29 Reviews liked by manualcookie


Sable

2021

Using the framework of the self-directed open world adventure game as metaphor for the great directionless unknown of fresh adulthood is a great idea, and the first few hours of this soar - not since Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have I found so much genuine pleasure and emotion in just moving a character around a big "you can go there!" sandbox.

That probably has something to do with the fact that Raw Fury and Shedworks have unashamedly lifted and shifted every aspect of Breath of the Wild's traversal mechanics, right down to the stamina wheel that gets a little outline as you upgrade it. In a weird way, it's refreshing to see a developer just openly admit (within the limits of copyright law) that they can't beat another game's implementation of certain mechanics and would rather just borrow them to tell their truth. Combine Breath of the Wild's climbing and gliding with the sparrow from Destiny, and you essentially have a complete picture of Sable's core game-feel.

There are a ton of other influences worn proudly on Sable's sleeve - Prince of Persia (2008), Shadow of the Colossus, Journey and The Last Guardian were the ones that immediately came to mind for me - but once the game was done intentionally wowing me and had settled into the real meat of its experience, I found myself thinking about Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker the most often. Sable shares that game's conflicted feelings of mindlessly traversing a big beautiful wide open virtual space for so long that everything that was initially unique and mesmerising about it eventually falls away by hand of tedium; you stop looking at cliffs and dunes because they delight you, and instead only see the little technical nit-picks that lie beneath the surface because there's nothing all that interesting to look at on the horizon.

Don't get me wrong - Sable lives up to its promise of being a playable Moebius comic (in aesthetic terms, if not content - my favourite Moebius comic has a dude harness his sexual love for a woman into a beam sword, and that sadly does not happen here), but keeping the artistry of this world together seems to have caused a ton of technical issues to leak out. Inventory management is messy, with items sometimes disappearing or becoming unsellable for no apparent reason. The YA novel thought/dialogue system is cute, until the point where it starts giving characters the wrong names and splicing different pages together. The aesthetic decision to have everything move in simple frame-by-frame animation is a delight, but when it starts to clash with genuine frame-rate issues, it's a one-way ticket to a headache - and in a game that so badly wants to induce introspection, that's the very last thing you want.

Complaining about technical problems in a beautiful BOTW-like made by a indie team with a double-digit staff roster feels a bit like criticising your grandmother for laying out a Michelin-quality ten-course tasting menu for you, but at the same I so badly wanted to be fully immersed in this experience and never could be because of its weird bugs, quirks and issues. The open world is beautifully crafted, but often reveals itself to be made in a hurry - a breathtaking Land Before Time graveyard of dinosaur bones amazes from afar, but quickly falls foul of frustration when it's revealed that trying to walk along the skeleton bridges to your objective triggers a ton of awkward jerked-together movement animations. Certain areas don't feel like they were play-tested quite so much as they were designed by an artist who was hurriedly prioritising form over function.

As a big fan of Japanese Breakfast, the soundtrack was one of the things that initially drew me to Sable, and the more vocal and melodic compositions here are a real treat - the game's big "Link runs up and stands on the edge of the Great Plateau" moment is given a superb bit of pop pomp, and certain character leitmotifs really sell the alien-ness of the experience; but just like with the gameplay, it feels like Michelle Zauner has played a bit too much Breath of the Wild and let it seep into her work a bit too often, and that prevents the more atmospheric notes from making their mark. Some tracks sadly just feel like preset drum loops on a keyboard or random notes being hit a few dozen beats apart - and as someone who soundtracks most of their work days with abstract-ambient music, I don't say that lightly. I'm still holding out for the day Brian Eno soundtracks a new video game.

I might come back and finish this at some point if the technical stuff can be flattened out, but at the moment the detractions sting too hard. I want to love this game, but every so often it does something to irritate me hard enough for my soul to leave the controller.

Sable

2021

Honestly this was kinda an eye opener for what I actually value to like a game. Buggy and poor performance? So what, as long as there isn't anything game breaking that messes with my progress it didn't bother me. Really easy without much of a challenge? Awesome, now I can just focus on enjoying the game and its world without any frustration. I just loved the games artstyle and how it built its world and the rituals of the people you encounter along your journey made this an unforgettable experience for me

Hot Wheels Unleashed is really cool in the sense that the company owns a ton of stuff, and they are able to have a bunch of outrageous Hot Wheels in the game itself. It's basically a novelty racer with some interesting mechanics that does it's job well enough. Like there is absolutely a full hearty racer in this game, and there is even a custom mode to it to make your own tracks, but in doing so everything just kinda blends to the point it feels barren.

