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Pinstripe is more tedious and boring than you'd expect for a game that's only two or three hours long.
It's got platforming, but it isn't very well-architected; the jumping works fine, but movement on bouncy elements is too hard to predict, platforms aren't always visually clear, and its scant enemies are consistently dull.
It's got puzzles, but they aren't very puzzling; many of its challenges are reminiscent of obtuse point-and-click adventure riddles, and its most engaging puzzles are Highlights-style spot the difference interludes.
It's got exploration, but it isn't very compelling; revisiting map screens I'd seen before always felt more like a chore than a surprise, especially considering how many screen transitions I had to go through again and again.
Pinstripe's mechanical shortcomings give it the earmarks of a story-driven arthouse game, except... while it's got a story to tell, it doesn't come together in a satisfying, or even coherent way. Its story beats have some subtle and some not subtle at all indications of a metaphorical connection to a deeper plot, but it never fully explains the truth or its intended message.
Imagine if you saw the beginning and end of The Usual Suspects without any of the storytelling inbetween. That's kinda what this story feels like.
This game has some admirable production values, in terms of its art style and moody soundtrack. Even the voice acting is pretty good, considering the source material its actors had to read. But that speaks to Pinstripe's core problem: the source material isn't any good. Despite its aesthetic trappings, this is a mechanically-stilted, tiresome, repetitive, unsatisfying adventure.
Better than: Toren Not as good as: Broken Age Did I really prefer: RiME over this? Yeah, if just barely.
Progress: Finished the story, didn't bother with any extras.
There are games that have bad controls, and then there are games that are about hard controls, like QWOP or ... Drunken Fist.
Snake Pass is the latter; actually, quite a bit friendlier than its peers, as it eases you into the game's slithering and climbing mechanics with a cute cartoony snake, bright colorful collectibles, and a friendly hummingbird who ... narrates.
But make no mistake: this is a game about overcoming awkward controls. I had some fun learning how to move and maneuver the snake, but at a certain point that learning turned into foolishly throwing my body at obstacles over and over.
It isn't just the movement controls - which make it infuriatingly easy to try coiling in one direction, only to end up un-coiling in the opposite direction - but also the camera, which is manually controlled except when it isn't. And since Snake Pass builds a lot of verticality into its levels, chances are very good that the camera will rotate behind a tree or other obstacle, spontaneously blocking your view.
I appreciate what Snake Pass tried to do, and I even enjoyed playing its first few, easier levels. But after that, it became clear that the game's challenge would come from retrying, retrying, and frustratingly retrying an obstacle until the stars had very precisely aligned, and that's when I lost patience for it.
2019 was a stressful year, and my gaming activity - a relative decline from 2017 and 2018 - reflects that.
Especialy when considering how many of my 2019 posts were about demos: in 2017, demos accounted for 13% (10/78) of the games I played; in 2018, 8% (5/59); and in 2019, 22% (9/41).
I mean, maybe it's cool that I played more post-worthy demos last year, but less non-demos is a worrying trend.
My replay count was relatively stable, including both remasters and booting up older games.
Returning to Breath of the Wild was a blast -- its overall immersion and scope still impressed me, despite its flaws becoming clearer in retrospect.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy felt like a long-overdue return to Phoenix's original court stories, and has me hankering for even more high-definition Ace Attorney remasters.
And Chrono Trigger is, ... well. Forget the throwaway gimmick endings, the jarring animated cutscenes, and the meaningless new dungeons; the original SNES game's core story is still precious.
Expansions and DLC were almost a non-issue in 2019:
The platforms I played on in 2019 were mostly unremarkable, with PC - like always - occupying the lion's share of my time. As for the rest:
My historic Xbox One usage has been staggeringly low, since its library overlaps so much with PC; last year's Crackdown 3 is in rare company. The game was overall competent and fun, but not very compelling and definitely not innovative. (With apologies to Terry Crews, who is undoubtedly the game's best new feature.)
My PS4 saw a bit more activity in 2019, but only just, with a disappointing stab at The Last Guardian and a fun-but-samey run through Marvel's Spider-Man. Like, it certainly wasn't bad, but came across too much like a re-skinned attempt to replace the Batman Arkham games.
