OH THAT LARRY THE CABLE MAN HE WAS SO FUNNY.
So since the demise of TAY I haven’t done one of these. I also didn’t save where I was but I’m pretty sure I ended up on like E? I THINK the last one I did was Earth Defense Force 2085 or whatever that first PC one was.
I’ll just go through rapid fire with a small list of what I’ve done since then and my thoughts. Mostly what happened is Kidechka and I forced our way through DIvinity 2 over the course of several hundreds of hours hating it the whole time and it really kind of put us off video games for a while. Congratulations Divinity 2 you’re so bad you made me lose my passion for gaming.
Metroid Dread
OK It’s not in alphabetical order but whatever. There’s very little I can say that hasn’t been said. This game is my pick for GOTY. It’s just perfection. Literally the only complaint I have with the game are the EMI encounters started to feel stale for me. But there aren’t that many and it’s only a small portion of the game. So good.
Should you play it?
YES
The Evil Within 2
At some point I wanted to, and I still might, make a post solely dedicated to the images I took from this game. It’s absolutely beautiful. Too bad it was so poorly received the idea of an Evil Within 3 is unlikely. To recap – I bought this game at launch because I was hyped af. I tried to play it with the steam controller but didn’t know what I was doing so the game was artificially difficult. Couple this with the “open world” first few levels and it was definitely not the Evil Within I was expecting. I was so disappointed I quit playing. I came back to it as part of my Alphabetical backlog challenge and wow. This game is really really good.
It’s not open world. There are approximately 16 ish levels and except for the first few and a two later on which revisit the same “open” area – the game is strictly linear. Even the open world segments are fairly claustrophobic. The enemy design, the story, the graphics, the sound, all of it is really enjoyable and I’m a little sad I didn’t give this game a fair shake way back when.
Should you play it?
Yes
Grey Goo
Expectation: StarCraft. Reality: CrapCraft
Heyo….. but yeah, this game wasn’t particularly enjoyable. The graphics and the cutscenes were nice although they didn’t mix the sound right so the in game sounds were super loud and then the cutscene audio was on “whisper mode” patent pending. What’s wrong with this game. My main issue is that each race has something that makes them really tedious to play. The Zeta? Tau? Omega? Beta! BETA that’s right…the beta are the initial aliens and everything you build has to be connected to a hub. Problem is you can’t build hubs with more than two slots until you build the one that has four slots. You can’t build the four slots until you build the two slots and a silo. zzzzzzzzz
Next you have the humans and this is some annoying ass shit. I’m sorry this is bad game design. Imagine the protoss but you have to actually sim city build power lines from your pylons to your buildings. Then imagine if the enemy attacks one of those tiny little power lines and it explodes de-powering your whole base! WOW FUN. That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is YOU CANT BUILD POWER LINES UP OR DOWN TERRAIN. There’s one or two missions (and this is out of 5/6 per race) where you’re effectively trapped because you can’t expand without power lines but you can’t build power lines down a hill.
Finally the goo. The goo are just boring af. Your base is your resource extractor is your unit producer. You have no buildings except for this. It has health. TO recharge health you stand on a resource collection site. To build units you sacrifice health to bleb out units. Sounds cool on paper but in reality it’s just extremely boring.
Overall too – there are only maybe six missions per race. They lock units until you get to later missions which wtf. I’d understand if it were ten to twelve missions. But you’re unlocking some units on your last mission. Also there are SUPER MEGA HERO units you can buy for a good chunk of your pop cap. SO here’s basically what the game boils down to every. single. Mission. once they become activated: Sit on resources. Collect resources. Defend base. watch tv or something. read a book. browse discord. about twenty minutes later come back to the game and build your super megazord and then go win the game. zzzzzzz. bad game
Should you play it?
Unfortunately no.
Guacamelee
I was hesitant to play this one as the game looked like…not my jam. Kind of try-hard/juvenile humor with generic hack n slash gameplay. Well I was wrong it’s more of a metroidvania but a very lite version. It’s also pretty fun up until they give you the flying wall kick. Then the game is unplayable if you’re playing with 2 people coop (which you should I can’t imagine playing this 1p). I wasn’t wrong about the humor and the story is as barebones as it goes. Also side note this is a game about Mexican culture made by Canadians so that feels weird. The gameplay is pretty enjoyable and feels nice. Enemy variety is limited to maybe 10 different enemy types but the game isn’t overly long so this feels OK too. Boss battle are GENERALLY well done but then…..
You unlock powers as you go and about 65% of the way through the game you’ll unlock an ability to run up walls. Sounds great. Problem is that this is a very FAST skill. If your 2p doesn’t activate the ability at basically the same time as you they’re left behind. That’d be OK maybe but then they introduce wall flight right after. This is basically wall running only horizontally now. They REALLY overuse this mechanic for the rest of the game too so if you’re playing with 2p expect the game to feel like 1p with a 2p cheerleader because unless you are shinji/asuka levels of in tune, someone is getting left behind. Really ruined the back half of the game.
Should you play it?
Depends, maybe?
It Takes Two
We’ll probably finish this game today. It wasn’t my GOTY but maybe it should have been? There’s one fatal flaw in a sea of absolute amazingness and that’s the dialogue. Dedicated couch coop games are so rare and they usually fall under “we reskinned final fight for you”. So this was really exciting. There are seven levels broken up by chapters where you try to guide your two little doll dudes through some interesting and varied locales. The joy is in the level design, the puzzles, and the gameplay. Each level gives you a new power and then several different sections where you’ll use it in different ways you probably wouldn’t have thought of. There’s rarely a time when I’m not grinning like an idiot because it’s just so…fun. Hazelight truly understands what makes a game fun (there other game A Way Out was fun enough that I actually played it with Quiddity even though the ‘prison gangster’ theme left me cold). They don’t understand what makes an interesting character. The banter in this game is enough to make you quit. I’m not even kidding. It’s being 12 and listening to your parents fight FOR THE ENTIRE GAME. Not until the very end of the game do they stop fighting. I cannot stress enough – there is not a single likable character in this game. The voice acting is well done but it doesn’t matter if you hate every character.
Should you play it
Yes but I’ll tell you a secret – skip the cutscenes. You’re not missing anything (I’m 100% serious the story is “these two people hate each other”)
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