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chuckroAll of these are games I’ve played…this calendar year. I fell behind on PC game reviews.
Even the Ocean – By the same designers as the Anodyne series, I had expected this to be a Metroidvania and it’s really more of a puzzle platformer—the stages are linear and rely mostly on varying obstacles in each area rather than exploration-enabling powerups. The story and the mechanics unite around the concept of opposing energy forces, and instead of a life meter, you have an energy meter that moves in one direction or the other depending on the hits you take. If you get overbalanced in light/green, you can superjump. If you get too much dark/purple, you run faster. But if you exceed the meter in either direction, you die. I was reminded of Celeste (especially since a wall-jump is the other major mechanic) though it’s much less demanding. I appreciate that they offer a story mode (no challenge scenes) and a challenge mode (just challenge scenes!) but I’m annoyed that half the Achievements require playing them along with the regular mode. But yes, if I couldn’t handle the platforming, I think I would still have wanted to finished out the story. It centers about a power plant technician named Aliph who experiences a tragedy but nonetheless manages to become the hero and hope of her city…or not, because there’s a thinly-veiled metaphor about climate change and institutional power. And everyone’s queer, which is also nice. Generally recommended if you like puzzle-platformers.
Actraiser Renaissance – A remake of the SNES classic, this keeps the overall structure of the game (Platformer stage -> simulation sequence -> platformer stage for the six areas) but adds a lot more material in terms of both gameplay and plot. The simulation stages add mini platformer areas whenever you seal a monster lair, and also tower defense sequences throughout the simulation sequence. (Though not really tower defense—you can’t actually place the towers in a way that they’ll actually block the enemies and are expected to be moving around your heroes and casting miracles to handle the majority of the work.) The tasks for the simulation sequences are divided up into quests, some of which appear to be optional. Each area has a hero who you can direct during tower defense and who figures into the area’s plot. In general quality of life bonuses: The Master handles much better in the platforming stages and has more attack moves, including an up-thrust, down-attack, and combo-charge with invincibility frames. Magic has been improved, there’s a proper MP meter, and you can collect crystals for power-ups within each stage. (And replay stages if you miss them. Replaying stages is also required for the post-Act II quests in each region.) The Angel’s arrows arc towards enemies; and towns generate health, magic and materials pickups so there’s more for the Angel to do. And there’s an Easy mode that gives you infinite lives in the platform stages, which I always appreciate. (It’s unclear to me how much the difficulty has overall been reduced, but the platforming definitely feels easier than the original.) Overall, I think they did a great job of building on the bones of the original and making a bigger, fuller game out of it.
Telling Lies – A style-sequel to Her Story that follows the same setup: You have access to a large set of video files surrounding an event and are trying to figure out what happened; but you are hobbled by a stupid search system that only responds to keywords and only gives 5 responses to any keyword. So as you go through the videos, you need to take notes and guess keywords to try to figure out what will reveal more of the story to you. In this case, the story revolves around “David”, who we see moving into a new apartment and having conversations with various women—this clearly had a much bigger budget than Her Story, as it features more than a dozen actors at various points and numerous sets as well. I can’t talk more about the story without spoilers, but it’s clear that many, many lies are told over the course of it. I played the entire game without realizing you could rewind to before the keyword that starts the video, and probably would have gotten a bunch of plot threads a lot earlier if I had. (And without re-watching videos from earlier points, which I did a bunch.) The long gaps where a person is just listening are annoying and too frequent, even if the one-sided conversations are a good puzzle conceit. I had issues with the Steam Achievements not popping and I had to restart the game the first time because I got a black screen (which is apparently common). Overall, this is a clever "investigative puzzle" approach to interactive fiction, and I enjoyed it
Cathedral – Another metroidvania game I tried a couple of times but had real issues with the difficulty level of. If this has a plot, it doesn’t emerge until later; you’re a haunted suit of armor in a castle, go fight things. If you like NES-style of platformer play that’s only slightly less forgiving (there are a lot of respawn points, but each respawn costs you 10% of the money you’ve collected, and that adds up fast), this might appeal to you. Especially since you’ve only got enough health to take 2-3 hits at any point, and the enemy knockback is unforgiving when you’re trying to do platforming. Using a down-thrust to bounce off of things is an important move to master very early on; which made me think that the NES Ducktales game was an inspiration. But this is the third metroidvania game in a row that I’ve tried and been frustrated by—an easy mode (or an invincibility cheat!) could probably have let this hold my attention; as it was I beat the first boss but was immediately frustrated by the dexterity-based switch-puzzles right afterwards.
