Bird vs. Backlog - Birthday Edition
Aug. 15th, 2021 05:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pshaw_ravenJust last month, Death's Door released and I picked it up in pre-order. This is one I think you'd call a metroidvania - you can revisit previous map areas as you gain new abilities and there are new bits you can access. I've enjoyed this one a lot, and not simply because I get to play as a cute little Crow with a bigass sword. The pacing is good, there's enough stuff scattered around that backtracking isn't so much of a grind, and the soundtrack is terrific. I should have got that when it was on sale.
The only two major points of frustration were a seriously hard platforming challenge late-game to get to a Vitality Shrine. This wasn't helped by my brain deciding it was going to confuse "roll" with "fire" so I'd go to fire my hook across a canyon and instead, roll off the cliff. I'm not a particularly good gamer, as you might imagine. Otherwise that one might have been a lot less annoying, though it does still rely on speed and timing to get through. The other was an early game mini boss, I guess it's called a Black Knight, but a lot of people on Reddit have started referring to it as "thicc knight" due to the way it looks. I think it's supposed to be some sort of clockwork, but I honestly don't know. It's incredibly hard to defeat early on when you have few upgrades and one melee weapon, but eventually it just clicked and I got it. I'm at probably the end of the game now, so I need to decide if I want to go back for collectibles, or do that on a new save file. There's an achievement for completing the game using on the discarded umbrella as your melee weapon, and I'm going to try it. It'll make some of the fights drag out, but once you learn the patterns it's just a matter of not getting hit, and not confusing roll with fire. I love this one, it was absolutely worth getting and worth playing.
Last night I finished The Messenger. I try to play games as blind as I can. So in this case, I had no idea how long this one actually was, and kept getting frustrated when new stuff would come up. Surely THIS has to be the last area. Nope. I think dying a lot is supposed to be a part of it, because I did die an awful lot, even for me. I think I got through some areas just with lucky button mashing. I have no desire to go back for collectibles, since after the game's midpoint, some areas become a whole lot more difficult and it doesn't feel worth the rage to do it. I've unlocked NG+ but have not started a new game yet, nor have I started the "Picnic Panic" DLC. Honestly, I've never been so relieved to roll credits on a game. I was damn tired of this thing, and completely fed up before I even got to the last area. Again, I did go in blind, so I didn't know what to expect, and I think a second playthrough might go better now that I do know.
Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and the art is spectacular, but for low-skill gamers, some of the sections are nightmares. Most of it is the fun sort of difficult, where you're motivated to keep trying and happy when you do succeed. Towards the end, it seems as if there are screens that are difficult simply to be difficult. They're not fun or motivating, and when I'd get across some section I'd been stuck on and die before making it to the next checkpoint, I'd have to just shut the game down for a while because I was so pissed off at it, and at myself. I'd give it four stars out of five - I think the main problems I have with it are "end user" problems and not as much the game itself.
A rather quieter game experience is Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) which seems to be a much shorter one set in the far north and based on a traditional story from the Inupiaq. The control feels a bit soft, but it's not bothersome to me. In fact, if you start struggling with a section, the game guides you through it, showing you where to go and stand at each point - which came in handy early on, with a balance puzzle that was driving me nuts because I wasn't quite grasping the physics of it. Anyway, you also get to play as an Acrtic Fox and it makes adorable fox noises.
I'm at about halfway through this one, and will go back to it this evening. Along the way you collect "cultural insights," which are short documentary clips about the Inupiaq, and are scattered along the route as owls. So I get to collect owls with my fox. (insert happy bird noises) I'm saving those up to watch at the end. So far Id' highly recommend it for a shorter, somewhat easier game with good art and a very engaging story. And honestly, I play these games for the stories.
The only two major points of frustration were a seriously hard platforming challenge late-game to get to a Vitality Shrine. This wasn't helped by my brain deciding it was going to confuse "roll" with "fire" so I'd go to fire my hook across a canyon and instead, roll off the cliff. I'm not a particularly good gamer, as you might imagine. Otherwise that one might have been a lot less annoying, though it does still rely on speed and timing to get through. The other was an early game mini boss, I guess it's called a Black Knight, but a lot of people on Reddit have started referring to it as "thicc knight" due to the way it looks. I think it's supposed to be some sort of clockwork, but I honestly don't know. It's incredibly hard to defeat early on when you have few upgrades and one melee weapon, but eventually it just clicked and I got it. I'm at probably the end of the game now, so I need to decide if I want to go back for collectibles, or do that on a new save file. There's an achievement for completing the game using on the discarded umbrella as your melee weapon, and I'm going to try it. It'll make some of the fights drag out, but once you learn the patterns it's just a matter of not getting hit, and not confusing roll with fire. I love this one, it was absolutely worth getting and worth playing.
Last night I finished The Messenger. I try to play games as blind as I can. So in this case, I had no idea how long this one actually was, and kept getting frustrated when new stuff would come up. Surely THIS has to be the last area. Nope. I think dying a lot is supposed to be a part of it, because I did die an awful lot, even for me. I think I got through some areas just with lucky button mashing. I have no desire to go back for collectibles, since after the game's midpoint, some areas become a whole lot more difficult and it doesn't feel worth the rage to do it. I've unlocked NG+ but have not started a new game yet, nor have I started the "Picnic Panic" DLC. Honestly, I've never been so relieved to roll credits on a game. I was damn tired of this thing, and completely fed up before I even got to the last area. Again, I did go in blind, so I didn't know what to expect, and I think a second playthrough might go better now that I do know.
Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and the art is spectacular, but for low-skill gamers, some of the sections are nightmares. Most of it is the fun sort of difficult, where you're motivated to keep trying and happy when you do succeed. Towards the end, it seems as if there are screens that are difficult simply to be difficult. They're not fun or motivating, and when I'd get across some section I'd been stuck on and die before making it to the next checkpoint, I'd have to just shut the game down for a while because I was so pissed off at it, and at myself. I'd give it four stars out of five - I think the main problems I have with it are "end user" problems and not as much the game itself.
A rather quieter game experience is Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa) which seems to be a much shorter one set in the far north and based on a traditional story from the Inupiaq. The control feels a bit soft, but it's not bothersome to me. In fact, if you start struggling with a section, the game guides you through it, showing you where to go and stand at each point - which came in handy early on, with a balance puzzle that was driving me nuts because I wasn't quite grasping the physics of it. Anyway, you also get to play as an Acrtic Fox and it makes adorable fox noises.
I'm at about halfway through this one, and will go back to it this evening. Along the way you collect "cultural insights," which are short documentary clips about the Inupiaq, and are scattered along the route as owls. So I get to collect owls with my fox. (insert happy bird noises) I'm saving those up to watch at the end. So far Id' highly recommend it for a shorter, somewhat easier game with good art and a very engaging story. And honestly, I play these games for the stories.
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Date: 2021-08-15 02:53 pm (UTC)