44 reviews liked by ThumbsMckenzie


when she suddenly realizes she's walked 51 steps with one foot on grass and the other on pavement... i've never met another person who related to that experience. oh my god. i get so anxious

it literally feels like this game teleports your mind into an alternative reality where skynet took over but instead of destroying humanity they produce these kinds of games made specifically to torture and torment you

seen the gameplay once since its release and genuinely thought i simply made this game up until now

i would fucking die for you molly

Using pointer controls with a Joy-Con makes me miss the Wiimote. The sensor bar was so crucial! There was a reference point at all times, so when you pointed at the screen, the cursor actually showed up where you wanted it to! The Joy-Con work well enough for short bursts of movement, like a shake or a gyro aim assist, but the pointing is just not happening.

So how should I go about collecting thousands of star bits to feed my hungry Luna babies?? I played through the game completely in handheld mode. Touch is completely accurate, but it presents its own challenges since you can't aim and use all the controller functions simultaneously. There were countless moments when I wanted to sweep my index finger across the screen to swipe up those delectable space candies, but I was in a boss fight or a sequence that didn't allow for pauses in movement or jumping. Oftentimes, I'd risk it and swipe anyway. I recklessly died dozens of times due to my insatiable greed, wistfully remembering the days of being able to run, jump, AND point my controller accurately at the screen all at once. I didn't appreciate the Wii Remote enough while I had it. And now, here I am, praying that the Switch 2 dock functions as a sensor bar for Joy-Con 2s with IR somehow crammed next to the shoulder buttons.

Anyhow uhhh this version of the game is very pretty and it's still a great time, shame about the pointer controls though!

Really great single-screen platformer that provides an excellent introduction to speedrunning. Takes ~30 minutes to run through its 100 levels on your first try, but it can be completed in less than 10 and has a good number of collectibles to add variety to your run challenges. Art is beautiful and soundtrack goes unnecessarily hard. Super fun and a must play imo, especially for its asking price.

A snooping maid stumbles upon the secrets of her guests while casually rifling through their belongings and must solve a murder in a 50s noir upscale Montreal hotel - you got me on the aesthetic alone. We had a great time using deductive reasoning, figuring out the puzzles, and cracking codes while discussing our many, many incorrect theories. I highly recommend you play this with a friend. However, some of the puzzles are a bit too obtuse and we needed to consult a guide, and I found the answers very unintuitive. I also was a bit dissatisfied with the bad ending we got, and after looking at all the dozens of decisions we'd have needed to make to reach the good ending I'm confident it's impossible without a guide. The story is great tho, and the voice acting as well. I love the art, the music, and style of the whole presentation. Highly recommend to anyone seeking a good old fashioned mystery that actually tests your brain.

Cocoon is not a puzzle game. It’s an interesting, weird little world to explore that uses light puzzles-based mechanics as a way of getting you to interact with the world in interesting ways. That shift in perspective helped me to adjust my expectations for what Cocoon was trying to do and helped me to appreciate it more.

I went into Cocoon expecting a puzzle game and was kind of disappointed at first. None of the puzzles feel particularly puzzling. It just feels like I’m carrying out a series of actions in the order the game wants me to do them in order for it to feel like I’m solving puzzles, but none of it ever made me feel clever. I never got that “Oh I’m so smart” feeling you get from some other great puzzle games. Even on the one or two occasions where I was stumped, I never got the satisfaction that comes from figuring out a challenging puzzle, I just eventually went “Oh this is what the game wants me to do here.” and then moved on.

Despite my feelings that the puzzles are not challenging or really even mentally engaging, I still think the mechanics of using the nesting orbs as a way of interacting with the weird world was very cool. Even if those “puzzle” interactions were sometimes a bit tedious.

I can acknowledge that the visuals in this game are extremely cool but they’re also extremely not my jam. As a person who does not like bugs or body-adjacent stuff, I found most of the visuals in this game to be grotesque and unsettling. I hate them. And yet, I find them to be really incredible. Extremely well-done visual design.

