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radellama · 3 months

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Games I played in 2023 - Part 2

Well. These certainly took longer to write than I expected them to. Who knew that I’d have a lot to say AND be incredibly picky about how I said everything?

Me. I knew.

Anyway…

Read part one if you haven’t already, and my resi part will be coming out… soon……… And once again, spoilers of varying degrees and strong opinions moving forwards.

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Tomodachi Life, 3DS

I never had this game growing up, but my friend did, and they gave me a demo via DS download play. I really wanted to have it myself, but it was always so expensive that I could never justify buying it, and I prioritised getting other games that were higher on the list instead. Now that I have my cool 3DS where I can play whatever I want, I finally gave it a try!

It didn’t last long though, as there isn’t really that much to do here.

Similarly to Miitopia, this kind of game is only any fun if you have ideas for funny miis to play with, or are amused enough by using miis of you and your friends. I played for about 8 days, checking in with everyone and trying to put all the Chrono characters in. There wasn’t much to actually do, it felt like pointless unlocks and shopping just for the sake of it, instead of any intrinsic reason compelling me to do so.

Maybe I’m just too old now, and have outgrown the age where I would’ve potentially enjoyed this more, but I doubt that. It’s just boring, and once you’ve played for a day or two, you have pretty much played it all. I know that there’s more to do if you spend the time playing for a few minutes every day, like miis dating or having a baby, but I couldn’t get my otp Magland to like each other and Harland spent more time with Schala than Magus. Also I had to make Magus a girl, cause gay people don’t exist and Nintendo doesn’t allow mpreg.

This is disappointing, especially as I enjoyed Miitopia more than I thought I would. I thought there would be more to this dollhouse style game, but there isnt. There’s some funny charm in the flavour text and such, but ehhhhhh… Just play Miitopia. That vibe is there and there’s more to do in that game.

I’m not going to link any songs, as I didn’t find anything particularly stand out, and as I listen while writing this, I’ve barely made a dent in the track list, so I can’t be bothered. It all just sounds like the classic Wii-DS era Mii music. Whatever.

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Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns, 3DS

I know I did a mock review a few years ago for this one, but. Y’know. This game is pretty good and I like farm sims. All the good stuff I’ve said in previous years about farm sims applies here; I get addicted to them easy and it’s dangerous for me to play them, cause it makes my autism go wheeeeeeeeeeeee

This game is one that’s close to my heart- I played it a lot as a tween and just enjoyed how much I felt like it captured the reasons why I liked the SNES Harvest Moon, while also expanding and adding more fun stuff. The gist of this game is that you are on your way to your farm, when you have an accident and forget which town you were going to live in. Both mayors want you to live in their town, and as you’ll come to find out, they’re fairly competitive against one another. Once you’ve picked your town, and start getting settled in, you’ll have an encounter with the Harvest Goddess, who explains that she collapsed the tunnel between the two towns because she was sick of the arguing- but wants YOUR help repairing relations. You do this primarily by entering the cooking festivals, held four times every month- the more you win, and the closer you get with the townspeople on both sides, the more you’ll be able to access upgrades for your house and tools, along with opening up the tunnel for easy access to both towns.

In the early days, you’ll be spending most your time working on your farm, and foraging on the mountain. There’s three screens on each side of the mountain with various foragable goods, fishing spots and wild animals to befriend – which is plenty to build up your inventory and earn some cash while you wait for your crops to grow. I really appreciate the early days in this game, as it’s not only nostalgic for me, but also a really solid tutorial. The first month is like an overall guide on how to play the game, with each town giving you a gift to start you off (Konohana giving you seeds and tools to grow crops, and Bluebell giving you a cow, which is just a much better deal lmao), showing you how the cooking competition works, and showing how to use the notice board and demonstrating the goal of opening the tunnel. You get a fairly well rounded understanding of most the mechanics you’ll be using, while also getting familiar with what you as a player will personally gravitate towards as you farm, forage, and befriend the locals on either side.

It’s not a lot of story, and it’s a very simple one at that- but it’s all this game needs. I remember as a tween, thinking that if there were ever to be a Harvest Moon movie made, that they should base it on this game; as it wasn’t overly complex, but still had fun characters and an easy to follow plot that would leave a lot of room for an adaptation to do what it needed to in order to make it work. I still stand by that, and will happily write the screenplay. Hit me up.

One cute thing that I love about this game, is that you can get closer with everyone, not just the bachelors and bachelorettes. In some instances, its required, which is a good incentive to give gifts and catch up with everyone when you can. Some date-ables need you to have high friendship points with not just themselves, but friends and/or family members that are important to them, otherwise you’ll be unable to marry them. That’s not the only reason to befriend people, however, as I learnt through this replay that you can unlock special requests once you’re close with certain people. This was an awesome revelation, as it varied the request board in a much needed way- when I was a kid playing, I’d only get super close with the bachelor I wanted and his required people so I could marry him. I didn’t ignore everyone, but I didn’t put much effort into raising their points either. I did this time though, which was great.

The request board is pretty simple, when you check it, there will usually be simple fetch quests from the villagers asking for something or to deliver something to someone else. This ranges from various crops, to foragables and other rarer items you need to collect or create. At the start of each month, there will also be special quests that are much higher in their difficulty, but also reap much greater rewards. In the early game, they’re usually requests for materials to open the tunnel between the two towns, or to upgrade your tools. Once you get closer with others, you can get special timed requests, which usually entail helping out with someone’s crops or livestock before the end of the day. This is a nice, simple mechanic to incentivise collecting items and growing your farm, and isn’t inherently bad.

What does hurt this, however, is how bloated and drawn out so much of this game feels. The special requests to upgrade your farm that I mentioned? ONLY at the start of the month. And, when you’re a year or two in, you can complete these big quests by day three or four usually- definitely before the first week is over. It kinda sucks to be forced to wait around all month just for an upgrading blitz as soon as the season turns over. I just wanted to unlock the mines, but according to the online guides, you need to have your house and property FULLY upgraded... I thought I was. I have the biggest house, both the chicken and livestock paddocks are fully expanded, I got a little more fields and a maker shed to process animal products into things like yarn and cheese and shit... BUT I HAVE TO DO THE BEEHIVES INDIVIDUALLY AT THE START OF EACH MONTH. THERE'S 6 OF THEM. I'M AT YEAR 4 OR 5 I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR SO LONG... THERE'S NOT EVEN ANY NOTES OR INDICATION IN GAME THAT THERE WILL BE A MINE I JUST HAVE TO MAX OUT MY FARM AND FIND OUT. NOT TO MENTION THAT THERE'S UPGRADES FOR BOTH FARMS TO DO, SO IT TAKES FOR FUCKING EVER… It’s really shit to have the main way to feel progression being spaced too far apart to even mean anything. A simple change, like making the big upgrades available twice a season instead of once would help IMMENSELY. Even to expand upon the request system, and be able to make requests yourself to various villagers once you’re closer to them in order to upgrade your farm. That way, there’s still that focus on the community, and incentivises you to get close to people on both sides, as there will be materials that only one town has. I’m just spit-balling, but the progression needs to be more frequent!

This elongated feeling isn’t just limited to the requests and upgrades. It’s unfortunately present across the whole game. Which is such a shame, as it’s the reason why I never played past the second or third year as a kid. Befriending villagers and getting closer to them takes ages. Progress takes ages. And the food competition takes aaaages. There’s no auto play for it, and there is no reason to drag out an ‘ooohh who’s gonna win!?’ back and forth every. Damn. Competition. You compete 4 times a month, it gets old by like, the third one lol. There’s also a lot about this game that is just vague for no real reason- my biggest gripe being that you can upgrade your livestock’s production output by feeding it treats. In game, you just have someone say that feeding your livestock their favourite treats will increase productivity. The reality? There is a set number of treats for each type of animal, and you have to feed it that set amount for every level up you want to do, for a max of 5 items from that animal. So, where I though it was something like ‘feed the animals various treats to see which is their favourite,’ or ‘feed the cow 10 grain treats,’ - it’s actually ridiculous numbers like the cow needing 7 treats, 15 grain treats, 8 vegetable treats and 1 nutra treat PER LEVEL. PER COW. AND YOU CAN ONLY FEED AN ANIMAL ONE TREAT PER DAY. And there’s no way to keep track of it in game, you have to keep track of it yourself, which, in my opinion, is fucking horrific. I don’t mind the concept of having to feed your livestock various treats to level it up, but at least give some way to know how many to feed it! Have one of the villagers who likes animals tell you this as a reward for getting close to them, and maybe they can tell you how many of each treat you have to go. Or, have it be something you can get the stats of when you examine your livestock with a stethoscope! OR JUST HAVE IT IN THE LIVESTOCK BOOK IN EACH SHED. There’s so many ways that this could be a perfectly fine mechanic, but with it being that bloated and time consuming, it’s just ass!

