Finally made it to Act 3. I now understand why I had so much trouble with that conductor gauntlet and that was because I didnt have the tacks, clockwork bugs or conch shell tools at the time. They do a lot of heavy lifting.
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strangely enjoyed the greymoor bird gank. i think i like it when these games force me to stay airborne longer than i’m used to. (maybe i’d enjoy shovel knight after all?)
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The game is starting to get slightly unfun again. I’m now stuck between a 3 wave gauntlet and a remix of a boss fight from earlier in the game and they just aggravating enough to make me consider walking away. I’m not interested in proving my endurance at the coral tower or perfecting the boss run to the Green Prince over and over. At this point theres not much in the way of new tools or upgrades to sniff out but I am in need of more memory lockets so I can have more complete options available.
There is a way to cut down on that gauntlet… but I still hated it and would recommend just opening the shortcuts to making the latter option quicker. Def not at the game’s strongest point though.
silkslop
it’s not enraging me too much. it’s like “ooh, you got me there, i’ll push back on that next time”, rather than “where did that even come from?!!”
the needle and thread motif is apt since it certainly asks you to weave.
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their business model is baffling. steadily churn out bugtroids for the cost of like $15 every seven years and just be good enough at it that everyone on earth buys it, i guess
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I’m still getting filtered by the act 3 Heart bosses. I understand the patterns but they ask far more of my mental endurance than I’m willing to give at this point. I’m about to just give in and go for the wanderer face tank build/style. Im more of a reaper bug at heart but I wish it had a little more damage per swing just to cut down on having to go through more cycles than the other crests.
I hope the DLC adds some more doodads to help even out the final stretch.
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I think this game coming out on Game Pass probably led a significant number of people to not realize just how good it looks on Switch 2. on that platform, I strongly suspect it will have been the first 120fps 2D game that most of its audience will have played, and the colors/viewport size in particular seem much more closely calibrated for that platform than for PC.
I maintain my skepticism of its design vis its reputation, but its presentation actually does seem much more singular in this context
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I’m trying to dig myself out of playing an old flash game by starting Hollow Night, a game with flash game aesthetics. I made it past the area I stopped at previously. It’s fine. Somebody said “empty calories” earlier and that feels accurate. I don’t know why half the rooms exist other than padding. I like some of the encounters and pogoing feels as fun as it did in Ducktales. I don’t think this game overcomes any of its influences to stand out on its own, but that’s okay.
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Finally got to the real credits in Silksong. On the whole a fine game with some great vibes, controls and world design but that last act was rough. Far to many bosses and gauntlets that undercut the adventure vibes that held it up for the first 80% of game. Can’t quite nail down what the solution would be other than 10-20% cut on boss life just so they don’t last so long. Im not a fan of the parts where they just want to push my mental endurance after I’ve demonstrated my understanding of the challenges presented. Thankfully skipped the coral memory due to there being an alternate option in another green place.
Anyways glad to put it down and see how that DLC shakes things up a few weeks/months? later.
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For better or worse, it’s playing the long game. Stuff is sparse at first but that changes as you get deeper and deeper. It’a a very intentional experience.
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my ultimate take away from Hollow Knight is the juice isn’t quite worth the squeeze. it needed some ideas of its own, rather than just inheriting mechanics from other, bolder videogames past. it’s greatest strengths are in consistency, competence, restraint. but in terms of new ideas? it’s threadbare. mechanically, it has nothing new to say
Silksong is more fun as a videogame, but I’m not sure it reckons with the above issue in a satisfying way, either
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playing Silksong on a handheld finally charmed me sufficiently to get a ways into the game which no other way of approaching these had, but ultimately I do agree with a lot of the conflicting opinions in this thread— it’s both one of the best “straight” Vanias I’ve played in a long time (ie not Animal Well or Rain World which were doing something different) but also a very derivative and unfortunately somewhat humorlessly punishing Dark Souls riff.
if anything this makes me finally appreciate the perspective of the 2010 indie heads who resented Dark Souls for making videogame-ass video games more critically favored at the expense of experimental stuff again. like, damn, you got me to fight Last Judge for an hour while watching TV in spite of everything, credit where due.
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I don’t think I would have picked it up again if I wasn’t playing it portable. It definitely makes it more palatable that way. Little critters belong on little screens.
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It has ideas of its own, they’re just also restrained
The way enemies are always hovering just barely out of range and forcing you to take risks feels very distinctive to me. I feel like the enemy AI that makes this possible must be one of the most complex in all 2d games.
(Speaking about Silksong here, I don’t remember the moment-to-moment of Hollow Knight anymore)
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predicting i might finish this a year from now. it’s ok, i just have to have absolutely nothing else to do.
i like the hanging rope physics and the divekick feels real good when you use it to finish a boss.
You know what, Silksong is pretty good. I hit Act II and I like it far more than Hollow Knight.
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same but I ran out of gas immediately in act 2
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I think I’m going to need to start slowing down.
Going through the map has started to feel grating and I can feel the scales shifting from interest to compulsion.
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