What did Emmet think of that game?

I shot through this one quickly off the heels of Miles Morales, which made that game feel even more like a tasty little snack in between major installments. It is just so much fun to pretend to be Spider-Man and zip through the city kicking villain tush. Much of the sweet richness of the movies is in these games, and the story is definitely the main draw. It’s as cinematic as a game gets. I’m a big web head, and I love the decisions made with this story, taking our familiar characters into a crazy new place. Having played this on my pc, I can tell there are many sections that would have felt much better on the native PS hardware with a Dualshock controller. The game was slightly buggy, and I could tell I was not playing it the way it was originally designed. I found the game to be just about the perfect length, with new abilities getting dripped in often enough for combat to stay mostly interesting. Boss fights were highly cinematic but not very interesting, mostly boiling down to waiting for an attack and hitting either the dodge button or the counter button and then mashing attack. The special moves felt slick and powerful land great to use, and generally combat got more difficult to rise up to meet the new abilities. I never felt like anything was too difficult, but I was pretty much in it for the story so I didn’t mind. The city is even more vast this time, but our spiders have great new abilities to traverse through it, the biggest being glide wings - and so this game feels even more like a less gritty version of the Arkham series. Speaking of… I’m going to have to say Arkham does stealth and gadgets in a far more interesting way. I kept waiting for something more than just distracting enemies by making sounds somewhere and then zipping people up, but I didn’t get much. Even for a guy who can turn invisible! Come on! I hope the third major installment shakes up the formula for combat and stealth. One of the things I really love about both Batman and Spider-man is how they use their brain to get themselves out of tough challenges. I don’t want to be the guy begging for my super heroes to be more adult… but you really can make a game that works for kids and adults. I have many more specific thoughts about this one, but I don’t want to spoil anything! Hit me up if you want to talk!

This second entry in the series feels like the younger brother in a number of ways. It uses the same beautiful map as the first (but in charming Christmas-time!), and many of the same characters. It’s gorgeous and fun to play (I zipped through it in two days while sick!), feeling just as quick as the first in combat and traversal. Miles’ kit feels fun to play with, a bite sized chunk of spider-manly goodness. The cast of characters is vaguely heartwarming, and the message that “anyone can be a hero; be yourself!” gave me warm fuzzies on a few occasions. Something I want to highlight about these games are the radio stations you pick up on while swinging through New York. It adds just the right amount of fun and character to the game that makes swinging around even more fun - way better than fast travelling! A large part of what makes Spider-Man in general so wonderful is that the city is peopled with real souls. I love you, Spider-Man!

This game scratches that old Donkey Kong Country itch. You’ve got two characters with very diverse moves that play together in an interesting way. With them together, I feel like Mario in Odyssey, able to throw a character up, dash through the air, jump, and dash again! With a moveset as complex as this one, the game loves to throw devastating challenges at you in the midst of its easier levels. This freedom in movement makes each level feel like a playground. There is just the right amount of puzzle solving and searching through the levels for secrets, as well as wonderful diversity from level to level. This is a game I’m going to complete for sure - unless it gets too hard even for me! There are cracks for sure - the small screen and fast baddies can lead to offscreen enemies zooming in and killing you unfairly. Having basically one health point and getting sent all the way back to a checkpoint can start to feel cheap and brutal. Bosses are surprisingly dry compared to the creative level design. I’m still enjoying it 8 hours in, but it’s starting to get quite difficult! Completion is going to be very difficult!! Yeah actually I don’t think this game is worth completing after all XD The super secret crazy hard post-game levels get to the point of being far more annoying and time consuming than fun for me, which is a huge shame. It feels very much like a Kaizo Mario game.

After forty hours, I’m putting this one down. Why is this an open world game? I don’t think it works for this genre at all. It has not the cleverness of a well connected world with levels as DS1, nor the brilliant boss and level design of DS3. This game is so bloated, and I simply don’t have time for it. There are other games that will respect my time more. I love the addition of a steed, but combat on it feels terrible and clunky. And I’m quite surprised there isn’t more to do with leveling it up. There are many places where platforms tease the idea of interesting dynamic movements, but the actual movement allowed to the player is quite poor. There’s an idea here that the player should be able to kind of choose their own difficulty. If an area is too hard, they can simply go somewhere else first and level up a bunch. This feels incredibly lazy to me… I don’t want to waste time looking around for enemies that feel like the right amount of challenge, I want the people who made the video game to design a game that already feels good to play! More and more bosses also have delayed, super strong attacks that reward players for memorizing how long each attack is. There are so many forced deaths this way (and the nagging voice in your mind to just go somewhere else) that this game is simply impossible to play quickly. You have to grind it out for your first playthrough. And I’d simply rather do something else. Bye bye for now, Elden Ring. At least you’re why I played Dark Souls.