Here’s another hot take - I think the boss fights are actually one of the coolest parts of the game. They have really interesting mechanics that aren’t really used anywhere else in the game and I found them to be pretty fun.

Similar to Limbo and Inside, I don’t really know if Cocoon is my type of game. It’s got unsettling visuals, non-engaging puzzles, and an abstract, weird story. That said, I can appreciate that it is an extremely well-made game with a cool world to explore using brilliant, unique mechanics. Cocoon is a neat experience that I feel is best approached as a linear game rather than a real puzzle game.

+ Extremely cool mechanics
+ Weird, interesting world with fantastic art design
+ Cool boss fights
+ Great soundtrack

- Puzzles are not challenging or even very puzzley
- Puzzles can be tedious
- I, personally, find the visuals to be unsettling and gross

Almost good enough to stop me from constantly thinking about how much more I loved Odyssey and 3D World. Probably the best 2D Mario? It's really hard to compare this to Super Mario World, but it would feel silly to suggest this wasn't an improvement on it.

Debating whether or not I'll got back for 100%. It's obviously a great game, but it's not necessarily leaving me wanting more.

Cruel

1990

Cruel Solitaire feels like the games my kids make up with a deck of cards. You just kind of stack things until you can't anymore, and then you re-deal. I didn't get the appeal as a kid in the 90s (despite loving most of the other Windows card games), and I don't get it now.

This review contains spoilers

both times i've played this game, my combat decisions allowed me to form really cool narrative headcanons. as i've just beat my second run, i'd like to share those with you :)


first run:

(for context, florina had a support with fiora and b with lyn. she died in the prologue and then came back in eliwood's story. she dealt the final blow on nergal)

florina is a child fighting in a war to save the world. in support conversations with lyn, it is revealed that she has been a pegasus knight since she was a little girl. even during this war, she can't be more than a teenager. and this shows in her character. a support conversation with lyn reveals that they met when she was scared off her pegasus by a swarm of bees. she is a self-described "crybaby." her relationships with both lyn and her sister fiora have more mother-daughter vibes to them than that of equals, siblings, or friends. she relies heavily on these two, and they fill the rolls exceptionally.

however, florina's over-reliance on lyn to survive backfired; because, naturally, lyn can only fight so many battles at once. and when her head was turned, florina was gravely injured in the prologue. she was left unable to fight, and had to abandon lyn's journey to save her father while she healed.

much time passed. florina's injuries healed. but lyn's resolve to protect florina grew even stronger. she became very worried about florina's well being.

"Are you well? ... I was worried... Don't go out alone if you can. You never know where archers might be lurking. Are you carrying enough healing salve? Your weapons—are they all in order? ... Take your time. I'm here should anything happen."

florina's injuries seemed to even further infantilize her in lyn's eyes. and when fiora joined the party, it became clear that their relationship was just as codependent.

throughout early support conversations, it is clear that fiora wants florina by her side in ilia. two traveling mercenary sisters. and this, much like lyn's motherliness, is based much more in her desire to protect her sister. "Then I’ll be able to help you anytime you need it. I would feel much better that way."

both of these relationships, while well-meaning, weigh heavily on florina. she doesn't want to need to be protected. she wants to be the one doing the protecting. she takes her training seriously. she takes on enemies that earlier would have been nightmares for her. and all this time, she thinks on these invitations - to work with her sister, to travel with her friend. and neither of them sit quite right.

so, towards the end of the journey, she sits fiora down. and she explains to her:

"Well, you see. I really love you, Fiora. And it would be great to be with you, to have you to protect me always... But... But... That wouldn’t be good for me... You’re so kind, you would probably protect me for the rest of my life... That’s the problem... If I rely on you forever, I’ll never become my own person. So...I’ve decided not to return to Ilia yet. It’s because I do love you... You see, I don’t want to always be the crybaby Florina who needs you to protect her... I want to be more like my sister, a fine pegasus knight."

