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#15: Picross 3D: 40.7 hours
I didn't actually finish the last level, but anyone who has played this knows that Hard-10-Gold is bullshit even with a 35 minute time limit. With that out of the way...
Picross 3D is a fantastic expansion of the Picross concept, but if you don't already love it it probably won't win you over. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect with some key changes. Not every row and column has information about what's in it, but this is necessary to make the game work. If all 3 axes had information at all times it would be way too easy. It also means that by necessity these puzzles are designed, with specific clues removed, instead of a normal Picross puzzle where the clues can be generated automatically. Said clues are also different to a regular Picross puzzle, being represented by a single number (how many blocks are in the column/row) and a symbol (indicating how many groups they're in) instead of telling you the specifics of the groups in the row. It's a new way of thinking about these puzzles but it works really well.
Unfortunately there's no way to have a mode that doesn't immediately tell you when you fuck up. Because you're removing pieces of the puzzle instead of just painting them the only option upon realising that you've fucked up would be to restart anyway.
Honestly I got a bit sick of this game by the end, because I just ran through it really quickly and there's a ton of content. Having too much content isn't really a bad thing, but it's something to keep in mind. It will be interesting to see if Picross 3D Round 2 is similarly long because Jupiter's Picross offerings can be a little sparse of late.
#16: Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash: 13.2 hours
This is a hard game to talk about because I haven't played a Chibi-Robo game before but I know enough about to series for this entry to come off as really weird and out of place regardless. There are a number of aspects that seem to be lifted from the older games (Chibi-Robo himself is adorable and deserves to be in more interesting games) but I can't say for sure.
Beyond the context of it's existence though, it's a 2D platformer that doesn't really have anything special to offer. The idea the game banks on and is named after is using your cord as a whip, which lends itself to trick shots and swinging. But the swinging can be a little awkward so the game doesn't really do anything interesting with it.
The game's main problem (which I admittedly avoided for the most part) is it's insane amount of padding. There are six worlds with six levels each, and these levels are arranged into a ring. When you finish a level you have to spin a wheel (which thankfully is easy to manipulate) that determines how many levels you advance. If you skip a level you have to go around the world until you land on it, or spend in-game currency to add panels to the wheel until to get the number you need. Once you finish all six levels the world boss appears, and beating them will enable you to freely select levels in that world. Then when you get to the end of the sixth world you're told that you need to cough up a certain amount of money to unlock the final boss.
On top of this, there are the toys. There are three kinds of collectibles in this game, one of which is lovingly rendered Japanese snack foods. Each world contains a portal that transports you to a toy that has a craving for some of these snacks, and by handing them over you unlock descriptions of them in the gallery. The level each toy can first be found in is randomised, and to get back to them later (which you will have to do because a lot of the time they want snacks you don't have yet) you have to go through much of whichever level they've moved to (which is thankfully marked after the first encounter).
Overall I found that the padding, while egregious is easy to overlook. But that doesn't change the fact that it's just a mediocre 2D platformer on a system that isn't starved of them. It's fun, but it's not that fun.
#17: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: 177.7 hours
I don't really need to extol the virtues of this game, everyone else has already done that. But I want to talk about a few things that I liked and disliked about my experience. Mine was a lot more rigid than most people's, I tended to stick to one map region at a time and moving on once I'd thoroughly explored it. First I went east to Necluda, then down to Faron, up through Akkala, then through the centre to Gerudo and finally up to Hebra. I found every shrine, and ended up finding almost 600 Korok seeds.
The thing this game does the best is the sense of wonder and exploration. Being able to climb and glide so easily is a treat and there is always something to find. The first time seeing a Divine Beast in the distance, stumbling across some terrain you haven't seen before, seeing a shrine or a shooting star in the distance. But the best thing is even when you go somewhere otherwise boring, like a random mountain peak, the designers will have put something up there (usually a Korok, a chest or a weapon) to find. Exploration is almost always rewarded in this game.
There are a few things I'd like to see more of in the future though, caves. Occasionally this game will really surprise you, you'll walk into an alcove or fall down a hole and realise that the area you've been exploring was hollow all along. The sense of "Wait, this was down here the whole time?" is incredible, but it only happens a handful of time.
