...And here we are again. Whatever may have gone on in your past year, rest assured that as always, I have played some video games, and at least ten are worth rambling about! Let's get straight into it.
It's rare that I play a game while it's in Early Access - in case you haven't noticed over the past decade or so, video games are often sold while unfinished and still being actively developed; at least when they are designated as Early Access, this situation is conveyed honestly and upfront! Still, the prospect of investing time and energy into what will inevitably be an incomplete experience has not often been appealing - in the case of Phantom Abyss, the core premise drew me in sufficiently however. Putting that premise into words feels slightly over-elaborate - a roguelike first-person platformer with an Indiana Jones-style whip that functions more like a grappling hook, oh and there are Dark Souls ghosts of previous players' attempts... Look, just watch a few seconds of the trailer, ok?
Plenty of features are of course yet to be implemented in Phantom Abyss - I'm looking forward to more forms of progression and side challenges, and a central storyline would be welcome. What has been made available so far is certainly promising.
9. Ghostrunner
From one first-person platformer to another - but the similarities essentially end there. Ghostrunner puts the player in the shoes of a nimble, cybered-up ninja wall-running and slashing their way through a futuristic dystopian landscape. It may occupy a different genre space from Cyberpunk 2077, but in terms of delivering an atmosphere with satisfying cyberpunk vibes, this absolutely puts 2020's biggest digital dumpster fire to shame. In large part this is achieved through an excellent soundtrack that perfectly complements the neon glare and dark industrial environment one expects from this variety of science fiction. The game's actual narrative is not as distinctive or memorable, but the atmosphere has stuck with me nearly a year after soaking in it.
Interestingly Ghostrunner reminds me in some ways of Super Meat Boy: highly challenging platforming puzzles that will take many attempts to overcome, but any frustration is alleviated by swift restarts at well-placed checkpoints. Many of the stages simply require eliminating several enemy soldiers who can dispatch the player with a single bullet, and the process of working out how to use the environment to out-manoeuvre them before slicing them in half with my cyber-katana was just immensely satisfying. The only firm criticism I have is that I would happily have done this for more hours - hopefully there are expansions, sequels or similar games inspired by Ghostrunner in the works.
8. Paradise Killer
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| More skulls and polished gold floors than Mar-a-Lago, probably. |
Some games have style. Paradise Killer oozes it from every pore. It's a detective game set in a truly outlandish locale: a tropical island at the end of reality, populated by worshippers of Lovecraftian trickster gods and draped in hues of blue and pink that scream "the 80s", set appropriately to a vaporwave soundtrack. The player character is called Lady Love Dies, summoned to investigate the ritualised murder of the island's entire council whose blood has been found in the prime suspect's stomach. I could go on and tell you all about other characters such as Doctor Doom Jazz or Crimson Acid, but I hope just their names along with the rest of this paragraph establish for you that Paradise Killer has a distinct style, and it's turned up to 11.
The investigation plays out much like detective visual novels such as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: questioning characters and suspects, investigating crime scenes and picking up leads in a gradual effort to piece together what has occurred in Paradise. These leads and the central mystery maintains a fascinating internal consistency given the subject matter - the motivations and actions of these characters make sense within the text, which helps thoroughly immerse you as you obsessively unravel the mystery. Sadly this is punctured towards the end by a twist I won't spoil - all I'll say is it was too well-hidden (I only stumbled upon it by attempting to find 100% of some collectibles that were not directly tied to the investigation) and the nature of the twist is entirely too convenient in tying up separate threads of the narrative. I could not have logically deduced this part of the mystery, it was simply revealed whole cloth. A disappointing cop-out, basically.
Still, the rest of the experience more than makes up for Paradise Killer desperately patching together its final act. The audiovisual style alone will live long in my memory and the mash-up of vaporwave, Lovecraft and detective gameplay was right up my alley.
7. Unpacking
Stories told with few words but instead through their environmental art are not uncommon especially among indie games, but when done well I always seem to find it impressive. Unpacking in terms of its premise is entirely summed up in its title: all you are tasked with is neatly unpacking boxes of someone's personal belongings, advancing a few years in time with each move. Before long you'll notice the same items are being retained over the years, for example a chipped mug packed with the toothbrushes, or a stuffed animal that clearly has nostalgic value to the protagonist. Coming from a family of somewhat-hoarders I can certainly relate to the urge to hold onto inanimate objects because they embody some inexplicable personal meaning to me! This game successfully communicated aspects of the protagonist's life and how they were growing as a person, simply by showing me the place they were moving into combined with the act of dipping into a cardboard box and pulling out trinkets new and old. I really don't want to get much more specific as this all built to an emotional conclusion that melted my icy heart.
