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Squeakross's more-free-puzzles updates didn't just pull me back into that cozy little rodent house; they alsodrew my attention to a nonogram-hybrid that I otherwise would've ignored: Cinicross, a rogue-like dungeon delver with timed puzzle challenges.
The "rogue-like" part is why I would've ignored it -- 'cause I tend to very rapidly tire of die-and-retry-based games. And after playing Cinicross's demo ... I'm still not into it, but! I'm glad to have given it a shot.
(And glad that more nonogram hybrids are getting out there, in general.)
Losing health points when you take too long to solve a puzzle, that part works pretty well; and the "loot" you collect for power-ups, like randomly revealing squares or safeguarding against mis-clicks - as weird as those effects can feel - are interesting little twists on the typical nonogram routine.
But the severity of health loss that follows the timer, and the depressingly-low amount of persistent experience points I got after a "run," left me with a sense of dread about the repetitive grinding it could take to make meaningful progress in Cinicross.
Have you ever thought that Ace Attorney could use more magic? Not like, more spirit channeling and psyche-locks, I mean fireballs and transmutation and dragons and shit. If so -- have I got good news for you!
Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane adapts finger-pointing, desk-pounding courtroom drama to a swords-and-sorcery setting. It unabashedly follows in Phoenix Wright's footsteps, from the "speedy trial" premise - immediate arrest, next-day opening statements - to your cross-examination Press and Present options. Tyrion even has a prestigious badge he can show off.
Just imagine Athena Cykes using mind-reading magic, rather than Mood Matrix technology, to discover when a suspect is hiding something; or Apollo Justice calling out a witness for alleging he cast "Conjure Light" to see the crime, but previous testimony put him outside the spell's short range! Attorney of the Arcane shows great admiration for the Ace Attorney games (which, hey, I greatly admire them too) and so the way this game works feels very familiar.
It's more than just a faithful homage to Capcom's franchise, though: Tyrion Cuthbert's world is his own, as is his story. This game's investigation and courtroom scenes use emotive art and dialog to portray deep, case-spanning themes of class strife and hierarchical conflict -- while also gradually revealing the mythical backstories of Wyverngarde and its cast of characters.
And those characters possess strong, memorable personalities of their own, despite recognizable inspirations. Tyrion has sympathetic moments of self-doubt and helplessness, like Apollo; but is driven by an unstoppable, Edgeworthian determination to make things right. Prosecutor Aria Steelwind's youthful need to prove herself screams "Franziska" at first; but it's not long before her softer side appears, a friendliness and helpfulness akin to Gumshoe or Ema Skye. Companion Celeste is full of Maya-like eager supportiveness, as well as Simon Blackquill-like physical intimidation (and sword-mastery).
Tyrion's crew can also behave a little less ... family friendly than Phoenix's gang, which is a lot of fun.
Like the tales of Japanifornia that inspired it, Cuthbert's cases weave multiple threads that ultimately come together in a really satisfying way. The copy editing isn't perfect (heck, neither was Capcom's), but I'm otherwise extremely impressed by this game's quality and volume of writing.
There are facets of Attorney of the Arcane that hold it back. Several evidence puzzles require counter-intuitive solutions (though again, not like Capcom hasn't stumbled here, too), and a whole lot of its Investigation screens are complete wastes of time; I'd rather they'd remove the button, when unneeded.
But what hurts this game the most, I'd say, is its user interface. From unclear or missing controls, to awkward mid-screen scrollbars, to wacky sub-panel detail buttons, ... to scene-investigation text that kicks you back out of the investigate screen ... and although Cuthbert can be played with a gamepad, just barely, I had some frustrating moments with its selection and focus handling that dragged down my overall experience.
In narrative terms, though - especially its charming, engaging cast of characters (including a dog! ... and a monkey!) - Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane feels like it's earned a seat at Ace Attorney's table.
Separate Ways was originally a menu option (in RE4's PS2 and Wii releases). But times have changed; now, DLC exists.
The Resident Evil 4 remake's downloadable Separate Ways pack is more than a simple update and cash-grab, though -- this version of Ada's story is expanded, with a meaningful amount of new content and variety.
It doesn't play all that differently from the main game, which is a good thing: Ada collects treasure, upgrades her weapons, and blows up infected cultists a lot like Leon did. (Though she starts with an SMG, which is pretty fun.) And in cases where she re-treads familiar ground - like the village, or the hedge maze - Ada's grappling hook (!) makes navigating old areas feel "new" again.
This mini-campaign's story scenes and cinematics don't exactly add depth to the events of RE4; at best, they just tee up Wesker's Resident Evil 5 plot.
But Separate Ways gave me a few more hours of the dumb, exciting adventure that I enjoyed in the main game.
Twenty years ago, Resident Evil 4's blend of "tense zombie-survival thriller" and "loud zombie-killing adventure" was a pretty radical franchise shift -- and though this led to ... debatable narrative decisions in RE5 and RE6, RE4 remains a landmark, even historic gaming event.
