It's been a hot minute since my first foray into Microsoft's Game Pass service. And when I started this new round of Game Pass titles, I was expecting another simple dive into what I believe are a solid selection of titles.
However, that simplicity is muddied what with recent events regarding Microsoft's business decisions. It seems the recovering alcoholic had a relapse, and he is fucking the cats again.
It's a shame too. While I didn't think Microsoft was a god send lately, I felt their practices felt like a step up from the predatory behavior seen during the 360 and XBOX One era. They had my good will. But man, Microsoft has demonstrated that there isn't a knight in shining armor under capitalism.
But I'm going to spare you all another anti-corporation rant. It's election season, so I imagine you have had your fill of political correspondence. For now, let's talk about the games that were made not by businessmen but by artists (with varying degrees of quality).
Lies of P
Anyway, this game feels like the inverse outcome of that Gollum game. You have a premise that's admittedly very weird. I mean, a fucking Pinocchio game where they don't even spell it out in the title likely cause they hated having to google the name to spell it right (no I'm not projecting). It's edgy. And yes, that is more in the spirit of the book. But, what wasn't in the spirit of the book is shonen anime fights and implied puppet fucking.
But execution is everything, and Lies of P is not Gollum. It's no Bloodborne either but...well I will get to that.
Now, I feel like I could do a long ass review of this game, and I got nine other games to cover. So I will mainly be talking about one aspect of the game. But as a quick round up of the things I like: I enjoy the Fable Arts mechanic. The story, while more heavy handed than an average Soulsborne, was well told. The themes are solid and elevates the Pinocchio premise from the surface level. And yeah, it's fun to stab things. That goes a long way with these kind of games.
Now for the point of contention. It goes without saying that I like difficult games. You don't like a Soulsborne game for just the fucking item descriptions. However, it also goes without saying that difficulty shouldn't feel like a slog.
The main difficulty comes with the game's bosses. It's an unusually common occurrence that bosses come in two phases. I've seen people defend this with the typical "get gud" adage, but the thing is that multi phase bosses, like any game design device, doesn't always work.
The thing with Soulsborne difficulty is that the best entries are always fair. That means that anything that's difficult is balanced to keep it from being oppressive. Need examples? Well, let's go through some of the hardest moments in the original Dark Souls.
1. First, the Catacombs is considered one of the hardest sections in the game, especially because you have access to it at the beginning of the game. However, this is tail end by a comparatively easy boss and a permanent upgrade to your healing flasks.
2. Ornstein and Smough are some of the hardest bosses in the series. There are two of them, and there is a second phase after killing one of them. Yet, they don't have a large health pool, and their attacks aren't dodge heavy gauntlets like in later souls games.
3. The Bell Gargoyles is a multi-fight, but the second Gargoyle has half health.
4. Tomb of the Giants, another difficult section because of its low visibility, can be tackled with multiple solutions to provide light sources.
5. The Four Kings, a multi-fight boss and with punishing magic attacks, have slow attacks and can be countered by an aggressive play style.
And when there isn't a balance, the lopsided difficulty always offers a point. Either they provide some story or thematic purpose like Soul of Cinder from Dark Souls 3 or they are optional like Sister Friede from Dark Souls 3 or Malenia from Elden Ring.
Lies of P rarely has a purpose for their many two-phase fights. And because of that, you are faced with the brunt of the problems two phase fights tend to bring. You have to maintain skill for a longer period of time making difficulty more about endurance. The Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne, what many consider the hardest encounter in the game, takes about four minutes to complete. The thing is that the average two phase fight in Lies of P are also about four minutes. And near the end, you have to fight three two phase bosses one after another. Bosses where you each have to learn their move set, grind the timings, and gain the muscle memory. You can see how this can become a slog. In short, the difficulty isn't the boss design but that you have to maintain composure for a long period of time. This is extra bad when the first phase is mastered, so attempts to get through the second phase feels tedious. It's no different to that egregious run back from the bonfire to fight False King Allant in Demon's Souls.
Lies of P rarely has a purpose for their many two-phase fights. And because of that, you are faced with the brunt of the problems two phase fights tend to bring. You have to maintain skill for a longer period of time making difficulty more about endurance. The Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne, what many consider the hardest encounter in the game, takes about four minutes to complete. The thing is that the average two phase fight in Lies of P are also about four minutes. And near the end, you have to fight three two phase bosses one after another. Bosses where you each have to learn their move set, grind the timings, and gain the muscle memory. You can see how this can become a slog. In short, the difficulty isn't the boss design but that you have to maintain composure for a long period of time. This is extra bad when the first phase is mastered, so attempts to get through the second phase feels tedious. It's no different to that egregious run back from the bonfire to fight False King Allant in Demon's Souls.
