Coelacanth

EVE has underrated combat mechanics to be honest, so I’m surprised there haven’t been more attempts to make games inspired by them. Managing your transversal and tracking of yours and the enemy’s weapons is quite fun.

I knew there was something off about the writing in that game from the trailer.

Damn, losing your saved games like that absolutely sucks. I’m so sorry. I’m glad you got to experience most of it, at least. The lost film in the cinema is so good too, almost more audacious than the We Sing chapter is shoving a whole ass European art house short film in there haha.

The first one or two bosses are alright, I think. I’m pretty sure you can parry all their attacks. But I can see what you mean, there is definitely a very simple design behind a lot of the bosses in vanilla. None of them were really super fun, but they also weren’t really all that difficult so I guess that’s why I didn’t think too much of it. I died way more to the environment than to any boss, except Isidora. She got my ass like 50 times. Though to be fair I never did the rest of the DLC so there may well be another equally tough boss there.

But yeah, the game seems to really lean into the whole “virtue of suffering” theme - which works great with the story, world building and vibe and all, it’s just… not necessarily fun.

I absolutely love the art, music, story and world building in Blasphemous, but I could also not really vibe with the gameplay. Way too much platforming combined with instant kill hazards and janky ledge//ladder grabbing. Also enemy placement that seems deliberately designed to waste your time and prevent you from rushing through areas, even when you backtrack.

I didn’t have much issue with the bosses though, at least in the main game. Isidora from the DLC was a fucking pain, though.

I finished The Drifter yesterday. It took me three weeks to get through a 10-hour game, that tells you a bit about how little I’ve been gaming lately. Anyway.

Game is absolutely great. 9.9/10, a must-play if you like the genre of point-and-click adventure games, and a game you should seriously consider even if you don’t.

I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in past weekly threads, so I am not going to repeat myself here. All I can add is that the game does stick the landing.

From what I have played, this is the most logical puzzle game ever. There were only something like 5 convoluted puzzles over the course of the whole game, and even those did make some sense in retrospect. Besides those five I got stuck on, I was able to figure out the rest of the game without outside help, and everything felt like it was logical and made sense.

The story is a lot of fun, it was more sci-fi than I expected but I don’t really mind it. It’s a breakneck pulp thriller and it keeps throwing curve balls at you, there is always a twist and turn and you never know what to expect. The writing is super sharp, it’s witty and fun and the dialogue is great. In the latter half there were a couple of voice actors that were only okay, but the rest of the cast is absolutely top shelf and the protagonist especially is great.

Overall I can’t say enough good things about it. The conclusion is satisfying, the main theme of the OST hitting with its heavy synths at a climactic moment was epic and there is even an emotional arc.

Play it, it’s fantastic. Even if you don’t like puzzle games, the story and presentation is great, so if you have to look up a few hints or solutions then so what? You’ll have a good time regardless.

I’m at the last bit of The Drifter, which I’ve been enjoying immensely. In the latter half some of the puzzles did start get a little convoluted (though maybe I’m just stupid) but overall it’s been an incredible pulp thriller ride underpinned by mostly logical puzzles. Beautiful art, sharp writing and excellent voice acting. The story is a fun ride too.

I’ve also been playing some Wanted: Dead. It’s an interesting mess of a game. I already ranted about it over in the PatientGamers community weekly thread. In a different universe this could have been a cult classic. The combat is still decent enough even with all the flaws.

Do we really need more Baldur’s Gates? The story was finished in Throne of Bhaal, then Larian dug the corpse up and put a mindflayer brainworm in it, and now it’s finished again. Just tap into the oodles of other Dungeons and Dragons settings for the next game. Why not adapt the Dragonlance novels into games? Or call it something else if you stay in Forgotten Realms, let this franchise rest.

Ah, I’m sorry I’m just shouting at clouds. Who wants a new IP when you can cash in on a successful established brand and squeeze some wallets until they bleed. That’s my bad, I forgot myself and the current state of things for a second. And I mean, it already worked for BG3 so fuck it, run it back I guess.

It’s a great game. In some ways I might even prefer it to Human Revolution. Also, make sure you do the DLCs after. A Criminal Past is some of the best “new Deus Ex” they ever produced.

The Lake House DLC is great, nice tight survival horror and a great commentary on Gen AI to boot.

I’m glad you’re having some more fun with Saga at least. I found the retirement home to be an awesome horror level, some of the best scares in the game there and some nice creepy atmosphere. Dilapidated hospitals are clichés maybe, but they are so for a reason. And I don’t know, I still found it effective.

Man, while you’re running Xemu you gotta throw in Ninja Gaiden Black!

I feel like the only game that could come close to the same level of digital crack is Football Manager. Since I’ve already plowed way too many hours into that one I’m steering clear of Factorio.

I’ve been playing a little bit of Wanted: Dead. Man, this is a weird fucking game to write about. I don’t even know how best to describe it. How about this: Wanted: Dead is a 3/10 but I “see the vision”. There is an alternate universe where this game is an absolute cult classic.

