Rambling about Random Games I've Played so Far in 2021

I play a lot of video games. It's a hobby I fell back into thanks to the pandemic, rampant political nonsense plaguing our news, and general shitty circumstances that comes basic in everyone's life. 

I reviewed a few of these games in full like Sword and Sanctuary and Spiritfarer. However, there are a handful of games that I want to talk about but don't have enough material to warrant an entire blog.  So when all else fails: RAMBLING COMP REVIEW.  

Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze

There is nothing that relaxes me more than blueberry muffins, a breezy blanket, and a nice platformer. DKC Tropical Freeze was a platformer originally released for the Wii U. It was then ported to the Switch after a clear consensus that the Wii U was a sinking ship. 

I have a weird relationship with the Donkey Kong Country Returns series. My experience with these games usually follow an exact process. I will mildly enjoy the game on my first playthrough, finish it, and find it kind of forgettable. Then on my second playthrough, I will find the game far more enjoyable and consider it one of my favorites. It happened with the original DKCR and is now my favorite Wii game second to only Super Paper Mario. And now this year, it has also happened with Tropical Freeze. 

I think the similar reaction stems from how I played both games. When I first played both of them, I merely just played and beat the levels, but they are best experienced when trying to go for 100%. At the very least, if you intend on playing these games, you should aim for the KONG letters that are dispersed across each level. It opens up more interesting levels, more extras, and adds some challenge in each level. The collectables also give more opportunities to collect 1-ups. And you will need them because this game is hard. 

This is the hidden genius behind the Returns series. This game is hard. Yet, if you try to collect items and collectables, you will never run out of lives. In my second playthrough, I never got a game over and even finished the final level with a surplus of lives. What's great is that it retains the effectiveness of having a lives system without dealing with the typical problems of a lives systems. A good live system is suppose to add tension to your gameplay, and Tropical Freeze has that. It keeps you on your toes, and it doesn't put you in a pattern where you are just throwing yourself against a wall like you would in Super Meat Boy or Celeste. That said, because of the sheer abundance of 1-ups, you will never face the tedium of having to repeat large sections of gameplay from game overs or having to devolve into a slower playstyle to avoid dying on harder sections. It's the perfect balance of tension of having lives without the punishment of retro style platformers. 

The 100% system also doesn't feel like a chore. The completion system has multiple layers where you can cut yourself off whenever you want to. If you saw my Billy Hatcher review, you may have remembered how that game disincentivize to just get one particular collectable forcing you to get absolutely everything. In the DKCR games, you can have a very satisfactory experience just by getting one or the other. The most substantial completion bonus requires merely getting the KONG letters which are easily the most fun collectables in the game. Other completion tasks like puzzle pieces and time trials, tasks I am not a fan of, aren't shoved down your throat. It is there purely for people who relish in doing those type of challenges. 

I like a good comfort game to be leisurely but not so leisurely that it is undemanding. I don't want an Animal Crossing where I basically turn my brain off, but I don't want a Nioh 2 S&M session. Tropical Freeze is that perfect middle ground. It's environments are serene but the gameplay won't pull punches. It asks a lot from the player, but it isn't unreasonable where you have to take off your breezy blanket and focus squarely on the game. 

Tropical Freeze is easily my favorite Wii U game (second to Wind Waker HD). If you haven't played it, give it a go. 

Slay the Spire

Usually, when I think of hard, I don't normally think of the difficulty that Slay the Spire demands from its players. 

Slay the Spire is a card game roguelike where you ascend a spire. How you win is by building a deck of cards of attacks, defenses, and abilities while also managing your health to survive this long stretch. It's the type of game where chess planning is involved so you have to think one, two, dozens steps ahead. You got to think about which cards to use in preparation for later turns. You will ask questions like "is this an ideal time to use this potion," "should I take a hit now to avoid taking a hit later," etc. 

In turn, it demonstrates the best qualities of a typical roguelike. There's fun synergies. Some of which completely break the game alla Binding of Isaac. Failure is understandable with very few instances where luck is necessary. Key decisions are made constantly which keeps resets and subsequent playthroughs from feeling stale. 

If there is one problem that keeps this game from being my favorite roguelike of all time, it is the endgame of Slay the Spire. The endgame, also known as in-game as Act IV, is fucking brutal. The final boss especially is one of the few places where luck definitely plays a part in your success as very few character builds really work that can take them on. 