In the end, difficulty isn't inherently good. It can still suffer from the lack of variety and purpose.
But anyway, I still recommend Lies of P. Don't let my 700+ word ramble of one singular problem discourage you. If you need a Soulsborne, you can certainly do worse than Lies of P. It gets my Ebert thumbs up.
Hypnospace Outlaw
In Hypnospace Outlaw, you play as a moderator on the 90s Internet. It's a very authentic depiction. Or rather, it's more a stylized parody of what 90s Internet was like. In either case, the game's goal is to provide the experience of having to navigate through 90s Internet forums and all the little eccentricities of the time. When I figure this would be premise, I listed all the little jokes in my head and was disappointed when I learned I foresaw almost every one.
It's a game whose novelty is very thin. At first, I was into the premise of navigating the Internet, and I like the little tricks you have to do in order to find those Internet hooligans.
But after like the first three missions or so, it becomes kind of boring. I think the rub is unlike Her Story, you don't have a goal you're working towards. It mainly follows a Papers Please structure where you do work and random story events are sprinkled in. A decent idea for a premise. However, the thing about Papers Please is that it had stakes and dilemmas, and that is frankly harder to translate to being an Internet moderator. I wonder if this game was made by a Reddit mod. Only they would be delusional enough to find the similarities between deciding the fate of someone's life and banning someone for self-advertising.
I was never given a reason to care. Once the novelty wore off, it doesn't do enough to hold your attention. It becomes a series of gags of cheap retro Internet humor. To be fair, the game is really short, but I wonder if it would have benefitted from being shorter.
TOEM
I got some mild Banjo Kazooie influences. The game is very simple with most challenges being solved in a handful of inputs. All the characters ooze a lot of personality down to even the one off characters. It's great stuff. Unfortunately, TOEM isn't Banjo Kazooie. Granted, very few are.
The thing that stuck with me about TOEM is that, as charming as it was, there wasn't anything I would describe as replayable. With the way it's structured and the likability of the characters, you would think it would be a game I would like to come back to for a second playthrough, but that isn't the case.
I believe the culprit is the lack of opportunities for skill expression. All challenges are simple puzzles that never evolve beyond the first playthrough. I think of Bubble Goop Swamp from Banjo Kazooie. I recall my first time playing that level and finding it to be the hardest thing ever. Now, it is one of my favorite levels. Things I once struggled with I can now dance on. With TOEM, the way I complete one section on my first playthrough would likely be how I solve it on my second playthrough.
Of course, that's the rub with most cozy games. They are not the place you go to for challenge. I could wish TOEM was a platformer or contained some challenge, but I know that's not what the game is going for.
Escape Academy
Escape Academy, as the name suggests, is a series of escape room puzzles. It's one of those games that I appreciate because you can tell they went the extra mile. I didn't expect to like the side characters, but I did. Likewise, the visuals, puzzles, and atmosphere are pretty good. I just wanted basic escape the room puzzles, and I ended up getting an actual game with it.
Puzzles aren't all bangers. But at the very least, they have creative theming and gimmicks to them. If you can forgive me for spoiling a level, one puzzle frames the escape room as the player providing intel for a prison break mission. Granted, I don't know if this is just typical of real life escape rooms. I don't go out much, but I was pleasantly surprise that they put the work in. I thought the game would reflect the schlocky premise.
But going back to the puzzles' problems, it's clear the game is intended for its co-op mode. Certain puzzles forces you to remember a solution that's on the other side of the room. This is annoying as you have to take notes or a photo which I always found tedious. But if it was co-op, this could be mitigated by jolly cooperation. Likewise, a level where you and another person are competing against each other would be more exciting if you were competing against your friend. With the way the puzzles being designed for it's co-op mode, it's strange that solutions are the same. It has a Portal 2 problem where I need to wait like ten years if I can properly replay it. Speaking of which, I need to play Portal 2 again.
So yeah, play it with co-op if you want the full experience.
Gris
This is on the same brand of games like Artful Escape or Night in the Woods where it has no justification being a video game. It feels like they were either financially incentivized to make it into a video game, or because games are a young medium with far less competition of arthouse narratives. I can tell you right now that if Gris was submitted to Sundance it would get laughed out of the room.
Gris lacks the depth to make it on par with established mediums like cinema or literature. But even ignoring those, it lacks the depth to even compete with its peers. If you ask a bunch of high school students to write an AP essay on Gris, every single essay would say the same thing because there is only one takeaway you can gleam from this narrative!