It's very much to the 2023 remake's credit that, without checking (i.e. without reading some superfans' documentation) I couldn't always tell what changed from the original. Some differences stuck out to me - like the removal of cutscene quick-time events (yay) and the absence of Salazar's tricorne hat (boo) - and I frequently got a "sense" while playing that it'd changed a mechanic for accessibility, or spiced-up some previous level design. But the overall experience felt like an appropriate blend of old and new; faithful to 20-year-old ideas, while approachable by a modern player.
This makes for a great nostalgia opportunity, though not exactly a modern masterpiece: RE4's nonsensical story and its vapid characters still feel like relics of a bygone era. Like most games of the early- or mid-2000s, its writing is more functional than substantial, serving to move the action from one level to the next. Don't expect any Uncharted-caliber banter; do expect glib and absurd one-liners.
Starting up is a little rough - the first chapter is a real trial-by-fire, in some ways, e.g. ammo conservation, just as difficult as the late game.
The remake is still tactically challenging, despite totally overhauling the classic Tank Controls, through severe combat encounters and scarce supplies. A fan of the original game's difficulty should feel right at home here.
... or, you can downgrade to the "Assisted" mode for more ammo and lower merchant prices. So of course I did that -- to more easily enjoy the power trip of upgrading Leon's arsenal and blasting the shit out of Las Plagas.
This is just the experience I was hoping for: exploring the map to collect treasure, trading for power-ups, and barreling through the videogame equivalent of a dumb, fun action movie.
(I do wish that the remake would've let me re-visit old areas, to complete more side missions at my own pace; or that it was clearer about points of no return.)
Action-adventure games have come a long way since 2005, and so the now-classic campaign of Resident Evil 4 doesn't stand quite as tall as it once did. But this remake does an exceptional, commendable job of re-creating that journey in a way that plays like it's brand new.
My first Civ 6 campaign turned sour when my friend Montezuma suddenly declared war on me, flooding my blissfully undefended cities with medieval-era pikemen; and when I finally built up an army large enough to stop him, its upkeep costs broke my whole economy.
Why did Montezuma turn on me without warning? Because one of his AI-controlled quirks is murderous, warmongering jealousy of a civ who possesses a luxury resource that he doesn't. (I think it was silk.)
Like Sid Meier's Civilization V before it - and like the newer Ara: History Untold - Civ 6 is hopelessly complicated, even before its expansions Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm have added yet more governing and environmental mechanics. The in-game user interface, to its credit, does about as good as it can making those mechanics manageable -- but "the problem" isn't the interface, it's the complexity underneath.
In my second campaign attempt, I played as Canadian PM Wilfrid Laurier (after finding internet advice that Canada can't be surprise-attacked); deactivated barbarians; and completely ignored entire features like military combat, religious expansion, cultural exports, and spycraft. My focus was science research, and racing to victory in space.
And I still had to work through a ton of meticulous city improvement and district management, civic development of government policies, city-state sponsorship competition, access to electricity-generating resources... on my way to science victory. All while my AI opponents were executing their own globe-spanning religious and cultural and military offensives. Good thing I couldn't be surprise-attacked, or any one of them could've crushed me immediately.
I feel like there's got to be some "ideal" amount of complexity that's more diverse and spicy than just science, or just war, but still less intimidatingly unapproachable than this mess of parallel systems. The amount of civilization progress that I can mess up - the opportunity space for setting myself up for failure - is just too great.
(Which, I think, kinda explains Civ 7's controversial reset-for-new-age mechanism: it can prevent mistakes from piling up too high, without actually removing complexity. Though I'd probably still prefer ... less complexity.)
Then again, Civ 6's over-complicated circus of simulation mechanics nevertheless kept me clicking Next - tapping into that classic "just one more turn" addictive behavior - through the wee hours of the night, until I'd finally launched Canada into the cosmos. So what do I know? In Civilization terms, it still works.
This new case checks all the same boxes as last time:
Enchanting dialog and personalities? Check.
Adorable art style? Check.
Good-enough investigation and "deducktion" gameplay? Check.
Short (and sweet)? Check.
Hilarious loading-screen tips? Big check.
Ghost of Glamping does present one slight improvement upon its predecessor: a map in the menu! ... not that it's all that helpful, the world is still small enough to easily remember its layout.
But it's not like Duck Detective really needed an upgrade; he just needs more cases. More scenes to investigate, more ridiculous characters to meet, more of McQuacklin's self-indulgent melodrama. And that's exactly what Ghost of Glamping delivers.
Its dialog - including voice acting! - is surprisingly well done; Detective Eugene McQuacklin is a pitch-perfect satire of hard-boiled noir, and the game's script is dense with amusing details. (Investigating suspects' computer screens is always good for a laugh, as you read through their browsing history and their silly text messages.)
And the art style is pretty dang adorable, with Paper Mario-esque cutout characters hopping delightfully around the crime scene.
The hint-collecting and mystery-solving gameplay is mostly good. Duck Detective does well at teasing its story as you gather clues and solve simple puzzles -- although some of the "deducktion" prompts simply require you to guess until it says you're right, and feel like jumping to conclusions rather than deducing them.