What frustrates me about Act IV, other than the fact that luck plays a major hand thus winning Act IV is not guaranteed, is that Act IV feels like the true ending of the game, and I wish that weren't the case. In Binding of Isaac, for instance, the equivalent of Act IV's final boss in terms of difficulty and luck factor would probably be Mega Satan. However, if you can't get to Mega Satan, there are still plenty of other endings that feel just as satisfactory as that one. In Slay the Spire, that is not the case. After a while, I just ended up using mods to give myself a fighting chance against the final level. I either had to do that or play early game in such a way where I had to keep resetting if I didn't get the right cards. It essentially made early game far more repetitive and stale which is a death sentence for a rogue like. 

Granted, losing in Act IV doesn't count as a loss in your stat totals. But intrinsically, it feels like a loss.  Act III should have given a more satisfactory conclusion. And frankly, Act III is more satisfying to complete since it feels more flexible in how to beat its challenge. It's still hard, but it doesn't feel so demanding of the player. 

Slay the Spire is awesome and definitely in my Top Five of all rogue likes. I have been playing it on and off for two years now, and I will likely continue doing so for a while longer.   

Star Fetchers 

I have been finding wonderful video game soundtracks lately. There's of course Friday Night Funkin' which has the added bonus of having a cute girl bobbing her head left and right. Unfortunately, that is not enough even for a compilation review. 

Then there is Star Fetchers. A new episodic video game about coming of age, decaying societies, and flailing your arms while holding a sword. 

Now because Star Fetchers is a fresh episodic video game, only the first episode is currently out at the time of writing. And if I learned anything from playing Kentucky Route Zero before it finished, it is likely that Star Fetchers won't reach its conclusion until the Earth is consumed by the Sun. That said, if we are judging the entire game based on its first episode, then there is some potential for a very promising game. 

Star Fetchers is a weird blend of Hotline Miami, No More Heroes, and a weird flash game you played in middle school. You play as a down on his luck guy who joins a gang that seeks to be the top dog among all the gangs in the town. You complete levels by thrusting yourself into buildings in these side scrolling layouts where you use your mouse to control your sword to stab enemies and deflect bullets. This is where the Hotline Miami comparison kicks in since it is difficult but the easy resets make character deaths less punishing. 

Overall, the gameplay is mindless fun and is only marred by the fact it feels incomplete due to the game only having one episode. Likewise, the story leaves a lot of intrigue. But again, who knows when the next proper episode will come out. Right now, I can say that this game is great. But like Kentucky Route Zero, that opinion could turn for the worse by an unsatisfactory end. I guess we will see. 

Thankfully, at least the soundtrack will hold me over. Star Fetchers currently has one of my favorite tracks I've ever heard in a game recently. I can almost call it my theme of 2021 for how much I play it on the daily. In fact, I am listening to it right now. 

That's all I can really say on the game. It's hard to talk about a television show when you watched one episode. It's even harder to talk about a game that only has one level. 

Betrayal at House on the Hill

The next game is not a video game but a board game. I have been dipping my toes into board games, and this was the first one that caught my eye. It must have caught many others as well since I have seen a lot of comments calling this their entry into more niche board games. 

Betrayal at House on the Hill (BHH) is a board game that involves exploring a haunted mansion. In video game terms, the board is a procedurally generated map (visualized by room tiles) that gives you items/abilities, events, and stat changes as you develop the mansion's layout. You play as a team exploring this map until one player discovers what is known as a haunting. The haunting then shifts the game from a cooperative one into an asymmetrical match where one player (known as the traitor) has to complete a task before the other players complete theirs. 

To put it simply, the game is split into two parts. One where you explore, build the mansion's layout, and gather resources that could potentially be useful for the second half, and one where the mansion turns into an arena for a chaotic back and forth of trying to finish the main objective first. 

Because it is procedurally generated, it is implied that every round plays very differently. And while that is true, BHH varies gameplay more than slapping random map generation on it. The key, and the thing that makes BHH special, is how the haunting shifts the gameplay is different almost every round. In other words, BHH's second halves will always have a different rule set. This is a weird comparison, but it reminds me of Kirby's Air Ride City Trial Mode. In that, you do essentially the same thing. You and other players explore a map gathering resources. And then afterwards, you do a challenge that is different every round that determines the winner. However, what BHH does to elevate that concept is far beyond Kirby's Air Ride. 

This is my favorite aspect and obviously the draw of this game. It's more than just "every round is different," it's that every round carries a deep layer of uncertainty and anticipation. Assuming you are playing blind, you will have no idea how the house will pull the rug under you. It's the closest a board game has come to feeling like Jumanji and Zathura where the board game almost feels alive. Because of this, BHH has an incredible atmosphere, and it is helped by the excellent game pieces such as the room tiles. I played about twenty rounds of this game at the time of writing, and I can still feel the excitement when the haunting starts and we pull out the books to figure out what happens next. 