And while I’m getting into the nitty-gritty of nitpicking- when you do timed requests for other villagers, like picking crops or milking cows, the items automatically go into their storage through an auto animation of the player putting their crops into their pocket. I wish that was an option for me on my farm, as it got annoying having to manually place every individual thing into my pockets when collecting crops and such. It’s things like this that make me want to get back into Stardew Valley again, as simple things like the auto grabber in the livestock sheds was a GODSEND that helped minimise the mind numbing grind, so that I can focus on enjoying the much better grinds that are more enjoyable.

One thing that this game has, that I really enjoyed when I was playing as a kid, is that the date-ables not only have heart events for when you’ve levelled up in your relationship, but also, YOU CAN TAKE PEOPLE ON DATES! If you catch your particular person when they’ve got some free time, they’ll ask if you want to go somewhere with them, and you can choose the location. Picking the right locations will reward you with a little date that goes well, and an increased amount of heart points – and if you pick a place that person doesn’t like, they’ll cut the date short due to feeling uncomfortable. This is really cute and fun, and though I wish you got more than a small handful of rotating sentences to see from your date- it is a nice way to be sure that you ARE close with that person, and can enjoy some time together. What I do wish, is that this was expanded a bit more, and even being able to go on friend dates with people you can’t date. I’d love to go for a walk in the mountains with the cool carpenter lady, or have tea with the grandma who runs the tea house – they’re my friends too, and it would be nice to have them do more than act as essentially set dressing and people to put up requests for you. Due to how simple these dates are, after a few of them, they don’t really feel like dates. The charm wears off when you notice that you’re just watching the two of you stand next to each other, while your date proclaims a random fact that’s not necessarily revealing anything of note towards your relationship with them, or their character. Having these be a bit more interactable would help solve this, as it’d be fun to answer questions the date has for you, or to do something together as a little minigame might be fun. Even something as simple as finding out info from other villagers as you get closer with everyone, and asking your date about the things you hear would be really nice! And, if you’re not dating, and able to go on friend dates, this would be a cool way to get closer with other villagers and learn a bit more about them and the history of the two towns.

One funny thing I noticed with these, however, is that ALL available bachelors or bachelorettes will ask to go on dates if you’re close enough- regardless of who you’re dating or even if you’re married. There is a jealousy system in place, where you’ll get the cold shoulder if you rack up too many jealousy points, and you have the choice to apologise or make it worse when they confront you with it. It’s a bit weird that people would still ask me on dates and get jealous after I was married. Like… Dude, you were at my wedding. There’s the occasional dialogue from other villagers that comments on married life, so it’s definitely not a secret. you KNOW I’m married, but still get pissy when I go on a date with my husband? It’s so silly, and that’s another point where I feel like a friend date system (that’s implemented with care) could resolve that strange point.

Of all the mechanics in this game, one that I simultaneously love and loathe is the filth on big livestock. First of all, I love that it’s such a clear indicator of when my animal is getting dirty, and if I leave it for too long they start to get filth clouds and flies following them. On the other, goddamn they get dirty so quickly. I don’t want to keep washing them every day, its a massive time sink and can be quite frustrating- especially when you’ve got a full barn with half a dozen cows, some sheep and alpacas. If it wasn’t as frequent, that’d be better, cause I don’t really care for the upkeep if I’m being honest. I just appreciate that it’s one of the only things that is communicated very clearly in the game. And, while we’re on the topic of bothersome things regarding the animals, the frame rate goes to hell when all the livestock are outside. It shouldn’t cause the game to nearly crash just by having all the animals outside, and it’s really annoying trying to milk your cow when you’re going at 1fps with massive slowdown. It’d be helped if the dogs and cats you train to herd them don’t cling to you and follow you wherever you go. I don’t really care if it’s cute or how pets act in real life (cause I know, my cats routinely come bother me for head scratches and cuddles while I’m writing these), but it’s really frustrating when you’re trying to pet your livestock and keep picking up 3 dogs in the process. Oh, oh, and one more thing, I grew up with the original DS version of this game, but played the 3DS remake for this; and while there’s not really any changes, the one change is this petting minigame for your livestock. While the livestock is out in the fields, you can sometimes see a little petting symbol above them, and interacting with them while that symbol is playing will launch the minigame. IT SUCKS. Like, yes, you can get extra hearts quickly through this minigame, but it goes on just a little too long, and would routinely crash my game when my black sheep wanted a pet. If the game automatically ended when you reached full hearts, instead of waiting for the timer to run out, that’d improve it- but this is ultimately an unnecessary addition and there’s no way to turn it off. Blehhhhh. You get so much more bang for your buck when farming livestock, but all this faff makes the crop growing seem so much simpler in comparison. I love that you can dig a trench for your crops, which allows you to place fertiliser at one end and it will fertilise the whole row, same with watering! There’s still a massive slowdown if you try to water a particularly large trench, but it goes back to normal when the animation is finished, unlike the animals, who still exist on the screen regardless.

Onto something I genuinely love about this game – the graphics. The style of the game is very cute, with a lot of the pre-rendered backgrounds having a painterly quality to them. The sprite art on the characters is also nice, even if it’s a bit of a generic anime style. I enjoyed seeing how the landscapes changed in each season, and seeing the little decorations put up during festivals is a fun touch. Pair this with the pleasant soundtrack, and it is such a nice, calming atmosphere to lose yourself in as you forage and farm.

Looking at this game more in-depth, it seems there’s a lot about it that becomes frustrating. However, I truly love this game. Within these weird flaws is a really cute game that I enjoy immensely, I just wish it was a little better so I could get more out of it. I deliberately pushed further than I ever played as a kid; I got so far that my animals started dying of old age LMAO. I would recommend playing with the fogu guide, as that was a lifesaver and clearly spelled out some of the vague things the game doesn’t elaborate upon. If you’re someone who likes farm sims, and hasn’t played this, I think that if you take into consideration how bloated it gets, you’ll probably enjoy this one! For at least the first two to three years. Lol.

Bluebell Town

Konohoana Town

Winter Theme

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Story of Seasons, 3DS

Oh boy. I got addicted.

I really should stay away from farm sims, huh?

This game is the spiritual successor to the Harvest Moon series- or, more accurately, what Harvest Moon rebranded to after the split from Natsume. Look into it if you’re interested, I don’t particularly feel like rehashing the history for this write up… These take long enough to write as it is, and I’m just sharing my opinions!

Anyway, this is such a fun and pleasant game!

I’ve been struggling with general life and health issues this year, and I can say that playing this was a great distraction for a few months. It was genuinely refreshing to play a farm sim that was new to me while still feeling like I knew what in store for me. What I found funny about this, was that the sound design is the same as Tale of Two Towns. That was very strange to hear after just giving up on ToTT for being too much of a slog – at least the sound design is pretty good lmao.

The intro to this game is straight to the point, which I appreciated. You’ve been chosen to move to this small farming town and start working on your own lot to help boost the local economy. For your first week, you stay with your neighbour- an elderly woman who knows everything there is to know about farming -and she teaches you the basics. It’s a great safety net to slowly get introduced to the mechanics you’ll need to know, and allow you the time to get acquainted with everyone in town.

The big change for this game is that you will exclusively be selling your goods in the market, which will grow to have a rotating list of vendors to buy and sell from. This is an interesting idea, and is certainly one way to get a basic understanding of a supply and demand economy; but I’m not sure how I feel about it. Because of the focus placed on this market, there’s no shipping bin for you to just sell items at a base price. A few years into the game, you can unlock a personal stall at the market, which I suppose is the replacement for the shipping bin; but you don’t get that until you’ve been well and truly playing for a while. In the beginning, it’s a little rough when you only have one or two vendors- if you miss them and then hit a dry spell, you’ll just have to deal with a bulging inventory until you can sell everything! It gets better once you unlock more vendors, and I assumed as such when playing, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling a bit off-putting initially. Once you start unlocking more vendors, though, it becomes surprisingly in-depth. There’s a strategy to the market, especially when a particular vendor is paying extra for select items or when completing requests. If you sell an abundance of one type of thing, the price for it will drop- which I thought was an interesting application of supply and demand. I’m unsure how easily understandable this all is to a younger audience, as despite my math and business skills being subpar, I am still an adult with a lived understanding of the concepts at play here, and not the intended younger demographic.

I can say that once you get a grasp on all the mechanics at play, this game was a blast! I think my hyperfixation on this game lasted until about halfway through winter of the first year – which is pretty good mileage! The addiction lasted much longer than that, as I genuinely enjoyed playing this game over a couple of real life months. In the first two years, I didn’t really feel bored or at a loss for things to do. There’s a decent pace to the events held within each season- and with limited stamina and particular days to meet with vendors and actually earn money, there’s loads to cram into each day! Will I spend the day working on my farm, will I head to town to talk with my friends, forage for much needed materials and supplies, go bug catching or fishing, even swim in the river to dive for fish or rarer items like gemstones? There’s a lot to do, and it often reminded me of Animal Crossing. The diving when you swim in the river functions the same way, and with the ability to decorate and rearrange furniture in your house and certain areas of town; I couldn’t help but feel it was an interesting mish-mash of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.

