Gortiamas
Finally beat this game for the first time today. Honestly? It's pretty good, even if the second to last obstacle got my goat. The one song on the soundtrack and its variant for the title and ending screens are great and keep you motivated throughout.
2023
Went into this blind. Very funny. Great time.
Surprisingly very charming. I would have loved this game as a child. The soundtrack in particular is really good, and the characters and art are generally cute. Very strong contender for a young child's first point and click adventure game.
So bad! Love it!
Cute novelty, but controls are very rough, even on NSO.
Echoes of the Eye tells a beautiful story and its first and last impressions are its strongest, but I felt a deep sense of disappointment throughout much of my playtime. While The Stranger is a breathtaking environment and its ring shape is an excellent tool to inform the player of what is hidden within its winding canyons, you will regularly find yourself railroaded from waking up to an all-out bum rush toward The Stranger to the nearest artifact you're aware of to the Secret World's nearest access point, which leaves the actual structure of the game feeling rote and repetitive in a way that the base game didn't.
The ideas on display, especially when it comes to the Secret World as a Matrix allegory (and, by extension, an allegory for Plato's Allegory of the Cave) and the ways that the inhabitants of The Stranger serve as a Yang to the Nomai's Yin, both in regards to the Eye and the Protagonist are fascinating and certainly warranted the time given to them by the DLC. Furthermore, the Protagonist's conversation with The Prisoner is a beautiful vindication for someone who gave up everything in an attempt to help those who would come next, and I once again found myself misty eyed at the end of the game.
I stumbled upon the secret chambers to enter the Secret World very early on, and quickly determined how to enter the matrix without seeing all of the exposition slides due to the lanterns held by the inhabitants, which threw my progression through the DLC into disarray. While such sequence breaks could occur in the base game, they necessarily didn't shunt you too far off the intended path due to the fact that every branch of the game generally narrows as it goes (perhaps with exception to Ember Twin) and ties back into the others, whereas the shape of progression in Echoes of the Eye is that of a barbell. In contrast, the introduction of the DLC is very open but quickly narrows down to the bottleneck of figuring out how to enter the Secret World, before widening back out once you enter it. I owe a lot of my wasted time in the DLC and my overall negative reception of its pacing to that structure, though it was further reinforced by the limited interactivity with both The Stranger at large and the Secret World.
One of the best mechanics in Outer Wilds is the jetpack because of all of the ways with which you are able to use it to smoothen your interaction with the world. Intelligent use of your thrusters allows you to utilize the curvature of the planet you're currently on to accelerate beyond your normal walking clip (essentially entering into a very low-altitude orbit once you go fast enough) or to overcome cliffs as a a player-made shortcut. Both of these are much rarer occurrences in The Stranger and downright impossible within the The Secret World, with the most desirable skip within The Stranger, to hop from a tree near the dam up to the top of the tallest cliffs, seemingly being impossible. Combined with fast movement in The Stranger being more-or-less limited to the use of the rafts, my aforementioned problem with the limited use of our spaceship, and the moment to moment gameplay within The Secret World boiling down to observe -> position properly, Echoes of the Eye felt less interactive than base Outer Wilds, which just left me bored a lot more often than I want from a game.
And yet, I do still have a lot of love for it. It's not as good as base Outer Wilds, but then very little is.
The ideas on display, especially when it comes to the Secret World as a Matrix allegory (and, by extension, an allegory for Plato's Allegory of the Cave) and the ways that the inhabitants of The Stranger serve as a Yang to the Nomai's Yin, both in regards to the Eye and the Protagonist are fascinating and certainly warranted the time given to them by the DLC. Furthermore, the Protagonist's conversation with The Prisoner is a beautiful vindication for someone who gave up everything in an attempt to help those who would come next, and I once again found myself misty eyed at the end of the game.
I stumbled upon the secret chambers to enter the Secret World very early on, and quickly determined how to enter the matrix without seeing all of the exposition slides due to the lanterns held by the inhabitants, which threw my progression through the DLC into disarray. While such sequence breaks could occur in the base game, they necessarily didn't shunt you too far off the intended path due to the fact that every branch of the game generally narrows as it goes (perhaps with exception to Ember Twin) and ties back into the others, whereas the shape of progression in Echoes of the Eye is that of a barbell. In contrast, the introduction of the DLC is very open but quickly narrows down to the bottleneck of figuring out how to enter the Secret World, before widening back out once you enter it. I owe a lot of my wasted time in the DLC and my overall negative reception of its pacing to that structure, though it was further reinforced by the limited interactivity with both The Stranger at large and the Secret World.