It's not in the sense that there is no substance to this game, but I think that's the hard part to figure out why it's not that interesting. Like it still feels like a decent racer with some interesting drifting and boosting techniques, but as you race more and more a lot of the tracks blend together and the novelty of them wears off. Hot Wheels also feel like they are different enough, but also not at all. See, largely due to the sheer roster, and track building mechanics it really feels like everything is a copy pasted version of itself. Like there is proper substance and style to everything here, but when you keep looking it's more like 3 different tracks, 3 different types of cars, and 3 different traps. There is enough variety that it keeps your attention initially, then just sorta never gets higher than that initial first impression. Like the campaign is there, but gets repetitive after a while. The traps are interesting and neat, but often feel cheap and unavoidable at times. Even the tracks, which should be the most interesting part to each racing game; just kinda flop with how they don't do more than what you are first shown.

If this stuff doesn't bother you, I'm sure you can have a lot of fun times with this game. Heck, with the way Hot Wheels Unleashed has it's collection game play loop, I can even see this game being thrilling for people that are a fan of the toy series. As for me, I simply have enjoyed other racers more because the tracks are just more engaging to me. Not to say I didn't put my hours into this game, but I don't really remember a lot of my run through with it. And as something that is supposed to be played constantly to "get everything" I just see it getting boring after the first 5 hours.Not to say that 5 hours isn't nothing though, it's certainly better than a lot of other games out there.

A LOT OF RAMBLING AHEAD, IM NOT PROOFREADING THIS
you will either play this for 5 days and move on or you will make a bunch of alt accounts to experience all the stories.
i am, of course, in the latter.
this is primarly a text game in a very interesting setting. the writing is generally vague, leaving a lot for you to imagine or comprehend on your own. sometimes it can work in the game's favour, but sometimes i feel like i'd prefer it to be more straightforward.
being a story-driven game, there are, of course, many choices to be made. some affect just the story, some may lose or gain more riches, but what makes them work is that its always informed consent. theres plenty of little text with the more significant choices that ensures you will never feel tricked, like "This is a faster, but more dangerous route", "This will ensure the survival of your ally, but they're unlikely to be grateful", "This is unlikely to be profitable, unless you have a use in mind for Human Arms". because i mostly know what im getting myself into, making a choice feels satisfying, and these warnings dont generally harm the story. and of course, the FailBetterGames tradition of giving you choices that will ultimately fuck you over for nothing but only sating your curiosity. those are great too.
as far as the gameplay is concerned, this is mostly a resource manager. you earn resources through skill checks, or spending other resources, or sheer luck. use these resources to progress stories, get some cool ass items, or just for vanity (look at the subreddit).
one of the more controversial resources is TIME: you can have up to 20 action points, and 1 takes 10 minutes to recover. this will understandably ward some people off, but i enjoy it as it gives me another resource to manage and think of my actions. plus, i can either have it open in a tab for the whole day, or play it once or twice a day in longer bursts. but i understand that this is a dealbreaker for most.
the reason why i love this game so much is the amount of depth there is. both to the lore and to the gameplay. they really make the most out of this setting, all im gonna say. in terms of gameplay, im the type of person who enjoys going over the wiki trying to find what the most optimal strategy is, having a game plan, and all that. its like minecraft to me but i can choose when to creeper myself and dont live in fear the whole game. this review is getting very rambly, isnt it?
last point i want to address is FATE, the in-game currency bought with Real money. besides unlocking stories, it can also give you small to significant gameplay advanteges, but the game is anything but pay to win (it can be pay to lose if you wish). partially because the player2player interactions are minimal, and partially even though fate can make grinding for items easier, you will still have to grind.
so yeah ive been playing this for around a year now, and while im no longer addicted, i am still obsessed. so if youre the type who gets fixated on shit easily, and for long, tread carefully.

A brilliant passion project from Josh Sawyer and Obsidian. The attention to detail in every aspect is outstanding, showing a real love for medieval history, culture and art. The writing is superb, following a large cast of characters over multiple time periods without being confusing or disjointed. The central mystery offers the player compelling choices and decisions that affect the narrative dramatically. Themes not often seen in games such as religion, bereavement and class dynamics are presented in an insightful manner, with a perfect balance between levity and seriousness. Lets hope it inspires more smaller, experimental projects from AAA studios.

πšƒπš‘πšŽπš›πšŽ'𝚜 πšŠπš— 𝚎-πš–πšŠπš’πš• πš–πšŽπšœπšœπšŠπšπšŽ!

...

πšƒπš‘πšŽ 𝟹 πš•πšŽπšπšŽπš—πšπšŠπš›πš’ 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 π™Άπ™°π™Όπ™΄πš‚
πšŠπš›πšŽ π™Άπšπ™΄π™΄π™½, πšπ™΄π™³, πšŠπš—πš π™±π™»πš„π™΄.

πšƒπš‘πšŽπš’ πš πšŽπš›πšŽ πš›πšŽπš•πšŽπšŠπšœπšŽπš
πšŠπš•πš–πš˜πšœπš 𝟹𝟢 πš’πšŽπšŠπš›πšœ 𝚊𝚐𝚘.