It’s finally here!! I’m finally playing it!! The sequel to one of my favorite games of all time!! A quick aside - upon Silksong’s release, Jon and I made a deal that one of us had to beat Pantheon of Hallownest in Hollow Knight before we could play it, so we got together for a weekend and threw ourselves at it as hard as we could. And oh man was it difficult. I feel that I could without much trouble beat each boss individually without taking a single hit… except for absolute radiance, the “perfect” version of the final boss. It took me two days of practice before I felt confident that I could beat her at the top of the pantheon. Sunday evening, I booted it up for one last attempt and finally beat her! What makes her so much more difficult than the rest is that she’s more like an ever-changing platforming challenge, where you must be patient about when you can get your hits in… but then you need to absolutely wail on her. Five hours in, and I’m loving it. It definitely feels harder than Hollow Knight, so I get what people have been commiserating about. There are enemies and hazards that do two masks of damage right off the bat! I feel incredibly frail. And I need to have my new version of my soul meter (Hornet converts Soul to Silk) completely full to heal, which gives me three masks back. This makes me not want to use my spells for damage because of how urgently I might need the Silk to heal. Luckily, there is a secondary way of doing damage, called “tools.” These are awesome. Every enemy drops a little currency to help make more, and you craft them automatically at benches. I feel like all of the systems that made Hollow Knight great have been pushed up a notch. The “charm” system is overhauled, the “spell” system is more challenging… even pogoing off enemies is more challenging, with Hornets downward attack going at an angle. Except actually, you can change how all of her attacks move and feel with different modes!! There is so much to play around with, and it's just so darn fun and beautiful. I was irked about how slow moving I was until finally getting the dash, and oh boy even the dash is more grown up. Tapping still makes Hornet dash, but holding it will make her run, which feels fantastic. Her momentum in all regards is thrilling. My only complaint so far is how darn frail I am and feel, making me not want to use cool spells… but maybe this will change as I get better and get more items!

I played this gem with my buddy David over the course of a few days, and we had a lovely time! Gameplay was easy enough that anyone with video game literacy can sit down and have a good time, while the action sequences, story, and beautiful settings are so immersive as to engage all players. I will admit to shedding a tear over some of the more personal moments in the characters' journeys. Jumping between sci-fi and fantasy worlds was quite enjoyable. The side stories were perfect bite sized chucks of novelty and joy. David and I both were anticipating some craziness with mingling of the genres at the climax, and what we got even surprised us! spoiler warning the game until this point features a split screen where you can see what your partner is up to, which suddenly starts to warp so that characters can move between, and other quick, fun novelties like that. spoiler over I did wish for more of a challenge on the puzzle side, and being able to always see my partner’s screen kept us from having to communicate to solve puzzles often. But, I understand that the target audience here isn’t for hardened puzzlers or even long time gamers. This is a game you can pick up with anyone who is comfortable moving a character with one stick and a camera with the other, and having a grand old time.

These days I find myself musing over my mortality quite often. What do I want to achieve before I die? What will I do with the gift of today that I have been blessed with? These questions are frightening to face, and I find people are doing it less and less thanks to how easily we can distract ourselves in the modern age. Time Flies does not impose these or any ideas of mortality, but rather invites us to ask ourselves these questions by shortening our lifespan from years to seconds (literally! You choose a country and it converts WHO lifespan data from years to seconds for your run). You are then challenged to achieve the things on your bucket list in those short few precious seconds. You fill them with meaning by helping a friend, making someone laugh, listening to music, exploring sexuality, and many other wholesome and worthwhile endeavors. Or, you know, you could just run into a lightbulb. This metaphor perhaps isn’t perfect, as in game you start again immediately as a new fly - but with the memories of the last. Or maybe this is commentary on how we must stand on the shoulders of those who came before us to achieve something great? These ponderings and many more - plus an enormous dose of whimsy and cleverness - make Time Flies a delicious and impactful two hour treat. Check it out!

