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Pid lives in a space between heavily-atmospheric walk-to-the-right games like Inside (2016) and tactical run-and-jump platform games like Mario side-scrollers. It's "more game-y" than the former category, as in, its imaginative environments are usually overshadowed by platforms to traverse and enemies to avoid or destroy.
But it's also not as well-polished as a Mario-tier game: the physics don't quite feel intuitive or predictable, and there is an awkward economy of collecting stars to buy ... consumable equipment? which rarely seems useful or relevant.
While it tries to set itself apart with some surreal backgrounds and that peculiar inventory system, Pid ultimately spends too much time feeling like just another platform game that doesn't measure up to the genre's standard-bearers.
Progress: Somewhere in the dining room, restaurant, missile-robot gauntlet? area.
The match-three mechanics are fun to learn and experiment with -- well, the horizontal-matching "wall" effect is kinda bullshit, since it eats away from your army count while the walls just sit around. But aside from that annoying quirk, the learning curve of Clash of Heroes' combat tactics feels like a really rewarding balance of "solving" the puzzle to win battles and progressively adding twists like elite units and linked attacks.
And the story is fine - a little trope-y, but it gets the job done - serving as a vehicle for the gradual introduction of new enemies, new friendly units, and new environments.
However... there are a couple of high-level design issues that work against the game's otherwise-satisfying progression and combat. One, there's effectively a finite supply of experience points (random encounters are rare and, failure rewards no XP) so your choice of units to consume those experience points is practically irreversible. And two, the effects of random unit placement are disproportionately influential in combat.
The randomness issue isn't worrisome in general, but becomes very poignant when facing enemies at a higher level (your chances dwindle from "fair" to "impossible" pretty immediately), and especially in special encounters, like - and here's where I gave up on the game - the one where a friendly unit randomly moves through the enemy battlefield, and accidentally attacking that unit is a game over.
How can I work around that? Well, one option would be to swap out all of my "attacks take two turns" units with an "attacks take one turn" unit, ... which is under-leveled and has no realistic option for catching up on experience points. So. I kind-of can't.
Clash of Heroes has some good fundamentals going for it, but also enough bad fundamentals that I've no interest in suffering through them for the good parts.
Cthulhu Saves the World is not without charm. It wastes no time breaking - really, demolishing - its own fourth wall, and its writing and art shows how much fun the game must've been to make.
But inbetween its silly dialogs is an RPG that's not only basic, but archaic. "Basic" isn't necessarily bad, especially since it means combat flows fairly quickly, but it also means lots of throwaway random encounters with low-effort monsters, and barren, bland environments between points of interest.
And by "archaic" I mean stuff like... there's no inventory screen, so when you pick up weapons or armor, you need to know (or guess) which party member can equip it, then go into the equipment sub-sub-menu for that character to see said weapon or armor.
I may have lamented that Cosmic Star Heroine was "unfinished", but at least what it did finish was more user-friendly than Cthulhu's head-scratching menus, and more satisfying than Cthulhu's makework combat and map traversal.
I was a fan of Overlord's and Raising Hell's sense of humor, in spite of some underwhelming gameplay. Coming back to Overlord II a decade later is a stark reminder of those "in spite of" problems: uninspired level design, uneven objective clarity, and confounding controls -- multiplexing minion direction with camera movement is a clear design flaw.
And the franchise's cartoony anti-hero humor doesn't really cut it anymore. I mean, to put a point on it, in a post-Saints Row IV marketplace Overlord's tone just isn't very impactful.
Iron Brigade (née Trenched) isn't a bad game, exactly, for its time. It combines the simplest and most visceral part of a mech-piloting game (putting huge gun turrets on metal legs) with a Tower Defense turret-placement game, picking up a "commander in-combat" feeling along the way. The thin-but-flashy presentation and light-but-thrilling gameplay makes it reasonably competitive with contemporaries like Toy Soldiers.
But even from very early in the campaign, it's clear that Iron Brigade isn't thoroughly exploring the space between the normally-appealing sub-genres it's combined. Your "trench" mech plods along slowly, with satisfying heft ... which makes battlefield obstacles as burdensome to you as they are to enemies. Turret placements are controlled from your mech suit, in close proximity ... which restricts your ability to manage the larger battlefield. Mech suit upgrades are customized inbetween missions ... which limits your weapon choices in the mission itself.
And, as much as the Double Fine level of audio-visual polish tries to conceal it, each mission is still just a wave-after-wave series of brainless enemies that you need to unload bullets into. The narrative backdrop is transparent and disposable.
And so, like Brütal Legend before it, Iron Brigade comes across like a riveting high-concept that was blessed with high production values and enough micro-level design to be playable, but not enough macro-level design to be cohesively engaging.
Progress: Finished the first non-tutorial mission (Europe, Beach).
For a one-person indie game (ignoring the "+" for the moment), Cave Story+ is pretty impressive. It's got a healthy amount of content, its environments and abilities show some well-tuned variety, even the story feels unique, albeit simple. But - even with a studio's worth of "+" polish on top - it is still a one-person indie game.
