Castle Magus

My first thought before I even started watching this was "all of them." And, of course, right at the 1:15 mark, Pat said "all of them," to which Woolie agreed.

So... yeah.

That said, when they start getting into specifics, it quickly shows how meaningless the terms "AAA" or "AA" or whatever truly are. Is Pokemon AAA or AA? Is Nintendo AAA just not as good as other companies' AAA? Is a really good "modern retro" "AA" indie game "better" or "worse" than a multi-million dollar, thousands of people "AAA" game? And if the "AA" game is unquestionably better and more fun to play and has more "soul" than the "AAA" game, then what do the labels even mean?

(Also, I keep hearing about this Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 game, and, indeed, I've had it on my wishlist since it first showed up in my discovery queue however long ago... and... when it doesn't cost $50-$60 USD, maybe I'll even buy it someday.)

Open Roads is now available on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC. Buy now on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/14...

Long-lost family secrets. Hints of a hidden fortune. And miles to go before they sleep. Tess Devine’s relationship with her mom has never been easy, but they’re about to set out together on a journey into the past that they’ll never forget.

Featuring star performances by Keri Russell (The Americans, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker) and Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Uncharted 4).

Developed by OPEN ROADS TEAM. Published by Annapurna Interactive.

© Annapurna Interactive, 2024

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Since that post the other day about Gone Home and Tacoma, I have gone through Open Roads. Yeah, this game is way more in line with the games that Fullbright previously made (even though this one wasn't actually published by Fullbright, for reasons already mentioned in that other post), rather than stupid shit like TOILET SPIDERS or whatever. *eye roll*

Very mild spoilers for Open Roads below.

You play as Tess Devine (voiced by Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of a woman name Opal (voiced by Keri Russell). (And Sarah Grayson, who voiced Sam in Gone Home and Amy in Tacoma, had a small role in this game as well, but I guess she's not a big "star" like the other two presumably are? *shrug*) At the start of the game, Tess is packing up her things because she and her mom are being forced to move out of her recently deceased grandmother's house, for financial reasons. As she walks around the house, Gone Home-style, looking at and commenting on what little is left of her grandmother's things, she finds something that raises a mystery about her grandmother's life. This leads to a road trip to an old summer home that her mom, Opal, hasn't been to since she was a kid (and which Tess has never been to or even knew existed), which in turn furthers the mystery and leads to them heading to Canada to investigate an old house boat. There are some smaller scenes along the way, as well, involving being in the car and being in a motel.

So, yeah, if you played and liked Gone Home and Tacoma, you'll probably like Open Roads, too, as I did. The main difference between Gone Home and Open Roads is that instead of the entire game taking place in a single large mansion, it takes place in a few different (smaller) locations. Also, you're not by yourself the whole time, as you have another person with you. They're often shown talking to each other in little animated scenes.

A few minor nitpicks... you can't pick up and open practically everything in Open Roads the way you could in Gone Home.[1] This leads to some weirdness (at least, it was weird to me) where Tess is initially upset because a locked drawer was found in the old summer home, involving a short quest to find the key to said drawer, and yet there are several other drawers in other locations (including in that same house, even) that don't even give you a prompt to open them at all, nor commentary for why you aren't bothering to check them. Who knows what treasures could have been in those particular drawers that weren't searched? (I mean, obviously, nothing important was in them, or else the game would have let you open them to look. But then, there were plenty other completely empty drawers that you could open, so why not those, too?) Also, there was a gun in a closet just leaning up against the wall that Tess didn't/couldn't pick up and look at or even comment on. There were several other, similar instances where I was like "So... you're just not going to examine or say anything at all about <insert thing here>, huh? That's kinda weird, not gonna lie."

Despite those very tiny nitpicks, I would definitely recommend Open Roads, assuming that you like this type of Walking SimulatorEnvironmental Narrative Game. I wish there were more (similarly good) games like this, where you're just playing normal-ass people, doing (mostly) normal-ass things, in normal-ass locations, all without ghosts or aliens or demons or monsters or Terminators or terrorists or whatever showing up to make everything way more video game-y.

[1] - Actually, come to think of it, this was an "issue" in Gone Home and Tacoma as well, i.e. objects you didn't have a prompt to examine or cabinets/drawers you didn't have a prompt to open, etc. Like, if a game is going to let us pick up/look at/open most narratively unimportant things, it might as well let us do that for all of them. Again, just a very minor quibble on my part. Just a tiny bit immersion breaking, but certainly not a deal breaker. It just seemed like Open Roads had a few more such instances of not being able to interact at all with stuff than the previous two games had.

Over the past few days, I've replayed both Gone Home and Tacoma (both made by the same company). Twice, even, with the first times being without commentary and the second times being with commentary. For Tacoma, I've already written a post about it, back in 2019 (and I should point out that I rebought it on Steam just before starting this new playthrough, since it was on sale at the time, even though I already had the free copy of it downloaded), but for Gone Home, I apparently never wrote a post about it. So, this is that post.

I would say it would be better to go into Gone Home not knowing anything about it, but it's kind of an It Was His Sled situation at this point, so...

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( Behind cut + spoiler space, even so, and also a bit of drama that I only found out about in the process of writing this post )

I just got done playing through what I thought was all the new shit recently released for Vampire Survivors, which was a couple of new adventures (finally, one for Tides of the Foscari, which didn't have an associated adventure until now) and some other assorted secrets and unlocks and new weapons and whatnot. A fair bit of content. But when I got done, I was like, "Wait, hold on, where's the crossover stuff with Square Enix and that SaGa game I haven't played and have no interest in buying or whatever?"