BHH also has probably the best use of a "traitor" mechanic. In an age of Among Us, BHH avoids many of the things I dislike about those mechanics. First off, discovering the traitor doesn't instantly cost the traitor the game since the traitor is typically revealed before the beginning of the haunting. This means lying is never the core mechanic which can run stale as I will explain later. Secondly, in the hauntings where lying is a mechanic, the traitor still doesn't instantly lose if they are revealed. At worst, they are at a slight disadvantage, but it doesn't completely offset the balance. And thirdly, lying isn't the focus but rather the series of objectives themselves. My biggest problem with games like Among Us is that there is surprising little to explore with the social concept of lying. Yeah, you can bluff, you can double bluff, you can even triple dog bluff, but it doesn't evolve past knowing your opponents tells and doing the necessary things to weed out the liar. It doesn't take long to discover a basic mode of operation to find the bad guy in the group. It's unlike Poker where everyone has the potential to lie. Here, you know that only a certain number people is incentivized to lie. I love BHH is more focused on how different rules can interact with different map designs with different items at play, and it makes for such an interesting game. 

It's a board game played solely for the experience. It's a game where you don't mind losing since you are usually sucked into the cleverness of the game itself. And it is a good thing this game is not played for competitiveness sake, because otherwise this game would be a mess. 

While the game is well designed, it comes with the caveat that it is very luck based. Based on how on the map is designed, the players stats/items, and or the specific rules of the haunting, one side can completely dominant the second half. Objectives are usually dictated by having good dice rolls or getting good stats earlier in the game which are also given via RNG. The game will decide to place a critical objective point in the most inconvenient spot. A player can have all the items necessary without having to look for them. It's very Mario Party luck, and sometimes not in a good way. It makes certain rounds feel anticlimactic or unearned as one side will win in two turns. Some rounds we ended up continue playing for how quickly they ended. While I don't mind luck playing a factor into a game, it can in fact encourage fun improvisation, too much can undermine any consistency of skill. 

One other minute problem is that the rules are more complicated than other board games so having a player in the know will make earlier playthroughs run more smoothly. If not, then you might be initially overwhelmed by the first two playthroughs. 

Other than that, this is a very interesting game despite being over fifteen years old. While there are certainly games the remind me of BHH, BHH completely stands out as a unique experience. 

Infamous

I will say right now if you want a game that perfectly exudes 2009 era game design, then look no further than the original Infamous. 

Infamous is a Sucker Punch title and a game on my must play list for a while. I am a big fan of the Sly Cooper series and I like good third person combat, so I was looking forward to playing this one for a while. In short, I was surprised by what I like and didn't like in the game. 

I was shocked, no pun intended, by how much I liked the story despite having a lot of things I typically hate in a video game story like unnecessary grittiness, forced story sequences to have extra game levels, and dumb humor meant for teenagers. Despite that, it managed to be pretty engaging. I like the main character a lot. He seems to have a solid motivation and his actions make sense in the world. I thought I would hate the villain but he turned out pretty solid even able to build intrigue for the second game. I found myself playing the game not for the game itself but to see what will happen next in the story. 

Because the game itself is a bit sloppy. It wasn't a deal breaker, but it was a slog at times. 

Infamous is an open world action game. And usually, in the better open world games, traversal should be either efficient or entertaining. Sometimes both. Infamous doesn't really have that. There are two major traversal options that you get throughout the game. One is riding ziplines which is the fastest way to get around. Unfortunately, if you fall off these ziplines or don't find them enjoyable to ride them then you are relegating to slower options of getting around. And unless you are clever with your death warps, there isn't any fast travel system to mitigate this. The other option is your hover ability which is unfortunately too slow for it to be fun either. 

Thankfully, the map isn't too big for traversal to be horrible, but it was still an unpolished experience. The same can be said for the combat. 

Now granted, I am the type of gamer that doesn't like to use up resources. I hate using Vulneraries in Fire Emblem, and I don't like using potions in Pokémon unless I absolutely have to. In Infamous, I despised using my special abilities because it wasted my meter. I mainly used my pea shooter. Now, this worked in some areas but other areas really encourage you to use your powers. This meant every once in a while I had to take time to scrounge around for electrical resources which threw a wedge into the pacing. It was tedious, and I hated it. 

Thankfully, the act of using my pea shooter was fun. Landing headshots feels satisfying. I like the surprising amount of enemy diversity except maybe the ones that spam explosive weapons. Overall, it was a pretty middling experience. 

And with that, I am done for today. Uhhhhh....God I hate how I end my blogs. *end transmission*