To help demonstrate progress, there are tourist NPCs that wander the village square and comment on the town and it’s reputation. Once you start to attract more vendors and build on it’s popularity, there will be more of these tourists wandering around, which makes the town noticeably more lively. In the beginning when the town is pretty sparse, they just complain about it being a small country town- but with just one or two more stalls, you not only see a handful more tourists wandering about, but a shift to a more optimistic mindset towards the town too. Dialogue for local villagers will change depending on the reputation of town also, commenting on the popularity of the place and the kinds of wares available in new vendor’s stalls. This is a subtle thing, but I really appreciated it, as it did make it feel like there was a tangible difference happening to the town as I put effort into it. Villagers will comment if you haven’t said hello in a while, and sometimes I came across little events with certain characters, which adds to that local community feeling. I also found it quite amusing that the villagers will tell you in varying ways to leave them alone if you try to talk to them while they are eating. I was also surprised that once the town became more popular, more villager NPCs moved to town- ones you could date! AND, TWO OF THEM HAPPENED TO BE FROM TOTT!? You have no idea how surprising it was to see my husband Cam rock up to town, but his name was Kamil now. And Reina moved to town as well, though her name is… Licorice. I’m so sorry they did you dirty like that Reina... That is a fucking dogs name, not a name for a cute girl...

The visuals of the game are pretty nice, too. I think the watercolour inspired look to the character portraits is nice, though I think the in game 3D models creep me out a bit… There are plenty of QOL additions to this game that I really appreciated; my favourite being the crop fields having a little text bubble pop up labelling what crop it is, and crops automatically went into my pockets when I harvested them!! However, I’m not keen on the UI of the inventory, if I’m being honest. I understand that a scrolling list menu is pretty utilitarian, and keeps the UI clean and simple, but I think I’d prefer to have a more visual inventory so that it’s super clear what I am selecting. There are pictures and more details on the top screen when you select something from the list menu on the bottom screen, but ehhh… It didn’t hit for me, and I often felt a little lost when scrolling through the monotonous design. Nitpicky, I know, but I feel this is a slight downgrade.

There were other little things that became apparent the more I played, and unfortunately culminated into a mindless and sometimes frustrating grind. In the animal sheds, there is a feed dispenser and a treat dispenser, but they are so close together that often when I was trying to grab a treat, I’d end up with a handful of feed, and vice versa. Treats also had to be pulled out one by one, which is just silly when you have a lot of animals to give treats to. My solution to that was to just keep treats in my pocket at all times and map them to a quick select menu; but I would’ve preferred the treats be held somewhere else in the shed so that they’re not accidentally picked instead of feed, and that the treats automatically pulled out the amount corresponding to the number of animals in the shed (ie, if you have 6 cows, you go to the treat dispenser and it will pull 6 out for you in one go- instead of you having to pull out six individual treats).

When feeding animals outside, small animals like chickens and rabbits need to have food placed on a crafted feeder plate, but big animals like cows, sheep, llamas, alpacas and camels can eat directly from grass you’ve planted within their paddocks. This is great in theory, as you can fence off a paddock of your own choosing, and place grass and feeders within so that the animals can eat outside. What sucks about this is that I found the big animals would all crowd around one tile of grass, despite me growing 2-4 for them at any given time. Animals would get stuck on each other, and when I’ve got 16 big animals in the paddock all trying to eat from one tile of grass (which I believe is only 9 servings) it’s just a huge mess. Especially when I’m trying to go around and milk all my cows or shear the sheep and such. In the early days of the game, you’ll need to manually put each animal outside, and bring them inside at night, otherwise you risk stressing out the animal, making them sick, or skipping their produce the next day. When you’ve got a lot of animals, this takes up a lot of time, so its handy to buy dogs when they become available and let them herd the animals! This was present in ToTT, which I loved, but I often found that my dogs would glitch and get stuck in a default pose, or sometimes they’d seem fine and just never herd the animals back inside for bedtime. I had no problems when I only had a few animals in the sheds to herd, but when each shed can hold up to 8 animals, and you can have two small and two big animal sheds on each screen for a total of 32 in each half of your farm (not counting the dogs and cats!) there’s a lot of animals to take care of, and that’s when I noticed the most glitching out. Training the dogs isn’t so bad though, as you can use your whistle to train them for the actual herding, and playing with them by throwing a bone will increase friendship points with them quicker, which will allow them to herd more animals. What sucks a bit about this, is that you cannot play with the pets inside their kennel. Their huge kennels that are perfect for playing fetch. Especially on a rainy day when you have the extra time to play with them cause you’re not watering crops. C’mon. I want to play with the dogs. Another thing that was a bit upsetting was that the cats are next to useless here. You can’t train them to do anything, they’ll just laze around your farm (which is fair enough), but unlike in ToTT, they don’t herd small animals. No, they just randomly collect items here and there. Maybe they’ll give you a stick. Or some stones. If you build up your relationship with them, they may get gems and other valuables, but I found this to be quite basic and unnecessary when getting more dogs to help herd my animals was more immediately useful.

I wish the livestock animals had the same visibly dirty system that ToTT had, it’s one of the only things that was a genuine downgrade compared to that game for me. The animals don’t look dirty, the only visual indicators you get are for when shearable animals are ready to be shorn, as you can see the fluff. If the animal is filthy, you just get a little cranky symbol from them every now and then, or you’ll find out that they’re stinky when you pet them. This isn’t great, as you can miss that when you’ve got a lot of animals to keep track of, but letting them be too dirty for too long will increase their stress and risk them running away or getting sick. When you’ve got 30+ animals to take care of, you don’t want to waste your whole day, every day, brushing them all when there’s other important things to get done. Another thing I miss is the trench digging you could do for your crops. In this game, each tile you till will result in 9 of that crop (ie, plant one potato, you’ll reap 9) – which is awesome! I just think it would’ve been nice to have some trenches or sprinklers to assist with watering, as despite the process not being too bad, especially when you’ve upgraded your watering can, I was pretty tired of it by the end of the third year.

The worst part of this game is the bloated requirements to unlock stuff. This issue is still here, and I’d argue that it’s worse than ToTT! Not only are the requirements vague and hidden, they’re also outrageously stupid. To unlock more vendors, you need to ship a certain amount of particular items- which on it’s own makes sense. I appreciated that some of the villagers encouraged this idea too, but they don’t give any indication for how much of each thing you’ll need to ship. Looking at online guides to help, I was outraged with the numbers. I just think that if the NPCs are already hinting at it to me, there could also be a note book or quest log tab where the player has something like "maybe shipping X amount of Y will work?" so that it's clearer. If I, as an adult, looking up guides to assist, found this confusing and convoluted- I don't think there's much hope for the intended younger audience to see the whole game... Like, saying I should try selling various items is one thing- but trying to figure out with no further clues that what it actually wants is 500 seeds, 10,000 processed goods and 15,000 cooked recipes as just SOME of the criteria for ONE of the two remaining vendors to unlock.... Jesus. I was already very lost at why I unlocked cats but no dogs yet- turns out I needed to fulfill certain requirements, one of which is 30 seperate offerings to the goddess… Just to unlock dogs.

I don't have a problem with the game wanting and encouraging you to use it's systems to unlock more things, it's the fact that it's so vague and bloated I have an issue with. This year’s replay of ToTT was the furthest I’ve ever gotten, and I still ended up giving up before I could unlock everything because it became a slog to get through. Even in this game, where it’s paced much better, it’s still awful! At the beginning, you have the option to play on easy or normal mode, and I chose normal thinking that the differences would be things like managing the animals and crops being made easier, so I didn’t need that. Nope, as I understand it, the only real difference is the number of things to export. And even then, the numbers are still ridiculously high! This is the main gripe I have with this game, its a real dampener on the experience and it makes the time sunk into it with the cost vs reward pitiful. I made it to partway through year 5 or 6 before I gave up, because I was no longer having fun and the grind felt awful. That far into it, I should have unlocked all the basics, like EVERY VENDOR. There will be more cosmetics and recipes and blueprints to buy with new vendors, and when you get close with each vendor, they’ll give you an animal that will either live in the wild areas outside of town, or on the safari once you’ve unlocked it. This is nice! But why do I need to export arbitrarily large amounts of things without any clear indication of how I’m doing!? When a new vendor comes to town, they have a little cutscene introducing themselves with the mayor- why not have them come to town to investigate, or send a letter, or just the mayor suggesting it clearly to you; and say that they’re only interested if certain requirements are fulfilled. That way, it gives a clearer goal, something tangible to refer back to (either have the goal in the same tabs as the requests, or go ask the mayor at town hall) and a much easier time achieving it. There’s potential here, just executed poorly.