Turns out the SaGa: Emerald Beyond crossover is a a whole separate DLC that required being manually added and downloaded, rather than just being an automatic update, even though it's free. Makes sense, in retrospect, I guess? Kind of? *scratches head* So, yeah, I wasn't as done as I thought I was. Won't be doing all that new new shit tonight, though.

Anyway, I guess this is probably a lead up to some massive Vampire Survivors DLC crossover with Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts or Dragon Quest or whatever. Kind of like how they teamed up with Konami for a Contra DLC first, before getting to the one that actually made sense. That'd probably be cool, too. Personally, I'd prefer Chrono Trigger/Cross, though. Of course, that just means that what they'll actually crossover with is something like the Mana series or Front Mission or Parasite Eve or ActRaiser or some shit. ¬_¬ I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd still play those, too. (I still bought and played that fucking Among Us crossover DLC, after all, even though I otherwise have less than zero interest in Among Us itself. Vampire Survivors is still Vampire Survivors, even if it's crossing over with some weird thing that I don't care about.)

I'm mostly like Woolie in the above video in that I haven't seen the Devil May Cry Netflix thing yet, but I'm also not like Woolie (or Pat or Gene) in that the only Devil May Cry that I've played at all is the first one, and also I have little to no interest in seeing the Netflix Devil May Cry thing to start with (and even less, now). I've seen some LPs of the later games, but I haven't touched them myself. Basically everything I know about the later Devil May Cry games comes almost solely from these guys.

So anyway... apparently, this new Devil May Cry Netflix show sucks balls, I guess? They do compare it (unfavorably) to the first Netflix Castlevania show, and I would probably agree with most of what they said about that, here.

It has been over two years, but I finally got around to (re)watching the rest of Captain N: The Game Master.

( Blah blah blah )

A post by Athena Scalzi on Whatever.

Yeah... it's pretty cool, I guess. I played through the first three levels, after the tutorial thing, and thought that would be it, but there was more after that. I stopped at that point though.

Full, superfluous title, which won't fit up there: "All 55 of these games are under $5 in Steam Spring Sale 2025, which is just silly for Metroidvanias, RPGs, roguelikes, and more gems this good"

Caveat: The above article does not take DLC into account on some of these. These are just the "base games" that are that cheap. As such, some of the full versions of these games can still cost $30 or more, in some cases.

Ones on that list that I would personally recommend (that I've played myself), with some additions of my own:

• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition. Hell, the bundle that contains not just Asylum, but also Arkham City and Arkham Knight is also just $8.99 USD at the moment. (No Arkham Origins included in the bundle, though, for whatever reason, but that one's also on sale for $3.99 currently [not including all the DLC, though].)
• Don't Starve is one of the "doesn't include the DLC" ones, but the bundle with all the DLC is still less than $10.
• Dust: An Elysian Tail - a pretty cool Metroidvania game.
• Fallout: New Vegas is another "doesn't include the DLC" thing, but again, New Vegas Ultimate is currently $7.99 USD.
• Not sure why they have the base versions of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 listed separately, when the Half-Life 1 Anthology and The Orange Box are still each under $5 (and even added together, they're still only $5.12 USD).
• Portal 2 isn't included in the previous point, but it is also just $1.99 USD at the moment.
• Psychonauts, currently $1.99 USD. I'd also recommend the sequel, but that one's a whole whopping $12 at the moment. (I'm being sarcastic. I still totally recommend it.)
• Slime Rancher, definitely. Can't speak to the sequel in this case, though, as I haven't bought it yet, because A) it's still in Early Access and I don't buy those anymore, and B) I haven't seen it on a good enough sale yet, regardless.
• Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition. Already wrote a whole recommendation post on this one.
• Terraria. Not only have I written about this one before, I've written about it enough that it has its own tag.
• The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series. Huh... so this is the entire series, all four seasons (including 400 Days and Michonne), apparently, for $4.99 USD. I've still only played the first two seasons myself, so far, because I have to be in a certain mood to want to play something as depressing as The Walking Dead (and, these days, real life has been more than depressing enough to want to explicitly subject myself to something [arguably] even worse), so I can only speak to those, but $4.99 would be worth it just for those.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. I mean, yeah, but the bundle that contains all the DLC (even the infamous Horse Armor) is barely more than a dollar more and is still under the $5 threshold. Kind of weird that Morrowind is a whole entire dollar above that threshold, though.
• Tomb Raider. As in the 2013 remake, which is the only one of the new series that I've played, thanks to asinine DRM bullshit on the sequels.
• To the Moon. This game has sequels, and I own pretty much all of them, but the first one there is the only one I've actually managed to play as of yet.
• Undertale. I mean, come on, it's frickin' Undertale (relevant post here), and it's currently $0.99 USD. Enough said, as far as I'm concerned.
• West of Loathing. Another one I've already written about. The sequel, which I have not written about yet, though I have completed it at least once (as a Cheese Wizard), is currently $15.17 USD, which is not as good of a sale as $3.51 USD, but I'd still recommend it.
• What Remains of Edith Finch. Yet another that I've already written about. Still haven't played that other, ostensibly related game yet, though.
• Yoku's Island Express. The last one on both GR+'s list and my own list here. And also another one I've already recommended elsewhere.