Of course, I came back to the Switch for Zelda, and for Smash Bros. - which ... maybe I shouldn't have - plus some scattered Mario Party-ing. Again, Breath of the Wild is great, but that's not exactly news.
What's interesting on that chart isn't the sparse wasteland that is my non-PC gaming, but the spontaneous appearance of Netflix. And even though Black Mirror: Bandersnatch wasn't much more than a choose-your-own-adventure story, it was well-implemented! and maybe more importantly, a good story. I would love to see more games from this talent pool. (Can you imagine a Black Mirror episode in the style of an Ace Attorney game?)
Unfortunately, the total number of games that really knocked my socks off in 2019 was pretty low.
And Exapunks built on the foundations of previous Zachtronics games to deliver a thrilling computer-hacking adventure.
I definitely didn't plan that trend. And I'd dispute that hacking/cyberpunk is a guarantee for "Awesome" given my distaste for NITE Team 4. (Nevertheless, Cyberpunk 2077 is a promising contender for the coming year.)
While I didn't play nearly as many "Awesome" games in 2019 as in previous years, there were still plenty of "Good" ones that provided fresh and entertaining experiences:
Hacknet, per above, did a great job of making a hacking game fun instead of getting lost in leaky abstractions.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night shared a few too many flaws with previous Igavanias, but was also a reminder of how much they got right.
Battle Chef Brigade used some low-quality ingredients, and its combat was undercooked, but the final dish was a surprisingly-satisfying mixture.
Hollow Knight was too hard for me, which is usually a big turn-off... but its aesthetic charm is difficult to resist. (I'll attempt it again in 2020! Promise!)
Indivisible had some rough spots that got in its way, but impressed the hell out of me with its unique narrative, memorable environments, challenging platforming, and fun action gameplay.
The Sexy Brutale was a really satisfying and engaging mystery game, even if it could have used some more polish and complexity.
It's notable that two of these games (Bloodstained and Indivisible) were from the crop of crowdfunding-backed titles that I've been complaining about for years. Of that original list of eight games, four got released in 2018, and now two more in 2019.
That just leaves A.N.N.E., which plans to release this year -- of course, they've been saying that since 2014; and Factorio, which has also finally set a date, so. I guess we'll see what happens in 2020.
What else might the new year hold? I still don't know what to expect from Final Fantasy VII Remake, nor do I know how long I might have to wait for Cyberpunk 2077 to iron out its release-day bugs.
After my somewhat-disappointing trip through RiME, I glanced at Tequila Works's resume and was like... oh, yeah, The Sexy Brutale! Yet another game that looked good, I bought, then got lost in my backlog.
The Sexy Brutale has a really compelling hook: murder mystery party! Also ... time travel! Imagine if the time-warping in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was applied to Clue, and you've pretty much got it.
Crucially, one of this party's rules is that you shouldn't be seen by other guests -- so there's no interviewing and no direct intervention. Instead, you'll observe guests' movements by peeping through keyholes, and learn their "loop" through the course of the day, to figure out how they die. Then you rewind time and manipulate the environment to, hopefully, prevent their grisly deaths.
This time-detective mechanic is at its best when tracking a guest spirals out into tertiary tasks, like overhearing a password to unlock a door, or watching someone open a secret passage. Unfortunately the puzzles never get more complex than two or three steps; but as it is, figuring out each guest's death puzzle is still enough detective-work to feel pretty cool.
As you track the guests, you'll pick up hints about what's going on in this murder-mansion, and each guest's relationship with its mysterious Marquis. The Sexy Brutale does a great job of ambient storytelling, as the conversations you overhear start to stitch together into a bigger overall story.
That story goes in some unexpected directions, but it's internally consistent, making sense within its established world. Many games with this kind of storytelling ambition end up tripping over themselves, but The Sexy Brutale concludes with a satisfying explanation for everything.
