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As an RPG, South Park: The Stick of Truth could use work: some combat features are wildly unbalanced (like the Screwed debuff), inventory management is a chore, skills and perks don't feel very significant, and - while I love that it has real-time combat prompts, like Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario - the timing windows of those prompts are staggeringly inconsistent.
But it gets away with these flaws because, even when the game isn't "fair," it's (usually) easy to button-mash through.
And, more importantly, because Stick of Truth isn't really about refined role-playing mechanics -- it's about South Park. I'm not that upset by how awkward it is to control overworld abilities; I'm amused by the fact that those abilities use alien anal probes, and explosive farts.
At its best, when you can freely explore South Park and meet its wacky cast members, running their errands is like watching multiple self-directed episodes of the TV show. Stick of Truth's absurd quest objectives and flippant writing are exactly in line with what South Park fans know and love. (Not to mention its boatloads of fanservice references, from collectable Chinpokomon to a ManBearPig hunt.)
It's unfortunate that the game's back half has fewer opportunities for self-directed activity (favoring an on-rails series of story missions), and especially that a bunch of optional events and items are permanently missable. That puts a bit of a damper on post-game sidequesting.
Nevertheless, Stick of Truth is a fun and funny jaunt through South Park, and that it leaves me wanting more is hardly a bad thing. Especially since there is more.
Khimera: Puzzle Island is a good example of how adding characters with strong personalities can spice up an otherwise-rote game design.
I mean, not to overly impugne Puzzle Island's roteness - it's got solid controls, and a large amount of puzzles - but it certainly doesn't have big enough grids or unique enough mechanics to stand out among your Pictopixes or your Voxelgrams.
What it does have is a cast of, uh, monster girls? who develop adorable friendships through a bizarre puzzle-filled misadventure.
Puzzle Island's "story" isn't taken seriously; cutscene dialog is filled with lighthearted gags and silly puns. The whole package is just fun, from the option to replace grid icons with hamburgers, to the loading screen's Loadin' notification.
There are some definite shortcomings in Puzzle Island, like the fact that most of its puzzles aren't even part of the "story" mode (a few large mosaics are split up into almost 200 small puzzles), and, while its soundtrack is pretty good!, each "stage" only has one track which inevitably becomes very repetitive.
But the quirky charm of these awkward monster girls really makes the game, and made me more than happy to click through even the most tedious of their puzzles.
... oh, and there is one pretty neat mechanic in the final boss battle, using rapid-fire timed puzzles to implement attacking and defending. I kinda hope that a sequel explores this idea some more.
Alternative title: "2021 in Review: Different Year, Same Bullshit"
... but, like 2020, 2021 had an upside: lots of opportunity to catch up on my videogame backlog.
Not all of that catching-up made it into the Glog -- more and more, I'm rapidly trying and discarding games, without wasting time on write-ups. (I'll get to the hard data on that later.)
In fact, 2021 saw my first multi-game post!, resulting in more games played than posts written for the first time in Glog history (ooh, ahh). I consider that a good omen for my future gaming activity: less writing, more playing!
Anyway, my continued focus on backlog-busting also meant I paid less attention than ever to demos (Copy Editor being the sole exception), although ...
... just as in 2020, I did feel a frequent need to cleanse my palate, by replaying known-good games.
Setting aside Darksiders II and Deadly Premonition - which were in my backlog to re-attempt, and which I've now finally abandoned - that Replay count consists of some really satisfying "comfort food" remasters:
And although I'll never be able to re-experience the astonishment of its narrative reveals, Horizon Zero Dawn and The Frozen Wilds were nevertheless wonderful to play through again on PC.
Coincidentally, one side-effect of replaying those particular games (Mass Effect 2, especially) was the most DLCs and expansions I've played in one year:
So it was a pleasant surprise that Mass Effect 3's From Ashes, Omega, Leviathan, and Citadel felt so substantial and rewarding. Citadel, especially, was a stupendously heartwarming send-off for Shepard and her eclectic gang of misfits.
Finally, The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna may have failed to measure up to its main game's "wow" factor, but it was certainly a clever and worthwhile experience all its own.
As for my gaming platforms in 2021, well, "platform" would be more appropriate; as ever, the overwhelming majority of my playtime was on PC. My singular non-PC playthrough last year was Ghost of Tsushima on PS4.
Which might be my last PS4 game, depending on how the upcoming God of War and Horizon sequels perform on the now-"old" hardware.