Love me a metroidvania 🙂 The gimmick here is that *every single character* has a time limit on their life. Game time, not attached to events. Play fast, play well, and you might be able to save someone. All around the map, you can collect the essential “meteor dust” to extend anyone’s life for 24 hours (minutes). Giving any one character three meteor dust will result in them giving you something helpful… and some people are more helpful than others. This causes you to make some difficult decisions… “she’s had a nice, long life” is something I had to tell myself when I let my first npc go unsighted. Puzzles were decent, had to have a couple pauses to think about some ice/tile problems. Otherwise pretty easy. The best dungeon had a light/dark mechanic where certain blocks would only show up in the dark, but it was difficult to see, which was a great design. Combat felt good, though not very complex. Most enemies had similar timings to their attacks, which could all be blocked. This did feel good to get skilled at, and by the end I was flying through them (which feels doubly good with the time crunch). A good variety of weapons to choose from, but they didn’t change gameplay very much. There was a system very similar to Hollow Knights “charms,” though this did have some novelty in that you can find or create duplicates of the chips for your loadout. There was additionally a “cog” system, which were like chips but you could only carry up to four, and they would end fairly quickly. Being able to craft cogs became an incredibly powerful powerup, especially when able to do it at any time.The heal system was also great, with you needing to do damage to build up a heal. And in a great twist, you can give an npc three meteor dust to make yourself another health pot… which I firmly opposed. Attacking, shooting, parrying, jumping, and running all deplete stamina, forcing the user to keep an eye on the bar and not be too greedy. I’m so glad I quickly found a chip that let running not deplete stamina, else combat would have been sooo much more slow and defensive. I started out thinking that the combat system was pretty banal, but now I’m realizing it was pretty good. Though I only died twice, at the very beginning of the game, due to a pretty low skill ceiling. I had an interesting experience while fighting an incredibly robust miniboss. I felt quite overpowered going in, but found suddenly that enemies were taking much longer to kill. This particular boss would occasionally spawn in two challenging enemies to fight with it… regardless of if you had already dispatched the two previous baddies. I quickly got quite outnumbered, and nearly gave up. But then I noticed that it seemed to reach a cap… and it couldn’t ever spawn more enemies! With lots of running away, getting little attacks in, and healing, I barely scraped by! Close one!! Many of the best powerups came from giving npcs meteor dust, which often felt quite satisfying. By the end of the game, I had that wonderful metroidvania feeling of being very powerful. The devs also clearly had speedrunning at top of mind, I’d love to watch a speedrun; there’s lots of sequence break potential.

Dude, what are you doing!?? You said no more logue-lites! Only games with endings! Well, I was pretty sure I would be able to get to the true ending of this game fairly quickly, and it looked too fun. And I was right! :D The game still suffered from long run-backs, though what made me keep playing was how each and every run felt viable. There were no awful weapons, only a few I didn’t like as much. My skill and knowledge determined my progress, not dumb-luck or unlocking better weapons for playing longer (looking at you, gungeon). Combat felt great, with a slick 2d wall run. The story actually progressed, as you could rescue people from the time loop back to the hub. Different gifts could stack in interesting ways. Though honestly, not that many ways haha. There are three elements that can be combined - ooze, fire, and poison.

I did one final run of the game with a challenge modifier - and made it all the way through! I felt the temptation to keep running and running, and to do it all… and with a final breath I resisted the temptation and uninstalled the game. Well done, Bethesda!