It's also worth pointing out that each object slots into place with a satisfying click somewhat akin to assembling Lego bricks, or in some cases context-appropriate sound affects. The hot water bottle makes a sloshy noise when you place it on the bed! What more do you need?!
6. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age
This game certainly wins the award for longest name - a Japanese RPG through and through. This was my first time grappling with an entry in the Dragon Quest series, and I'm happy to report that, provided you have patience necessary for many a JRPG, this one is worth digging into.
Firstly, the artstyle and particularly the designs of the monsters immediately drew me in. The Dragon Quest series is, I understand, famous for this. There's something enticingly escapist in the first minutes of the game as you explore a world of blue skies, rolling green hills and swelling orchestral music. As for the monsters, I can't really do them justice here, other than to say their cuteness added further layers of joy in exploring DQ11's world - we're talking Pokémon levels of adorable. Sadly the further you venture into this lengthy game, the more "new" creatures are variations on others you've already encountered, often a mere tweaking of their colour palette.
As this honeymoon period in the early game fades, DQ11 thankfully maintained my interest through the familiar rhythm of the JRPG genre. The turn-based battles are slick and rewarding, lightly interactive and swiftly resolved. Boss fights are more challenging and therefore require more strategic thinking. Exploring the world brings you into contact with many an NPC, and even the insignificant ones at least display some entertaining dialogue. The main story is wholesome and perhaps a mite predictable in places, because this game has no qualms about making ample use of JRPG clichés. As I've already said, there's a serious time investment here (125+ hours in my case), but the story keeps its pace admirably well, delivering plenty of enjoyable twists throughout.
It's worth sharing at this point that, despite finishing reading the Dragon Ball manga around the time I played DQ11, I somehow failed to spot Akira Toriyama's involvement, when in fact he has been a prominent figure throughout the Dragon Quest series. I find it oddly amusing that I missed this given the many unsubtle nods and parallels to Dragon Ball Zee:
- Multiple characters clearly resemble famous characters from DBZ
- For most of the game the objective is to collect several magic orbs
- Every elderly man is played for laughs as a delightful pervert
- It has "Dragon" right there in the title
I could go on but I'm can feel eyes glazing over for everyone reading this without knowledge or interest in Dragon Ball's particular variety of anime. But in all seriousness, Toriyama's strong influence may be a deciding factor for some in playing this, for good or for bad. The childlike whimsy and imaginative character design comes bundled with some adolescent depictions of women and some deliberately ridiculous narrative directions. Personally I found this to my taste, and if it's to yours as well then settle in for a long, smile-inducing ride.
5. Dark Souls III
The confidence instilled from my time with Sekiro bore successful fruit... to a point. As mentioned last year, the challenge is actually to maintain concentration and patience in the face of an intimidating adversary, who more often than not is roughly house-sized, or can attack faster than you can evade, or who covers the environment with fire, ice, poison, etc, or all of the above perhaps. Dark Souls excels when perseverance makes up for lack of reflexes, and after enough time playing in that mindset even the most obnoxiously-designed boss failed to infuriate me, because I knew they had a limited number of tricks and ultimately I would prevail.
So basically I had a lovely smug time and completed the main portion of Dark Souls III, before the first expansion plonked me smartly on my arse. If you'd like to see the unstoppable nightmare that shattered my hubris, simply type Sister Friede into YouTube. It turns out frustration is still very much on the menu, and I haven't returned for another spanking in about nine months. Hopefully I will be able to once again overcome a seemingly invincible obstacle, because the true fun in my opinion exists in traipsing across FromSoft's dilapidated landscapes like a kind of macabre sightseer, the unsightly monsters along the way merely rather rude ticket inspectors. The act of documenting my time with Dark Souls III here has at the very least emboldened me to return to it.
4. Forza Horizon 5
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| Anime car skins mandatory as far as I'm concerned |
For once I also found myself engaging with the "live service" content: daily and weekly challenges, special races incorporating for example wintry/summery weather conditions, I was even successfully tempted into racing online against the best asshats the internet had to offer. I had no concerns with dragging out the experience, because the moment-to-moment action of these games is rarely anything but joyful. Some cars handle better than others, but even in the transit vans and cumbersome 50+ year-old motors it was possible to enjoy myself. The force feedback vibration from my controller was a big part of this, intuitively informing how I braked and accelerated over the varying terrain and countless vehicles thrown at me. Combined with this excellent core gameplay is the festival atmosphere familiar from previous Horizon games - there's a sense that everything that goes on in the game's world is knowingly silly and childishly chaotic, a vibe of "cars plus [something stupid]? Why not?"