It would be nice to see more enemy variety, but the game copes well with what it has, and the overworld minibosses are a delight. Lynel fights especially are tense and really fun. By the end of the game the white enemy varieties spawn a lot and they have a little too much health for my liking but the combat is always pretty satisfying for what it is.
I guess the elephants in the room are the durability and the stamina systems. I thought stamina was fine as long as it wasn't raining, and while the durability did make me hold off on using more powerful weapons by the end of the game I could easily farm my favourites if I wanted to and my inventory was always full of them.
The biggest disappointment for me is probably the cooking mechanic. Most of the materials and recipes you collect in the game are useless. If you want to make a meal that grants you a specific thing there is usually one kind of ingredient that will give you the best results, so mix five together and ignore everything else. It's amazing how many different meals there are in the game, adding salt to things changes their name and description, there are 3 or 4 different ways to prepare meat, etc. But at the end of the day all of the materials have an effect when cooked and they add together linearly to form the final meal, so why bother experimenting when five of the same thing gives the best results? It's something I'd love to see expanded in future installments.
Another thing I really hope gets fleshed out in future is the armour system. The set bonuses are cool but a little restrictive because it's always better to wear the whole set if you have it, but one underused feature might mitigate this some what. A few pieces of clothing in the game have unique effects all by themselves, most notably two of the three pieces of swimming gear giving you new abilities in the water. I hope that more of them do in the future to make the customisation feel a little more meaningful.
At the end of the day though, no matter the flaws, I'm going to remember this game for a long time. It was an amazing world to explore.
#18: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment: 6.4 hours
If you've never played Shovel Knight, do that first. It's an amazing platformer, if you have then this expansion is a real treat.
Yacht Club really went all out this time. While Plague of Shadows used the same levels as the original Shovel Knight campaign, and functioned as a concurrent side-story, Specter of Torment is a prequel with all new level layouts. The game shows how Specter Knight and the Enchantress assembled the Order of No Quarter seen in Shovel Knight, and provides some unexpected backstory connecting some of the characters.
Once again Spectre Knight controls differently to the previous protagonists. He has a basic slash, can run up walls a short distance, wall jump, he can grind on rails, and he has a homing attack. This homing attack, the Dash Slash, lets you do a diagonal dash when you're near an enemy (up or down is determined by height). This ability is used to great effect, with lanterns and enemies strewn throughout the levels to give you a path forward across traps and pits. Unfortunately it also makes combat somewhat easy, especially when combined with a magic item that lets you trade mana for health. Weirdly considering the character action style moveset that Specter Knight has, the platforming still takes centre stage. Oh also there's a new mix of the soundtrack and it's great
#19: Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith: 11.1 hours
While this expansion is structured in a much more interesting way than the base game I'm hesitant to call it better. All the problems I already had with the combat persist and a few new enemies have shown up to put a spanner in the works. The aforementioned structrure
is interesting though. For the first few levels you play as Kyle Katarn as in the base game, but eventually he wanders of to investigate a temple on a distant planet. You spend the rest of the game as Mara Jade running some jobs, before heading to the temple as well to figure out why Kyle hasn't come back yet. The temple also marks a shift in gameplay because all of your weapons save the lightsaber fail to work there. It's actually a bit disappointing because it means that you don't get as much time as you'd hope to play with the one new weapon addition, a scoped rifle. That said it's a very janky implementation of a scope, as it functions as separate weapon that you switch to.
There's a new common enemy, a sort of lion, that you will fight over and over in the last few levels (where you have no ranged weapons). It can leap across a room in a fraction of a second and it can kill you in a few hits, they're a pain to fight and I have no regrets ducking behind a corner and saving every time I see one.
Oh and I almost forgot, this campaign integrates Force powers into the level design. With a lot of places where using a Force jump to get to a platform or a Force pull to activate a switch or disarm an enemy is required. But then you run into that last set of levels again and everything's immune to your powers anyway.