On paper, all the pieces - or at least the ideas of the pieces - are there. Melee combat designed by developers who worked on Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Parrying and gun parrying. Third person shooting, grenades, weapon upgrades. Some sick gun-fu finishing moves combining pistol and katana. Cyberpunk storyline of privatised law enforcement using prisoners Suicide Squad style, a conspiracy, and sentient androids. Minigames. Weird and quirky cast of characters. Randomly inserted clips of a custom tie-in anime (???).

This could have been a great game. It’s just… everything is just so fucking bad. The characters are weirdly written and unlikeable (or absolute dead-horse beaten clichés like the police captain). The main cast are supposed to be terrorist war criminals but act like goofy sitcom characters. The cutscenes are actually made with some effort and care, they’re just horribly written and acted. Sometimes it’s managing to veer into B-movie “so bad it’s entertaining” territory but… most of the time it’s actually just bad.

And part of it is that the voice acting may be the absolute worst I’ve ever heard, and must have been recorded without direction too (and is poorly mixed, to boot). Like, I know I’m ranting here but it’s genuinely unbelievable that this voice acting shipped in a game that is sold for actual dollars. This isn’t just worse than AI voices, at times it’s so bad fucking Microsoft Sam would be an improvement. The protagonist is swiss for some reason, and her “actress” is constantly stumbling through the lines with all the grace of a 12-year-old reading their English exam off the page. And she’s one of the better acted characters! The other team members are even worse!

So, then, the gameplay? Well ultimately it’s kind of a worse version of Ninja Gaiden 2 but with cover based shooting injected into it like invasive plastic surgery. Was it really needed? Matter of taste, I suppose. The general flow is very similar: it’s about crowd control against hordes of enemies. Your main tool is melee and you can perform finishing blows on wounded enemies that give you generous amounts of iframes, only here you are way less mobile but instead you have guns. You don’t actually have enough ammo to dispatch all your enemies with them, though. They’re meant to be used selectively to take out key threats, while melee is the primary focus. So really, you just trade the mobility in NG2 for cover based shooting to achieve the same end result. Which is more fun? I prefer NG2 by a million country miles, but I suppose there is conceivably someone out there who just loves cover based shooting.

Another big issue is the skill tree and the difficulty curve. Way too many core abilities are gated behind unlocks, which makes the first level punishingly difficult. Especially since there is also a very old school “what is a checkpoint?” design philosophy here in terms of how rarely you get to save. Also, the bosses have been quite bad, which should come as no surprise to Ninja Gaiden fans. The first level boss especially was extremely frustrating and unpleasant to fight. Difficult yes, but not at all in a fun way.

So, is anything actually somewhat good? Well, the core combat - despite everything - is kind of alright once you unlock some skills. The gun-and-katana finishing moves themselves do look cool and are actually extremely varied - it’s just a shame that they’re really shoddily integrated into the movement and you “snap/slide” into them in a very jarring fashion. And you feel laggy and unresponsive coming out of them afterwards. Some of them also take way too long, which further adds to the weird feel of losing control of your character for several seconds. Meanwhile, NG2 finishing moves feel absolutely seamless. Overall that’s the case for all of the combat in Wanted: Dead - it’s clunky, it’s rigid, it’s not fluid. The moveset is also way less varied here, so you’ll be using the same combos over and over.

Then there are the minigames which… I don’t know man. There is a claw game you have to grind for skill points and there are two versions of the same rhythm game - one for karaoke and one for eating ramen (???). Maybe there will be more down the line. They’re okay if you love rhythm games, I suppose. I will tell you it’s fucking weird when your terrorist war criminals sing 99 Luftballons on karaoke as part of the main story, though. And not abbreviated either - the whole fucking thing.

So yeah… It’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s been something to do when I’ve felt too mentally exhausted to play The Drifter, but it’s not exactly going to enter my permanent rotation after (if) I finish it.

I’m cautiously optimistic. I really hope this is the big redemption, sort of like Phantom Liberty/2.0 for Cyberpunk.

I’m starting to look forward to a second playthrough.

I had such high hopes for a new Warren Spector game and it turned out to be… this. Shame, really.

I didn’t mind Saga, I liked several of her chapters (the one coming after Coffee World was one of my favourites) and I enjoyed the mixup in playstyles, environments and weaponry to create some variety. I also thought it was neat to see the reality-rewriting happen in real time for her in parallel to the Alan stuff. The one thing that I didn’t like with her was all the collectibles, I felt that those ruined the tempo and pace and were just busywork put out to meet the expectations of modern gamers but actually detracted from and otherwise tight and concise story.

For sure Alan’s chapters are the stars of the show though, they’re just fantastic and show the full range of Remedy writing, art direction, creativity and mixed media use.

How hard is God Hand? It’s become a bit of a cult classic but I’m somewhat intimidated by it, especially as someone who hasn’t played many fighting games.