But if this is the end for my PS4, then it's going out with a "bang," as Ghost of Tsushima ranks among the small number of Awesome games I played in 2021.
What had been one of the oldest games on my backlog, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, turned out to have aged surprisingly well. (Granted, it did need some modern tech support.) Bloodlines was a satisfying reminder of why I keep a backlog: sometimes, a game I've missed is actually worth catching up on, and lets me experience something cool that I haven't seen before.
Of course there's still plenty of chaff in my backlog that isn't so worthwhile ... and I did better, in 2021, at not wasting so much time writing about that chaff. Check that "hard data" above: a marked decline in No Rating posts. If the game isn't remarkable, then why bother remarking on it?
Hopefully, as I continue burning through my backlog in 2022, I'll stumble across more of those praise-worthy missed gems (and will avoid sinking time into the rest). Here's to some positive progress - in my backlog, if nothing else - this year!
I could go on, and on, and on, about how slowly RDR2 tends to move. Not in the same way as John Marston's story, that is, Arthur Morgan doesn't need to herd cattle or break horses for two hours before something interesting happens... but.
He does need to ride his horse from point A to B, for minutes at a time, in and between practically every mission. Sometimes the narrative scripting skips this ride, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a riding companion will provide dialog, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes there's a "fast travel" option at A to go directly to B, and usually there isn't.
And I could similarly go on and on and on about the absurd number of gameplay mechanics in RDR2 - 20 hours in, the game was still tutorializing new activities (like fishing!) - as well as how player-hostile the controls for those mechanics are.
Letters and books share inventory space with animal meat ... except when they don't, depending on which vendor you're talking to. Some guns need to be cocked inbetween shots, which is done with the fire button. Sometimes the aim button gives you dialog choices, and sometimes it points a gun, removing dialog choices. I missed a cutscene because the "run" button is the same as the "skip scene" button.
And don't get me started on how fidgety and fiddly position-sensitive button prompts can be.
And, I could continue going on!, about how these and other problems interfere with RDR2's storytelling -- from attempts at re-watching cinematics getting stuck on infinite loading screens, to the (spoilers) final story mission actively punishing attempted gameplay. ("Stay behind cover. You aren't meant to shoot [the guy] here.")
The story of Arthur Morgan and the Dutch van der Linde gang is good, but it's 20 hours of good story stretched out over 50 hours of actually playing it.
What's shocking about these various shortcomings is that they all sabotage the very "sandbox" formula that Rockstar is known for: optional activities are frustrating to play, exploring the map is overly laborious, and it's impossible to move through the story at your own pace. Like, literally, there are so many scenes where you can't run! and so many other scenes where NPCs yell that you're walking too slowly!
While Red Dead Redemption 2's story can be good, and its shooting can be fun, and its optional activities can be interesting, the game goes out of its way to prevent you from focusing too much on any of those.
Therein lies my conclusion: the only thing that it doesn't prevent you from focusing on, in fact, the thing it frequently forces you to focus on, is watching varmints and livestock and other cowboys run through the wilderness as you're on your way to some mission objective.
And the quality of those floral and faunal animations is top notch. So, for a wildlife simulator, Red Dead Redemption 2 is pretty great.
For an epic narrative, it's pretty good, except when it's slowing itself down; and for an open-world sandbox, it's simply not open enough.
Let's get an important warning out of the way, first: don't buy the Borderlands 3 Season Pass 2. It is an absolute rip-off.
If you bother reading into it before purchasing - which I, admittedly, didn't - it should be obvious why: this isn't a collection of extended story chapters, like the first season pass was (and like Borderlands 2's season pass was!). The majority of Season Pass 2's content is new skills, new cosmetics, new arena challenges, and new raid bosses; superfan stuff, which a superfan would already have via an Ultimate Edition or some similar bullshit.
The only new narrative content is a quartet of missions in the Director's Cut add-on, which sure doesn't seem like a "season" worth of content to me.
Alright, so, here's the good news: those Director's Cut missions are actually pretty fun! Moreso than the morose and melodramatic Bounty of Blood and Fantastic Fustercluck, these investigations on behalf of Ava's "Mysteriouslier" podcast demonstrate the kinds of irreverent humor and thrilling pacing that are peak Borderlands.
There's even a solid film noir aesthetic in its intro mission, which, well, is an instant "win" for me.
It's over relatively quickly, at about 2 to 2.5 hours, but "Mysteriouslier" manages to pack some pretty respectable quality into those hours.
