It’s been just about 3 years since I’ve first played an Ys game. Yet, ever since playing Ys Origin and the first two games I constantly had irresistible urge to play ever other title in the series that slowly roll out on PC. And I’m constantly interested in checking out other Nihon Falcom titles as well. Ys SEVEN is yet another rather old release, finally re-released in English on PC. What does it bring this time?
Tag: game review
Happy about: Orwell, Emily is Away Too and The Banner Saga 2
Story-driven titles, be they based around simple text or visual based interactions or on top of fleshed out other genres/mixes of genres, always have to consider the dangers of being story-driven – does the story focus enhance with the gameplay, is something done at the expense of something else, are the stories written and/or told in a good enough way for the game to have a story focus? Let’s look at some good examples among the titles where story is almost all there is: Orwell, Emily is Away Too and The Banner Saga 2.
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Thoughts on: Red Comrades (1 & 2) and Blue Estate
Pop culture reference filled parody games were never really my cup of tea. And they haven’t really been popular lately either, feeling more reserved to the 90s era. Let me write about games a lot of you will probably not enjoy: Red Comrades Save the Galaxy: Reloaded, Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice. Reloaded and Blue Estate.
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Thoughts on: Neverending Nightmares, Dropsy and OneShot
Three open-ended exploratory story-driven games, all using unconventional approach to the genre they would usually be in. Let me write a few things on Neverending Nightmares, Dropsy and OneShot.
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Few words on Dead Rising
To my surprise, I’ve completed the first Dead Rising today, now that it’s on PC. To my surprise, because I felt (and still do) that this game isn’t really “for me” and because I attempted playing Dead Rising 2 before and didn’t enjoy the experience much. I still feel like I cannot write this as a “proper review”, especially since I cheated in a few places to speed things up and didn’t redo the same things proper, so my perception is a bit off. But I do have a few words to say about the game and what I’ve seen of the series so far.
In love with: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Ninja Theory have established a reputation for making games that are solid, if average mechanically, but really memorable in terms of storytelling. With one glaring exception being DmC: Devil May Cry, where the game had solid and fun (if weaker than previous DMC games) gameplay, but unbelievably terrible story and script. With Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, their first fully independent production, things looked a bit different from the announcement. And I’m glad to say, that what we got is a really unforgettable experience.
Thoughts on: The Silent Age, Mr. Pumpkin Adventure and Four Last Things
The art of point and click adventuring can be tackled in many different ways. Some focus on story, some on puzzles, some on comedy, some just try to create an unexpectedly deep adventuring via a simple mouse-based controls interface. The Silent Age, Mr. Pumpkin Adventure and Four Last Things, however, are of the simple sort. The story, the puzzles and the comedy.
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Thoughts on: Near Death, Firewatch and Maize
Three first person view games with heavy focus on exploration and open-ended maps. Three completely different approaches to that concept. Survival, drama and comedy. Done to varying degrees of success.
Thoughts on: Several games I’ve had no time to write about before
It is time again to write about a bunch of games I played, some of which I finished, but which didn’t really require a full on exclusive review for them (or even the dual/triple review post, for that matter). The games I will cover here are these: Pony Island, Refunct, Deus Ex: The Fall, Layers of Fear, Dream Machine, Hidden Folks, Clustertruck, Superhot, 2000:1 A Space Felony, Goat Simulator, Environmental Station Alpha, Ori and the Blind Forest and Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse. Yep, that’s a lot of stuff that piled up over the course of about half a year. Let’s get to it.
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Happy about: Stories Untold and What Remains of Edith Finch
For the past 10 years or so understanding of what can be achieved with videogames in terms of storytelling has changed quite a lot. From feeling too dependent on the gameplay mechanics to “be successful” which was then crushed by several titles like original Dear Esther mod or strange experiences from Tale of Tales we came to the almost opposite reality of games trying to brush off gameplay as unnecessary and trying to be as non-game as possible to tell their stories. But this whole movement seems to have finally matured in recent years and we’re getting more an more titles that try to mix gameplay and storytelling in ways that naturally complement each other, rather than compete with each other. And two new interesting examples of that are Stories Untold and What Remains of Edith Finch.
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