πš†πšŽ πš™πš•πšŠπš— 𝚝𝚘 πšŽπš‘πš™πš•πš˜πš›πšŽ πšπš‘πšŽπš–
πšπš˜πš•πš•πš˜πš πš’πš—πš πšπš‘πšŽ πš›πšŽπš•πšŽπšŠπšœπšŽ 𝚘𝚏
𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 πš…π™Έπ™Ύπ™»π™΄πšƒ πšŠπš—πš
𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 πš‚π™²π™°πšπ™»π™΄πšƒ.

π™΅πš›πš˜πš–:
𝙳𝙾𝙾𝙼 π™³π™°π™³π™³πšˆ π™³π™Έπ™Άπ™Έπšƒπ™°π™»
πšπ™΄πš‚π™΄π™°πšπ™²π™· πšƒπ™΄π™°π™Ό

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𝙡𝙴𝙱. 𝟸
π™Άπš•πšŠπšœπšπš˜πš , πš‚πšŒπš˜πšπš•πšŠπš—πš

𝙰 πš—πšŽπš  𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 πšπšŠπš–πšŽ 𝚠𝚊𝚜
πšπš’πšœπšŒπš˜πšŸπšŽπš›πšŽπš πšπšŽπšŽπš™ πš’πš—
πšπš‘πšŽ πš–πš’πš—πš.

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𝙡𝙴𝙱. 𝟾

πš†πšŽ πšŒπš‘πš›πš’πšœπšπšŽπš—πšŽπš πšπš‘πšŽ πš—πšŽπš πš•πš’
πšπš’πšœπšŒπš˜πšŸπšŽπš›πšŽπš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 πšπšŠπš–πšŽ,
π™°π™½π™Ύπšƒπ™·π™΄πš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 𝙢𝙰𝙼𝙴.

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𝙡𝙴𝙱. 𝟷𝟸

π™°π™½π™Ύπšƒπ™·π™΄πš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 𝙢𝙰𝙼𝙴 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 πš‹πš’πš›πšπš‘.
πš†πšŽ πš—πšŠπš–πšŽπš πšπš‘πšŽ πš—πšŽπš  πšπšŠπš–πšŽ
π™°π™½π™Ύπšƒπ™·π™΄πš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 𝙢𝙰𝙼𝙴 𝚝𝚘𝚘.

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𝙡𝙴𝙱. 𝟷𝟻

π™°π™½π™Ύπšƒπ™·π™΄πš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 𝙢𝙰𝙼𝙴 πš’πšœ πšπšŠπš›
𝚝𝚘𝚘 πš™πš˜πš πšŽπš›πšπšžπš•. πš†πšŽ πš‘πšŠπšŸπšŽ πšπšŠπš’πš•πšŽπš
𝚝𝚘 πšŒπšžπš›πš‹ πš’πšπšœ πšŸπš’πšŒπš’πš˜πšžπšœ πš‹πšžπšπšœ
πšŠπš—πš πšŽπš›πš›πš˜πš›πšœ.

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#𝟷𝟢𝟢𝟿 π™°π™½π™Ύπšƒπ™·π™΄πš 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 𝙢𝙰𝙼𝙴
π™Όπ™΄π™Όπ™΄πšƒπ™Έπ™²
π™·πšƒ πŸΏπŸ·πŸΈπš™πš‘
πš†πšƒ πŸΈπŸΊπ™Όπ™±

π™Έπš 𝚠𝚊𝚜 πšŒπš›πšŽπšŠπšπšŽπš πš‹πš’ 𝚊 πšœπšŒπš’πšŽπš—πšπš’πšœπš
πšŠπšπšπšŽπš› πš’πšŽπšŠπš›πšœ 𝚘𝚏 πš‘πš˜πš›πš›πš’πšπš’πšŒ 𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚎
πšœπš™πš•πš’πšŒπš’πš—πš πšŠπš—πš πšœπš˜πšπšπš πšŠπš›πšŽ
πšŽπš—πšπš’πš—πšŽπšŽπš›πš’πš—πš πšŽπš‘πš™πšŽπš›πš’πš–πšŽπš—πšπšœ.

π™Έπšπšœ 𝙳𝙽𝙰 πš’πšœ πšŠπš•πš–πš˜πšœπš πšπš‘πšŽ
πšœπšŠπš–πšŽ 𝚊𝚜 𝙿𝙾𝙺é𝙼𝙾𝙽 πšπ™΄π™³'𝚜.
π™·πš˜πš πšŽπšŸπšŽπš›, πš’πšπšœ πšœπš’πš£πšŽ πšŠπš—πš
πšπš’πšœπš™πš˜πšœπš’πšπš’πš˜πš— πšŠπš›πšŽ
πšŸπšŠπšœπšπš•πš’ πšπš’πšπšπšŽπš›πšŽπš—πš.


β€œIs this what other video games are like?” was my girlfriend’s only response after we finished this. It’s the first game she’s beaten that wasn’t on the Nintendo Switch.

Like many people around the world, coronavirus made her into a gamer - a combination of lockdown boredom and watching me play video games every single day of the week convinced her to find out what all the fuss was about. She’d played plenty of Mega Drive and PlayStation as a child, but, like most normal people, fell away from the hobby when school, sex and other pressing responsibilities began to take hold.

