Happy about: AMID EVIL

With the new oldschool FPS wave on the rise, it’s nice to see as many good attempts at the genre as there are. My biggest trouble with looking at these games, however, is due to how quickly the revival peaked with the astonishing DUSK in late 2018. And given that AMID EVIL is published by the same team at New Blood Interactive and also features the soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, avoiding comparisons is pretty much impossible. It’s good then that this title has its own unique set of strengths to distinguish itself.

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Happy about: Persona 4 Golden

I have very little experience with the (Shin) Megami Tensei series of (mostly) jRPG titles by ATLUS. I first learned of the series after the huge success of Persona 3 about 11 years ago, which is in itself part of the sub-series of games with a different story and gameplay focus. I did play Persona 3 FES around the same time. I loved the unique blend of social simulation and turn based jRPG dungeon crawling and the overall dark horror mood of the story got me through a huge chunk of the game, but in the end I’ve never finished it. Same happened with the original Persona 4, which I’ve tried a few years later – I liked the premise and the gameplay, but playing on PS2 with its loading speeds get to me in the end and I dropped it, hoping that later the game will be ported to other platforms where its problems will be alleviated somewhat.

Persona 4 Golden was such a port… which I did miss because I never owned a PS Vita. Yet, moving the title to a portable console seemed like a smart move – these are long games and the social/life sim aspect takes a lot of time, while also being very easy on the pick up and play routine and that’s where a lot of people enjoyed the game even more. Fast forward eight more years and Persona 4 Golden made a surprise showing as a PC port with a few more improvements over the enhanced PS Vita port. And now I’ve finally played the game to the end.

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Thoughts on: Hypnospace Outlaw

Ever since the release of Her Story there’s been a lot of releases which approach the investigation adventuring in a different way, essentially simulating the work of looking through archives. While there were earlier examples of that that worked more like ARGs, like In Memoriam, and other titles that experimented with alternative ways of how a mystery can be solved in an adventure game and what mechanics can it use for doing so, I feel that Her Story was an exact point where people became more open to the idea and started experimenting with it more often. Hypnospace Outlaw in particular is simulating the experience of working as a moderator (Enforcer) inside an Internet-like network called Hypnospace. And it’s more curious than actually fun.

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Happy about: Halo 3: ODST (MCC)

Of all the Halo titles, the one that always got me most curious was Halo 3: ODST. A very different approach to story and tone, the more open world like game design and even the uneven fan reception were things that got me interested and now that I’ve finally played it in the Master Chief Collection, I have to say that it was right for me to be intrigued. Maybe this will turn out to be not the best campaign in Halo games, but I’m sure it will remain one of the most unique ones.

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Thoughts on: Borderlands 3 (with DLCs)

I’m still not quite sure why is that I’m attracted to the Borderlands series. I’m not a fan of loot focused action RPGs, I don’t often play coop or multiplayer and every single main game in the series has been at best “kinda nice”. Yet here I am, playing Borderlands 3 (and 4 big DLCs for it) without even expecting to like it much.

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Happy about: Journey

I remember how stunned everyone was by thatgamecompany’s Journey back in 2012, when the game was released as a PS3 exclusive. I didn’t have that console and missed it entirely, but knowing Flower and flOw, I planned to definitely play the game some day. Well, now that the game is on PC that day has come. Except, it’s 8 years later. Does it matter?

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Happy about: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Despite hearing a lot about the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series for years, and frankly how couldn’t you hear about it with how popular it has become, I’ve not played a single entry up until this point. Most of the world has met Phoenix in a localized version back in 2005-2006 when the original GBA title was ported to Nintendo DS and released worldwide. This original trilogy of games was already out in Japan, having been released in 2001, 2002 and 2004 on GBA, but it was at this point that the famous “Objection!” really took off elsewhere. And after years of popularity, different related media, sequels, crossover games and many direct and indirect imitators the original trilogy has finally landed on PC, worldwide (there were Japan-only PC ports of several previous titles) in its newest updated iteration. I was very excited to finally check it out.

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Thoughts on: Creaks

While I was never a huge fan of Amanita Design, some of their titles have been and still remain among my favorite games. What I always admired about their projects is the playfulness and unpredictability, with the art and music coming close second. And pretty much every time they wanted to do something more puzzle oriented, I was far less interested with their critical darling Machinarium being my least favorite of the titles. Yet, I was curious about what Creaks would turn out to be – a puzzle platformer from the studio is a new direction after all. The results are not as fun as I hoped they would be.

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Thoughts on: 428: Shibuya Scramble

When I’ve first learnt of 428: Shibuya Scramble, which wasn’t too long ago, I got incredibly interested. While I’m not a huge fan of visual novels as a genre, there have been many great examples of how to build an engaging interactive narrative among these games. And this title seemed like it had many curious concepts of its own. Multiple characters with converging storylines, similarity to the good old (actually often really bad) FMV titles from the 90s, several story genres in one game telling different sides of the story… It was only later that I’ve learnt that the game was actually originally released back in 2008 on Wii and this new port was the first non-Japan exclusive version of the game. During the first several hours I didn’t even consider this, since the game felt really smart about how it used its own mechanics and how high quality the visual side of the game was.

I was thoroughly enjoying this title for hours, fully expecting to end up praising it a lot and calling it a gem that needed everyone’s attention. But that was only halfway through the game. Then the rest of the game happened.

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O tempora: Halo 2: Anniversary (MCC)

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

I found Halo to be respectable for when it was released, but ultimately tedious and frustrating as a single player FPS by today’s expectations. Its story was primitive, characters flat, levels a horrible copy-paste and even though its music was still memorable and the size and open nature of the levels (and the use of vehicles) was still impressive, it just wasn’t an enjoyable game to play. From my Halo 2 Vista memories, I knew that the sequel was a very different game, so I was hoping that it, in the new Anniversary version under Master Chief Collection, will be much more fun. And in many ways it is. But it has its flaws.

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