I don’t really know how to link this, but there were some other strange things I noticed about this game. The start button does nothing… you have to tap a button on the touch screen to pause the game. I don’t understand why the start button wasn’t good enough, especially when it’s not used for anything else? Also, I don’t know if it’s a quirk of the game, or just my copy, but when planting tress, the softwood and hardwood seeds are swapped. I plant softwood, and I’ll get hardwood, vice versa. Was very weird, so I just planted both to make sure I got some of the tree I wanted, as I’d inevitably forget and confuse myself lmao. There was also never enough fertiliser sold at the shop, and never enough weeds and twigs to find while foraging to turn into fertiliser. I wish it was easier to get a hold of more, as I seemed to have an excess of literally everything else at that point.

But, enough bitching- there’s an auto text mode during festivals and you can skip certain cutscenes! YIPPEE!! A lot of the gripes that I had with ToTT feel like they’ve been directly addressed and renovated in a nice way for this game. There are more things to do throughout the month- there are festivals and competitions regularly enough that it gives you a chance to work on your animals, crops, and fashion sense. The characters feel generally nice to get to know, and cutscenes aren’t just limited to the date-ables you’re romancing- there are farm rivals that will trigger cutscenes as well, and I played a little with one of the kids and she had a little social special event too. The town really felt so much like a small community when you know that getting closer with people can trigger cutscenes and events that show you more about them or your relationships with each other!

The maker sheds are not only easier to unlock, but more varied- there’s plenty of things you can do to the items you grow and gather, like creating more things for your farm, decorations for your house and the town, or even cool outfits and accessories. Did you know that if you equip certain combinations of accessories, you’ll get stat boosts? I didn’t until I read through the guides, and I equiped a combination that regenerated stamina periodically – it was SUPER helpful! Decorating your house, farm and town is fun too. I put it off for a bit because I was focused on the grind to try unlock all the vendors, but when that was seeming pointless, I built a bunch of cool furniture and made some lovely little settings with cute plants and nice decorations. Tourists will sometimes stand close to the decorations and comment on them too, which was a pleasant surprise. And, earlier I mentioned the safari- you can travel to it to forage for rarer items, or whack the mining point to get gems and minerals for upgrading tools and crafting cool furniture and accessories. I really meant it when I said that it didn’t feel like I was running out of things to do!

The music is generally nice too! I really loved that each season has both a day and night theme, I appreciated that after playing so many farming games that just have nighttime ambience when it gets dark. The summer theme for this game is also my favourite, its so pretty and I’d play it on my phone over other themes I didn’t like as much lmao. I was sad to hear the autumn theme was a bit strange and I didn’t like it as much, cause usually the autumn themes are some of my favourites from farming games- and although the winter theme was better, it got repetitive in a negative way real fast. Thats not so bad though, considering there are so many cute songs in this game (I think it’s gotta be double what ToTT had soundtrack wise!) I know for certain that when I hear the spring and summer themes from this game, I’ll have that fun nostalgic feeling when I listen. There is also a music festival held once a year, and in it they’ll play little medleys of songs from older Harvest Moon games – which was such a cute easter egg for older players!

In closing, I’m not sure what else to say, really. I love farming games, and this was a nice reminder as to why. I’m very glad to have played it, and although I still have a lot of gripes with it, I had a lot of fun. Which, that’s the point of a farming game, right?

Summer Theme

Flower Event 1

Competitive Festival

~~~

Nintendogs, DS

I wasn’t originally going to write this the following entry, as these were short playthroughs compared to what I normally self impose for these lists. But, well, here we are. This and the next entry are kind of a call and response to each other too, btw, as I played them both at the same time to compare for the sake of my own curiosity.

Nintendogs was the very first game that I had for my little ice blue DS lite back in the day. I had just turned nine, and this was the very first console that was mine. I had a childlike obsessions with dogs, and this was before I found out how cool cats were! I would ask all the time if my parents could get a big dalmatian with a red leather collar so I could name him spotty. It was a dream I’d held onto since I was two, and my parents were definitely sick of me asking, so it was VERY exciting that I got a dog game, and not only that, but the dalmatian version!

Initially, I just started playing this as a half hearted nostalgia trip- it’s hard when you’re inbetween fixations and NOTHING is fulfilling any entertainment or stimulation needs. It was cute to revisit this game, and I got pretty far, considering I fudged stuff a bit to make it a little more interesting. After all, I’m not 9 with endless time after school and homework was finished!

There’s plenty of things to do with your virtual dogs, you can feed and bathe them, dress them up and play, take them on walks or train them to win competitions! The only ways to make money in this game are to win competitions, or sell items. Good thing you can both find items and train your dogs for 2/3 of the competitions while out walking! While on a walk, if you head to an empty park and have a frisbee, you can practice throwing with your dog until they get better at catching and returning to you. You can also head to the gym where you can train your dog to go through various agility equipment, unlocking more as you progress through the agility trials. Both of these are free to visit, only relying on your dog having enough stamina to make it to these locations and back home again- and like the training at these locations, your dogs stamina will build over time the more you spend time with them.

The other competition is the obedience trials, which is best practiced at home. Training your dog to do tricks utilises the built in microphone, requiring you to direct your dog to the trick you want it to do and then calling out the command. I quite liked these when I was a kid, and while I didn’t get as far this time around, I really appreciate that this game will teach you how to train your dog for everything required to win the trails, but also lets you create new and unique tricks for your dogs. I so vividly remember sneaking onto the computer (I wasn’t allowed to use it without permission, and especially not to use the internet unattended lol) and looking up forums on how to teach my dog particular tricks. If you manage to find and buy a keyboard, you can teach your dog to bark short melodies on command, or even teach it to stand or do flips if you and your dog are particularly close! Some tricks are much harder to teach, obviously, but I enjoy that the game literally gives you an easy guide on how to take care of and train your dog in all aspects, while also giving you the freedom to play around and see what else you can get up to while you play.

As the competitions are so integral to the game, you’ll quickly meet the commentators Ted Rumsworth and Archie Hubbs, who were gay married in my head before I knew what gay marriage really meant. While the commentators can drag on, they’re actually pretty funny and certainly have a charisma about them, working perfectly as a silly jokester who feels more down to earth, and a more straight laced professional who takes those jokes seriously. You can even run into Archie on walks, with his friendly Shiba Inu. He often has nice or silly things to say to you, and sometimes other neighbours will gossip about him, talking about that time he apparently ate a dog biscuit.

There’s also a plethora of items and accessories to find while you play, including but not limited to weird and interesting toys, a Mario Kart RC toy collection, musical records, lost shoes to chew on and funny hats. The musical records were particularly fun for me, and though I didn’t play enough this time around to collect them all, I have great memories with these. You start off with just one white record, and this is one that you can record your own sounds on and replay, with half and double speeds available. I remember mucking around with it as a kid and finding out you can layer recordings on top of each other, and if you record at half speed, it’ll sound like a chipmunk when played at normal speed- so of course I had to make an elaborate record about an alien landing on Earth and telling everyone to go away. Some records, like the nap time and marching band one will have effects on your dogs, such as getting them all sleepy or marching around the room together. There are also four ‘secret’ records you can find that are produced by our very own Archie Hubbs, and these would incorporate snippets of your own record as a kind of remix. You would not believe how funny it was when I showed my sister my version of Giant Socks ft. Fart Noises, you just had to be there…

The visuals are about as sharp and crunchy as you’d expect from a DS game, but I love them. This low poly look with pixelated edges is quite charming to me, and although it’s not the most spectacular graphics ever made, there is a lot of care and detail put into the dog models and all the items and environments you come across. When you save up enough to buy new looks for your house, there are so many gorgeous interiors to choose from once you unlock them all! The soundtrack is similarly iconic, I pretty sure everyone likes the bath time track! There’s also plenty of Mario references throughout the toys and accessories, so it can be quite fun to see what you can collect when you get closer with your dogs.

Unfortunately, as I played on my own for a few weeks, I couldn’t partake in street pass, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was pretty good back in the day. You can choose a pup, maybe choose something from your inventory to give as a gift, and close your DS as you went out. I’d often exchange gifts with my sister as we compared trainer level scores, and it was fun meeting with other kids at church on the weekend and showing off all the cool tricks and items we had.

The only real downside to this game is that it takes place in real time, but I don’t find that too detrimental. This is definitely a game meant to be played in short bursts, and as a pet sim, if you’re not all that interested in just hanging out with your dogs after you’ve maxed out the amount of competitions and tricks to teach in a day, I don’t think you’ll get much more out of it. What you see is pretty much what you get, there aren’t really any hidden mechanics that’ll drastically shake up the game, you just buy dogs and hang out with them.

I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a quintessential DS game to play, or just like dogs. It’s cute, has it’s own charm, and is quite frankly iconic. And it has middle-aged man yaoi

Bath Time

Walking the Dog

Friendly Whiff Record

~~~

Nintendogs + Cats, 3DS

I never owned this game growing up, but my sister did. She never played it, so sometimes I’d borrow it and try to play, forgetting each time why I’d put it down previously. This game is a pitiful attempt at recapturing the magic of the first Nintendogs, adding features that no one asked for, and changing or even removing the elements that made the first game work so well.