"But M. Rambles! Not every narrative has to be highly interpretative. What about the ones where they explore a single thing?"
First off numb nuts. If you are going to explore one thing, you got to explore the hell out of it. Gris doesn't say much about its theme of grief. In fact, there are times where it contradicts itself. The game supposed to depict the harrowing process of grieving, yet the gameplay having no challenge runs contrary to that theme. I know the game's intent was to make it accessible, but it failed to understand that challenge can bring the player closer to the narrative. At the very least, you can make the character look challenged. An example that comes to mind is Shadow of Colossus. The game I wouldn't call difficult. Yet, when the main character climbs, he struggles immensely to the point of looking painful. The act from the player is not challenging at all, but it is challenging for him. And because of that, we connect with him as a character. I don't get the same thing from Gris.
It all comes down to the game having no meaningful interactivity. It doesn't embrace the medium and feels like a glorified animation reel. You can ignore the literal interactivity expected from a video game, but Gris doesn't have any interactivity. The game is extremely abstract, so there is nothing to connect to. Nothing to engage or interact with emotionally. No personality from the main character. No vulnerability in her struggle. The only emotion I felt during the three hours of playing were frustration and boredom.
One of my favorite films is Three Colours: Blue. If want a story that succeeds where Gris fails, this is the one.
I didn't expect to hate it as much as I did. The animation and production value were there, but the heart wasn't.
Rainbow Billy
However, other than Bug Fables, there hasn't been a Paper Mario clone I thoroughly enjoyed. And honestly, Rainbow Billy hasn't changed that. Though to its credit, it was a valiant attempt.
In Rainbow Billy, you are tasked to befriending animals through Paper Mario style combat, puzzles, and quirky dialogue. It's the combat where Rainbow Billy attempts to separate itself from the formula. Rather than a handful of partners, you have a litter of animal friends alla Pokemon that can be placed on a grid. Each animal has attacks in the form of shapes. And then, you must match said shapes to the enemies'. And then, you realize you were tricked into playing the video game equivalent of a baby shape sorter toy and feel like a complete dumbass.
The gameplay becomes very repetitive after a while. I think now people are becoming more aware that Paper Mario's combat is a lot more dynamic than at first glance. Many will say, including myself, that the Mario RPG games are babies' first rpg, but that is not giving enough credit to some of the game's complexities. I figure I should save this for a potential Paper Mario Favorite Game Retrospective. So instead, let me give just one example.
In combat, the player is rarely deprived of interaction. The player's turn obviously has the battle menu, but there are also audience members that throw hazards and items that players have to be mindful of as well as the action commands when a character winds up an attack. During the enemies turn, the player is still able to block or counter attack avoiding the usual JRPG problem of pacing being marred by waiting for the enemies turn to resolve.
In Rainbow Billy, there is less interaction. Aside from a few gimmick battles, players don't have any way to sway the outcome of the enemies turn. It is a cycle of placing your characters on the board followed by a series of repetitive mini games. There's no special moves, no environmental alterations, no equipment to customize your playstyle.
In fairness, Rainbow Billy does employ its own decision making by giving your animal friends special effects when placed on the front row. However, very few ended up being useful during my playthrough and in fact made certain moments more inconvenient.
The inconvenience I could see being a interesting mechanic as well being thematically appropriate. The game's narrative revolves around mental health, and mechanics are themed around the subject matter. You don't fight enemies, you befriend them, and you can further upgrade them by working through their struggle. So it would a fun idea to have your partners actually hinder you in some way because of their insecurities. Unfortunately, it rarely gets that creative, and any mental health aspect is normally portrayed through dialogue. And if I were to review Rainbow Billy more harshly, it's presumptuous how easy they make overcoming mental health. Granted, very few games have properly tackled the subject matter, but that is another topic for another time.
Rainbow Billy has a lot of potential. I wasn't kidding when I said Rainbow Billy put up a valiant effort. One look at the visuals and character designs shows the team behind this have a lot of heart. And after some reading, I learned how much care they put into accurately portraying the main protagonist as non-binary. A+ on that.
I think if they made a Rainbow Billy 2 and fleshed out the mechanics. You would have quite the rock solid Paper Mario clone.
So not for me, but it was a noble attempt by a sincere game dev studio.
Hi-Fi Rush
Around the time I started Hi-Fi Rush, I was also playing No More Heroes 3 for the first time. I'm a big fan of the first No More Heroes and was promptly disappointed in how boring No More Heroes 3 was. To then go from No More Heroes 3 to Hi-Fi Rush felt like a splash of fucking water.