It mostly nails its aesthetics, too, with a distinctive chibi art style that highlights the guests' masks, and UI flourishes that fit right into the theme of a casino party mansion. The soundtrack is ... great, sometimes, if not all the time; some tracks are moody and thrilling, but at least one became really grating over the course of multiple time loops.
The Sexy Brutale is fun and engaging, though its puzzles are pretty simple and make me wish for more layers (and non-linearity) in a future iteration. Also for some better controls and system design, as I frequently had to mash the door-open button a few times before it "took," then watched the game stutter through loading in the next room.
Nevertheless, it's a really cool experience that unravels a uniquely interesting story, and I'd definitely look forward to another game in this format.
Gato Roboto is an adorable little Metroid clone with a cat in a power suit.
It has doors that you shoot to open; it has elevators connecting different sections of the map; it has ability upgrades that allow you to overcome progression obstacles, including a double-jump that looks a lot like the screw attack.
Sometimes you'll need to exit the suit and scamper through small tunnels or ventilation shafts ... kinda like morph-ball mode. Even the low-fidelity underground-laboratory aesthetic is highly evocative of Samus's early adventures.
So there's one problem: this game doesn't bring many new ideas to the table. Its cute theme and occasional humor - when a human monologues at the cat, and the cat just meows back - are pretty much all that separate it from Metroid II.
My other problem with Gato Roboto is that it is, at times, brutally difficult. A few enemy- and trap-filled gauntlets are frustratingly unforgiving, and one boss fight in particular is a maddening bullet hell with limited health and slippery movement.
Before the end, I went and got all the health upgrades and other collectibles, not because I "wanted" to 100%-complete the game; but because the upgrades felt necessary to keep up with the difficulty curve.
Gato Roboto is a perfectly competent Metroid-alike, but not much else. I enjoyed more of my 4-5 hours with it than not, and I like the game's cute personality, but too much of it feels like a tribute to Samus rather than an original creation.
The story took a bit of a weird turn near the end, but ultimately Exapunks left me feeling very satisfied.
Its simple instruction set and network-distributed parallelism make for fun puzzles; my new favorite among all Zachtronics games, which is saying a lot. The amount of content is impressive, with a main campaign that isn't just lengthy, but also feels "meaty" and well-paced.
And the story is easily the best of its genre, both in its enchanting cyberpunk theme and in its intriguingly diverse styles of narration. This feels like the glorious culmination of TIS-100's hidden notes, Shenzhen I/O's email banter, and Opus Magnum's dialog scenes.
I loved uncovering Exapunks's story, and I loved solving its puzzles. Hell, I'd still be solving the bonus puzzles right now, if they weren't so damn hard. Ah, well... more fun for later.
Better than: SpaceChem, and every other Zachtronics game I've played. Not as good as: I suppose if these puzzles could be combined with a Hacknet-style hacking game ... And +1: for the nonograms at the end of the manual. Of course I printed those out.
Progress: Finished the main campaign, and the first four bonus missions.
RiME is a very pretty - sincerely, a very aesthetically-pleasing - experience. Its exotic environments are visually striking, and evocative of various narratively-engaging themes of awe, curiosity, anxiety, and isolation.
But there's almost no substance to support this style. The game doesn't control very well (there's just a smidge of unpredictability when jumping or running), the puzzle mechanics don't evolve after the first hour, and its most challenging moments are only thus because of partially-hidden climbing handholds.
RiME has no voice-overs, no expository text, no character development and almost no ambient storytelling. The story it does tell, through confusingly metaphorical cinematics, takes a turn around the 4-hour point into "Oh, now I see what they're going for," but then takes another turn shortly afterward into "A lie is not a twist!" before landing on an unfulfilling ending.
Compared to the last Tequila Works title I played, Deadlight, RiME shows some growth in the "playability" domain. But it's still not mechanically fun, and the story still feels meaninglessly tepid.
Better than: Deadlight Not as good as: ... Myst? I guess? Roughly equivalent to: AER: Memories of Old; RiME is longer, but maybe it shouldn't be.