and she keeps training. and she keeps improving. and in the final confrontation, standing beside lyn and fiora this time as equals, she knows she made the right choice.


second run:

(this one's a lot less involved. though it is still fresh as i just finished it today, so i will probably develop on it as time goes on. not much context here. all you need to know is that heath romanced priscilla and died in the final battle against the dragon)

"I'm a soldier, but... I'm trying to be human, too."

heath is similar in a lot of ways to eliwood. his sense of justice is clear from the very first conversation he has. he seeks to do good above all else. what becomes evident later is his equally undying sense of honor. the interesting thing about this is, where these traits in eliwood are beloved by all, these traits in heath are the main source of his conflict. and ultimately, these attributes are what make me view his story as one of extreme sacrifice.

see, heath is born in bern, a country with a corrupt ruler. this ruler demanded he slaughter unarmed people thought to be behind an uprising. and when he refused to do so, he was labeled a traitor and sentenced to death. he was forced to flee the country he loves for refusing to murder innocent people.

knowing this backstory, reading through his support conversations with priscilla show us a massive contrast in tone that i really appreciate.

heath is immediately very open, informal and friendly with priscilla. "You! You our medic? ... Name’s Heath. I’m a wyvern knight, as you can see. My wyvern is Hyperion. He may look scary, but he’s all right. I trust you’ll be there if any of us get hurt." he wastes no time in treating her like a true friend. he wastes no time with formalities. he is in touch with people's feelings, humanizing his wyvern with a name to priscilla to dissuade any potential fear the animal might bring her.

this relationship is immediately refreshing to priscilla too. considering that priscilla is a princess hiding as a commoner, it is interesting that heath is the only one to talk so informally to her. there's immediately a really warm feeling between the two.

this relationship grows even more friendly as the two begin to rely on each other in their own ways. where she was at first timid around him, she opens up. she initiates their b support by asking if he's injured. she learns more of heath's upbringing, how his military captain used to say "If you can feel the pain, you’re not badly wounded.” She makes him promise to visit her, "even if [his] wounds are slight."

and then, sometime between b and a supports, he learns of her royalty...

priscilla, now very open with heath, immediately notices something is off. he is avoiding her. she begins to talk to him about it, but the openness in the conversation is gone now. he responds slowly and vaguely. in his head, he is retroactively trying to "correct" his behavior toward her. he apologizes for having "spoken too frankly." and it is everything priscilla feared would happen.

because, again, heath is a very honorable person. and, even if he acted out of justice, refusing to kill innocents, the country he loves views him as a criminal. and criminals aren't supposed to talk to princesses.

in the final battle against nergal, heath is going to sacrifice himself. heath will always choose to sacrifice everything to do good. he did it in bern, and he will do it again to save priscilla and all the friends he's made. in death, he tells himself, he will find redemption. "I fought with honor... I can ask nothing more..."

but for the moment, he is face to face with a now crying priscilla, realizing all at once that their relationship will never be the same again.

" Priscilla... I... can call you that, can’t I? If it’s so much that you are moved to tears, I will stay by your side. Even...for just this battle... I’ll be here."

"Heath... If only... If only... time... could stop."

"... Yes... If only..."


---

i would not call the story of the blazing blade good. i doubt anyone plays the game for its plot, myself included. both of these stories, while backed up from support dialogue in the game, were made into what they were through the actions i made in combat. these characters do not have any lines pertaining to the main story of this game.

and yet, this game allowed me to make these stories. i will always remember florina and heath and priscilla. i'll always remember my sweet sweet rath who i didn't even get to talk about, and the sweet, healing romance he and lyn shared in my game. i will always remember eliwood and hector, and the sad gay forbidden love story i made about them in my head ("You know, back then, I’m proud I took your hand." "Heh, I’ve got no plans to break my oath. Not now, not ever").

it is so cool how people personalize the stories they consume. how we're able to relate to them in a way the writers never intended us to.

i am really thankful to have art in my life

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by Momoka |

100 Games