Thoughts on: Ys SEVEN

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?

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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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Happy about: Headlander and Kero Blaster

When you think Double Fine, you usually think adventure games, either point and click or action adventures. They do have attempts at strategy games and even simple jRPGs, but it still feels a bit weird to see something like Headlander pop up. Because Headlander is a metroidvania… At least, Pixel is consistent in his love of cutely drawn action platformers, even if, unlike Cave Story, Kero Blaster is linear. So, let’s take a quick look at these two games.

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In love with: Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut

It’s been a while since I could write anything in the blog. Whenever you have a job that takes most of your day, playing long titles takes much longer than whenever you have a lot of free time. And apart from open world titles, most of which I tend to ignore nowadays anyway, RPGs tend to take most of your gaming time. Luckily, Wasteland 2 was that particular type of an RPG that was a joy to return to, no matter how long it took.

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O tempora: Bayonetta (PC)

My O tempora posts tend to be about older titles, than 2009, the year Bayonetta was released originally in Japan. But Bayonetta became a milestone release, a new classic that ushered a new era of “stylish action” games and gave the Capcom alumni at PlatinumGames a much needed boost, despite the lower than expected sales. In addition, the core gameplay has been evolved and perfected so much since then it’s interesting to look back at where it started. But now on PC, with a surprisingly solid port.

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Thoughts on: The Witness and Samorost 3

It might seem strange for me to pair these two quite different adventure/exploration/puzzle games into one post, but there’s a good reason for that, I feel. That is, apart from me playing them one after the other and not feeling like making separate posts. They’re both beautiful but flawed games. Flawed at the execution of the key ideas they aim to shine at.

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