Platforming is challenging, and not always for good reasons (slippery movement). Save points are often too far apart, which makes surprise sudden deaths (like hidden spikes!) too punishing. Some "quests" lazily ask you to go re-tread the same ground and re-fight the same enemies you just dispatched a moment ago. The game's first half sets up a hub area and interconnected routes, but the second half is a non-stop train ride that you can't really get off of.
That "surprise sudden deaths" issue comes to a head with the game's final boss, which is a phase-after-phase gauntlet of boss fights that I didn't see coming, and had no interest in re-trying when I died on (what I think is) the last part.
There were things I liked about Cave Story, punctuated by things I didn't like. The ability upgrades are pretty cool, and the shooting action is mostly fun, despite how confounding it can be to lose weapon experience. But those positives are canceled out by how poorly-connected the world map is, and by how disrespectful to my time the surprise sudden deaths are.
Its awkward screen size and poorly-written story are both off-putting, though not deal-breakers. Input-handling feels a little loose, but Valdis Story's bigger problem is that the controls don't make sense, due to both poor tutorialization (I had to read the online manual to figure out what Focus is) and counter-intuitive button mapping.
In the air, pressing Down performs a stomp move. On the ground, Down is an animation cancel and also a necessary precursor to dodging -- like, to dodge left, you press Down and then Left. There are so many unused buttons, and so many other games have the sense to implement a dodge button; why, why would you do it this way?
The game's also got a style ranking system, which might be a "plus" to action/fighting folks, but to me is just a punishment for not adapting to those bizarre controls.
What little of Valdis Story I saw was somewhat promising re: other 'vania qualities, like a sprawling world map with just-out-of-reach alternate routes, and character progression through level-ups and equipment crafting. But learning how to play the game looks like more work than I'm willing to put into it.
Aside from the ... everything, 2020 was actually a great year for the Glog. In January I resolved to aggressively tackle my backlog, and I ended up doing a damned good job of it; a couple more years like this might actually clear it out!
Last year saw the second-highest number of games Glogged since I started counting -- and that's only the number of games I "bothered" to write about.
I don't have a firm count of how many I gave up on without a post, but I will say ... the scroll bar on my Steam library is getting pretty confident in itself.
The dark side of backlog-busting is that many of those games sat unplayed for a reason - more on that in a bit - and, for palate-cleansing purposes, my 2020 gaming also included a significant amount of replaying old favorites.
Plus some brief trips back to VVVVVV for its tenth anniversary; Prince of Persia (2008) which has been officially demoted out of "old favorite" status; and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance which was really more of a "re-attempt" (though not much of one).
But I also found time for a fair number of demos last year, and some of them were even good! Don't be surprised to read more about the full versions of Voxelgram, Batbarian, Raji: An Ancient Epic, and Midnight Protocol in the future.
On that note, it was very satisfying to see Steam evangelizing demos in its Spring, Summer, and Autumn Game Festival events. I really hope that this trend continues after in-person game conventions have resumed.
As for DLC and expansion activity, those replays ended up feeding a big chunk of it...
... between the aforementioned Ballad of Gay Tony, Harley Quinn's Revenge, and Lost Legacy replays. Last year also saw my first playthroughs of some Batman DLCs, specifically the better-than-expected Cold, Cold Heart, the worse-than-expected A Matter of Family, and the pretty-much-just-as-expected Season of Infamy: Most Wanted Expansion.
The remainder of my DLCs last year were Fallout 4's, namely Automatron, Vault-Tec Workshop, Far Harbor, and Nuka World ... that last one thoroughly wearing out the game's welcome. Bethesda's proliferation of DLC packs is a case study in what happens when you don't "leave them wanting more."
Around now is where I would normally chart my cross-platform game activity, excluding the always-unfairly-advantaged PC -- normally, that is, but last year I only played on one other platform (PS4) and most of that was replaying Uncharted.
My one non-PC, non-replay game of 2020 was the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo, which I was side-eyeing even before full-game reviews started to explain how weird it gets.
Now, a few paragraphs ago, I said that the "dark side" of spelunking into my backlog was that many games were there "for a reason." If I was being generous, I could say the reason was that they didn't quite stand out from their competitors; but if I was being real, I'd say that many just weren't good.
My game ratings for 2020 were significantly biased toward "No Rating" (which sometimes just means I'm being polite) and Meh, with a record-low proportion of Good or Awesome ratings.
Excluding replays, the only games I counted as Awesome were Pictopix (so many puzzles!) and Factorio (so many conveyor belts!).
I'll even admit - yes, admit - that Fallout 4 was good, and enjoyable, and sometimes captivating, despite how much I've ranted (and will surely rant in the future) about its various transgressions.