#20: BYE-BYE BOXBOY!: 9.6 hours
So I actually finished this game on the 27th of April and forgot to write it up. While that seems damning I actually enjoyed this final entry in the trilogy more than the other two, which I quite liked. This game adds more than the second game, which mostly focused on how being able to summon two sets of boxes interacted with the existing mechanics. This entry is constantly throwing new mechanics at you and it's better for it. The Boxboy concept honestly doesn't really lend itself very well to complicated puzzles and adding more mechanics is a good way to keep things fresh. Though like the previous ones this game still doesn't really fully develop them until the post-game worlds. Some of the new mechanics take the form of special boxes (rockets, bombs, etc) and that's a space the series hasn't explored before so that feels really nice too. All in all the series goes out on a high note but the games are all pretty interchangeable.
#21: Professor Layton and the Lost Future: 11.9 hours
Not much to say here, it's another Layton game that follows the same general structure as the last two. It's good if you like the series, though the plot is a bit nonsense (even in the context of the other games.
Main Post - Part 1
Main Post - Part 2
Finishing the DLC for these first two is on indefinite hold so I guess now is a good time to talk about them.
#22: Overcooked
What a great concept, what great execution. Overcooked is a 4-player couch co-op cooking game with very simple but enjoyable gameplay. You're in a kitchen, orders come in at the top of the screen, you have to make the required food and send it off to the customer. The faster you fulfill the order, the higher the tip you get. Fail to get an order out in the time limit and you lose points. You have chopping boards to cut things, pans to fry things, pots to make soup, etc. The recipes themselves start very simple but become a little more complex over time. For example to make a burger you need to pound meat into a patty before cooking it, then adding it to the burger with the rest of the ingredients. Further complicating things is that you only have 3 plates and they have to be washed after they're used.
But the real joy of Overcooked comes from the level design. Nobody should ever want to cook in any of the kitchens in this game, they are designed to cause you headaches. From a rocking ship that causes the counters to slide all over the place, to a series of trucks on a highway, movement is generally limited in some way making coordination and efficient delegation of tasks the keys to success.
The presentation gives the game a ton of charm too. The plot revolves around a group of 1-4 chefs tasked by the Onion King (a giant sentient onion) with feeding a giant spaghetti monster to death. They fail, and so are sent back in time to prepare and learn how to work together better as a team. There are also a ton of playable characters to choose from, but my favourite character is the default chef who is always maniacally grinning, even while chopping food. If you haven't played this game yet, grab some friends and get to it.
#23: Affordable Space Adventures: 4.7 hours
Affordable Space Adventures is a 2D puzzle game, where you and up to two friends pilot a spaceship (but you really should play with all three). One person flies the ship, one person controls the flare gun and scanner, and the last has control of the ship's systems on the Wii U Gamepad. This last position is what gives the game it's hook, with only that person able to see how the ship is configured, and trying to take orders from the other two to get through the game. Most enemies can't be destroyed, instead you have to scan them to find out whether they respond to noise, heat, or electricity, and then keep the ships levels below their detection threshold.
There are a lot of toys to play with, with extra bits and bobs being unlocked throughout the game. A few of the puzzles are a bit unpolished though, introducing new concepts out of nowhere and expecting you to pick up on them right away. But there's not really a whole lot else to say about it. It's engaging the whole way through, it looks and sounds fantastic. Go check it out.
#24: Dishonored 2: 49.5 hours
I enjoyed Dishonored 2 even more than the first game, and that's saying a lot. Emily's totally new power set is a breath of fresh area most games wouldn't dare to implement (though the option to play as Corvo with the old powers softens that somewhat). But this really is Emily's story, and you should definitely play as her at least the first time through.
Far Reach is a lot more finicky than Blink, but once you get used to it's quirks it's far more interesting. It functions more like a grappling hook than a teleport, pulling you forward and giving you momentum if you want it. If you're willing to take the leap you can go much further, much faster. This comes with a trade-off in that you can't use it to gain much height under most circumstances, with it preferring to target the ground beyond a certain distance in front of you. But you can upgrade it to snatch guards which is the best feeling in the world so on the whole it's a great power.
The game still suffers from a lack of non-lethal and stealth options, but I'm coming to see this as a good thing. When you go assault in this game it becomes far too easy, you are so mobile and powerful that you can clear an area in seconds without breaking a sweat. If you self-impose a non-lethal or ghost (never spotted) run the game becomes far more interesting as you can't just run in and kill everyone. It can be argued that the game letting you play it guns blazing is a bad thing, and I can see that, but I had no problem imposing the restrictions on myself to make it more fun.
