Extremely simple and earnest. I was recently looking for something I could play while going full 'head empty' mode so I could simultaneously binge either anime or a podcast (Kimagure Orange Road and Insert Credit are my respective favorites currently), so I grabbed this during the last Steam Sale and it fulfilled this role perfectly. I know the general opinion nowadays is that Stardew Valley mostly made this series irrelevant and while I agree that Stardew is a better game overall, it has a tad too much going on for when I'm trying to effectively multitask.

I expect to come back to this from time to time whenever I'm in need of unwinding.

Incredibly bizarre survival horror game sporting some uneven gameplay and a narrative that's generally just campy shlock (in a fun way) but will occasionally veer into being grotesque and shocking (that acid bath murder sequence is genuinely unsettling). I was surprised to learn that this was directed by Kinji Fukasaku (film director of Battle Royale and the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series) but in hindsight Survival Horror is just naturally cinematic, especially when fixed camera angles are involved, so it's honestly a pretty nice fit even if some of those motion capture scenes have aged horrendously.

I think this might be one of those games that falls into the 'so bad it's good' category for me and it's absolutely the type of game that couldn't get made today (outside of a misguided crowdfunded revival project perhaps) but honestly it was consistently entertaining and really managed to invoke the feeling of watching a B-Horror movie (though I'm mostly certain that wasn't their intention), which is a pastime I quite enjoy.

A decent game with a great retro futurist aesthetic that has never really clicked with me. I've gotten roughly halfway through this 3 times now before getting bored and dropping it, which always surprises me because I love nearly all of the mainline entries that precede this.

Demon loyalty sounds good on paper as it helps personify your demons a bit but I'm generally not a fan of how it actually plays out during battles, especially when combined with the clunky row system which further limits your demon's actions; it ends up just making battles feel needlessly elongated and tedious compared to earlier games in the series. The story is serviceable, if not a little bland, though I'm sure it felt more original back when it was released. I also don't really understand the common love for Nemissa (outside of her cool character design) as I genuinely find it a little off-putting how often she forces Hitomi into uncomfortable situations which the game then plays off as a gag.

Mars After Midnight is full of hilarious weirdos, is great in small sessions, features an immersive use of the crank, and even managed to fit in some subtle but interesting worldbuilding; however, I was still left yearning for a bit more substance after finishing it. That's not to say I wish it was longer, just that I wish there was more room for decision making from the player. I feel like the classes attended by the Martians could've been a good solution here if they involved some sort of gameplay component rather than just ending in a simple (albeit quite fun) cutscene but hey I'm not a game designer.

As a bit of a tangent, while playing this game I couldn't help but have a lingering worry in my mind that this was just going to be the peak of games on the platform. I express this as worry because while this could very well be a perfect 'Playdate game', it's hard to deny that it's lacking depth and as someone who only purchased my console recently I was left wondering, 'Is this going to be the case with all other exclusives as well?'. I guess this is perhaps my roundabout way of asking for other game recommendations on the Playdate that hopefully disprove this notion?

A comforting little nap of a game in which I had a very wholesome time jumping around in the world and talking to all of the endearing forest denizens; however, it was interrupted a tad too often by bugs (not the cute ones you run around delivering mail for) that required me to bounce back to the title screen and reload the game to continue. While this process is relatively quick and seamless it still inadvertently added an unwelcome element of frustration into what is self-described as being a stress-free experience which is rather unfortunate.

Children of the Sun's hyper-stylized visuals and visceral soundscape serve as a great juxtaposition to the surprisingly methodical puzzle-solving; the likes of which do a fantastic job of encouraging creativity and improvisation from the player. While a couple of the more challenging levels occasionally felt a bit frustrating due to the amount of trial and error they required, they were well worth persevering through as the satisfaction of finally discovering that perfect route was near unmatched.

Documenting this here on Backloggd™ as I'm sure this will cease to be a memory within a few hours:

I just awoke from a nightmare that took place an unspecified amount of time into the future in which the desolate remains of Earth are lorded over by a Nintendo helmed regime and all of the world's conflicts are resolved through massive scale real-life BALLOON FIGHTS. Every balloon pop may as well have been a cannon blast and they always tended to be accompanied by the fading visceral screams of once afloat humans spiraling into a bottomless void, a red mist spewing into the air shortly after their disappearance.

There was a brief period where I was ready to jump on the 'Dark Souls 2 is underrated' train but then it just continued to hit me with underwhelming boss after underwhelming boss. I understand some fans prefer when the series leans harder into the RPG side of 'Action-RPG' but I'm really just here for the action and while some fights/areas delivered on this fairly well, a majority of them can be brute forced far too easily simply by having enough levels under your belt.

On a more positive note, the atmosphere here is unique and interesting, there's a pretty diverse range of locations (especially when including the DLC), and the NPCs are some of the most memorable in the series. I also actually enjoyed a majority of the additional enemies that were thrown into SotFS to make things a little more difficult; I don't want to imagine how bland some of these areas would've been without them.

At the end of the day, a souls game is a souls game and I had a good enough time working my way through Dark Souls 2 but this is easily the least impressed I've been with any entry in the series. (Insert joke about how DS2 is just an Elden Ring prototype here)

There's a fine line between being atmospheric and introspective vs being dull and boring. While FAR: Lone Sails occasionally manages to be the former, it is far more common for it to sink to the latter. The most profound moments were easily those few occurrences where you arrive at a long desolated outpost and your radio briefly springs to life with the suggestion that there are inhabitants other than yourself tucked within the dreary landscape. Alternatively, the couple of occasions where the solemn journey was interrupted by sudden tension and you had to scramble to keep your vessel in working order were always a welcome change of pace.