The critical path in Metroid Prime 1 does have some really rough bits in its back half, I vaguely recall hitting a point where after a big encounter the only way forward was with I think the grapple beam, which could now be gotten right near where you started on the planet at which point you just travel straight back to where you were. That this shortly lead to the aforementioned color-coded pirates was the game’s clear low point.
That said when I revisited the game some years back I did still find it overall still rather enjoyable. I could see Super Mario Sunshine exceeding it based solely on how well I could manage the camera. I have sailed across the awful Wind Waker sea enough times for three lifetimes, I still maintain it is the Zelda game that nailed all the small touches a game needs to be great while forgetting to do half the things needed to make sure the game was even good.
I got so sick of Metroid Prime’s bullshit that I just YouTubed the rest of it because I refused to continue to subject myself to it.
I finished both Sunshine (though only years later after I initially bounced off it) and Wind Waker (note: I only played the remake of the latter which I understand gets rid of some of the more annoying things).
Guess where I am! Just take a guess. I think I am done because I have done this section twice (I died getting the superbomb) and doing a third time ugghhhh.
it struck me as a damn fine thing playing it again last year for the first time since launch though it sure does have those bum notes but also, rudie, imo, this is a bad game to play
lol speaking as someone who bounced off it a few times over the course of a decade and ultimately left with pretty much no interest in the other Primes cuz it sure did seem that this particular approach doubled down could only = pain but anyway, this game is better than Eternal Darkness I just want that on the record!
Bloodstained is very uncharismatic compared to older Castlevania games, it feels like an US/euro made homage to Castlevania that missed the mark. Miriam looks wrong, the music blows, IDK…Miriam getting brutally impaled every time she gets a new power…. It’s not great. And I -loved- every teenager shooting themselves in the head over and over in Persona 3
Minor gripe but backer rooms and tie-in equipment and any kind of preorder or promo bonus should all be opt-in in every game.
I already don’t want to have a treasure chest in my house that gifts me free healing items as a thank you for the 1 millionth download. So this powerful Shantae equipment added to my inventory at the beginning of this game without asking my permission is heresy
Little Kitty Big City is a very good game to play with a 4 year old. The cat’s movement and animations are VERY cute and the range of simple activities is just right. It feels similar to Untitled Goose Game with a cute cat instead of an asshole goose.
I’m kind of offended on behalf of the animal kingdom for human devs replacing a goose with a cat and having the cat be way nicer TBH, even cats wouldn’t paint themselves in that light
“Would you like to remove all semblance of, not only challenge, but flow and acceleration by having gaudy gold versions of all the most powerful items airdropped on you right at the beginning of the game?” No, no I would not
I managed to get through Spire and powered through Serenia. Myst IV’s final world is a lot more straightforward and is comparatively simple despite so many characters running around the place. You have to get either a fire-, water-, or plant-aspected spirit guide to aid you in traversing the dreamscape which felt like a Luc Besson adaptation of the Pokémon starter choice. Serenia has a mirror world in a non-material dreamscape called (shockingly enough) Dream. The Dream dream sequence plays over a licensed track from Peter Gabriel which came as I was getting frustrated with the puzzles again. It had an oddly soothing effect on me as dated and strange as it is for the tone of a Myst game.
I get to the very final puzzle and… the run is dead. This final section has a lot of cutscene triggers that are required for progress, and I must’ve missed one because the final Archimedes principle water puzzle has not opened the door it should open. I reset the water flow, I went everywhere, the game is just hard locked. Time to watch the end on Youtube.
Well, Sirrus the dream-brainflea tries to bodyhop into Yeesha. You kill him and Achenar helps by sacrificing himself in the process. It is an odd feeling for the series to end with Achenar’s redemption (sort of, he helped put Yeesha in a nearly fatal position) and Sirrus as irredeemably evil. It feels like Achenar is given a primal revelation and respect for life through hunting in his prison world but if your defining character trait is you are intelligent like Sirrus then you are surely a mad scientist and want only to break out of prison to enact world conquest.
It at least throws ambiguity on Atrus’ reformation through imprisonment. It sort of worked but also completely failed. To such an extent his young daughter was nearly killed. Maybe don’t keep the linking books to prison worlds in the house? Maybe have several ages establish a firebreak between you and the prisons? Anyway, Atrus shows up to say to the player for a fourth time how bad he feels about how everything went. His young daughter now seriously traumatised and both his sons dead.
I’m not sure whether to continue with Myst/Uru. I hear good things about Uru but I’d miss the lack of FMV. It seems like the series had a bit of a Kingdom Hearts moment spreading itself across too much media that you have to hoover it all up to be able to understand a not so satisfying resolution to it all. I’ll set it aside for now and maybe pick up where I left off while dusting the [Steam] shelves one day.
Thankfully for Bloodstained the backer items are all bad, worse than any other option you could get at the start of the game, and after expending time and resources to power them up they are also still worse than any end-game options you could have access to.
Playing the new Riven remake. Getting to the schoolhouse and figuring out the numbering system made me feel like a genius; turning around and seeing all of the learning materials for the D’ni script made me feel like a dullard.
all of the d’ni materials are easter eggs more than something you could reasonably decipher from within the game. It’s not just an alphabetic cipher. The d’ni script has 35 characters, ultimately derived from the numbering system
my standard advice for riven is that you should endeavor to close doors behind you after entering rooms. This is just as true in the remake as it was in the original
i started playing Cavern of Dreams on a whim after Psuedoregalia got me wanting to look at more of these retro 3D nostalgia platformers to kind of try to unpack and understand this whole nostalgia moment for these types of games. and this game is actually quite strange in a lot of ways that are sort of hard to convey, but is kind of hard to sell.
ostensibly it’s a Banjo Kazooie-themed nostalgia platformer for kids, and like the tone of everything in the writing and what you’re interacting with more or less echoes that. but then there’s that kind of obsession with slightly jank movement mechanics that comes from the fixation everyone has with Mario 64 and (presumably) the need to attract speedrunners to the game. this just doesn’t feel like something kids would really enjoy in spots because the movement can be kinda weird. and some of the levels kind of veer off into slight weirdness of theming that feels different from just trying to do a straight Banjo Kazooie imitation. but not enough for it to really distinguish itself as fully its own thing either.
i think what’s most confusing is it’s also more visually arresting/has some more cool and unique environments than any of other nostalgia platformers i’ve seen. this alone makes me want to continue playing and like makes me realize how much just having cool/unique spaces can keep me going.
anyway i’m kind of stuck right now and i’m not fully compelled by what this game is doing to want to continue (tho it doesn’t seem like it’s that much longer), but i also think some of these environments are really great looking enough to where maybe it’s worth it if for nothing else than to take notes on some of the environmental/visual design. but yeah i dunno - not distinguishable enough to really recommend but also kind of too interesting in one or two ways to really dismiss either. it has a lot of the qualities i wish a game like Psuedoregalia had a lot more of, even though i think it’s kind of a less interesting/worse experience overall. if nothing else, i hope people who are making better games steal some of the visual design ideas from this.
