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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

PRAGMATA

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Completed

Wednesdays

A very well written and unique that tackles a lot of heavy and sensitive subjects with a great amount of care.

The mock Roller Coaster Tycoon game was a great way to frame the game’s structure, making the jump from memory to memory feel more natural within the narrative than simply advancing through them in a menu. There were some really creative scenes throughout that played with narrative and perspective in very interesting and memorable ways.

I was a big fan of the in-game interview segment they added in a post release patch, which provided insight into the dev team, the development process, and even the game’s total sales. It was a very unique way of sharing info that you would normally need to scour the internet to find through press interviews.

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Darwin’s Paradox!

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Creature Kitchen

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Esoteric Ebb

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REPLACED

GOOD

• Graphics and lighting look unreal
• Great camera direction and cinematography
• A surprising amount of traversal and battle mechanics
• Game gets better the further you go
• Solid story throughout

MIXED

• Side quests mainly feel like busy work, but the rewards for doing them are worth pushing through

BAD

• Terrible arcade minigames
• Some really bad checkpointing
• Fights start to feel very samey near the end
• Very flat final act gameplay-wise
• No cool claw combat mechanics??!!

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MOUSE: P.I. For Hire

GOOD

• The devs went above and beyond what they really needed to do for VO. Not only is the entire cast stacked with a ton of talent, every single line of dialogue in this game has VO
• Wide arsenal of weapons, each with their own unique upgrades and secondary abilities
• Diverse levels that tap into a ton of different old time cartoon settings and tropes
• Lot of characters that all have great designs
• Great lock picking mini game that thematically fits perfectly
• Great hint system that tells you exactly where to go if you get lost
• Solid enemy variety
• Good amount of traversal tools

BAD

• Extremely shallow detective mechanics
• The Baseball minigame is pretty one-dimensional for something that they want you to play (and win) over and over again to collect coins
• Nothing of real value in the shops, unless you’re really into newspapers, comics, and baseball cards
• Combat is serviceable, but fights aren’t particularly memorable
• Lots of yapping
• About a 100 lines about stinky cheese too many
• They do a very unnecessary in medias res to kick off the game, which spoils the final level for no reason
• Not being able to return to levels after you’ve completed them to search for collectibles kind of sucks
• Final boss fight is kind of a mess
• Overstays its welcome by a bit

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Vampire Crawlers

Poncle done changed the game again.

These guys are just the kings of psychological warfare. They’ve recreated the addictive nature of Vampire Survivors in a totally different gaming genre. It’s really impressive how they were able to pull so many elements from their previous title and remix them into a unique experience.

Once you figure out how busted Wild cards are and you’ve unlocked the revive mechanic, the gameplay does start to feel a bit trivial even on the tougher levels. Regardless, I had a ton of fun working my way through floors, collecting cards, and getting my combo meter really high to do crazy damage.

I wouldn’t go into this game expecting to get s dozens of hours out of it. I rolled credits after about 13 hours, compared to Vampire Survivors, which took me around 30 hours to kill the final boss. I only really have a handful of achievements left to get if I wanted to fully 100% it. Then there’s really no reason to keep playing, unlike a lot of other roguelike deck builders that usually have challenge modes that incentivize you to keep coming back.

Overall, I do prefer this to the Vampire Survivor formula. It feels less like you’re throwing your life energy into a trash pit when you have to at least put some amount of brain power into the order you’re playing your cards, which makes it a much more recommendable title in my eyes.

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Super Meat Boy 3D

A super responsive and challenging platformer filled with great level design. Looking forward to throwing myself into the Dark World Challenges and collecting more bandages to see how wild some of these playable characters get.

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Kiln

I love every aspect of this game’s concept. It’s super unique and has a level of polish and charm that Double Fine injects into every project. Building and customising your own pot is super fun to experiment with. Having each pot feature different specs and abilities based on its construction is a real testament to an out-of-the-box approach that should definitely be celebrated.

Sadly, when it comes to actually playing the game, I find it severely lacking. The combat is clunky and I felt the gameplay loop getting stale after only a handful of matches.

Because this is strictly an online multiplayer game, it won’t be playable once the online community inevitably dries up. I really wish there was a single player component, but I’m also glad Double Fine isn’t sinking a ton of resources into this so those efforts can go towards something more substantial.

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Dropped

RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike

It seems fine, if not a bit too mindless. This game made me realize that I’m pretty burnt out on this genre and the runs weren’t interesting enough to hold my attention.

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Screamer

This game had the potential to be so many things. It could have been a game that delivered a one of a kind experience that let people live out their Initial D fantasies. It could have been a great onboarding game for people unfamiliar with racing games, who come for the anime vibes and walk away with a greater appreciation for the genre and maybe even a drive to explore other games in the genre. It could have been a game with an interesting and well written story that takes advantage of the absurdity, creating a unique experience you can’t get anywhere else. Sadly, Screamer fails on nearly every front, resulting in a frustrating and unfocused mess of a game that left me disappointed in just about every way.

