Castle Magus

All right, so, Yoku's Island Express (which is currently on an 80%-off sale on Steam, for $3.99 USD, until June 27) can probably be best described as "Metroidvania pinball." Steam says I played it for 10.7 hours, and the game save considers itself to be 100% complete (even though I didn't get all of the Steam achievements for the game, and since some of them are dumb busywork stuff like "toot the noisemaker 1000 times" or whatever, I probably won't bother).

You're playing as Yoku, a dung beetle, who arrives on an island at the start of the game to begin his (or maybe her, as I don't recall the game ever really specifying if Yoku is male or female) job as the new postmaster. Ostensibly, your job is to deliver mail and such, which you do over the course of the game, but ultimately your job is to save the island from destruction, as becomes clear pretty early on.

So yeah, it's Metroidvania in that you're traversing a big open world area (with a few different "biomes" like "the desert area" and "the snowy area" and "the watery area" and such), finding new gear that lets you get to places you couldn't otherwise get too, and all that stuff. The Metroidvania part of the game is great.

And it's pinball in that you're very frequently encountering areas that are... well... basically just big pinball machines. The pinball part is... okay, I guess. It can be rather frustrating at times, especially those times when you know what you need to do to progress, but it's just a matter of getting Yoku and his/her little ball to cooperate. That said, even I managed to 100% the game (according to the save file, not Steam's achievement acquisition), and I'm not even really into pinball all that much. For the most part, I liked it well enough that I didn't ever rage-quit (though I did "this is exhausting, I'm done for now"-quit a few times). Basically, if you hate pinball, maybe avoid this game, but if you like pinball or, at least, are indifferent to it, then I would recommend this game.

Also... this might be one of those "better played with a controller, rather than keyboard" kind of games. Though, again, I managed to 100% it using keyboard, so... *shrug* (For what it's worth, it's also on consoles, like the Switch, PS4, etc.)

One hint/tip: when in doubt, try to find an explosive slug (it'll make sense eventually) and use it to launch yourself to a place that otherwise may look utterly inaccessible. The source of explosive slugs sometimes may be much farther away from the goal than other times, though. And it may take (more than) a few tries to properly line up the slug-side of your little ball to get the launch angle correct.

(Consider this to be "part two" of the series of video game related posts I mentioned a few days ago.)

Spiritfarer. Available on Steam and GOG.com, as well as on Switch, PS4, and X-bone.

This is sort of a weird mix of platformer, adventure, city builder, and farming sim. You play as Stella (and her cat, Daffodil, if you do the local co-op thing, which I don't have the means to do) who becomes the new "Spiritfarer" at the start of the game. A psychopomp, in other words.

Soon after the game starts, you acquire a large boat, which is where you'll probably spend most of your time in the game. As you travel from island to island, you'll eventually meet several spirits who will join you on your ship (after you do a quest or two or ten for some of them). While on the ship, they'll give you additional specific tasks that they want you to do, such as building them a certain building, or giving them a certain meal, or bringing them a certain item, either one that you create yourself or one that you find somewhere in the world. You can build a bunch of different buildings and such on the ship, and after you build the right ones, you'll gain access to the ability to cook food, farm crops, raise livestock, smelt ore, weave fabric, and so on and so forth. There are also several different mini-games that you'll come across while traveling the world that will gain you unique items, such as literally catching lightning in a bottle as one example. And you'll need a lot of that stuff and all the other stuff you make or find in order to upgrade your boat, as there are some areas you can't get to until you have certain upgrades. Unfortunately, in particular the ones that let you reach new areas, some of these upgrades require "spirit flowers," which you only get after you take a spirit to the "Everdoor," which means it's not possible to have all the spirits on the boat at the same time. Also, throughout the course of the game, you will get Metroidvania-like personal upgrades, like double-jumping and gliding and such, which will allow you to get to areas of the platforming-stage-ish islands that you can visit that you otherwise would be unable to reach.

It's also a story-based game. Each spirit has their own tale, which you'll eventually learn as you get to know them. All of them are tied to Stella in some way or other, either by being a family member or someone she had worked with in the "real world." And, of course, the game being what it is, these stories are usually pretty sad in some way. The worst, or at least most hard-hitting for me, were the two that involved the spirit becoming stricken with dementia over the course of their stay on the boat (one was way worse than the other, and it reminded me too much of my own mother, as she was in the end). But all of them are pretty sad at the end, when you have to take each spirit to the Everdoor.

Honestly, for me, it was all about the day to day chores, like watering the crops or shearing the sheep or picking the fruit or milking the cow or cooking food for the passengers or whatever. There was just something relaxing about loading into the game and doing all of that stuff. Even after you upgrade your boat so that it doesn't move so slowly, you'll still usually have plenty of time to do stuff on the boat between moving from one place to the next, and that's even if you use the fast travel walrus, which I rarely did. And then, even when you arrive, nothing is forcing you to immediately leave the boat.

Mild spoilers after this point.

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( Mild spoilers behind cut )

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So yeah, I'd recommend Spiritfarer. I will say this, too: this is the only game, so far, for which I've separately and after the fact bought the digital artbook. (Any other game for which I may have gotten such a thing, I did so only because the version of the game I bought simply came with it already included, and I most likely would not have bought it separately otherwise.)