I will say that the key "Showcase" events that serve as the larger progression points of a loose story were a bit underwhelming and in some cases too familiar. I've definitely raced against a train before, and some folks on dirt bikes, and monster trucks... it feels like the makers of these games are starting to run out of ideas. With any luck this can be remedied by whatever future content they add in, because as I've already established, I'll probably always turn up for more Forza Horizon.
3. Resident Evil 2 (2019)
Reboots, remasters and remakes have been commonplace for quite some years now, which can sometimes be a bit disappointing, indicating a lack of fresh ideas or willingness to take risks. But with a title like Resident Evil 2, there are valid reasons for a re-release: two decades had passed, so to take the structural and atmospheric elements of the original and combine it with modern visuals and controls is eminently a useful undertaking. Certainly in my case, because late-90s Alex missed out on these PS1 classics and spent his pocket money on trash such as Croc: Legend of the Gobbos and Grudge Warriors. In short: this is a superb remake, of a game that I imagine was years ahead of its time.
I doubt I need to describe in much detail the premise of a Resident Evil game: there are zombies, you shoot them. But you shoot them carefully, because bullets are scarce - the early portion of the game is spent carefully venturing into suspiciously quiet rooms and scrounging for what few resources have been stingily strewn about. You'd think a police station setting would be awash with lethal weaponry! But this is unabashedly a police station in a video game, and therefore realism is happily ignored in favour of a delicious mixture of tension, exploration, puzzles and of course plenty of zombie gore.
It's also an excellent example of how not every game has to be massive open world (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft): you'll spend hours becoming intimately familiar with and criss-crossing around this cunningly maze-like building, learning by trial-and-error where you can slip past zombies without wasting precious bullets and gradually uncovering items that will solve the puzzles that will unlock another area to explore. And just when you start feel in control, one or more of the nightmarish enemies will ramp up the tension.
There's little doubt that the most memorable of these enemies is the roughly humanoid Mr X, the eight-foot grey-faced silent killing machine sporting a fedora pictured above. Any attempt to take him down is a waste of ammunition - like the xenomorph in Alien Isolation, your weapons are useless against him as he relentlessly hunts you down. This of course only further heightens that tension, as you must play this game of cat and mouse while trying to suss out a way forward. I'm particularly glad I played some of these sections with surround sound headphones - nothing this year was quite as immersive as listening for Mr X's footsteps while sneaking through Resident Evil 2. There are many more games I have yet to play in this series, and many more entertaining hours ahead of me I'm sure.
2. Metroid Dread
Onto another series I have merely dipped my toes into over the years, and like Resident Evil 2 has a focus on careful exploration while occasionally being stalked by a unforgiving adversary in whom the tools at your disposal will not make a single dent. A suddenly announced yet long-awaited sequel to the games that contributed the first two syllables to the "Metroidvania" subgenre, this game was simply incredible from start to finish. It was also bizarrely an inversion of the time-vampire effect many video games create: what felt like dozens of hours worth of gameplay was somehow squeezed into about 15 hours.
The fluid movement and intuitive combat mechanics certainly played their part in tricking my brain this way. Every room and enemy encounter can be dealt with quite rapidly, and what items are or are not obtainable with your current equipment is signposted very clearly. Therefore, even when things get dicey you're moving on to the next combat puzzle with little to slow you down. As I progressed through each sprawling area in Metroid Dread I would find a map that sketched out rectangles representing all the rooms I had yet to enter, which would then fill in with more detail upon exploration. Here, for example is just one of the early sectors, filled out in this case (because I nicked it from Polygon.com's walkthrough).
It should be noted that earlier in the game you are not quite as lightning fast, and the aforementioned bulletproof stalker enemies, the EMMI robots, regularly require a slower, more thoughtful approach. Overall there's a wonderful rhythm to the progression in Metroid Dread, with the various upgrades to Samus's laser-arm and other destructive tools making mincemeat of enemies that previously presented significant challenge, and those pesky EMMI bots are all dealt with one by one.
Interestingly, much of the reaction I have seen to this game makes mention of its unforgiving difficulty. There were certainly bosses that took many attempts before I could overcome them, and some late-game encounters were seemingly designed to feel unfair in a Dark Souls-esque manner. Perhaps my time with Sekiro and Dark Souls III has made me a glutton for punishment, because I found the challenges presented here a joy to wrestle with.
So I can heartily recommend this provided what I've just described doesn't sound off-putting. Some of the narrative moments went over my head due to my lack of familiarity with previous entries - suffice to say some older Metroid titles are on my to-play list.
1. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
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| The chocobo riding alone justifies this GOTY award |
Many moons ago, I saw some opinions being shared online that the latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion Stormbringers encapsulated the best Final Fantasy story to date. Now, having played a majority of the 14 other numbered Final Fantasy's, some of them featuring my most cherished memories in gaming, this was quite tempting - but the price of entry (aside from the literal subscription) was roughly at least 200 hours to progress through the base game and other expansions. Quite the carrot on the end of an exceptionally long stick.
Furthermore, I had never played a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. This would be an entirely different beast from the turn-based affairs from many years ago. World of Warcraft had never seemed a good idea from my perspective - I was susceptible enough to becoming obsessive with video games, so did I really want to expose myself to the genre most notoriously addictive, with a monthly cost to boot?
I can't speak for WoW, but in the case of FFXIV, my deal with the devil has been unquestionably worthwhile. My initial hours with the game were tremendously enjoyable, and not in an 80s anti-drug campaign "the first hit is free..." way. The class I chose (a Marauder, because I wanted a big ol' axe) started me off in a picturesque pirate cove, welcoming me into the FFXIV fold with enrapturing sights and sounds, the upbeat music providing a relaxing backdrop to plenty of low-stakes quests that introduced small tidbits of lore and wolrd-building. I had expected many variations of "go to X and kill 5 of Y creatures", and yes that stereotypical MMO task is absolutely present, but it's not the focus. Story and characters have been the predominant focus, along with multiplayer sections which I will get onto shortly. I am still many, many hours from that hyped to high heaven expansion, but if it outclasses the base game's narrative while also enriching it, it seems to me that will be a colossal achievement.
I have to talk for a moment about the crafting. The systems are too dense to explore concisely, but what surprised me was that it used the same controls and MMO hotkeys as the combat - what could have been relegated to dithering about in several menus is instead satisfyingly interactive. There are hundreds (maybe thousands?!) of items and pieces of equipment that can be created, the components of which can almost all be scavenged while exploring the world of FFXIV. Every one of those items gains a little tick symbol after being successfully crafted, a small aspect of the game that is like crack to me (it's hard to avoid a drug analogy with this game I guess). It's a near-endless to-do list, and sometimes that's exactly what I want from a video game.
Some of that crafted gear I sold for a hefty in-game profit, some of it just enabled yet more crafting, and the rest helped me outfit myself for the multiplayer portion of the game. For those unfamiliar with MMO's, co-operative combat in these games operates via a holy trinity of damage dealers (aka DPS's), healers and "tanks". The tank draws the attention and attacks of the monsters, the healer refills the tank's health, the DPS dispatches the monsters. My Marauder cherub above is a tank, a choice that has been at times gratifying and at other times... intimidating in its responsibility. FFXIV has been around in its current form for over 8 years, so veteran players are extremely experienced. I've often treated online interactions in games with varying amounts of trepidation, and this was no exception. Despite the overwhelming majority of players I was randomly paired up with exhibiting heart-warming levels of understanding and kindness, the experience has frequently been one of anxious nervousness for me. Largely this is my own problem, rather than the game's, though when the multiplayer scenarios are deliberately complicated and obtuse my self-imposed pressure of expectation is heightened. Great narratives and addictive gameplay aside, I'm persisting with FFXIV's marathon of content because so far the positive online interactions substantially outweigh the negative, even if it doesn't feel that way when I just died four times in a complex 24-player raid. I've written on this blog many years ago about my complicated relationship with online personas and multiplayer content - I'm hoping that FFXIV will finally reveal to me the inherent value and positivity of an online community. No pressure, game.
So, in summary, Final Fantasy XIV is a deep, fascinating well of content that wills me on even as it unintentionally terrifies me. If you're curious about the game but don't have the time or patience to dig into it yourself, I'd strongly recommend Noclip's excellent documentary series. And if you do find yourself tempted, join me and we'll find out this crack-filled rabbit-hole goes.
And the honourable mentions go to:
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - yet more Dark Souls-ish gaming, this time with lightsabres!
Yakuza 3 & 4 - these continue to be excellent, but they do make me pine for Japan...
Picross S4 - I've played 4 of these, completed thousands of Picross puzzles, and there are yet more out there?!
Snowrunner - those Truck Sim games were too fast, time to get stuck in mud for 100s of hours.
Lake - those Truck Sim games were too not set in 80s Oregon.
Psychonauts 2 - can I have more sequels to underrated PS2 classics please.
Dark Cloud - or just the original PS2 classics will do I suppose.
Spyro the Dragon Reignited Trilogy - nostalgia is also a drug.
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