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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

Big Walk

One of the best co-op games of all time. Great puzzles, tons of surprises, and an extremely strong and heartfelt finale make for a title that I would recommend to just about anyone.

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Completed

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

While no individual element is extraordinary, the whole package is very solid and the variety kept it from feeling stale.

The combat system wasn’t stellar, but I did have fun with how fluid encounters felt alongside a tight parry mechanic. There weren’t a ton of memorable puzzles, but there were a few standouts that I thought were really clever and fun to piece together.

The trial sequences with Theseus were big standouts and I kind of wish there were more of them. The sequence with the one-on-one battles in particular was very cool. The bosses were solid, albeit a bit too punishing at times. It was really annoying to hear the same bits of dialogue over and over again for fights that took a few tries to clear.

Dodging the main monster by jumping or sliding under some cover just in time always felt great and even the sections that required more methodical traversal weren’t too much of a slog. The only stealth sequences that truly sucked were the ones where you had to slowly tiptoe around enemies to keep them from waking up and swarming you.

The most disappointing aspect of this game was definitely its narrative. What started off as a promising pirate thriller with undertones of Uncharted cheekiness eventually devolved into a feels-bad melodrama swept up in a story that feels detached from Sophia.

At the end of the day, I’m glad that Asobo Studios decided to push forward and redefine what it means to be an entry in the Plague Tale series. We could have gotten a total snooze fest of a sequel, and instead we got an action packed game that does a lot of things right.

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Onimusha: Way of the Sword

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PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse

This franchise is officially defined by long, drawn out conversations and talking in circles for hours. While the first game benefited from a super interesting setup, the one in Mermaid’s Curse is far less engaging.

Character designs across the board were strong, and the series’ overall visual style remains very good.

The scares in this game are super effective because they play around with perspective and the unique camera system and I really wish they leaned into that more. The start of the first game is truly terrifying and nothing really topped it for the remainder of the playthrough. It’s disappointing that this game displays even less of that effectiveness in the sequel.

The fill in the blank question and answer segments either felt like homework requiring you to dig through tons of files for specific info or were extremely obtuse. Idk how you could possibly get through some sections of these games without consulting a walkthrough. The alternative would just be endless trial and error to brute force your way through.

I did really like some of the out-of-the-box puzzles near the end that played around with menus and UI elements, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the overall bloated experience.

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Endacopia

Neat point-and-click adventure game with cool visuals and solid horror elements. I just wished that the rest of the areas were as good as Timesville and that unlocking each ending didn’t require an entire new playthrough.

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Marvel’s Wolverine

It’s really not a bad game, but it’s hard not to think that it feels like a big step down from what Insomniac achieved with Spider-Man.

GOOD

• The roguelike-style wave challenges were fun to fight through and offered the most challenge in the entire game
• The game looks and performs fantastically on the PS5 Pro

MIXED

• Boss fights range from decent to just straight up bad. Even the best among them tend to go on for way longer than they should
• Combat is fun fun, but does start to wear thin in the third act when you run out of meaningful upgrades to unlock

BAD

• Bad QuickTime events
• Way too sequences centered around slowly walking and doing mundane tasks
• Despite not being a Spider-Man game, there were a ton of bugs (zing)
• Overall the narrative felt very unfocused and poorly paced. The spot in the story where they drop you in at the very start felt really bizarre. The entire second act feels like a massive detour that barely ties into the main story. The third act nosedives into stupid character decisions and total nonsense. A mediocre story told very poorly.
• Traversal challenges are really bad. They all boil down to just pushing forward and mashing jump.
• Essex Es-sucksss. One of the most uncharismatic and annoying video game villains of all time. During the third act, I just kept yelling at the TV, “Oh my god, stop talking to this idiot!”

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Well Dweller

Kyle Thompson has become one of my favorite solo indie devs over the past few years and Well Dweller is his most refined game yet. It’s the closest to a “cozy” metroidvania that I’ve ever played through despite some of the creepy and troubling content you’re faced with. There’s something about his games that just evokes a sense of comfort, and a large part of it has to do with his signature writing style, tone, and overall game design.

All of the bosses were great, but I did run into a balancing issue. Even playing on hard difficulty, there were some bosses that felt like I shouldn’t have been able to beat them on my first try, but because of all the upgraded trinkets I had equipped I just kind of brute-forced my way through them in an unsatisfying way. These fights would definitely stand out as more memorable if I had to learn patterns and bang my head against them for a while. I guess I could have just unequipped all of my best trinkets to give them a bit more of a shot, but I prefer to work with what the game gives me to overcome obstacles and having to nerf myself like that doesn’t seem very fun either.

Despite having a great time with Well Dweller, it all felt very familiar as someone who played through all of Kyle’s games just last year. From the overall objectives all the way down to the optional challenge rooms and collectibles, there was a “been there, done that” feeling that stuck with me through most of my playthrough.

The post game was bit of a disappointment. It’s structured nearly identically to his past titles, but the challenges were a bit underwhelming as was the final power-up you unlock to help with clean up. I was also really hoping for one more boss battle to pop up once I completed the final quest, but alas you just get hit with a modified credits sequence and your journey ends there.

I don’t want to underplay how impressive this game is for a solo dev project. It’s just that I feel like Kyle has the potential to really push this genre to new heights and I felt like he played it a bit safe here, which is why Crypt Custodian remains my favorite of his titles to date. While Kyle continues to deliver really quality experiences, it would be nice to see him step out of his comfort zone a bit with his next project to see what he can come up with.

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Dropped

Halo: Campaign Evolved

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