That said, many of the games that disappointed me in 2020 have no one to blame but themselves. Dishonored 2 and (especially) Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus failed to live up to the expectations set by their predecessors. 3030 Deathwar Redux, Cosmic Star Heroine, and Dex were all victims of out-sized ambitions, and under-delivered on their core loops. Undertale had some great ideas, like, I get it, but the game itself was clunky and boring.
Furi definitely wasn't for me. I think it might be for people who really hate themselves.
And I feel I have to make a note, for the record, on Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Divinity: Original Sin. Between these three heavy-hitters of the classically-styled CRPG, 2020 was the year I finally realized that I'm not into this sub-genre.
Which has helped shape my gaming plans for the year ahead, vis-a-vis what portions of my backlog to focus on. As did Cyberpunk 2077's wet fart of a launch, such that I know my inevitable trip to Night City is still several months away.
Some Borderlands 3 DLCs might be part of my 2021 plan, too. And I've still got to get around to Red Dead Redemption 2, and so, so many others in that backlog. But I think I'm catching up...!
One last footnote: with Factorio 1.0 launched, and A.N.N.E. being about as complete as it's likely to get, I think I'm finally, finally done waiting on crowdfunded games. That's kind of a milestone, right?
"Moonface" is a not-in-polite-company term, right? Like, I could've sworn it was an outright slur. At any rate, it doesn't sound quite right.
PictoQuest doesn't seem like it's trying to offend, though; its translation just has a few rough spots. And other than that, the game is well-polished and mechanically solid: input handling works great (so much better than Puppy Cross's), puzzles get up to a reasonable size (20x20), and it doesn't screw around with nonsense like making you re-play a puzzle if you make a mistake.
Unfortunately the interesting parts of PictoQuest, the "quest" parts, are underwhelming. There's no story other than the establishment of ... the aforementioned villain. There's a world map with distinct regions, but your path through it is a line; one puzzle is available at a time, with the exception of a few optional side-puzzles.
Some puzzles are made up like combat encounters with stereotypical enemies, such as bats or blobs -- they'll "attack" you if you make a mistake or let their attack meter fill up, and you'll "attack" them each time you solve a row or column. Attacking the monster also pushes its attack meter back. ... in other words, you win combat by solving the puzzle with a soft time limit.
There are a small handful of combat items which can reveal parts of the puzzle (i.e. cheating the game) or slow down enemies, and you'll pick these items up gradually or can buy them using money (which also accumulates from solving puzzles). But if you're able to solve nonograms in general, these items are entirely unnecessary.
The "combat" side of a puzzle only becomes even remotely challenging when some of the biggest, 20-by-20 puzzles take a while to fill enough blocks for an entire row or column. And it would still be a stretch to call those puzzles difficult.
When you ignore its thin adventure-like elements, PictoQuest ends up being a relatively short nonogram game. Not, like, disastrously short; I just mean it's a far cry from Pictopix in terms of content.
PictoQuest isn't a bad nonogram game, but there are plenty of better ones. And its attempted integration of RPG/adventure aspects doesn't really pay off.
Borderlands 3 is a technological step forward, and it succeeds in reiterating the franchise's manic-weapons-and-zany-scenarios formula. But it barely attempts to meaningfully distinguish itself from its predecessors, and those attempts don't generally work in the threequel's favor.
I want to be clear that the core "Borderlands" gameplay - running around and shooting bandits and exploding their dumb faces - is surviving and thriving in Borderlands 3. Its character classes are powerfully distinctive. Its combat is more beautifully chaotic than ever, with what feels like a record number of enemies in every encounter. Its new environments and their corresponding enemy designs are diverse and creative, as are the random weapon drops; upgrading from one crazy weapon to another, differently-crazy one is still a blast.
But given that we're nearly a decade on from Borderlands 2 (and 5+ years from the Pre-Sequel side-story), it seems reasonable to expect Borderlands 3 to stand out from its forebears. It doesn't -- instead, it's more like a remaster of the second game, with an upgraded engine and re-skinned content. Everything it does well was also done well in Borderlands 2.
That "remaster" sensation includes some surprising failures to meet contemporary game expectations. You can't track multiple quests at a time, finding fast-travel destinations is a pain, even clicking on menu buttons with a mouse just doesn't work as well as it should. (Which is especially confounding since the game has been released on PC for over a year, now.)
And, while there are a few stand-out moments in Borderlands 3's narrative - here I'm thinking particularly of Ice-T's and Penn and Teller's amazing guest spots - it overall falls short of the bar set by Handsome Jack's tale. Troy and Tyreen are lackluster villains (more annoying than anything else), cutscenes distractingly railroad the story away from you, late-game plot revelations fall flat, and even cameos from series favorites like Tiny Tina (who's less tiny, now) are disappointingly short-lived.
Also, what the hell happened to the "effervescent" items showed off in Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary? I thought that teasing those super-shiny guns for the third game was, like, the whole point of that DLC.
... but I digress.
The problem isn't that Borderlands 3 is un-fun -- it is fun. In terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, it's as fun as the series has ever been. It just seems like it's still lingering in the shadow of Borderlands 2.