The Nintendo Switch is, of course, the ideal console for re-introducing someone to the world of video games - capital-G Gamers may rankle against Nintendo’s minimalist UI for dummies, baby-friendly options and softly-softly in-game tutorials, but watching a newly-minted member of our organisation come to grips with gaming via Nintendo’s safe, friendly little ecosystem makes it undeniably clear what The Big N are up to when they remind you that β€œA” means β€œJump” 10 hours into Super Mario Galaxy. A twenty-second irritation for you is a life-saving clarification for someone who still has to hold the controller up to their face to read the buttons.

Within 18 months, Nintendo has gradually guided my girlfriend through the worlds of Animal Crossing, Super Mario Odyssey Captain Toad, Bowser’s Fury and many other great wee games, eventually climaxing in her getting a near-100% completion stat on Breath of the Wild last week. Unfortunately, as the daily blood-thirst for Yet Another Nintendo Direct proves, Nintendo only make so many games - even for more laid-back fans - and my girlfriend has near enough run the Switch’s first-party well dry.

Which is where the Xbox Series S comes in - while peering through pop-ups and paywalls at countless click-baiting β€œBest 2021 Games” lists to find new things to enjoy, we found that a lot of interesting stuff that appealed to us - Sable, Forgotten City, Psychonauts 2, Twelve Minutes - were heading straight past the Nintendo Switch and only coming to Xbox and PC. While I have a pretty good PC that could reasonably play all these games, I would never willingly subject a human being I care about to PC Gaming. So we bought an Xbox Series S instead.

In many ways, the Series X|S is the Switch’s antithesis, for worse and for better - a confusing smorgasbord of hardware options that are laser-focused on performance and deeply-integrated online components, with a homescreen that relentlessly bombards you with options, adverts and other worthless media tiles - it’s genuinely amusing that a games console hides its video games in a sub-menu that sits alongside Disney+ suggestions (when you haven’t even downloaded or enrolled Disney+ on the console!) and adverts for games you already own within said sub-menu. Needless to say, starting an Xbox game can be a daunting task for anyone who’s used to just pressing the power button and clicking on a big picture of the game they want to play. Between my β€œβ€β€smart””” TV and the Xbox, I now have to run a gamut of broken advertising just to play a little bit of Blast Corps in glorious 4K. The next generation of gaming is here, folks!

The Series S would be an outright contemptible little device if Microsoft hadn’t essentially mastered their ability to give console players a comfortable PC-like experience of near-infinite diversity in near-infinite combinations, all from the comfort of a controller. This thing has the best multi-generational compatibility of any console I’ve ever owned - surpassing even the mighty Nintendo DS and O.G. PS3. It’s confounding/astounding that I could, technically, if I really wanted, sign in to a workplace Teams call on a device that simultaneously allows me to swap between Halo 2, Daytona USA, Symphony of the Night and Halo Infinite. I could give my daily team brief using a Turtle Beach headset plugged into an Xbox controller while playing Conker’s Bad Fur Day, if I really wanted to! Does anyone want that? I don’t think so, but Microsoft have made it possible, for some reason! The next generation of gaming is here, folks! (If you can play Microsoft Teams on an Xbox console, does that technically qualify it for inclusion in the Backloggd archives? I’d love to read those Top Reviews.)

On a console that neatly demonstrates many of the things that make playing modern video games a surreal Kafkaesque nightmare, Twelve Minutes is more or less a perfect package of everything that’s shit about those video games themselves: repetition of mindless tasks; the banal trial-and-error dragging-and-dropping of [USE] [ITEM] [OBJECT] that has plagued adventure gaming for three decades; trying to click on things that are too small; clicking on wrong things and having to slowly watch wrong things unfold; watching polygonal automatons walk slowly to their destination; watching polygonal automatons bump and jerk against and around each other; watching clunky plot unfold at sub-iceberg paces; watching accomplished actors of stage and screen recite from torn-out pages of school play dialogue; hearing that same dialogue again, and again, and again on your way back to the destination of your next clunky plot point; cognitively-dissonant clashes between gameplay and narrative; and, of course, one of video gaming’s most reliable staples - unnecessary, senseless and gratuitous violence against defenceless women.

A game about a police officer exploitatively wielding his authority to prey on a woman in myriad horrific ways is never gonna come out at the β€œright” time, but playing Twelve Minutes in the ongoing moment of the Sarah Everard case feels so sickeningly sour. It’s morbidly impressive how quickly the game lets you watch a woman get handcuffed and choked out. It’s even more impressive how quickly the game gives you unprovoked player-driven options for violence against your own wife! The next generation of gaming is here, folks!