Lets start with the biggest and worst change, in my opinion. You can’t physically pet your pets. Now, I know what you’re thinking, it’s a pet sim, surely you can pet it? And while, yes, technically, you can, all physical interactions with your pet are via a silhouetted shadow of your pet on the touch screen, while your actual pet is on the top screen. WHY!?

Well, I know why. They wanted to utilise the oh so epic 3D visuals and to do that, they have to keep the pets on the top screen. BOOOOOOOOOO

This design philosophy that prioritises the tech over the actual gameplay is the poison that killed this game, in my opinion. I do not even play with the 3DS slider on because it strains my eyes real quick lol, yet everything important is placed on the top screen to utilise this feature. The bottom screen is delegated to being a permanent menu screen or just a silhouette of your pet. By segregating this tactile element, it’s not only making it difficult to interact intuitively with your pets, but it just plain ol’ feels crap. In real life, when I want to pet my cats, I read out and pet them. In the first Nintendogs, when I want to pet my dogs, it’s really easy to figure out that petting them with your stylus while they’re on the touch screen is how you do it. I just don’t think there’s any reason in defence of making this a hand-eye coordination thing with the silhouette dogs, like. It’s yucky.

Because of these changes, the trails have changed a lot too. The agility trial is now a lure course, where you turn a crank wheel and lead your dog down a race track with lure lines. This is… painfully simple; despite there being elevations to the trails as you progress- like cross-crossing lines and hurdles to jump -it lacks any sort of direction or skill between you and your dog. You just… turn a crank, and honk the horn if you need to recapture your dog’s attention. Turn it just fast enough that they run at their fastest, but not so fast that your dog will lose interest and not so slow enough that your dog will pounce and play with the lure. It’s not complex or even interesting, if I’m being honest, and you just make sure to take your dog to the gym a few times and buy good lures that can go fast and it’s almost a guaranteed win. The disc trials, by comparison, are much more complex. In the previous Nintendogs, the only thing that really changed was the minimum required points needed to qualify for rankings. Here, the further you get, the more things get introduced. There will be sand patches that slow down your dog, and highlighted point zones that give an additional boost to your score. In theory, I get how this is upping the stakes and making it more challenging to win, but it all feels like a moot point as the disc feels so floaty and garbage to throw. It needs a certain weight and spin to it so that you can guess how hard and far to throw for certain points, but nothing I did seemed to work. Why did they change the physics here? The disc was perfectly fine previously, and these new challenges might even be interesting if you could actually direct and throw the disc. The other big gripe with these competitions is that your competitors are on the same screen as you. Previously, you competed by yourself, meaning that if you fucked up, it was on you and your dog, no one else. Now? Other dogs can get in the way on the agility course or disc range. I get that it feels more like a competition, but aren’t we here for the skill demonstration? The most egregious is the obedience trial, as you can’t even compete if you don’t have the AR Cards that came with the 3DS. Like… HELLO!? It’s lucky that it worked by just opening a PDF scan of them on my phone, but a core part of the game like this shouldn’t be tied to something external like that, just for a gimmick. They don’t actually do anything to enhance the competition, they aren’t a core mechanic in how you train your dog, it’s just an awkward thing you have to sit in front of your 3DS while you play! They don’t even do much when you play with your pets at home, the only thing you can do with them is scan them in and then your pet will wear an accessory based on whatever card you scan… but only while you’re in the scanning mode. IF you are going to implement something like this, I think it’s only fair if you get a rare collectable in game thats a fun reward for scanning it in, something more tangible for the effort, yknow? Not this dumb gimmicky shit that’s forced in cause they have to. (I don’t even think there should be stuff like what I just suggested if I’m being honest, the LoZ:SSHD Zelda amiibo is the perfect example of.. wtf why?)

Also, the prize money is not that much, especially for coming first in the championship. I have a feeling that this is due to the fact that you can enter each competition three times a day, per dog, for a total of nine potential competitions - unlike the previous which was three entries total per dog, regardless of competition. While Ted is back to narrate the competitions, it’s clear that they got the feedback of there being too much text to get through, so he’s barely a presence at the start and end, doing nothing more than the formalities of it. I definitely get that it could get tiresome to tap through all the text, but the text was flavourful at least, and if they had more banter between Ted and Archie here, it could’ve helped. Even just having something like… press and hold A to skip. That would literally fix it. And… ARCHIE ISN’T HERE. ITS JUST TED ALONE ITS SO SAD. AND I DON’T LIKE THAT EVERYONE IS MIIS NOW, IT WAS FUN THAT THE ONLY FACES YOU SEE IN THE FIRST NINTENDOGS WERE THE PIXELATED FACES OF TED AND ARCHIE, AND NOW ITS JUST MIIS EVERYWHERE. YOU DIDN’T NEED TO SEE THE PHYSICAL NPC PERSON AS YOU WALKED THE DOG IN THE FIRST GAME, IT KINDA IMPLIED THAT THEY ARE ALSO PLAYING ON THEIR DS JUST LIKE YOU CAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE AN IN-GAME MODEL EITHER. WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK.

MIIS ARE COOL AND ALL, BUT THIS FELT LIKE IT WAS TRYING WAY TOO HARD! The Wii/3DS era is rightfully iconic, but this just missed the mark. I dunno how else to describe it, but there isn’t that much charm in walking through town and coming across miis- it was fine the way it was in the first nintendogs! The music as well… it just feels like it’s trying too hard to have baked in nostalgia by using the classic wii/mii sounds we all like without bringing anything to the table. Archie technically appears as one of the cashiers of a store you can enter on walks, but I didn’t recognise him cause he’s a mii and he got a bit whitewashed :/

The walks as well… UGH. There was something very nice and deliberate about planning out the walk beforehand and then going out. You can pick where you wanna go, if you wanna try to get the ? Icons that will either be a present or a neighbourhood dog, it was nice. I also liked that it was 2D sidescroller style walking in that game, here it is point of view behind the dog as it runs forward for the EPIQUE 3D GRAFICKS. You don’t get to plan the route, and I disliked how certain spaces were only in certain areas. The more you walk your dog, the more you’ll unlock places like the town streets, mountain streets, beach streets, ect. In town, there is a gym, in the mountain and beach there are public parks, but to get to them you have to catch a sign asking if you wanna go to that section while you’re on the walk. It’s more spontaneous, and I found myself frustrated. If I wanted to go to the gym, I had to make sure I went straight to town and after that, it’s straight home. If I want to go to the park, I have to make sure to get through at least two areas every time and not accidentally run past the park sign- and even then, you don’t know until you get there if there’s going to be another dog there who will muck up your training session. I don’t care, and its annoying for no reason, what was wrong with picking your path beforehand? If they insist on having these segregated areas, why not at least let me pick where I want to start? The only thing that is kinda ok, I guess, is that when you talk to neighbours and your dogs get along, they might invite you to come to the cafe or park with them to let the dogs play for longer. That’s cute, but most the time I don’t wanna do that cause the gym is right behind you and I won’t be able to access it if I go out with you now. UGH. At least there are little cones lines up that if you manage to get your dog to zig zag through them without touching any, you’ll get a gift- but the gifts are always recyclable materials to craft items later and it feels like salt in the wound for getting rid of the agility trails while reminding us that the dogs don’t control very well so its annoying doing the cones anyway!

The interiors you can buy are weird too- theres some nice looking ones to unlock but they all cost a certain amount. That on it’s own is fine, but theres the basic one you start off with that’s free, and then every time you change to one you have to pay. So if I bought the Japanese style interior for $1,000, then bought a different one but wanted to go back to the Japanese one, I’d have to pay $1,000 again. The build is instant, but like? Bruh? This is a bruh moment because in Nintendogs, once you bought a design, it was free to change back to it at any time- it just took a day or two irl to install. WHY WAS THIS CHANGED?

Even something as iconic as bath time isn’t that fun here. I dunno. This game just sucks. If washing the dog isn’t fun, what’s the point. There’s so many stupid changes that just says to me that they didn’t understand why the first one worked, and forced too many new gimmicks without testing to make sure that they were integrated well. Oh and the cats? Literally useless. You can’t take them on walks, and you can’t enter them in competitions. But Rads, I hear you say, real life cats are like that too! And to that I say: THERE ARE ALSO CAT COMPETITIONS IN REAL LIFE! The lure coursing feels much more like a cat thing than a dog one to me, and cats could be trained to go through obstacle courses or do a little dance like obedience trials. The competitions are an integral way to interact with your pet, they help to set goals for how you want to train them and measure your progress, and it is rewarding to win something with them after you put all the effort in. If you have a cat here, I want to play with it, not just throw a toy at it and have it look at me. I have cats in real life that will just stare at me blankly when I try to play and throw toys at them, cmon.