Every time I tell someone that "Indivisible is kinda like Valkyrie Profile," they respond with a shrug -- which is more than fair, since I've barely played Valkyrie Profile myself. And like I said back in 2011 - about a game released in 1999 - surprisingly, not many titles have tried to imitate it.
So to put it another way: Indivisible is a side-scrolling action-RPG with real-time multi-character combat, platforming challenges in a Metroidvania-like interconnected world, a plot inspired by Southeast Asian mythology, and a large cast of unique characters who by the way accompany the protagonist Ajna by living inside of her head. Does ... does that clarify things?
Combat is Indivisible's most distinctive aspect. If you aren't familiar with Valkyrie Profile, the Mario & Luigi games might be the next best comparison: your party has four members, and each one is mapped to a face button on the controller. Pressing a character's button will order that character to attack, or if an enemy is currently attacking, will order your character to defend. Each character also has modified attacks when you hold Up, Down, or Left/Right while pressing their corresponding button.
Indivisible's combat is all real-time, so if the action meters are full, you could mash all four buttons at once to have the whole party attack together. A shared iddhi meter encourages you to defend sparingly, and timely defenses are rewarded with a little healing. (The iddhi meter can also be used by some characters for ultra-powerful super attacks.)
Where it gets really interesting is that, of Indivisible's dozens-strong cast, each character has a totally unique set of moves. Some can heal, some have projectiles, some use elemental effects, some deal damage to multiple targets, some launch enemies into the air or can pierce their defenses... some lay traps, or have delayed effects like charging up a later attack.
Indivisible isn't a "fighting game," but you can tell that Lab Zero's fighter background helped in building this system up. Each character's move-set feels uniquely tailored to their fighting style. For example, there's a dog, and he does damage by barking. You can also build your iddhi meter by petting the dog. (Aww.)
Outside of combat, Indivisible is a platform-puzzle-y Metroidvania: the main story will take you through a huge interconnected map of varied environments, and as you make progress and learn new abilities, you'll be able to unlock new areas or uncover new secrets in previously-visited locations. Sometimes these progress gates are pretty direct, i.e. you need an ability to open a door; and sometimes they're indirect, i.e. you need an ability to increase your aerial range in order to reach a platform.
Indivisible's bar for platforming skill is higher than most Metroidvanias, and its collection of abilities also becomes rather large by the end, making it a challenge (at least for me) to maintain the mapping of abilities to hand muscles. In most cases, this feels more like an opportunity to improve than like an annoyance, as the game provides plenty of helpful hints and is merciful with its checkpoints.
The exceptions are the trips to Mt. Sumeru, which are kinda bullshit. These gauntlet-style platforming segments are what I might expect from a platform game's "challenge mode," requiring planning and precision on par with a Mario endgame, except that Indivisible requires getting through these sections to continue with its story. Which made me very motivated, but not very happy.
But I digress. Overall, Indivisible's platforming chops are pretty damn respectable, and contribute to a healthy variety of gameplay along with the combat.
As for the interconnected map, it's pretty good, but lacks a bit of polish. Chiefly: you can never see the "whole" map at once. Every region of the world is connected, including by some means of fast-travel, but when you View Map you can only see the region you're currently in. Which is just fine for chasing a local quest, but unhelpful when trying to find a good route to another region.
Sidequests in the late game require quite a bit of inter-region travel, and I didn't really feel like I had a handle on all the available routes until I'd finished most of those quests.
It helps, though, that each region of the world has a distinctive theme and feel. And, even more, that these regional themes aren't your typical tropey videogame environments. Port Maerifa is a bustling Mediterranean-style trading post; Tai Krung City is a dense, neon-soaked Asian metropolis mixing nightclubs and ramen shops; Kaanul is reminiscent of Maya or Inca temples overgrown by jungle. And while the Iron Kingdom is a clear nod to European culture, its industrial-age setting throws away archetypal nobles/castles/crumpets in favor of Dickensian peasants/slums/malaise.
These regions and the NPCs inhabiting them are built around a world mythology cribbed from Buddhism and Hinduism, which are similarly under-utilized in videogames, resulting in a pretty refreshing plot. And Indivisible's ending is an especially great example of integrating that background mythos with its hero's journey, as the idea of good-versus-evil intersects with the philosophical motives of cyclical death and rebirth.