Early on in Twelve Minutes, β€œa prestige mystery-thriller timeloop game” (Annapurna Interactive press release, 2021), we realised you can grab a knife and stab your wife while she sits on the couch reading a book. Don’t worry gamers! We had to do it to gain more precious intel about a pocket watch that helps move the mystery along! It’s wholly justifiable woman-murder! There’s a mystery to solve! When we worked this part out, there was no β€œaha!” moment that usually comes with solving a puzzle in a video game. Just an instinctive revulsion of β€œdo we have to do this?” - and not in an introspective, meaningful way, like, say, that fateful R2 press at the end of Snake Eater. Just a pained, mindless β€œugh” while dragging the knife to the wife. A far cry from turning into a funny little jumping cabbage to collect power moons in Super Mario Odyssey. Video games provide infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Nonetheless, we persisted on the assumption that the game would address its own inhumanity in pursuit of a greater goal or message. It’s a β€œprestige” game, after all! This is the kind of high-calibre gaming that only the next generation of video games hardware can provide! Of course, it never did - Twelve Minutes is never interested in examining itself, even though it has all the endlessly looping time in the world to do it. Another example within the prior example - American Husband (Scotland’s James McAvoy) resists the player’s first suggestion to carry out the act of wife-stabbing with a weak-willed β€œNo…” refusal before capitulating on the second attempt. What does that mean, really? I hoped the game was taking a page from Deltarune’s playbook by suggesting that the player and the player-controlled husband were distinct entities in the Twelve Minutes world, but alas - we already established that this game is a portrait of every blemish and pimple on the face of video games. There’s no space for interesting thoughts here! Ignore that cheap gesture in the general direction of drama and get back to stabbing your wife! You need to stab her to get The Facts! You’ll be absolved of your crimes on the next loop anyway.

Fortunately, the game’s incoherent and incompetent tone often comes to your rescue whenever it forces you to do something rotten. Immediately after shanking his wife (for the third time) for having the temerity to read a book on the couch, we commanded our witless hero to sit down and eat his chocolate mousse. He remarked on how tasty it was, then read a book on the couch with his dead wife, behaving more like an auto-piloting Sim than a Serious Protagonist. It was a very good bit of morbidly dissonant ludo-narrative giggling, and a rare moment of joy in a game that is trying so very hard to be mature. Remember the Groundhog Day montage where Bill Murray trial-and-errors his way around diners and offices? All those bits in Edge of Tomorrow where Tom Cruise bit the dust in increasingly sadistic and silly ways? Weren’t they fun! No room for that here. We’ve got women to kick in the ribs!

I’m not opposed to video games and other artworks depicting our ugliest inhumanities, but I feel like it has to be to some meaningful end. Twelve Minutes is so obsessed with presenting itself as maturely as possible that it ultimately comes off as immaturely meaningless as it possibly could - no amount of prestigious acting credits or allusions to brutal murder and rape can save it from coming across like a Christopher Moltisanti spec script. Like a corny mafia movie, Twelve Minutes lets you watch a woman get punched, kicked, choked and stabbed - again, and again, and again, and again, and again (Achievement Unlocked, by the way!) until you’re bored. Then it’ll introduce something about incest, for some reason. The perfect introduction to the world of video games beyond Nintendo’s borders. The next generation of gaming is here, folks!

This review contains spoilers

everybody in this game is devoted to some kind of trade, whether it be cooking stew, djing, hustling -- boil it down, give it your upmost faith, and suddenly you lose yourself in it, like youre slipping on somebody elses creepy skin suit. you yourself adopt these roles by spending currency on skills which create increasingly high dice rolls, the primary mechanic through which all interactions take place. its a touch overwhelming at first, but the micromanaging necessary at higher difficulty levels makes you feel as addicted to making Forward Progress as the chef who can't let go of her stew or the dj who refuses to give up the boards. its a little eerie. nothing ive encountered yet in 'betrayal at club low' is Scary per say, but theres an underlying bit of unease found between interactions and skill checks, narrow, starkly-lit neon passageways and diorama-like sets that dont feel entirely Natural... i suppose in the same way as dreams. like dreams, too, all the interactions you have, where everyone is holding onto their little skills and hidden interests, is reduced into symbols and patterns. this bouncer... hes Fit and Observant, and harbors a secret love of Dance, all of which i can ultimately profit off of via dice rolls and absorb into the mental picturebook this games made for me. its a tad like the first leisure suit larry game but with less snark and more melatonin, a haunting little stage play that loops back in on itself. i played this all the way thru a few times on edibles in one sitting, and i do think that took away from the novelty a bit, as eventually i was just rushing past dialog to get to specific encounters. regardless, theres some wonderful dreamy stuff in here, thick, palpable bits of worldbuilding in a good point n clicky package. check this out if youre into passing out on the night bus or huffing pc duster

I was really excited about this game like I am anytime Cosmo D releases something new, but I walked away a little bit disappointed this time.