The good: The music is bopping and I think the “Like a Shooting Star… Burn!” line they use at the start of most races is iconic.

The bad: everything else.

Screamer is really just an anime wannabe that has no sauce. The writing is weak, the pacing is terrible, the characters are forgettable, and the overall story is just wasted potential incarnate. On top of all that, the visual novel scenes are of very poor quality. They could have found a more stylistic way to deal with their limitations, but instead we just get really flat conversations that feel very budget. The mash up of languages here just comes off as jarring. Typically when a universal translator is introduced in media, that’s usually a totally servicable way of explaining how people from all over the world can freely communicate with each other. The problem here is that, instead of just changing the default language to English, they keep everyone’s dialogue in their native language. I really can’t think of another piece of media that does it this way and I get why now: it’s distracting. They also use their limited amount of cutscenes very poorly. Most of the big narrative beats that deserve one, like the introduction of The Announcer or Mr. A, just happen as another visual novel scene and fall extremely flat.

There should have been 5 separate campaigns, each focusing on one of the teams rather than the one we got, which just randomly jumps between everyone. It would have helped my enjoyment if I was just focusing on getting good with 3 different cars at a time instead of forcing the entire roster that

They didn’t even attempt to balance the campaign in a way that makes sense. Under no circumstances should I come first in a team race with 8 KOs and still fail the mission because my AI teammates decided to come in last place. I shouldn’t have to hit every turn perfectly and use every shortcut in a course just to barely scrape by with a win after dropping the difficulty down to the easiest possible option. Some missions will be absolute cakewalks, while others feel like they weren’t even kind of tested with the player in mind.

I really thought the double stick drive system would have at least felt cool like it did in Inertial Drift, an indie game that I ended up sinking dozens of hours into, but it just feels so limp and unsatisfying. That, combined with the boring drift and strike mechanics, resulted in a driving experience that feels off.

I tried to get through the campaign, but I ran into so many rage inducing frustrations in the back half of this game that I had to officially give up to spare myself from throwing my controller across the room.

One of my biggest disappointments of the year thus far.

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Mama’s Sleeping Angels

It feels like a massive mess from the get go. The was tutorial was super confusing and navigating the convoluted controls was just not very fun. The aesthetics are kind of cool, but I found navigating levels to be largely aimless and unsatisfying.

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Lords of the Fallen

I thought the 2.0 update could have potentially saved this game, but it still doesn’t quite have the sauce it needs.

The first hour of this game does a really poor job of selling itself. The run to the first major boss is filled with boring enemies, linear yet confusing level design, and obnoxious tutorials. There were just a lot of questionable game design choices throughout. Why teach me about parries for the first time in the middle of a boss fight? Why include a guidance system that leads into impassable walls instead of helping me through areas? The levels look great, but all of the characters look a bit too budget and the voice acting and writing are pretty weak. I wish they took more of a “show don’t tell” approach, but everyone just yaps your ear off instead.

Officially calling it quits on this one. Hopefully the sequel is a bit more compelling.

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Sol Cesto

I really thought I would like this one more than I did. The art style is incredible and the demo really sold me on the unique gameplay loop, but I found myself having less fun with every subsequent run once I dove into the 1.0 launch.

The base luck system really rubs me the wrong way. While it’s certainly unique, there’s only so much you can do to keep yourself out of harm’s way. I had multiple runs where I made it past the 3rd boss only to lose because I got severely unlucky twice in a row, hitting a trap that only had a 15% chance of triggering. The game feels weighted against the player from the get-go until you spend dozens of attempts unlocking permanent upgrades.

Speaking of which, I really don’t like the permanent upgrade system in play here. You’re incentivized to sacrifice the gold you earn in a run, gold you would otherwise use to purchase items that give you a leg up on difficult floors, and instead basically say, “Welp, I guess I’ll just throw this run in the toilet”. It just feels like a waste of time, especially when much of what you’re unlocking is just more variety for the various shops and statues.

When it comes to bosses in these kinds of games, I feel like they tend to feel unfair if you haven’t built your character/deck in a specific way. But I think this game actually has the opposite issue. The bosses are actually way too easy and aren’t interesting at all outside of their aesthetic. It doesn’t help that there’s absolutely no variety with them between runs. Every time I got up to the first boss, I just got into the habit of mindlessly clicking on rows that wouldn’t instakill me and I’d get through it in about 15 seconds with maybe 2 less health than I started with.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this one. I anticipated wanting to finish a run with every character I could, but instead, I lost the drive to push through even one.

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Tomb Raider I-III Remastered

Even after changing the controls to modern, which at least made the game playable, I was having zero fun with this. Boring levels with boring enemies. These games really haven’t aged well.

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