Oh boy, now this is a game!! Combat is quite simple, but fun. It is based largely upon a great parry mechanic, with two windows. If you’re too early, you will take half the damage as “internal damage,” which can be healed over time or by other means (through hollow knight like charms). You can easily tell which window you landed in, as they sound different. If you nail a parry, you are rewarded with a qui charge, which you can tag an opponent with by essentially dashing through them and releasing for big damage. It’s tricky to learn, but quite satisfying to master. True to its metroidvania roots, there are a few power ups to find throughout the game that make exploration and combat more challenging and enjoyable - my favorite being a charged parry technique that gets used in difficult boss fights. I did find myself at many points thinking “can I please just have the double jump??” It also has a skill tree system however, with very cool upgrades for combat and movement. I think this is a good system for drip feeding new mechanics as to not overwhelm. The game actually feels quite linear, and watching a speedrun afterwards wasn’t very entertaining. You’re not really meant to sequence break. This isn’t a bad thing though, because it lets the game tell a nice story and develop fun relationships with its few characters. Good music and great visuals, though at times a bit buggy. I once had to un-download the game to resolve a weird issue that made a layer invisible! Enemy (and frankly boss) AI is quite simple, letting them be easily cheesed. The charm-like system was enjoyable and led me to trying a few different builds when challenging bosses. The final boss … wow. What a step up in difficulty! She took me four hours. Reading online, I see people claim weeks even. And yeah, sure she’s hard. But once you learn the moves… it feels pretty great. I think the parry system makes you feel like you understand the boss so well, in a way that’s different than clunky dark souls bosses. Nailing parry after parry after charged parry and slicing off a huge chunk of health is soooo satisfying.

You know me, I can’t resist a good metroidvania! From the outset I was thinking it looked a little too easy for me, and it hasn’t posed much of a challenge. But it has been pretty fun! No moments have blown my mind, but there are some novel ideas I want to talk about. Any special move (including dashes) increases Haiku’s temperature pretty significantly. Like you can only dash four times in a row before overheating. This feels kind of annoying to me from the outset, because I wanna go fast!! But this opens up the possibility for more restrictive platforming. And at least rolling into a ball makes you a bit faster (or even faster with a “chip”), so rolling around is quite fun. What has been by far the most interesting thing to me is my ability to cheese lots of sections. I do sometimes wonder “was this intended?”, like realizing the ball bounces when landing, and I can jump out of the bounce for a tiny bit of extra height! This let me get to a few places for goodies before I unlocked the double jump. I also did a few sections that required a novel take on the grappling hook by being pretty sick with my platforming. This is the kind of thing that I just know the devs allowed for, and makes me feel awesome. Well done, devs. There is a particularly novel section of the map that’s super hot, preventing you from using many of your moves, complete with a powerful boss. Another section makes all the enemies much more difficult when you destroy a hive. Yet another has you turn on the machinery so many gears change the platforms and such. The game feels very much like a light version of hollow knight. There is a slight story, some cute characters, and similar metroidvania elements. Maybe I’m remembering hollow knight with too much fondness… I’ll have to do it again! But this just felt like a watered down version. Even the DLC was similar, with a boss rush zone with difficulty settings. That’s not to say this isn’t a good game - it is! I enjoyed my eight hours scouring every corner. I even enjoyed the boss rush section, where I grew to even appreciate the overheating mechanic. I started using bombs a lot more to beat the bosses more quickly, so I was using my specials in a measured way, which felt unique to this metroidvania.

A soulslike that’s colorful?? Another Crab’s Treasure was a pleasure every minute. The undersea world was fantastical and creative, with enemies and friends alike using trash in clever and interesting ways. The message of the game felt to me like how we are all personally dealing with the destruction of our planet. Anger may very well be the most powerful and useful tool to help prevent total disaster, and yet it is a dangerous thing to give in to. I totally enjoyed the gameplay, especially after learning spell shells and adaptations that really made combat feel interesting. In dark souls proper, I felt like I was approaching each and every enemy basically the same way… and just learning patterns and hitting them. With Kril, I felt much more free to zoom around the map with my hook and line, shoot spells at enemies, get good at parrying, even rolling was still fun. Maybe this is what playing a mage is like in dark souls. Probably not this fun. Getting magic (or Umami, lol) in this game requires you to hit enemies with your fork (main weapon), so you’re still constantly forced to engage. Enemies hit quite hard though, it’s not an easy game. Blocking is quite strong, though your shell may quickly break… so grab another! Zipping between different shells during a boss battle and using their different mechanics was so refreshing. Level design was also quite fun. Platforming was generally quite easy, but still felt rewarding to explore and find things. I love being able to swim through the water briefly and zipping to grapples and enemies! It was also very fun when you would pop in and out of the water. I will buy any game this studio (Angry Crab) makes in the future!