I can’t even be bothered to talk about the other stuff in depth, you get the idea.

This shit sucks.

Lets Go For A Walk [Daytime]

BARC

Cafe Petrov

~~~

Katana Zero, PC

Katana Zero is a relatively unique game; it’s a 2D sidescroller, but not quite a platformer- it has stealth elements, but is more focused on the mowing down of enemies to be a true stealth game. Either way, what you’ve got here is fun, especially once you start to understand the game and how it works.

One massive thing I appreciate is how the narrative elements are so entangled with the gameplay elements. The story revolves around Zero, a bathrobe-wearing, katana-weilding, samurai-film-loving swordsman who is tasked with killing certain individuals, leaving no survivors behind. To assist with these missions, he’s given a dose of chronos- a drug that alters the user’s perception of time, allowing them to slow down and rewind time through precognition. The more missions you go on, the more you slowly find out about the drug and circumstances surrounding it, along with revealing more hints towards Zero and his past.

As he is an amnesica, the only things we know about him is that he fought in the war, as evidenced by his service medal- and that he is a highly skilled, if socially withdrawn, killer. In between missions, he must attend therapy sessions, where he will be briefed on his next target and given a new dose of chronos. There are also little sequences where he befriends a young neighbour girl, and various other one-off sections with colourful characters around town. These all function like interactive cutscenes, meaning that there isn’t much time spent idly holding the controller and waiting for things to happen. You will be playing and making choices, even in quieter moments.

A real stand out factor of what makes this short game so memorable is the delivery. Not only in the gameplay and other details, which I will get to in a moment, but in the text itself! The text boxes have a timed delivery- with colours, animations and some sound effects for emphasis. This is AWESOME and really helps to demonstrate the tone of each conversation, accentuating the flavourful writing. Each character feels distinct in their presentation due to the way their text is literally presented, and when prompted, you get timed responses to choose from when in conversation. You’re given options for how you want to interact with others, from serious to humorous- even given the chance to interrupt people and really piss them off. The writing itself is quite enjoyable, as it knows when to be serious, and when to not take itself so seriously. In certain sections, you can even watch the conversations of certain enemies before they’re aware of your presence, which are quite entertaining to snoop on.

Into the gameplay itself, there is certainly a rhythm to it that takes a moment to fully understand- but once you do, it’s really satisfying. The big gimmick that ties into the narrative is the slo-mo - of which you have a limited amount of time to work in slow motion, which can be incredibly helpful when bum-rushing particularly tricky groups of enemies. The main skills you can utilise are a quick roll, which is practical and fun; melee items, which can be found and thrown across the levels; and your katana, which is a one hit kill for enemies, and can also help with extending jumps and dashes across the levels while you slash away. There’s also a crouch you can use to sneak around levels, but I did not use this often enough to really comment on. For the things I did use, however, I am quite pleased with the deceptive depth built into them. Melee objects seem simple, just pick up and throw; but depending on which item you’ve picked up, you can obscure yourself in a cloud of smoke, throw molotov cocktails or grenades at enemies- or at oil barrels, which was a personal favourite of mine -or simply rely on the tried and true reliability of throwing knives or other blunt impact objects to kill enemies or otherwise interact with the level. Sometimes, you’ll even come across melee that’s more special, like a flame thrower or remote detonation mine that can be used with more tactic.

The main method of killing will be via your katana, it is the name of the game, after all. Most enemies are one-hit kills, only requiring you be in range and slash at the right time to take them down. Some enemies will parry attacks with shields or melee weapons of their own, requiring two or more hits OR for a tactical roll to slash from behind. You can also parry the bullets shot at you if you time it right, flinging them back in the shooter’s direction for a nasty surprise. It’s simple, yet there are options for how you want to approach your enemies- meaning that you can’t blitz through with button mashing alone. You’ll want to pay attention while you learn through trial and error- as once you gain a bit of confidence in your understanding, you may want to experiment with baiting groups of enemies to your advantage- I sure liked playing with this! If an enemy shoots their gun upon seeing you, it’ll alert all the enemies in the immediately surrounding areas to flock to where they heard the gunshot. This can be a pain in the ass if you’re caught off guard, BUT, if you can adapt, or even plan to have this happen, you can wait for enemies right by the door they’ll appear from and slice them straight away. This is the kind of thing I think will seperate a lot of players’ experiences with this game, as the game gives this incentive to get good while being quick and nimble- so if you’re up to the challenge of bettering yourself through the way you behave and interact with the levels, it’ll definitely change the way you feel about the combat! I can tell you personally, just from playing through roughly 3-4 times, my first play that was largely brute force based vs my most recent where I prioritised efficiency and dexterity felt so different- AND BOTH FUN!

While this may sound a little overwhelming, especially when I tell you that you WILL be dying often, the game isn’t discouraging as it allows a quick respawn at the start of the room you’re in- meaning you can try again almost instantly without ruining the flow of gameplay. One of my biggest critiques of the game is, due to how fast paced everything is, I often found myself losing Zero amongst the flurry of guns and katanas, which mucks me up a lot. The only detriment to it being so fast, especially upon respawning, is this. Sometimes I’d get stuck for a second and keep dying on loop at the beginning of a level because my human brain and eyes were lagging behind and unable to physically process the rush of everything going on. This user error was the only thing stopping the experience from otherwise being seamless, so make of that what you will. I can say that I DID get better the longer I played, but I seemingly reset after putting down the game each time. It’s a great indicator for when I was getting too tired to play properly, as it was incredibly quick at pointing out through the rapid fire of stupid deaths when I’d just lost the knack for the session. One thing to counteract this is that there is a plethora of customisable setting within the menu. I had my friend Nika help me adjust everything so that I could play with minimal strain to my eyes, and it was greatly appreciated! I even joked that the tell of a great game is when the settings menus were as robust as the game itself- I’m not kidding when I say there’s a lot to customise! That is definitely the kind of accessibility within gaming I’m after; and I feel so perplexed that an indie game such as this can provide these options, while a large majority of AAA games barely let you remap buttons where you want.

Anyway, aside from the gameplay, the visuals and soundtrack are fantastic. There’s a distinct retro-dystopian-cyberpunk feel here, taking advantage of that tactile analogue feel of late 90s tech. There’s a branded focus on the cyan and magenta colours, which is super fun- but all the environments feel vibrant and detailed, even when they’re not pushing the saturation limits of your screen. You’re really able to see and appreciate the beauty of modern pixel art graphics here; the fluid animations make sprites feel so lively and full of character, there’s so many details in each level to appreciate, the dynamic lighting within levels is fucking gorgeous, and the level design was visually clear without being so in-your-face that it detracts from itself. Like, I noticed that during the levels as you walk through, theres a subtle glow around interactable elements, like floors and doors you can burst through. It’s not calling attention to itself in an obnoxious way, and honestly I find it hard to notice when you’re focusing on the action- but, if you’re ever feeling a little lost, the tiny glow as you get closer can really help steer players in the right direction- in a way that may even be subconscious when you’re not looking directly for it. In fact, I could say something similar for the early levels that teach you the foundations of this game as well. The tutorial sections do a great job of demonstrating the way it wants you to play; once you’re on your own- playing the real deal -I often felt as though there was an open dialogue between myself and the developers, the common tongue being this game. I love when games feel like a conversation in this manner, a back a forth between player and creator in a way that’s memorable- no matter how short the game is.

Pair this with an amazing soundtrack and some brilliant sound design, and you have yourself a winner! Seriously, you don’t know how conflicted I’ve been trying to pick my top 3 tracks here. Everything has a nice cohesion to it, while also being quite broad in sound. There’s a nice, almost vapourwave-esque style to most of the main level’s tracks- something fun and upbeat that showcases the beauty in synth music, and all without being too distracting from gameplay. There’s subtle changes in vibe depending on where you are in the game as well, so it’s not like you’ll ever get bored! And the light jazz sound in the quieter tracks brings a more subdued feeling without taking away any of that charm. I’m glad that the composers had the skill and confidence to pull these various moods together in the game through the music, as it allows for various emotional beats to play without feeling cheesy or abrupt. I already mentioned the sound effects that play during speech text; but the rest of the sound design is greatly appreciated in creating that atmosphere, along with auditory cues to help with gameplay. Even something as simple as the end of every level- where your objective has been completed and you have to walk back through the rooms with the carnage you left behind with nothing but the sound of your feet as you make your leave -is incredibly impactful.

For a game that is so fast paced, I was pleasantly surprised that it let moments just breathe. Walking back through levels, the sessions with the therapist, the nightly routines of watching the news and drinking tea before bed… Moments of reflection, forcing you to just sit and BE with the characters. You can’t avoid it, at least, not in the main story mode. It’s great. For those that don’t care as much about seeing the story in replays, or just want to challenge themselves, there’s a dedicated speedrun mode; and for those that bought the game on steam, theres an April Fool’s patch called Katana HERO, which is a frankly hilarious story of a spirit hunter who is trying to slay all the evil spirits. For something that’s notthedlcbro, there was a lot of effort put into the reskins and new dialogue that was very fun. I found Katana ZERO quite funny in certain moments already, HERO was just an enjoyable step further in that aspect.

I’ve been putting it off until now, but my other major critique is, in fact, with the story of this game. And it’s more of a half-hearted critique, as we are left with a vague twist and a lot of dangling threads that are setting itself up for a continuation. We know from the dev team that they are steadily working on a free DLC update, which is great to hear. However, I can’t help but feel that there could have been a way to keep this short story more self contained instead of relying on this update to tell all. There’s a billion and one examples of games that set themselves up to have a grand conclusion in the DLC or sequel, and end up falling short due to any number of factors- often the worst of which being the time between releases and the stagnating interest from fans as they wait. What we have here story-wise is special, don’t get me wrong, but I find myself being very cautious towards a DLC being able to truly clear up any questions and satisfactorily wrap up the narrative. I want to trust them, as they’ve delivered a great base game and April Fool’s patch, but I’ve experienced all too many games that fall short from things like this, and it’d be a massive shame if the overall experience is soured by leaving players on a puzzling ‘huh???’ for years before getting a conclusion that doesn’t quite live up to expectations. I think it is important to note that their progress on the DLC was likely interrupted due to the pandemic, and for an indie team I’m more than willing to wait as long as they need to get it out- these are just concerns I have, ones that more often than not can hit indie studios harder. I will say, that up until the very last chunk, the game had a fantastic pacing that I vibed with, great escalation and tangible stakes to drive the story, and very charismatic writing that I appreciated. The reveals and rapid fire of new perspectives upon the credits ARE interesting, and I’ve been thinking and talking about them for a while after playing- and that is something I’d like to give credit to. Despite the minor gripes I have, I was left with a great experience, one I’ll gladly replay through the years as I patiently await the continuation. The impact it’s imparted is already enough, as that’s what I’m usually looking for to validate the time sunk into any game that I play.

Lastly, I have no idea how to transition into this, but this game often reminded me of Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3. This game is not at all like DKC 2&3, and if you play either game expecting elements of the other, you will not find them- yet I consistently felt a distinctly DKC sense of familiarity. The way Zero yells when he dies sounds similar to the kremlings when you jump on them, the 2D level progression that’s not quite focused on platforming in a traditional sense yet still has undeniable platforming elements, the minecart section, the reticle aimed at you in the meat packing facility, the banging music and attention to detail… I DUNNO. IT JUST KEPT REMINDING ME OF DKC!? I want to stress that this is a good comparison, as I thoroughly enjoy both games- a lot of effort clearly went into both. ALSO I would enjoy more time with the minecart, it was really fun and way too short. I am a minecart level apologist for both DKC and KZ idc.

To wrap up, I absolutely see why Nika fell in love so hard with this game, and I’m glad I finally got the opportunity to try for myself. It was great to run my first playthrough with her watching, and I have enjoyed poking around and experimenting with the game myself. I feel like there’s plenty more I could say, but you get the picture, so I wont. I’ll just leave you with the only thing left to say-

R.I.P. Strong Terry, you’re lifting with Baby Jesus now...

Sneaky Driver

Breath of a Serpent

Delusive Bunker

Come and See