Life is Strange – An exploration puzzle / visual novel hybrid game (by Square-Enix!) that I’ve been meaning to play for something like eight years. A high school student, newly transferred to a ritzy private school in the hometown she had moved away from, discovers she has the strange ability to rewind time and can use it to help the people around her…and that disaster is about to strike the town in only a few days’ time. It’s interesting in a “Choose Your Own Adventure but on rails” sort of way, in that the choices you make do influence the story later, but the major plot beats and setpieces stay generally the same. That said, I don’t think they actually used the conceit well: The game warns you that an action will have consequences, but you never see those consequences soon enough to rewind and change them, so rewinding during conversations/actions mostly just lets you see the other side of the tree if you feel like it. And then, though a number of your choices echo into the last chapter, the final choice determines the ending and renders 100% of your actions moot: Either you save the girl and everyone else dies, or you save the town and the history of the entire week is rewritten. In the end, you realize it’s a mash-up of The Butterfly Effect with Final Destination, and while I thought the various gimmicks they came up with for the time travel were clever (and the creators probably loved that the alt-history sequences didn’t have any parts that were dependent on earlier decisions, so they only have to script and create one story for them), it’s not fair to build an entire game on “this action will have consequences” and introduce wide-scale change as “this will only screw things up more”, and then end it with a choice that always means your actions never had consequences but the wide-scale change is the only thing that actually saves the day. This was clever and inventive and much more like watching a season of TV than playing a video game, and I’m glad I played it but it’s not getting a replay. Oh, and screw the psychedelic too-dark mandatory stealth sequence in the final-final area an hour after the game’s emotional climax.
Overall: Heck of a variety of Steam games this year, eh? All of them were interesting and all were things I’m glad I got around to trying; generally I’ll recommend them if the description appeals to you.
Even the Ocean – By the same designers as the Anodyne series, I had expected this to be a Metroidvania and it’s really more of a puzzle platformer—the stages are linear and rely mostly on varying obstacles in each area rather than exploration-enabling powerups. The story and the mechanics unite around the concept of opposing energy forces, and instead of a life meter, you have an energy meter that moves in one direction or the other depending on the hits you take. If you get overbalanced in light/green, you can superjump. If you get too much dark/purple, you run faster. But if you exceed the meter in either direction, you die. I was reminded of Celeste (especially since a wall-jump is the other major mechanic) though it’s much less demanding. I appreciate that they offer a story mode (no challenge scenes) and a challenge mode (just challenge scenes!) but I’m annoyed that half the Achievements require playing them along with the regular mode. But yes, if I couldn’t handle the platforming, I think I would still have wanted to finished out the story. It centers about a power plant technician named Aliph who experiences a tragedy but nonetheless manages to become the hero and hope of her city…or not, because there’s a thinly-veiled metaphor about climate change and institutional power. And everyone’s queer, which is also nice. Generally recommended if you like puzzle-platformers.
Actraiser Renaissance – A remake of the SNES classic, this keeps the overall structure of the game (Platformer stage -> simulation sequence -> platformer stage for the six areas) but adds a lot more material in terms of both gameplay and plot. The simulation stages add mini platformer areas whenever you seal a monster lair, and also tower defense sequences throughout the simulation sequence. (Though not really tower defense—you can’t actually place the towers in a way that they’ll actually block the enemies and are expected to be moving around your heroes and casting miracles to handle the majority of the work.) The tasks for the simulation sequences are divided up into quests, some of which appear to be optional. Each area has a hero who you can direct during tower defense and who figures into the area’s plot. In general quality of life bonuses: The Master handles much better in the platforming stages and has more attack moves, including an up-thrust, down-attack, and combo-charge with invincibility frames. Magic has been improved, there’s a proper MP meter, and you can collect crystals for power-ups within each stage. (And replay stages if you miss them. Replaying stages is also required for the post-Act II quests in each region.) The Angel’s arrows arc towards enemies; and towns generate health, magic and materials pickups so there’s more for the Angel to do. And there’s an Easy mode that gives you infinite lives in the platform stages, which I always appreciate. (It’s unclear to me how much the difficulty has overall been reduced, but the platforming definitely feels easier than the original.) Overall, I think they did a great job of building on the bones of the original and making a bigger, fuller game out of it.