But hey, you're just a duck. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
The game is unambiguously brief: after a short tutorial, "The Secret Salami" is its one and only case, and you can solve it inside of 2 hours.
It moves swiftly, though, and is polished enough that those 2 hours are a real treat.
Piczle World of Puzzles shares a name, and some title art, with one of my all-time favorite nonogram hybrid games: Piczle Cross Adventure. Adventure pulled the delightful trick of combining puzzles with adventure game mechanics, like an open world map, lighthearted storytelling, and faux progression elements (equipment and experience points). World of Puzzles ... doesn't have any of those.
It's just puzzles. Hm.
And (admittedly, like Adventure) the puzzle interface could be better -- clicking and dragging will drift between rows and columns, and there's measurable lag when the hint numbers update.
Caveat: the game is currently in Early Access, and the developer's "full version" plan does state "A separate adventure mode may also be added."
But as of writing, World of Puzzles's free built-in puzzles don't make a compelling case for buying more.
Dispatch's titular call-dispatch hero management scenes have a frustrating control issue, when trying to select map locations using the analog stick. This is the only negative critique I can come up with.
Dispatch is a Telltale-style choose-your-own-adventure story game. Developer AdHoc was founded by Telltale alumni, and they show total mastery of the format here -- high-quality writing and scripted animations and voice acting, peppered with cinematic quick-time events and engaging dialog choices. It even recaps your choices and shows audience stats after each episodic chapter, "You and 35% of players did this thing that way" et cetera.
How Dispatch surpasses that pedigree is a little nuanced, but easy to summarize: the game is just expertly crafted in every aspect. It's got an interesting story to tell, and it tells that story so well; the entire experience is thoroughly, and thoughtfully, polished.
The game's premise centers around Superhero Dispatch Network's "Z-Team" of ex-villains, a crew of superpowered misfits and jerks - a bit of a trope in recent media, see also: The Boys, Doom Patrol, The Suicide Squad, Deadpool 2 ... - and one of Dispatch's greatest accomplishments is how every member of the cast is made memorable and compelling in their own way.
It's not "just" the story of main character Robert, a relatable un-powered "normie" going through dramatic professional and personal struggles; it's not "just" about his close interactions with Blonde Blazer, a classic do-gooder (and SDN manager) who's a slightly sloppy drunk; with Invisigal, a flippant and acerbic wildcard formerly-known-as Invisibitch; with Chase, Robert's childhood friend whose super-speed powers inadvertently super-aged him into a cranky oldster with a foul mouth.
It's also about Flambae, the flame-powered douchebag who wears sunglasses indoors and mocks Robert during karaoke. And Prism, the loud, rude illusionist pop-music star (who, uh, really is one). And Malevola, the Karlach-esque demon lady who's sick to death of her own cult followers ... and Punch Up, the diminutive brawler who's got no qualms with punching dudes in the dick ... and Golem, the malleable mud-monster with a drinking problem.
Every member of the game's cast - even Waterboy, the over-eager trainee who's eternally wet and awkward - even Toxic, a supporting hench-villain whose enthusiastic cruel commentary lives up to the name - is portrayed with remarkable charm through great humorous writing, eye-catching art direction, slick cinematic pacing, and deeply convincing voice-acting. Their personalities and their character growth throughout the story make them all genuinely fascinating, and entertaining as hell.
And! the choices you (as Robert) make during the story, favoring one team-member over another, building or breaking different relationships, feel meaningful due to the strength of those characters. For maybe the first time in my gaming career, after rolling through the ending credits I immediately started a second playthrough to experience alternatives to my first choices -- alternatives which were all satisfying and well worth the replay time.
(Although I would say, the choice of going out with Blazer was a little underwhelming compared to the alternative romantic build-up with Invisigal. The former option didn't feel like it had as much narrative relevance, or screen-time impact, as the latter's. But that side-story was still worthwhile.)
I don't want to forget to mention Dispatch's gameplay mechanics, either, because despite its unabashed story focus -- no, you know what? The call-dispatch and computer-hacking minigames work in service of Dispatch's storytelling. Responding to support calls successfully and leveling-up the Z-Team may not be "the point" of the game, but the comms chatter during these sequences embellishes the cast's personalities and backstories, kinda like Uncharted's exploration segments where Nate and Sully banter with one another; and these mechanics feel like a very natural part of Dispatch's world, like how Ace Attorney lawyers investigate crime scenes to figure out their cases.
They also help pace and structure the game, as dramatic breaks inbetween story scenes, or occasionally as dramatic emphasis! Like when an event leads to the team being understaffed, making for tenser decisions about call priority.
Also helpful to story structure: episodic chapters. It's pretty eye-opening, in contrast to past episodically-released games, that Dispatch can use episode intro and outro moments purely as narrative beats; that they already finished making the whole game, and don't need to buy more development time for still-in-production future episodes.
I just can't say enough good things about Dispatch, and oh yeah the soundtrack! Both its original score and its licensed music are full of catchy and memorable tracks. Yeah.
Dispatch is an incredible production, top to bottom; AdHoc have set a pretty high bar for their next game.