I can't recall the last time a series of cutscenes were actually creatively composed. Im so used to cutscenes being these Horizon Zero Dawn drab scenes lacking in any sense of style or richness. Here, from the moment the game turns on, you have some of the most wildly creative visuals where every frame feels like how I remember my old Saturday morning cartoons feeling like.
The game oozes charm. It's hard not to find the characters, the energy, and the world immensely likable. Sure, it's not the most original project. It feels like an amalgamation of Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, and the film Robots. However, execution is everything, and they execute this game beautifully. I love the slapstick. I like how affable our main protagonist is despite being cocky and annoying. I like how lovely his foil Peppermint is despite being the stereotypical hard ass, straight and narrow female archetype. You got your autistic robot. You got your cute red head with an accent. You got robot workers who are for some reason programmed to quiet quit which doesn't make sense, but it's hilarious.
As you can tell by how I'm just listing things I like, this game is a well made package.
If I had to complain, I would say the gameplay is simply serviceable. And in fairness to Hi-Fi Rush, it has steep competition in its genre. I think of games like Wonderful 101 or Bayonetta which have such polished combat systems. Maybe if I decide to play with the combat more that might change. But from my first play through, I never evolved far from spamming light attack with the occasional special move.
Also, this is totally too much to ask in a world of DLC horse armor and loot boxes, but can I have better costumes that I can wear during the first play through? Why tease that shit and then not have it available until you beat the game. Also, this is a Bethesda published game? Where my Bethesda themed costumes? I WANT DOVAHKIIN JAMMING TO NINE INCH NAILS!
The way I would describe this game would be like a life changing roller coaster. You know how roller coaster enthusiasts have their one roller coaster they gush about. This game is going to be that for a lot of people. It may not stick with you in the long term. But damn, will you feel great after riding it.
No More Heroes 3
So speak of the devil, just as I was finishing mentioning No More Heroes 3 in the last entry, the game was added to Game Pass! So now, I can save time by talking how much of a piece of shit this game is.
For those unfamiliar with No More Heroes, in it you fight master assassins in a boss rush structure alla Shadow of the Colossus and Furi. It's very simple. But like Furi and Shadow of the Colossus, the simplicity of the structure is merely a device to tell a worthwhile story. In Shadow of the Colossus, it's used to explore the lengths humanity will go for their own interests even if it means destroying irreplaceable life. In No More Heroes, it is used to explore masturbation jokes and pop culture references.
That said, even in No More Heroes 1, there was a heart that kept No More Heroes from being just a juvenile action game. Travis Touchdown, while a foul mouthed bitchy protagonist, had a traumatic back story and moral backbone that gave the game a nice coat of sincerity without it being too forced. I have no idea where that shit went with No More Heroes 3.
They have so many directions they could have taken this concept and instead chose the most generic sequel premise of all time. No More Heroes in space. Wonderful. Good to know this series that I respect is on the same standing as bloody Friday the 13th.
There's no heart to No More Heroes 3. All the bosses are either characters from previous games or highly forgettable alien creatures. I can remember every single boss from No More Heroes and all their eccentricities and how they inform the story. I couldn't tell you a fucking thing from No More Heroes 3 other than I played a musical chairs for some reason.
A good comparison to what made No More Heroes 1 special is the Dr. Peace fight. There are no wink winks or cheap pop culture references. It's just one human conversation and insight into an interesting man. While No More Heroes 1 has its fair share of silliness such as Destroyman, it had its share of touching or disturbing moments such as Summers and Bad Girl respectively.
It felt like I was playing a produced depiction of a man child playing in his sand box. "Look, the aliens say fuck, and there's time travel, and there's boobs, and there's giant crocodiles you shoot with mortars! Pew Pew!"
Suda 51 was always a guy I felt maintained a respectable distance to his nostalgia and comfort alla Tarantino. But unlike Tarantino, Suda 51 immerse himself more and more into his bad habits to where he flat out shoehorns in a dedicated scene to have meta cameo from one of his favorite film directors.
Travis Touchdown felt like a mature self reflection of the sadness of nerd culture. The Travis Touchdown of No More Heroes 3 gives up any pretense and is merely another exercise in it.
Little Kitty, Big City
This is like when George Miller made Babe. It's a complete 180 in tone. It would be like if Junji Ito directed a Peppa Pig episode. It gives a premise that most people would brush off and makes it into an interesting piece of media.
In Little Kitty, you play as a tax accountant.
Nah, I'm just kidding. You play as a kitty who falls off a tall building and must climb back to get back home. From the premise, I thought it was going to be some annoying Breath of the Wild thing where there is a climbing meter. Instead, the game feels closer to a collectathon alla Banjo Kazooie. And because I reference Banjo Kazooie in a game review, another angel gets its wings.