Its broad, "Grand Strategy" scope; its deep, statistics-drenched, micro-management combat; and its randomly-generated characters and events; these are all significant turn-offs for me. But!
I was pleasantly surprised to find each of those concerns tempered by a light, fun attitude. Its bickering voice cast brings an entertaining personality to the otherwise-sterile empire-building premise, and holds your hand through tutorializing combat and asset management. Even the randomly-generated content is pleasantly silly, assuming you choose the "Humorous" content option (instead of "Thematic"); then you, too, can recruit brave warriors like Catkicker Cooke-Gallagher.
And, at least in my initial campaign, I rarely had to sweat the intricate details of dynasty optimization or character loadouts. When a regent died, the game suggested replacement candidates to me; when I researched new equipment, my vanguard equipped it automatically. By my campaign's end, selecting the best new hero or the best new researcher or et al was a triviality, every time.
This isn't a genre I ordinarily get into, but for exceptionally well-polished entries like Civilization and its "just one more turn" addiction loop. So I was surprised to find that Massive Chalice tapped into that same addiction; every time I finished a battle, or placed a new regent, I was eager for the next thing, the next event ... whatever that might happen to be.
I won't be starting a new campaign anytime soon, and I'll never forget how repetitive Massive Chalice's combat encounters and empire planning got by the end. But I had an unexpectedly fun time learning those limits, and I won't forget that fun, either.
I mean, yeah, Splasher's paint-twisted platforming feels pretty fresh: bouncing between walls and running along ceilings to get through dangerous, sawblade-filled laboratories is exciting! Fun, even! And at least at first, doesn't feel punishing.
But it's got the narrative hooks of a Splosion Man - that is, none - which made me suspect that its "appeal" would turn out to be raw, brutal challenge. And looking ahead a bit, I can see ... yeah. I don't have the patience for that many lasers.
Glad that I tried more of it, but I'm convinced enough that the rest of the game would be "not for me."
See, unlike Hell Yeah!, which landed somewhere between "reference" and "parody" -- Tembo actually channels the spirit of a Sonic game, in that it allows you to turn into a destructive ball and charge through obstacles at high speed. And it doesn't destroy you when you take damage, instead stealing just a portion of your health meter. And there are checkpoints!
Tembo makes meaningful strides toward letting you go fast, without punishing you for going "too" fast. But... it doesn't go far enough.
It's not so much the short walls, requiring a jump; or the resilient barriers, requiring multiple hits; but the surprise hazards, enemies with machetes or flame cannons or ... flame tanks? Even when Tembo forgives you for a momentum-defeating mistake, it still doesn't feel fair, because it's not your fault that the game suddenly decided that you need to stop and reverse direction.
It's also an unfortunate example of user-unfriendly PC porting, between the obviously unhelpful tutorial prompts for my Xbox gamepad:
... and some surprising crash diagnostics when I alt-tabbed away:
It's not like Tembo is bad - I mean, the PC port ain't great - it's just, well, it recognizes that "fast sidescrolling" can be improved upon but doesn't execute on many of those improvements.
Progress: Got to the first Phantom Dome before getting lost in what was apparently a ping-pong battle.
Semblance does an impressive job of explaining its mechanics without explaining them -- like the infamous opening of Super Mario Bros., it places elements in such a way that you'll learn how the game works practically by accident.
And, those mechanics are both pleasantly simple and refreshingly inventive; it put a smile on my face when I realized that environment deformation could be used to "climb" sheer walls, by denting platforms into the side.
Unfortunately...
Actually solving Semblance's puzzles is less gratifying, because of the tweaky, fiddly imprecision of that deformable environment. Like World of Goo, or so many other physics-simulation platformers, it's way too easy to "almost" solve a puzzle -- but the ground is a few pixels too high, or the laser angle is a few degrees off, so you need to reset and try it again.
There also isn't any external motivation, no promise of narrative payoff for pushing forward. As far as I can tell, the story is "purple stuff got infected by green stuff." If my only reward for fidgeting together a puzzle solution is more puzzles, well, no thanks.
I really, really like Semblance's mechanical premise. It just needed to do more to keep me interested.
And while more Horizon certainly isn't bad - I had no trouble dumping hours upon hours into The Cut's objectives and collectibles - it simply doesn't measure up to the main game's high-points.
From a level-pacing perspective, I wish The Frozen Wilds fit more "alongside" the main game than "after" it. After Zero Dawn's thrilling main narrative, this can't help but feel like a side-story.