Here, Cosmo D pushes into new territory with a short RPG built around dice-based skill checks. It’s as strange a take on that as you’d expect, with customizable pizza dice and a physique skill that’s frequently used to contort your body in weird ways to get people’s attention. It’s fun and unique, with some enjoyable writing that adds new layers to the Off-Peak universe, but the balance of the default difficulty is off - while the game is built to be replayed several times, I had a hard time progressing whether I built my character as a jack-of-all trades or focused on one or two skills, and I had to save scum once I hit the late game. I think I’d probably enjoy it a lot more on the lower difficulties, so I may give that a try when I inevitably come back to this.

Also, Cosmo D’s Off-Peak universe is one of the strangest and most creatively bizarre in video games, and that’s very much on display here. But the move away from a first-person perspective and the focus on RPG mechanics takes some of the focus off the game world, which means there’s not as much room for the details of that strangeness as before, and I found the game less engrossing as a result.

Regardless, I’m excited to see Cosmo D push into new territory, and I’m excited for what he does next!

What an absolute flex to follow up three ambitious first-person adventure games with an isometric CRPG while losing none of the creative momentum or thematic depth. Manages to condense what is historically a 40+ hour game genre into a tight 2-hour heist, pulling drama from every dice roll as much as (if not more so than) its narrative. Would love to see more games adapt the streamlined stat system used here (to say nothing of how well its implemented into the UI). The nightclub background is a natural home for the sort of nu-human entities that make up Off-Peak, and now having control over how you engage with them only escalates the absurdity (love to indiscriminately fight everyone).

I've only finished a single run so I can't speak to if it holds up on replay, but as an expansion into a wholly new genre with significantly more mechanical emphasis than anything Cosmo D has done prior, it's quite the accomplishment.

This is, to date, Cosmo D's best title in terms of gameplay experience and mechanical design.

However - I found it the least narratively compelling. I still highly recommend you give Club Low a try, but I'm hopeful that Cosmo D's next game can marry this sort of gameplay with the strong writing of his previous work.

I wouldn't describe myself as an Elder Scrolls fan. Most of my experience with the series has been with Skrimm, which I've tried to complete a few times but always seem to lose interest in, typically resulting in me installing a bunch of mods to keep things interesting, installing too much freak shit, then panicking and deleting the game in fear of someone discovering and exposing my sinful nature. Beyond that, my familiarity with the broader Elder Scrolls series has mostly been limited to retrospectives on YouTube channels like LGR, and a roommate I had in college who bogarted my Xbox 360 to play Morrowind and he did this CONSTANTLY when all I wanted to do was play The Orange Box it's MY XBOX, man, just let me play my games!!!

whoa, what just happened

While buying up 360 games to fill out my collection, it felt almost obligatory to pick up Oblivion, which I've been told is a favorite among fans of the series and arguably The Best One. I snagged a copy of the GOTY edition for ten bucks on Ebay and it was promptly delivered to someone else's mailbox. I live among dishonest people and so it was never returned to me, which meant I had to spend another ten dollars to get another copy, and by this point I had Oblivion on the brain, so I decided to make it the first game I played out of my 360 backlog.

Oblivion may be a dated game in a lot of ways, but I also found it compelling enough that I was able to see the whole thing through, which I honestly was not expecting to be the case. The world of Oblivion feels so alive that I often meandered around watching people go about their daily routines. Yeah ok, sometimes I did that because it was fun to watch those routines break in really stupid ways, but I still had fun with it, and it's rare for open world games to suck me in so much that I deviate from the main quest to just, like, exist in those worlds. I was also impressed by how varied main and side quests are. When I think of these types of games, I think of a million worthless icons dotting a map. Countless points of "interest" marking side content that is copy and pasted over and over and over again, utterly pointless and not worth my time. Oblivion, however, manages to pack so much personality into each quest that l actually feel like a genuine participant in people's problems, even if the solution to that problem is to dive into a dungeon composed of the same pre-fab parts I've already seen dozens of times.

That said, I did find myself hitting the Skrimm-point a few times during my playthrough, and this usually set in whenever I was going through a stretch of the game that was combat heavy. Battles take place in first person, all swinging your sword around and casting magic, but that's just facade, the lens through which you view combat. In reality, fights essentially play out through a series of dice rolls. It's your character sheet smacking against another, which results in a bit of a disassociation between what is actually happening and what you're witnessing on screen. It's... not great. The difficulty balancing also feels off right out of the gate. Bonking basic goblins in the head with a sword 18 times before they keel over is really tedious, and when I looked up to see what I was doing wrong, all the advice I was able to find told me to turn the difficulty down a few notches. While this helped a lot, Oblivion's enemies scale with you, which means those basic goblins became about as much trouble as fully armored warriors from beyond the boundaries of space and time, and that results in this feeling of stagnation, like you're never really getting stronger, which in turn exacerbates the disconnected feeling I had with combat.