As much as I enjoyed this game, I'm really glad I held off. The improvements made to it post-launch have made it feel like a much more cohesive and complete whole. New Game Plus is great fun, turning you into even more of a god of silent death, and the custom difficulty settings are amazing. You can individually modify over 20 parameters including how much potions heal you, and how much awareness guards have of areas above them. In addition you can customise the FPS threshold and lower limit of the dynamic resolution scaling. More games should have this much customisation, it's great.
Dishonored 2 didn't light the world on fire, and it's definitely more of the same. More tools, more powers, more of the world to explore. But it's a great game and if you liked the first one (and feel like playing it for another 30 hours) you should definitely check this out.
#25: Gain Ground: 9 hours
This was a nice surprise but also a bit of a disappointment. Gain Ground is a top down shooter of sorts that plays unlike anything else I've ever seen before. You start with three characters, each with their own movement speed, 8-directional standard attack and a unique special attack. One can throw a spear in any direction that goes over short walls, one can fire long range shots towards the top of the screen even while strafing, and the last can throw a grenade over short walls, also only in one direction.
Your objective is to either get all three characters to the exit of the map, or kill all the enemies. If someone is hit they stay on the map and must be lead to the exit by the next character. If the next character is also hit then the first character is gone for good. Many of the maps contain other characters that can be taken to the exit to add them to your character pool, and this is where the game reveals itself. There's a long list of characters with varied special shots and in many of the levels knowing which ones are capable of surviving is the key to victory. Lose too many and you may find yourself in a tight spot later on when there are gunmen in the battlements and all of your people who can aim that high are dead.
The dynamic this creates of having to quickly assess your roster and the map and determine which characters to deploy and in which order to clear out the enemies is fascinating and a ton of fun. But after a while the enemies become faster, with better weapons, and the fun starts to wear off. After trying to play the game the whole way through about 10 times getting hit by gunfire I was unable to dodge and losing the character I knew the next level really needed, or trying to learn a boss pattern knowing that if I got hit I might as well restart wore thin. Luckily I was playing via Sega Game Room and I could just save scum my way to victory.
Great concept, would love to see other games expand on it, the arcade-era design isn't really for me.
#26: Boson X: 5.8 hours
Initially I hated this game, about halfway through the first world I was ready to give up. But then eventually I realised that I was playing the game all wrong, the correct way to play doesn't necessarily make the game good, but it certainly makes it more enjoyable.
Boson X is an endless runner set inside a hexagonal track. Press forwards to jump forwards, press left to jump forwards and rotate the track anti-clockwise, press right to rotate it clockwise. If you hold down the button you jump further until eventually you fall below the track and die. Simple stuff. The other main mechanic is that there are blue pads on the ground that fill a charge meter when you run over them, making you run slightly faster in the process. When you hit 100% you "finish" the level and enter a boost mode and are able to rack up bonus percentage before your extra speed inevitably sends you careening into the abyss.
Before I talk about what I didn't like I want to say that I really like the general idea of the boost pads. The riskier you are with your jumps, the longer you stay on each one, the more charge you can extract from them, which can later save you from leaving one at 99% and dying before you reach the next. My main problem was with the way the levels are designed. Each of the game's 18 levels are procedural assembled from sections exclusive to that level, and some of them require a lot of rote learning to be able to navigate successfully. It really sucked when I would only see a component I was bad at later on in a level, before I managed enough practice to get past it consistently. But more than that it leads to the feeling that finishing a level is less about learning how to deal with all of the patterns, and more waiting until you randomly roll a long enough sequence of patterns you're good at to reach 100%. Sometimes the level would throw patterns with impossible to reach boost pads at me as well which just felt mean-spirited, but that's the least of the problems really.
Overall once I came to terms with the fact that Boson X was one part rote learning and one part waiting for a lucky roll I had a lot of fun with it.
Currently playing: Still making my way through Inazuma Eleven[/QUOTE]
I also want to talk about Towerfall, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Screencheat once I've put more time into them.