One of the best mechanics in Outer Wilds is the jetpack because of all of the ways with which you are able to use it to smoothen your interaction with the world. Intelligent use of your thrusters allows you to utilize the curvature of the planet you're currently on to accelerate beyond your normal walking clip (essentially entering into a very low-altitude orbit once you go fast enough) or to overcome cliffs as a a player-made shortcut. Both of these are much rarer occurrences in The Stranger and downright impossible within the The Secret World, with the most desirable skip within The Stranger, to hop from a tree near the dam up to the top of the tallest cliffs, seemingly being impossible. Combined with fast movement in The Stranger being more-or-less limited to the use of the rafts, my aforementioned problem with the limited use of our spaceship, and the moment to moment gameplay within The Secret World boiling down to observe -> position properly, Echoes of the Eye felt less interactive than base Outer Wilds, which just left me bored a lot more often than I want from a game.
And yet, I do still have a lot of love for it. It's not as good as base Outer Wilds, but then very little is.
Charming little point and click adventure game for kids. Lots of dead ends, which could potentially frustrate.
2022
Would be a 3.5 if not for the performance problems on switch. The game started to lag like crazy once I got to the temple, which was also the part of the game that I cared the least for. The dioramas rock, but they're a lot more endearing in modern human settlements and facilities. Puzzles are decent, but the story is not good. Overall a mixed bag that's carried by its cool art. Play it on PC- maybe it performs better there.
2019
We're all doomed. But we can make things better for those who come next. And if we're lucky, we may live on in their memories and in their actions.
Simply a masterpiece.
Simply a masterpiece.
2023
Lethal Company can be very funny, but it feels almost empty as a game. There's very little interactivity on a micro level, which kept me bored in-between shouting for my buddies and getting assassinated in the dark by an unseen ceiling-clinger. Mods definitely help it along, but I always came away feeling unsatisfied.
Oh, to have my consciousness subsumed into the KATAMARI and be forcibly turned into star dust after a lackluster rollup...
Another passable Zelda clone, but parts of it are REALLY rough, and doubly so after leaving the game alone for a while. The game's sound and animation lack oomph and its puzzles are generally pretty easy, so it's hard to find specific strengths to point to. Lily's movespeed feels mismatched with the scale of the world, which contributed to an overall dragging feeling as I played through Blossom Tales 2.
Passable Zelda clone. It lacks oomph and polish.
Glad to play one of my favorite games again and in a new format. Some of the higher framerate animations are a little wonky, and the loss of the lower screen obfuscates the usability of the swap power a little bit, but these issues aren't enough to turn me against one of the best games ever made.
As an added bonus, I finally learned how to do slide puzzles so that I could complete the last challenge.
As an added bonus, I finally learned how to do slide puzzles so that I could complete the last challenge.
What happens when you remake a middling game? A really wonderful second chance at a story.
Although they're not all apparent until the final act of Journey Into Lost Memories, the parallels between the characters and stories in both halves of this pair of stories are fascinating, and I encourage people to play this game just to get these characters and their experiences into their heads.
While the actual gameplay in this collection is just serviceable, the writing can feel awkward at times, and the voice acting wavers in quality, I loved my time with these games. To borrow common parlance, the vibes were on-point. I loved all of the character descriptions and their gradual updates throughout each story, I enjoyed the newly-developed puzzles, and I liked most of the character redesigns (although I kind of wish Ashley's dad hadn't received such a drastic change). Really just a great experience with plenty of likable characters and decent production value (at least outside of grassy fields). I pray for Hotel Dusk and Last Window to get similar treatment, and I also hope they'll do a great job of preserving those games' rotoscoped art style.
Although they're not all apparent until the final act of Journey Into Lost Memories, the parallels between the characters and stories in both halves of this pair of stories are fascinating, and I encourage people to play this game just to get these characters and their experiences into their heads.
While the actual gameplay in this collection is just serviceable, the writing can feel awkward at times, and the voice acting wavers in quality, I loved my time with these games. To borrow common parlance, the vibes were on-point. I loved all of the character descriptions and their gradual updates throughout each story, I enjoyed the newly-developed puzzles, and I liked most of the character redesigns (although I kind of wish Ashley's dad hadn't received such a drastic change). Really just a great experience with plenty of likable characters and decent production value (at least outside of grassy fields). I pray for Hotel Dusk and Last Window to get similar treatment, and I also hope they'll do a great job of preserving those games' rotoscoped art style.