Another comparison is Stray since both have a kitty cat protagonist, and both make constant effort to reinforce common kitty cat antics like sleeping in random places and being cute.
However, Little Kitty trades graphical prowess and animations in favor of personality and a satisfying gameplay loop.
For that reason, I ended up preferring Little Kitty over Stray despite this game having some jank including a glitch that caused me to restart from the very beginning. So, this game must be special if it tilted me in such an aggravating way, and I am still willing to recommend it.
You can tell the guy who worked on Portal 2 and Half Life 2 had his fingers in this too. The dialogue has a wit where the kitty speaks with other animals about humans through their limited frame of mind. The setting feels very lived in. And overall, the game constantly encourages you to do funny cat things.
Also, the collectables are fun to collect! This is a thing that bothers me about most collectathons is not really giving the collectables a sense of reward. In Banjo Kazooie, (there it is again), everything felt important and helped you progress. They feel satisfying to collect. In Kitty, they have the same sense of reward. You got fish that allow you to explore more parts of the map. You got trash and bird feathers that act as currency for certain missions. And most important of all, you got hats that your kitty can wear. If you want an easy way to impress me in your collectathon, then you can do that by giving your player character a variety of costumes. It works in Mario Odyssey and A Hat in Time, and it works in this.
So if you need a decent collectathon, this one will fill up your time. It's almost on the cusp of breaking out of the mid-tier platformer status, but doesn't quite reach it. Still, I had fun, and I felt the creative vision this game is trying to evoke. The vision of harassing random people while being cute about it.
Firewatch
Now, I put off this game for quite some time. Right when the game was announced, I had my eyes set on it. It's from the leads the headed Telltale's The Walking Dead which might be one of the most critically acclaimed game narratives of all time. At the very least, I really liked it. And for a brief period of time, The Walking Dead was the standout narrative among the deluge of crap that was seen at the time.
You can probably imagine the reception Firewatch garnered. Having to follow a critical darling is a tough mountain to climb, so the reviews were all over the place.
I can sort of see that mixed reception. Because in the grand scheme of things, Firewatch's narrative feels more like a mid tier Hitchcock movie than a grand follow up to one of the greatest games from the 2010s. That being said, I still kind of like it.
The way I see it. Firewatch is a good game that didn't have enough ideas to make it into a great game.
The story, while well told, didn't seem to quite justify being a game. A lot of time I will play the game and wonder how the interactivity breathes new life into a story that could easily adapted into a film. I think about the scenes in Walking Dead where you had to make dialogue choices that could affect the story. Granted, they didn't make drastic changes to the narrative, but they informed your relationship with the narrative.
Not that the game was bad. I had a decent time maneuvering through the wilderness with nothing but a map and a compass. However, it's a mechanic that merely interrupts the story rather than enhances it. Around the time the game came out, people had a vitriol for the quote-on-quote walking simulators. It makes sense to see this get in the crossfires. It's better than most walking simulators but still falls into the same trappings.
It also reminds me of period where games were trying to match the narrative artistry of film. The problem is film is a medium with its own strengths and weaknesses. As much as I love the Uncharted games, I feel those games hold up story wise because they work as games. If you don't believe me, you should watch the Uncharted movie and find out.
While Firewatch isn't the worst example of this, it serves as a reminder that game narratives strive when they embrace their mediums. Sure, games can't match the subtly of good filmmaking, but people also forget that filmmaking can't match the powerful connection of interactivity. I think if Firewatch had that type of magic that Walking Dead had. I don't think it would be just another random title on Gamepass.
Anyway, my verdict is to watch a longplay rather than play it. There is some good dialogue and the story is decent stuff. This is the game equivalent to a Sunday watch, a really long Sunday watch.
Other Games I Tried on Gamepass
A Little to the Left: I already have enough annoyance following my own OCD rituals. I ain't following someone else's.
Superliminal: Not my kind of puzzle game.
Genesis Noir: Maybe there is some abstract aficionados that might get more out of this, but not me.
Headbangers: Like Fall Guys, it was like the best game ever for the first few hours then loses its charm really quickly.
Sea of Stars: Almost considered doing a JRPG First Five Hours Review, but there is not much for me to talk about. It's just a good game.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox: Interesting premise. Yet weirdly, it is kind of a slog of a Metroidvania.
Vampire Survivors: I would review it, but I am too busy playing Vampire Survivors.
Palworld: Ehh, I will hop on the next fad. I promise.
Venba: Got high, cried, ate a bunch of fudge. I give Venba a 9/10.