~~~

Marvel’s Spider-Man, PS4

This is a game that I’ve had on my shelf for a few years now, and I finally decided to give it a go. I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t really have an interest in playing, as I am so completely burnt out on the Marvel-ification of superheroes and also don’t really play these kinds of games much. I bought it because it was $18 on sale and it is one of my best friend’s favourite games. (The same friend who likes Odyssey… He should play better games, I am for reeeeeeeaaaaaaaal)

While the game isn’t that bad, I found myself incredibly bored and under stimulated with the repetitive nature of the gameplay. It does have it’s perks, (which is a massive one-up on Odyssey), and the saving grace of this game is it’s story. It took me a while to get into it, but once you’ve started to get a feel for everything and play past the tutorial sections, you start to see why people enjoy it. There’s a richness to it that has definitely been absent from the most recent entries in the MCU, and it was great to see a Spidey story that wasn’t the same ol’ Uncle Ben With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility spiel. We all know it, regardless of how much you know about Spider Man, and instead I would say it’s a genuine treat to see a Spidey (and Peter!) who have been at this for a while. There’s a lot of flavour text to help support this, through things like the in-game twitter parody, and collectables you find across the map, of which Peter will nostalgically comment on as you inspect them- I found that this did help to make the city feel like something that’s already been lived in, and not just starting up for the events of this game. The best demonstration of this, however, is the relationship between Peter and MJ. They’re exes who are just starting to rekindle their friendship as they cross paths and decide to team up and try to work together as events unfold.

You start the game by putting away Kingpin, and starting a domino effect that starts to put the city at risk. Without his mafia-style grip on the underbelly of New York, smaller criminal gangs are attempting to take over in the absence, which leads to trouble for our hero. There are three main stages to the story campaign, of which I felt the best was the first. While you swing around fighting crime and helping people, you’ll be able to tune into the JJJ livestreams which give an interesting, if vindictive, view of how the people view Spidey and related events- even if he seems a bit too fixated on him and comes up with some wild conspiracies.

I think most fans would say that swinging around as Spidey is the biggest draw to the game- though I’d argue that I found more fulfilment doing friendly neighbourhood activities. There are also various battles and boss battles along with select missions to be had around the map, so there is a lot to do. During the main story campaign, you will take part in scripted events AND play sections where you play as other characters- MJ and Miles. Playing these short sections, which are usually stealth oriented, was overall a nice change in perspective. It helped make the world feel just that little bit bigger and connect various main NPCs to Spidey and what you get up to. In between the three main phases of the campaign missions, there are various side missions and objectives to fulfil- such as various crime related missions where you infiltrate and take down baddies with the help of a local police chief, more environmentally focused missions provided by your friend Harry (who is absent for this game), and little quests given by NPCs in the world who need help from their friendly neighbourhood Spider Man.

There’s a lot going on here, and that is both to it’s benefit AND detriment. I enjoyed doing most of Harry’s eco missions; it not only varied things up with little, but provided a further reminder that Peter IS a scientist, and quite a clever one at that. Plus, you can’t be kicking butt allllllll day! It was also nice to help NPCs out when you could- but there were a lot of missions and quests that felt like copy paste jobs and I got tired of them real fast. In the overworld, while you swing around, you can come across crimes to stop, enemy bases to expose, and later on various little puzzles or skill challenges as you progress. These encounters were grindy and repetitive, and I found that once you’d gained an understanding of both how to enemies behaved and how the combat worked, it’s not actually that in depth! It kinda sucks, actually, because even if you only did encounters that were radioed in, there’s so many that even if you’re not aiming for 100%, you’d still spend a lot of time idly swinging around and doing the same old fights over and over. Encounters don’t feel challenging, they’re just hard because there’s six waves to fight through. Anyone who isn’t a boss is a copy paste from one of four variants of the same enemy. Guy. Guy with weapon. Guy with shield. Big guy. Sometimes you’d get a guy with a rocket launcher or a jetpack, but it’s nothing more than a garnish. I’d have hoped that it at least felt different to fight the different syndicates- the first third has you fighting a Chinese Mafia group, very organised crime based enemies. The second third is mainly escaped convicts after a break out, which is much messier with in-fighting and lack of organisation. And the final third has you fighting Sable Agents, a form of private military/mercenaries for hire who’ve run amuck, and have brute force and numbers on their side. If there were more variation in the feel of these different stages in the story shown through the way you needed to fight and take down these groups, I feel it would’ve helped immensely! But no, all three stages of the story have battles and enemies that are quite literally the same, but just reskins depending on which syndicate, with the Sable agents just ever so slightly different because they have jetpacks and armour. OoooOOoOOoooooh. So gaming. I think that if they were aiming for more of an organic feel with enemy encounters and the like, they should aim higher than for them to be set dressing to eventually ignore, and instead put effort into making battles not only varied and challenging, but enjoyable, too.