More than its freshness and gravitas, Indivisible's storytelling is remarkable for how good-humored it is. Interactions with NPCs are almost always punctuated by a joke, and for all the problem-solving and world-saving that Ajna gets into, it's clear that "having fun" is still one of her top priorities.
Most of the (again, dozens-strong) cast is written with distinct and endearing personalities, and while some of the voice acting is ... let's say uneven, it's good when it counts. Crucially, Ajna's voice acting is some of the best I've heard in any game, and her emotional line deliveries are a big part of what makes Ajna's character development so compelling.
What did I miss? Oh, the rest of the audio is solid - including some catchy background tunes that I'm sure to catch myself idly humming - and the graphics are mostly excellent. These guys are known for their striking character art and fluid animations, and Indivisible's playable characters get top marks in both of those categories. Then there are the background NPCs made up for crowdfunding backers, which ... are easy enough to ignore.
Indivisible's imperfections - confusing world navigation, and the ass-ache that is Mt. Sumeru - were just enough to keep me from calling it an unconditional success. But it delivers strong on its core gameplay mechanics, builds a unique and refreshing world, and tells an interesting story; and for a studio's first attempt at an RPG, that's really damn good.
Open World Game is a 2D map with quest markers that you can complete by pressing a button. That's all it is. ... Well, that and text descriptions for those quests, which also take jabs at RPG tropes.
The surprising thing about Open World Game is that it's actually kinda good. Not just good for a free game, but also good by the standards of other satirical games like DLC Quest and Evoland.
The map is surprisingly big, with distinct regions; there are named characters, and their backstories intertwine with the political state of the world. Granted, your interactions with those characters are limited to reading text, and the plot is also heavily influenced by (sometimes practically copied from) well-known fantasy RPGs.
But my point is that there is more and better world-building in Open World Game than I would ever have expected. And in that way, it actually taps into the same conceit that makes a samey, repetitive game like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood successful: working through that quest-marker checklist is like an excuse to reveal more about the game's setting and lore.
The writing's sense of humor helps, too.
I don't want to blow too much smoke up this free game's skirt, and if it wasn't free I almost certainly wouldn't be willing to buy it. But I really admire the amount of effort that went into creating this world, even if it is ultimately just a 90-minute-long joke.
Better than: DLC Quest Not as good as: well, Skyrim, I guess. Higher-quality writing than: a depressing amount of paid, even triple-A, games.
In Tales of Lazo, you write prose descriptions of how the hero (er, Lazo) overcomes platforming and combat challenges. Explain how to beat the level, and then watch him do it! Like the English version of a programming-puzzle game. What a premise, right?
Of course the obvious question is, does it work well enough to maintain the illusion that you're writing a story instead of just entering keywords? And the answer is, no, it doesn't.
Its vocabulary is lacking, for one thing; I can write that Lazo "jumped" over a gap, but not that he "leaped" over it. And some definitions are surprisingly specific, for example while Lazo would be fine if he walked forward until he "reached a gap," walking forward until he "reached a ledge" would result in him trying to walk to a ledge past the "gap," tumbling head-first into the "gap" on his way there.
As frustrating as it is for this game to misinterpret my words, the problem is amplified even further by the high cost of death -- resetting the whole level. Falling into the sixth pit (or hole, or canyon, or whatever) results in having to retype the whole story from scratch.
Playing this guessing-game with Lazo's dictionary leads to dying and retrying, which in turn discourages wordiness in the written text, which thoroughly ruins the cool idea of the game. There's no point in wasting time and keystrokes on colorful language if Lazo is liable to fall in a pit anyway, so you may as well just enter "walked forward reached gap jumped forward" like it's a poorly-documented programming language instead of real, expressive prose.
This game idea needs a much stronger dictionary and more robust world-to-word abstraction to really make writing "fun." Short of that, it would probably be better to restrict the player to some pre-baked verbs and parameters, and make this a visual programming game instead of one about typing.
