I have a weird relationship with the Life is Strange series. I hated the original when I first played it and only after giving it a second chance three years later understood why people liked it. Even so, despite my newfound respect, I didn’t quite love it as much as I wanted to see it evolve and become as good as it could be. Before the Storm was also played late, mostly because of the reception the game got. And yet, I liked it far more and in fact, spoilers, it remains my favorite entry in the series as of now. Then there was Life is Strange 2 which had so many pointless and bizarre decisions and detours in the story that by the end it ended up feeling like a mess. So I was glad that True Colors was going to be handled by Deck Nine, who worked on Before the Storm, and had high hopes for this one. It didn’t quite stick the landing.
Tag: Highly recommended
In love with: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
When I saw the announcement trailer for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the gameplay it was showcasing, I immediately wrote the game off as something that I’m not going to play. But then the game got released to extremely positive reviews and even some people I know personally played it and praised it. So I decided to give it a go and see for myself what was so good about this game that looked so boring in the previews. And, well, the bits that were shown are indeed quite boring. It’s just that the rest of the game is shockingly fantastic.
O tempora: Castlevania Advance Collection
O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Well, this was unexpected. After spending years locked to Game Boy Advance, a console that most people nowadays probably don’t have or use anymore, Konami has decided to release the Castlevania entries made for that console for modern platforms and most importantly PC. Oh and the SNES port of Rondo of Blood as well, for some reason. Unfortunately, this isn’t some extremely complicated NightDive Studios remaster or what Square Enix did with the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection. This is just a collection of original game ROMs, wrapped in a nice emulation package with a few extras thrown in. Luckily, it’s a well made collection and playing these titles is a joy.
In love with: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered
If it were late 90s-early 00s it would be impossible for me not to play and rant about NFS games. I’ve played them since the 3DO original, despite never being a huge fan of racing games. And up until Most Wanted in 2005, the only title I didn’t play the year of release was Hot Pursuit 2. After MW, however, there has been just one NFS game that I highly enjoyed and that game was Hot Pursuit (2010). After the “street racing” phase of the franchise, started in Underground, has grown stale, the new Hot Pursuit (not to be confused with the third game in the series from 98) suddenly revitalized the franchise by simply going back to its roots, while keeping all of the innovations from the 00s. It felt like a “best of” compilation of the series and even 10 years later (well almost 11 now) in this Remastered form it remains amazing. Despite the fact that not much has been “remastered”.
Read more“In love with: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered”
In love with: Chicory: A Colorful Tale
A couple of years ago I saw the first teasers of the “Drawdog” game on twitter and it looked really neat. The project regularly popped up somewhere on my timeline, consistently looking more enticing until finally it changed the title to the current Chicory: A Colorful Tale and then finally, and very recently, got released. Despite me not liking the previous title from the developer, Wandersong, all that much it was a promising game with lots of heart, so I was hoping that Chicory will be better. It turned out to be more than that.
In love with: Yakuza 4 Remastered
As I was going through all of the Yakuza titles, I was getting less hopeful that another one will get me as excited as 0 did back at the start of this journey. None of the games I’ve played this far were bad, even 3 had lots of strong elements despite being the game I’ve enjoyed the least. But then along comes Yakuza 4 in its remastered form on PC and I’m happy again.
In love with: Mass Effect Legendary Edition
When I sat down to play all three original Mass Effect trilogy games 3 years ago, I did not expect EA to join on the idea of remasters, especially for such a complex series made on Unreal Engine 3, at the tail end of the previous console generation. They seemed perfectly content with selling original releases and all of the DLCs separately for a juicy price, without even attempting to fix any serious issues that plagued the PC releases for years. So the announcement of Mass Effect Legendary Edition came as a complete surprise to me.
After having spent another 90 hours, playing through the trilogy with a fresh new Shepard, I’m happy to say that while it’s not exactly perfect and definitely not as thorough as some might’ve wanted, Legendary Edition is the best way to play the original Mass Effect trilogy. And play it you must.
Quick thoughts on: Ynglet
I really like games by Nifflas (Nicklas Nygren) even when I don’t like to play them. Truth be told, apart from the wonderful Knytt games, I never finished any of the other titles he designed or worked on. So when I saw Ynglet, my memory went to the really tough platforming parts of Knytt Underground, which were my least liked part of that wonderful game, and I considered skipping this game. Luckily I didn’t.
In love with: Mundaun
I rarely stumble upon praising reviews for a niche game I’ve never heard before, play it and end up liking it a lot. Usually the game turns out to be not some amazing surprise like Sylvio, but rather just a nice but forgettable experience. I am not forgetting Mundaun.
In love with: Cyberpunk 2077
Years after its announcement and months since its release I’ve decided to give Cyberpunk 2077 a go. Despite owning the game, I didn’t play it not for the obvious reasons of it being horribly buggy at the moment, but out of my usual principle of not playing story-driven games that have DLCs announced for it until said DLCs are out. I don’t like playing story-driven games until they’re “done” and I was willing to wait a year or more, just like I did with The Witcher 3 and it’s DLCs and expansions or recently with The Outer Worlds. But after almost half a year of CDPR spending all of their efforts on patches instead of additional content, I figured that the wait might be a bit too long for my liking and played the game in its 1.21 patch version. What an experience it has been.