Haven’t had too much time or energy to play the past week so I haven’t made much progress. Played another two chapters of The Drifter. Game is still excellent, maybe Chapter 4 has a little too much backtracking and Chapter 5 had the first instances of some more convoluted logic in the game (although I would still not call it “moon logic”). But overall it’s absolutely great. Writing keeps being sharp and funny, pulpy thriller mood and pace keeps being quick and tense, voice acting keeps being top tier.

Must play for point-and-click or adventure game fans, I would say.

The ultimate weapons for each character in FFX are all locked behind minigames, most of which are unfun (barring Blitz Ball), most being extremely difficult and some being almost broken (looking at you, chocobo racing). You might remember jumping to dodge lightning bolts 200 times in a row or chasing down butterflies in the trees.

I agree with most of your criticisms, but the jumping puzzles and beach challenges I don’t really think should factor into the overall rating too much. They were deliberate nods to inane and frustrating minigames in older Final Fantasies and I think they succeeded in that regard. Anyone who has tried to assemble all the ultimate weapons in FFX knows what I’m talking about. They’re also completely optional in E33, contributing neither important lore, plot or item rewards. They can be totally ignored without consequence by anyone that doesn’t enjoy them.

I’m the same. One game at a time, for the most part. I might mix in a non-story game in parallel sometimes like a roguelike, but only ever one story based game at a time. My brain can’t handle switching back and forth, I need to dedicate my full intention hah.

I agree. This is a fantastic video essay that goes through everything in more detail than I could here, and I recommend it thoroughly. It’s a good game, that manages to enthrall most players into thinking it’s a great game through a combination of a phenomenal soundtrack and some standout moments that sort of jolt their critical thinking faculties out of order. I was victim of this too - I liked the game way more as I was first playing through it, but the more I went back through it and the more I actually thought about it the less I liked it.

I still appreciate E33 for what it is (overrated does not mean bad), but for me Blue Prince was the GOTY 2025.

Gotcha. Funny how that is, sometimes we need something outside our comfort zone to shake us up. I was close to buying ROUTINE last Steam Sale, but ultimately opted against it. I’ve heard good things, although I think it’s more psychological horror than survival horror.

Final note about the DLCs, the Lake House is also integrated into the main campaign and that one I didn’t feel break the pace as much. Despite being the reverse release order my preference is playing the Lake House when it appears in the story and then all the Night Springs episodes after finishing the campaign. Lake House still works fine as a post script too though, if you want the main story to be more concise and do all the DLCs after.

I think I agree with that about Cronos. The lore has some interesting implications, especially with the exact nature of the Collective that I hope gets explored further in the future.

I’m glad you fixed the blurriness issue in AW2! One thing I will say is, while the Night Springs episodes are integrated into the campaign I find they kind of break the pacing and sometimes spoil things and work better when played afterwards. But I guess that’s a personal opinion.

Totally agreed about the subway, that whole Alan chapter is absolutely superb I think. Love all the detail like the text on all the signs all over the subway too.

Since you seem to be a big horror gamer, have you tried ROUTINE? I’ve been curious about it since I’ve heard some good things.

If it keeps this quality through the whole game (which I’ve been told it does) I might end up dubbing it the best point-and-click of all time. It’s definitely going to ruin the genre for me when I next try another game and start running into frustrating nonsense puzzles.

Good, I wasn’t sure whether they came bundled or not but just making sure since they’re pretty crucial. Enjoy!

Only Civ you’ll need for a long time, possibly ever. Already great out of the box (assuming you got all the expansions), and after a few hundred hours you got tons of mods to spice it up too.

I started playing The Drifter this week. Don’t want to say too much about it without having completed it, but I’ve played through the first few chapters now (about a third of the way through) and so far it is living up to its reputation and then some.

• Initial impressions:

Great pixel art that is surprisingly expressive, some great animations and a nice synth soundtrack. Pace is breakneck and breathless, it often feels like you’re playing out a classic pulp thriller. Controls are great, it actually plays fantastically well on controller which is a rarity with these kinds of games. Writing is razor sharp, at times quite funny and the dialogue is actually good. The plot is interesting and as befitting the genre involves a conspiracy that keeps going deeper, although it’s too early to say how well it is tied up at the end. Voice acting is phenomenal throughout, and almost everything is voiced, too. The main character is great, and I love the noir-y internal monologue.

Puzzles and gameplay so far have been equally impressive. Not a single “moon logic” instance so far, every solution has been very logical. The internal monologue of the protagonist is also a great vehicle to deliver some subtle clues when you interact with things, or occasionally when you fail a certain puzzle a couple of times.

Overall I’m completely hooked.

To be honest, I find DLAA to be quite a good form of anti-aliasing, almost as good as DLDSR. I don’t have much personal experience with FSR though as I have an Nvidia card.

I guess that screen tearing is a result of CRT and being locked into Vsync? I used G-Sync and never had any screen tearing issues.

Shame about your monitor, HDR is addictive when you get used to it.

Yeah, Cronos is a survival horror that emphasises survival over horror in my opinion. It isn’t really too scary, just atmospheric and with cool lore and story. It’s more about scraping by on the edge of resources and ammo than it is scaring the shit out of you.