Telling Lies – A style-sequel to Her Story that follows the same setup: You have access to a large set of video files surrounding an event and are trying to figure out what happened; but you are hobbled by a stupid search system that only responds to keywords and only gives 5 responses to any keyword. So as you go through the videos, you need to take notes and guess keywords to try to figure out what will reveal more of the story to you. In this case, the story revolves around “David”, who we see moving into a new apartment and having conversations with various women—this clearly had a much bigger budget than Her Story, as it features more than a dozen actors at various points and numerous sets as well. I can’t talk more about the story without spoilers, but it’s clear that many, many lies are told over the course of it. I played the entire game without realizing you could rewind to before the keyword that starts the video, and probably would have gotten a bunch of plot threads a lot earlier if I had. (And without re-watching videos from earlier points, which I did a bunch.) The long gaps where a person is just listening are annoying and too frequent, even if the one-sided conversations are a good puzzle conceit. I had issues with the Steam Achievements not popping and I had to restart the game the first time because I got a black screen (which is apparently common). Overall, this is a clever "investigative puzzle" approach to interactive fiction, and I enjoyed it
Cathedral – Another metroidvania game I tried a couple of times but had real issues with the difficulty level of. If this has a plot, it doesn’t emerge until later; you’re a haunted suit of armor in a castle, go fight things. If you like NES-style of platformer play that’s only slightly less forgiving (there are a lot of respawn points, but each respawn costs you 10% of the money you’ve collected, and that adds up fast), this might appeal to you. Especially since you’ve only got enough health to take 2-3 hits at any point, and the enemy knockback is unforgiving when you’re trying to do platforming. Using a down-thrust to bounce off of things is an important move to master very early on; which made me think that the NES Ducktales game was an inspiration. But this is the third metroidvania game in a row that I’ve tried and been frustrated by—an easy mode (or an invincibility cheat!) could probably have let this hold my attention; as it was I beat the first boss but was immediately frustrated by the dexterity-based switch-puzzles right afterwards.
Life is Strange – An exploration puzzle / visual novel hybrid game (by Square-Enix!) that I’ve been meaning to play for something like eight years. A high school student, newly transferred to a ritzy private school in the hometown she had moved away from, discovers she has the strange ability to rewind time and can use it to help the people around her…and that disaster is about to strike the town in only a few days’ time. It’s interesting in a “Choose Your Own Adventure but on rails” sort of way, in that the choices you make do influence the story later, but the major plot beats and setpieces stay generally the same. That said, I don’t think they actually used the conceit well: The game warns you that an action will have consequences, but you never see those consequences soon enough to rewind and change them, so rewinding during conversations/actions mostly just lets you see the other side of the tree if you feel like it. And then, though a number of your choices echo into the last chapter, the final choice determines the ending and renders 100% of your actions moot: Either you save the girl and everyone else dies, or you save the town and the history of the entire week is rewritten. In the end, you realize it’s a mash-up of The Butterfly Effect with Final Destination, and while I thought the various gimmicks they came up with for the time travel were clever (and the creators probably loved that the alt-history sequences didn’t have any parts that were dependent on earlier decisions, so they only have to script and create one story for them), it’s not fair to build an entire game on “this action will have consequences” and introduce wide-scale change as “this will only screw things up more”, and then end it with a choice that always means your actions never had consequences but the wide-scale change is the only thing that actually saves the day. This was clever and inventive and much more like watching a season of TV than playing a video game, and I’m glad I played it but it’s not getting a replay. Oh, and screw the psychedelic too-dark mandatory stealth sequence in the final-final area an hour after the game’s emotional climax.
Overall: Heck of a variety of Steam games this year, eh? All of them were interesting and all were things I’m glad I got around to trying; generally I’ll recommend them if the description appeals to you.