Just finished Lair of the Clockwork God. It's a sort of sequel to Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please!, though you don't really need to have played either of those two for this, as the story of Lair of the Clockwork God (which is full of British humor and heavy satire of modern video gaming and other current events) is stand-alone. The first two are still pretty cool though, so I'd recommend them, too.

So, instead of being a pure point-and-click style adventure game like the first two games, this one is a weird little hybrid platformer and adventure game. Dan has apparently moved on from his adventure game roots and is now a platform character, i.e. running, jumping, and, eventually, shooting. Ben, however, steadfastly refuses to get involved with all of that running and jumping claptrap and sticks to the old-school adventure game ethos of looking at everything, talking to everybody, stealing everything that isn't nailed down (and sometimes even if it is nailed down), and combining those things into other things and using them on everything else. Given that both of these guys exist in the same world, it makes for some fairly unique gameplay. Or, rather, two different styles of otherwise bog standard gameplay mixed and mashed together in a unique way. It's pretty cool. Some of the platforming is actually pretty tough, though I never bothered to try lowering the difficulty setting, and as such, I can say that the game isn't too awfully hard.

Oh, and there's a prequel game to this (and the other two, I suppose), in the form of a visual novel, called Devil's Kiss (which you get free if you buy Lair of the Clockwork God), that tells the tale of the first meeting of Dan and Ben and their first adventure together. At one point in Lair of the Clockwork God, a password is needed which can only be obtained by playing Devil's Kiss. Or, you know, by looking up the solution online, which I ended up having to do, despite having played through Devil's Kiss three times prior to starting Clockwork God, as I had no real desire to reinstall it and replay it a fourth time just for a password, even if it would've only taken maybe half an hour at most. The password was, in retrospect, stupidly simple (thatsthejoke.jpg). Basically, if you play Devil's Kiss, pay attention to Dan's dog's name, Dan's locker number, and Dan's mother's maiden name. In fact, honestly, I'd say it might be better to play Clockwork God up to the point where you need the password, then play Devil's Kiss, then go back to Clockwork God.

"CD Projekt Red has apologized for the Cyberpunk 2077 launch issues on PS4 and Xbox One."

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This doesn't surprise me at all. The modern video game industry gonna modern video game, after all. CD Projekt (Red or otherwise) is not, and has never been, the messiah of the modern video game industry that far too many gullible dupes try to make it out to be. To steal from one of the comments under the above video, maybe they should rename themselves to "Seedy Projekt."

Ian is totally right. It's deception. It's absolute bullshit. And Pat's "crossing the Rubicon" point about no longer being able to rely on consoles to provide a consistent experience is a good one, too (if a bit behind the curve, because that's been the case for a while now, if not necessarily to such a huge degree as this).

Just completed my second playthrough of Timespinner (on Steam and GOG and consoles), which came pretty much immediately after the first playthrough.

It is a Metroidvania game, which takes place in a sort of fantasy/science fiction hybrid setting (though mostly fantasy-ish, I'd say). You play as Lunais, a girl who has been trained to be a Time Messenger, someone whose job is to go back in time to warn their clan of nomads of impending danger (when said danger would have been otherwise fatal to the clan). At the start of the game, the clan is attacked by the emperor of Lachiem, a star spanning empire, and Lunais is accidentally transported to their homeworld, when the operation of the titular Timespinner is interfered with. Eventually, she gains the ability to travel back and forth between two different time periods at will, on her quest to avenge her clan... or prevent them from ever being in danger in the first place. And as the story goes on, she finds out that things are more complicated than she thought at first.

So yeah, it's a pretty awesome game, I have to say. SNES style graphics, modern music appropriate to the setting, and the gameplay is pretty tight. I'd say that it is easily as good as Bloodstained or any of the IGAvania games (though you're not going to be getting souls/glyphs/shards/whatever from every single enemy in this game like you do in the later of those). I didn't run into any bugs, either, which is nice, for a change. As I said, I just completed a second playthrough, on Nightmare difficulty, in which enemies just hit way harder is all, and aren't really that much more difficult to kill, other than that, but then I was at like level 85 or some such by the end of the normal playthrough anyway, mainly because I went through the optional, randomized dungeon that opens up at the very end of the game several times before actually finishing the normal playthrough. (I'm not touching the "Nightmare, locked at level 1" option, though.) Also got all the Steam achievements, if anyone cares about that sort of thing, though I'd have never gotten at least one of them if I hadn't simply looked up how to get it.

There are four endings total, three of which you can get on the first, pre-new game plus playthrough, but to get the last requires another playthrough on new game-plus, since you have to make a choice at some point between one of two options. I saved the option that I felt would change the timeline the most for the new game plus playthrough, and I think that was a good decision.

In any case, I will be very interested in any potential sequel to this game (or perhaps another, separate, but similar game made by the same people).