I'm thankful that I persevered, however, because the pendulum always swung back in Oblivion's favor. Soaking in the world, speaking to the people that inhabit it, learning about their histories, following them home, robbing them, murdering them, getting caught and freaking out and murdering their immediate family to leave no witnesses... That is Oblivion's true strength, and it's what I had the most fun doing. Thankfully there's enough of that I never teetered over the edge and quit. I wanted to make sure I saw as much of the game as I reasonably could, so I committed to doing a few of the longer quest lines. Unfortunately, I didn't finish all of them, but here's my thoughts on a few:

The Dark Brotherhood - I knew I had to complete this quest since it's pretty much the thing people talk about when they talk about Oblivion. I'm happy to say it lived up to my expectations. All the cloak and daggers bullshit at the heart of the Brotherhood initially seems sinister and almost cultish, but that veneer quickly melts away, exposing the Brotherhood as a bureaucracy which is as easily manipulated as it is inept. You eventually ascend to the highest position within the Brotherhood, bestowed the title of Listener after climbing over countless corpses, but what does that even earn you? You're no longer an assassin, you're no malevolent leader of this dark order, you're just a middle-man. A gofer picking up kill orders for a bit of coin. It's perfect.

Theives Guild - Tried to take the initiation test, which involved stealing a sword from someone's home before your competitors do. Unfortunately, someone else got there first, then blinked out of existence, preventing me from stealing it back from them. I reattempted the initiation test and passed it the second time, but disliked the fencing requirements to progress through the guild's main story missions. I got far enough that one of my points of contact was wrongly arrested, which I found out about hours later after returning from killing Mankar Camoran in his pocket dimension. Stuck in the air, mid-animation, basked in the red glow of arcane magic, a member of the thieves' guild ran up to let me know Armand had been detained. Uh, that's cool lady, kinda dealing with some shit at the moment, though! Never came back to it.

Knights of the Nine - Bad quest. Opens with a long, tedious pilgrimage to pray at a bunch of shrines before you can take on the Nine's request to recover their ancient armor. One piece of armor can only be attained by walking over a chasm using boots you pick up earlier in the quest, only you can't wear those boots if you have any points in infamy, of which I had two. How do you get rid of infamy? You go on a pilgrimage to all the shrines. Again. I attempted to do this and almost immediately got stuck in a rock outside one of the shrines (it happens.) Gave up.

The Shivering Isles - I'm the Duke of Dementia, A-Number-One. This expansion gives you a new island to explore with it's own questline that rivals Oblivion's in size and scope. You have to help the Mad God, Sheogorath, prevent the culling of his kingdom by the god of Order. Everyone in the Shivering Isles is broken, driven to insanity for Sheogorath's amusement. The atmosphere is eerie, yet darkly playful, and some of the quest givers you encounter are my favorite in the entire game. In particular, I really like Kithlan. Sure he thinks I'm a shitty escort and uh, he might have died in the last dungeon - I'm not really sure, I never saw him again - but he's a great guy, he thinks it's AWESOME that I'm out here torturing people for information, he knows and respects that get shit done. Anyway, the last "boss fight" in the Shivering Isles is unfortunately underwhelming, so it does kind of fall apart right near the end, but if you get the GOTY edition of the game, then this is definitely the piece of DLC you should check out.

I feel like I have finally developed an appreciation for what people like about The Elder Scrolls thanks to Oblivion. It's not perfect, of course. It's pretty buggy and its combat is atrocious, and I generally think it's not a good sign that people tell you to turn the difficulty down as soon as you start the game... But I am genuinely impressed by how much content and variety there is here. Oblivion feels richer in character and life than modern day open world games, and I think it's given me more motivation to go back to Skrimm and see how it compares. Plus, I heard they made some new... they made some new mods that make the girls prettier... yeeeeah.... these mods are just for daddy.............

A man pushes another man off of a cliff on a remote island. Stashed in the unnamed murderer's bag just a few feet away is a written contract between the two men and a mysterious golden idol. With the information shown to you from this animated snapshot at the moment of the crime, players are able to deduce the identities and motivations of the two men and what led to the untimely death, setting off a chain reaction through the following twelve chapters of The Case of the Golden Idol. The game is heavily focused on its narrative and finding the connective tissue as to whodunit and the intricate web around the facts is critical to a cracked case.

The Case of the Golden Idol exists in a similar space to Return of the Obra Dinn, and a variety of other detective games, as well as an inkling of point-and-click adventure games. Per each scenario, you are given the ability to explore the scene, clicking around the various screens to rifle through pockets, compartments, garbage bins, statues, and books to pull any keywords and clues you can scrounge up. The visuals themselves are a greasy, dark palette of 18th century pixel art, depicting its inhabitants as twisted, exaggerated vessels. No one is or even looks truly innocent and peering into glimpses of their belongings allows you to paint a bigger picture. Flipping a dial at the bottom of the screen takes you to the Thinking mode, where the game prompts several questions as to the nature of the case, from identifying all the suspects, matching names to placements at a dinner table, or piecing together an order of events using various scraps of testimony. The keywords you find in the explore mode can be slotted into these prompts, but it's not as easy as it may seem. Several keywords in each scene go completely unused, and many characters in this time period carry something to defend themselves with. You'll need to pay attention to letters, locations, and dialogue to deduce anything you can to establish the correct reconstruction of the chapter. Most of these moments are wonderful, and a few of the cases here are standouts using their logic and step-by-step nature to guide the player to the correct answer. However, others involve a logical leap too great sometimes, usually due to servicing the greater narrative and it bogs the game's logic down by sacrificing a uniquely solvable problem to a matter of guesswork and overanalysis. The narrative does pay off, though, and many of the cases in the second half of the game become (much more complex, yes but also) fairer since you can recognize the key players who slip between each set of murders.