Even the most fundamental part of the game- the web slinging -felt fatiguing and tiresome early on. I guess it’s nice, but it didn’t feel too impressive to me. I found the controls rather sticky- pun intended -and felt like I had barely any control over the movement and direction. When I’d run up a building, Spidey felt like he was going all over the place instead of where I’m trying to get him to go. And don’t get me started on trying to get off a building once you start crawling or running across it- he’s stuck and I couldn’t find any way to get him off in a timely manner without resorting to button mashing! It sucked the most when I was in the middle of a car chase or other time sensitive manoeuvring and I’d get stuck on the corner of some dumb building – goodbye momentum! Fighting was also ass, as I’d often get stuck in corners when wall crawling or attempting some of the fancier move sets you unlock later on. I don’t really think it’s that great when so much of a AAA game made me feel like I had to resort to button mashing just to get out of the way…

If that wasn’t bad enough, during the more stealth oriented sections where you play as MJ or Miles, you don’t have access to much, if any, move sets; and have to get by with something much more limited. The stealth sections are ass, and I think people who genuinely praise these sections haven’t played other stealth games. I’m a relatively new appreciator of the stealth genre myself, but cmon, the stealth here is bare bones at best, and is infinitely better when you’re playing as Spidey compared to the mandatory sections with MJ or Miles! Crawling around, finding info and trying to escape unnoticed is so much more fun with Spidey, and although I understand the point of these sections is to demonstrate not only how powerful and skilled Spider Man is, but also how dangerous the enemies are- I just plain ol’ didn’t enjoy them! Some stealth scenes were more interesting than others- I mostly enjoyed creeping around Mayor Osbourne’s apartment – but as a whole, it is just so bare bones and not good enough to have made it to the final cut in my opinion. I don’t know what else they could do to make these more interesting, making more stealth based objectives for MJ and Miles to do during these sequences might be a start. Another thing might be to have more time playing as these characters in a non stealth context, but I don’t feel too solidly on either suggestion.

I’m clearly quite frustrated over these sections, but that’s because, to me, they concisely describe an issue that I have with this game. It’s trying too hard to be a jack of all trades, while being a master of none. So much of this game felt like obligatory game design choices, the safe ones you make because they’re popular and work and can be easily replicated in most AAA games. The very first note that I wrote down for this game was that the map reminded me of the botw map- bad. I don’t enjoy these pseudo open world games that try to put so much busy work in the overworld that doesn't actually amount to much, and it’s boasting points are mainly on the technical specs and not the experience of the game imparted on players. For a hero that’s defining characteristic that sets him apart from other heroes is the fact that he is a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, so much of this game felt about the big picture instead of the little guy. By having so much crap in the world over saturating Spidey’s downtime, it detracted from the feeling of helping the people of New York, and just felt like he was helping the city as a vague concept. Yes, fighting crimes and keeping the city in check is important, but let us spend more time at the FEAST Shelter so we can help out when we want, instead of limiting it to scripted story moments. Even if Peter can’t always get to the shelter, show us more of how Miles is doing once he starts volunteering his time there. And show us more of MJ please, she’s a very clever and interesting character, and to have most of her screen time being limited to shitty stealth sections or cutscenes was a bummer, especially because, although what we get of her is decent, it would’ve been a bit nicer to see more about how the actions of Spider-Man were affecting her work and personal life as well. I feel there plainly wasn’t enough time to get to know these characters, and that they were all severely lacking in those ‘filler’ moments – y’know, the ones that let us know more about these characters and their world when they’re not faced with life or death. Some comments here and there from Peter and MJ wasn’t enough, and in this department, even though I do think the story is solid and the best part about this game, it is too refined when it could’ve afforded to go a lot more in depth. Even things such as important moments regarding Aunt May or Doc Oc didn’t hit very hard for me because we barely spend any time with them- and what little time we DO spend with them is through whatever Peter is directly involved in. Having some time to cut away and SEE how the work Peter and Doc Oc are doing is DIRECTLY impacting the people they’re trying to help, and not just having some random guy show up when the product is nearly finished and the funding is cut. Let us KNOW how hard Aunt May is working in the FEAST Shelter without the director there, and what kind of a toll it’s taking, not only on herself but on the people she’s trying to help. I feel that it was in desperate need of more humanising moments for everyone, and not just Peter. It’s a video game, not a movie! Lean into the fact that there are so many more ways to demonstrate characters and settings through this interactive medium, a comic book character should be one of the easier things to adapt!

The visuals were fine, it’s a pretty standard PS4 game- but I noticed a lot of issues when playing, and some that would’ve been game breaking if not for auto saves. There were instances where enemies got stuck in walls or behind fences and were literally inaccessible to me, meaning that I couldn’t complete battle objectives because the battle was never won. There were also a few times where the camera puzzles set up by Black Cat just didn’t load correctly. The location had everything there to start the puzzle, except for the camera, so I couldn’t start anything until I swung around for a bit and came back, hoping it spawned in correctly this time. The worst example of this though, was that during one of the eco missions, I was supposed to redirect satellite dishes to relink them during a storm. Very simple mission, however, I was swinging around for over 40 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was missing, because even though I’d linked up everything, the final part of the mission didn’t load in or whatever and I couldn’t complete the mission. It was so frustrating that it marked the end of that play session for me, and when I eventually went to restart the mission, it worked fine and was solved in under 5 minutes. For a game native to the PS4, it wasn’t optimised that well, which is a shame.

The audio was generally pretty nice as well, there’s a few nice tracks, but I don’t really feel that anything was stand out to me; other than the fact that there is a dynamic soundtrack thing going on. This means that when you’re just walking around, you’ll hear the city ambience in all it’s glory (including this cool easter egg). However, as soon as you start swinging, the bombastic track for epic cool spider guy starts playing, and can feel quite awkward when you abruptly jump into a song, especially when you didn’t intend to. The soundtrack has an overall orchestral feel, one that feels on a similar caliber to blockbuster movies, so while I didn’t personally connect with many of the songs, there’s not really anything bad to say about this soundtrack either.

In my final nitpicking, I’m going to get a bit more spoilery than I aim for these write ups. The final third and ending of this game sucked balls. Sable as the main antagonist for the endgame felt bland, and she had a rather abrupt change of heart at the end. I feel she would’ve been a stronger threat if she, and her men, were better not only narratively, but morally too. Having a private military for hire should’ve felt like a threat, and I can’t help but feel if they proved that they ARE better at Spidey’s job and really shaped public perception of him into being an amatuer and a menace, that would’ve been a morbillion times more interesting. By having them just be an oppressive, fascist-lite, military brute force that is just as corrupt and uncontrollable as you’d think it would be, it devalued all level of threat for me. Shouldn’t the main issue here be that Mayor Osborne hiring these guys is not only a smear campaign against Spidey, but something so effective after the main fuck ups at the start of the game that the people of New York are WELCOMING of this protection? I just found it cartoonishly over the top and too simple that the big military guys were arresting and locking up civilians for no real reason, looting them and kicking them out of their building, and otherwise wasting all their resources by focusing on Spidey and not, yknow, resolving crimes and other disputes. Fuck cops, but the very least they could’ve done is make it more obvious that the police can’t do anything anymore, as these guys are stepping in and taking over ALL aspects of life in the city. Having them stated to be crazy oppressive and whatever felt pretty watered down when they functioned exactly the same as the amateur but organised crime of the Masks in the first third, and exactly the same as the chaotic and brutish crimes of escaped convicts. The only tangible difference is that theres more physical layers to peel off Sable Agents when in combat: there’s more towers to pull down and armour to smack off – THATS IT. Part of what should’ve made Sable so much more of a commanding force is that they’re acting in direct response to a viral epidemic started by Doc Oc. Not only do I find it unrealistic that everyone was actually wearing masks during the pandemic, but this whole section just felt like a complete mess, gameplay wise. I found myself most annoyed by the crime system in the overworld, as there will be both escaped cons AND Sable agents shooting you down as you swing through the map. While this is an effective display of how fucked the city has become, I was quite disappointed to find that of all the enemies you can fight in the overworld at this stage, the ONLY ones that count towards map completions are the ones that are radioed in. There’s no other incentive to make it worth my time to fight all these people, no extra things to trade for to gadget upgrades or new suits. Nothing. On top of all this, the actual end of the narrative was rather abrupt and crap tbh. I know with the foresight of having played this years after release that it got it’s own sequels and spin offs, but I’m a firm believer in narratives being able to hold on their own internally without relying on the MCU-ification to make them retroactively better.

In closing, it’s clear that this game was not for me. It’s fine if you like superheros, and don’t care about how thin the genre cocktail of gameplay styles are in actuality - but I think my standards are too high and I wasn’t impressed, especially due to this being a fucking Sony game. I know they have the budget to do better, c’mon. And although I didn’t care for it, there were a lot of options for customising your play experience, like choosing suits, power-ups and gadgets to aid in battle, and the freedom to leisurely explore the map if you’re so inclined. I did 100% the story and all collectables and challenges on the map, but not to a gold-star degree or with the aims of platinum trophy. Fuck that.

At the end of the day, I want to praise the parts of this game that should be standard within games of this budget, but weren’t, and sometimes still aren’t. This is a completely single player game with a large campaign filled with variety and interesting things to do. There is still a demand for games like this, and I’m glad that this aspect was something that not only helped it to sell well, but also show to developers and stake holders that there IS a demand for enriching single player games. There were also a great amount of accessibility features that were fairly easy to access and understand, so those that may need a bit of extra help and adjustments to get through the game are able to enjoy the same experience. These are things that should be encouraged, and for that, I commend it.

But, play a different game if you care about the fighting or the stealth. Neither are done well here lol.

The Golden Age

Anything For A Story

Renewed Rivalries

#rads reviews #goty #hooray thats last years gaming done!!!!

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