Also, the game is very LGBTQ+ friendly, which, of course, obviously, has a bunch of homophobic/transphobic fucktards in the Steam forums and elsewhere whining about "SJW agenda" and such bullshit. Basically, according to them, "gaem has too much ghey therefore bad gaem." You know, like how it usually is with those dipshits.

Obligatory TVTropes link, though I'd recommend not looking at that until after playing the game itself.

So after... that other post, I decided to buy and play through Night in the Woods.

It's pretty cool. The main content is in the storyline and dialogue, so you'll want to try to find all the hotspots where a conversation or a description can occur, as you explore the town. Some are in harder to reach places than others and require a bit of platforming. Also, as long as a conversation/description hotspot icon continues to be visible, that means there will be new dialogue to see. Once you've exhausted it all, the hotspot icon will go away (at least until a later day, anyway, though not necessarily every day). And more of the town will open up as the game progresses (sometimes seemingly for no apparent reason, i.e. for the first few days, Mae will refuse to go any farther west past the Click Clack Diner, and then, on like the fourth or fifth day, she just will, with no comment [at least that I saw, anyway]).

Basically, my main hint/tip for the game is to do everything else that you can possibly do during any given day prior to deciding to hang out with Bea or Gregg (or, at a couple points, Angus), because none of the other stuff ends the day, whereas choosing to hang out with one of the gang will end up with you back at home, ready to go to bed (or occasionally watching TV with dad first, if you choose to do that). Also, once the "investigation" stuff kicks in (see below), you will only be allowed to do two of the three possible events (woodland park, historical society, and graveyard), so decide who you want to go on an investigation with, as one of the three friends will not be possible to do on that playthrough. Sadly, I missed the one with Bea, because I was trying to save it for last, and then immediately after finishing the thing with Gregg (after having previously done the thing with Angus), it went straight into endgame, so I didn't get to do the one with Bea, despite having done everything else with Bea up to that point. If I'd known it was going to do that, I'd have done the event with Bea instead of Angus or Gregg (probably instead of Angus, since it would kind of make more sense to do the Angus thing when on a Gregg playthrough, probably, not that it really mattered either way).

The Big Plot™ stuff (which I won't spoil) that came up at around the halfway-ish point (aside from the one Weird Thing™ that happens much earlier) felt a little tacked on and forced, though, given that most of the game before that point was just normal, slice-of-life stuff, for the most part. I would have been perfectly okay if the entire game had just been Mae hanging out with her friends, and I would have preferred any Big Plot™ to have been a bit more... realistic in nature. But... eh, it was still pretty cool, I guess.

As for Mae, the player character, most of the time I felt like I could really identify with her. At one point, even, I actually said, out loud, "Mae Borowski is literally my spirit animal." Which was kind of weird since I was in a room by myself with nobody else in the house, at the time. However, there were other times where I had to wince at Mae's shitty behavior, wondering why the game was outright preventing me from playing Mae as not an asshole. I really hated that the game forced me to make Mae keep drinking the beer at the forest party, for instance. Most of the asshole-ish behavior was during the interactions with Bea, like at the college party. (Whenever I had to choose between hanging out with Bea or with Gregg, I always chose Bea, at least in this first playthrough, not because I didn't like Gregg, but because I liked Bea more. I'll probably go back and do crimes with Gregg later, someday.) But, on the whole, Mae was pretty cool.

So, yeah, despite any nitpicks, I'd recommend Night in the Woods.

I haven't beaten it yet, but I'm almost 75% (map completion) into it, so I think I have a fairly good handle on it. So I'm going to share some tips that will make the game easier/cooler/less frustrating. Some of these might be pretty obvious, but whatever.

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Before I even watch this video, I am going to go ahead and answer the question. Yes, absolutely, monetization is affecting game design. It has been doing so for years now. I and owsf2000 and many others have been ranting about this asinine horseshit for years. It fucking sucks fucking ass fucking hole. It always has fucking sucked fucking ass fucking hole. It will never not fucking suck fucking ass fucking hole.

Now, to actually watch the video.

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I absolutely agree with this video. My only minor issue with the video is that it seems like Ryan and Mike are hugely behind the curve if they're seemingly only just now starting to notice this issue and to have a problem with it, due to "oh noes not muh zeldas" or whatever. Ignoring that quibble, yeah, like I said, 100% agreement with them. The whole goddamn thing goddamn sucks goddamn ass goddamn hole.

Here, have another post that consists entirely of embeds of tweets. This time it's not Donald Trump related, so there is that, at least.

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...and is currently sitting at an aggregate 4.2 user rating on Metacritic (for the PS4 version)[1] and a 44% "Mixed" user rating on Steam.

Yeah. How about that.

/me idly goes back to not giving a shit about Street Fighter V.

(Adding the asinine anti-singleplayer trend tag here, since Street Fighter V is retardedly online-only, but this is another case where I wish that I had originally made the tag be "asinine anti-offline trend" instead, since that's more what it's actually about, but I have linked to it too much in other posts to change it now.)

[1] - And notice how I didn't even mention what the aggregate score from the professional critics was, because I haven't given a shit about those guys for a very long while now. (Not that user ratings are all that much more useful on that site either, mind you, but still, in this case, I think it's not entirely out of line.)