The game's presentation and structure is overall pretty minimal, you start the game, click on a chapter and are immediately dropped into that location. A few animated cutscenes provide a welcome transition between sequences, but aren't necessarily common and really only become interesting once you know the whole truth. I do admire the game's commitment to its story. This game could very easily be 12 unconnected murder cases with increasing difficulty, but it is BECAUSE they are all narratively intertwined that the ending feels more satisfying, but also wildly more difficult to pinpoint.

The Case of the Golden Idol doesn't nail every one of its mysteries, but it tells a fascinating, supernatural, and suprisingly dark tale woven with blood, murder, political intrigue, and much else beneath the surface. If you are a fan of Obra Dinn or other detective games, this should really be a no-brainer.

Elden Ring gets caught into the trap of the open-world design: bigger always means better.

There is a sense of discovery in the first 20 hours or so, where you slowly uncover the elements that form the world (characters, enemies, levels, systems...). Many of them are well-known by now, as everyone has pointed out, given their iterative nature. But it's in how is iterated that I think lies the magic of those first 20 hours. The caves, dungeons and mines are my favourite part, having to keep your lantern with you at all times, not knowing where those little assholes will come you from. Little passages, some secrets, a nice boss battle at the end and out. A little adventure in the midst of all that grandiosity.

Sadly, those 20 hours of discoveries and secrets comes to an end rather abruptly, when the iterative becomes repetitive. The same locations, the same enemies, the same bosses, the same items, the same strategy, the same vistas. A boring mosaic. All the magic got swept away for the sake of squeezing all those hours that become junk.

There is much more than just small dungeons, of course. The rest is an extension of dark souls 3, not dark souls 1, with very big and intricate castles, and at the end a stupidly giant mega boss awaiting to be slayed and make a fucking super epic moment, which in many cases read as very similar encounters. I would lie if I'd say that i didn't enjoy (very much enjoy) some of those battles, mainly Radahn and Rennala. They offered something more varied and interesting than just battle, and very refreshing.

Dark souls games have been compered to Berserk ad nauseam, pointing at all the homages and references to Miura's biggest work. It is considered that Dark Souls 3, even this one, kept some of the spirit of the manga faithfully. Recently, I was once again listening to Susumu Hirasawa's ost for the anime while re-reading the manga, and when this song started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZa0Yh6e7dw, I realised that we view Berserk through different lenses, because there is no moment in all Elden Ring that even resembles this.

If that wasn't enough, I've also been replaying Dark Souls 1 at the same time, and it's really jarring the comparison. People destroyed Dark Souls 2 for not capturing the essence of the first one, but I now think they only meant the world wasn't fully interconnected, because Elden Ring is nothing like the first one in the worst ways! DS1 gets much better the spirit of Berserk, the melancholy of a dark and twisted world, full of violence but with traces of hope to continue. Some of the characters you meet along the journey are too cynical to keep going, some of them still hold the will to go forward, many will fall into despair, madness and death, but every single one of them are bound to the strength needed to dream a different future. The idea that the world is not going to die this time. Some still believe it, some stopped believing a long time ago. You yourself keep persevering in a world that has died so many times that it doesn't make sense anymore. Buildings are not going down, but the concept of architecture itself is fading. Ugliness can be felt in the colors of the walls, in the faraway trees and landmasses. Elden Ring is too concrete and clean to show that ugliness, and is too convoluted with power plays to make character interactions tragic or memorable (also, maybe having much more characters doesn't help). The only exception is the woman's hug in The Round Table, something that could perfectly have been in DS1.

I read someone explaining the game as "imagine the moment in DS3 when you saw Irithyll for the first time. That's Elden Ring all the time", implying that it was something great. For me, it's not. I got saturated of so much "beauty", so much brightness, so much clarity, so many perfect compositions that it didn't strike me anymore. Since you are going to be traversing a world for a long time, they decided to make STUNNING VISTAS all the time, every time. An attempt to naturalistic open-worlds. In Spanish, there is a word that perfectly describes my sensations: relamido.

Yes, the gameplay is obviously good. Its the previous games with more weapons, which translates in fun ways to approach fights. But I find pretty underwhelming that the thing this game has going for is what people criticise constantly: polish. A bigger and uniform forest with polished trees.

Maybe I'm being more harsh with this game than with any other, but seeing the comparisons with previous games and Berserk, and spending maybe 70 hours with no moving or alienating experiences unlike the previous ones, has made me more bitter towards this spouting of thoughts. Beware games, don't make me play for that long.