Let it not be said that I don't indulge in multiplayer-only games. BACKGROUND:
I recall learning about this game via a Let's Play I watched on YouTube, and I was immediately entertained by the Overcooked-style shenanigans that could ensue during gameplay. I didn't see reason to pick up the game until somewhat recently, when a friend of mine bought the game after independently learning about it and becoming interested. This game clearly looked like a pure multiplayer experience, so someone in the friend group taking the first bite was all the excuse I needed to jump in. PLOT: While I think a story based on the game's premise could potentially be hilarious, Unrailed has nothing in terms of narrative. PRESENTATION: Unrailed has a voxel art style: think of it like pixel art, except instead of forming 2D images with individual square pixels, you're forming 3D models with tiny cubes (called voxels). The end result is a cutesy, cartoony aesthetic with vibrant colors and simple animations. I suppose my only issue is how zoomed out everything is; it makes the game a bit hard for me to play on the TV since I have to sit some distance away (I already have poor eyesight and my TV's screen is small, so it's hard to see stuff even with my glasses on). The music is pretty cheery and keeps an otherwise hectic game slightly more chill, though I tend to tune it out since I'm focusing on talking with my friends. GAMEPLAY: Unrailed is a co-op multiplayer game where a team of 2-4 players work together to keep a slow-moving train on the rails and make sure it gets from station to station in one piece. Players must use axes and pickaxes to harvest wood (from trees) and iron (from stone) respectively, and use the resources to craft rails to place in order to create a path to the next train station. You'll have to use the same tools to clear a path through forests and mountains, and even use wood to create bridges over bodies of water. All the while, the team must prevent the train from overheating by periodically supplying buckets of water; not doing so will set the train's wagons on fire, disabling important functions. It sounds like a lot at first, but the game has you go through a tutorial taking you through the basics. After that, though, it's off to the races, and you're free to try local or multiplayer co-op play. You can choose a variety of modes: Endless (the standard: survive as long as you can and get your train as far as possible), Quick (all about getting to the next station as quickly as possible), Versus (which lets two teams compete against each other), and Sandbox (which lets you freely customize your train wagons with whatever you've already unlocked in Endless). Each mode has their own brand of fun, but I personally found the regular Endless mode to be the most fun; there's something satisfying about keeping a run going for a really long time. Your tools will get you far, but upgrading your train is equally important. The method for upgrading differs per mode, but in Endless, you'll have to earn Bolts to spend in between stations, Bolts are earned in three different ways: simply reaching the next train station, finding the hidden Bolt on the map, or completing the special objective the game gives you. These Bolts can be spent to buy new wagons with various functions (like one that creates dynamite or auto-mines resources), upgrades to wagons already on your train (like speeding up the rail crafting speed), and upgrading the main engine (which increases the maximum number of wagons you can attach to the train, and takes you to new biomes). This mechanic adds a fun layer of strategy to the game: we found ourselves comparing which upgrades are worth going for, and we weigh whether it's worth going for optional Bolts in certain rounds. Each run has its set of challenges every time you take one on. For one, levels are procedurally generated, which means unless you load a predetermined seed (which is easy to do), you don't know what's ahead of you. There'll be a lot of planning on the fly, since you can't see too far ahead and can't plan a critical path for the train immediately. RNG can mess with you, too, and you can easily get sizable obstructions that take forever to clear out, or worse: dark gray rock formations that you can't destroy and must go around. Lastly, the longer you go without upgrading the main engine, the faster the train gets, but upgrading the engine will take you to new biomes with mechanics that present challenging new mechanics that you have to contend with. The team will need to properly coordinate their route not only to deal with the randomness, but to also ensure that players don't get stuck or otherwise lose access to important wagons and tools. We've lost many runs due to not properly carving out a path, leading to one of us not being to do crucial tasks like grabbing rails to put down or using the axe to cut down trees in the train's path. This game is designed to be played with multiple people, but if you just want to mess around solo, it's possible to do so. What the game does is give you an AI teammate that you can give orders to through the game's emote system. I suppose that it's neat that there's still a way to play the game alone, but I found the game way more fun playing with actual people. You can unlock a bunch of skins for your player character simply by playing, which is neat. There are some cute-looking ones in there, but the most important bit for me is that most of them are visually distinct from one another, which matters given how small the characters are relative to the size of the game's map. VERDICT: Unrailed was exactly the quirky, sometimes hectic co-op experience I expected it to be, and it's a blast to play with friends. The core objective and mechanics are easy to understand, but stuff like new wagons and the random elements give the game strategic depth and challenge respectively. There's a decent amount of ways to customize the game, too, allowing for different ways to enjoy the act of keeping a train going. My friends and I unanimously agreed that coordinating to get a high score in this game is a ton of fun, and we look forward to playing some more. I highly recommend this game if you're looking for a four-player party game with a co-op focus. It's easy enough to pick up if you have more casual players, has a good variety of modes and difficulty settings for players of all skill levels, and it has full online and crossplay, allowing you to enjoy the game remotely with friends regardless of platform. Get the game on Steam: Unrailed! on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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More PC backlog stuff! I'm doing my best to beat at least one game per week; hopefully that's a good enough pace to eventually get back down to zero. BACKGROUND:
I happened to just see that this game was free one day and downloaded it. My memory is fuzzy on the details, but Titan Souls becoming free for a limited time may have had something to do with the fact that the developer's latest game Death's Door was celebrating something (a console release, maybe?). In any case, I watched a friend play Death's Door, thought it was a neat-looking game, saw that the devs' first game (this one) was free, and added it to my library out of curiosity. PLOT: Titan Souls is almost completely esoteric when it comes to presenting its story, with even cutscenes and the environment providing very little clarity on what's going on. Even the names of the bosses you encounter (which appear at the start of the fight) are in mysterious glyphs that you can't read, further adding to the mystery. The most I can glean from what I played is that you're some random dude with a presumably magic bow and arrow, and you're exploring this mysterious realm in search of Titans, so you can fire an arrow at them, kill them, and absorb their souls for... something. I kinda wish there were a bigger focus on the story, because the bits and pieces I got from it paint an interesting world. What little I could gather on the purposes and origins of some of the Titans was intriguing to me, a hard-to-find encounter that provides the only exposition in the game hints at why the player character is embarking on their journey, and beating a special boss fight brings about a wild revelation. I suppose the mystery is part of what makes the story so captivating (being dropped into a world full of killer Titans with little explanation is exciting in its own right), but I would have loved a more in-depth exploration of what's going on. PRESENTATION: The game's visual style takes inspiration from older titles and takes on a classic sprite-based pixel art style. I wouldn't write off the sprites as NES-era simple, however, as the levels and the bosses have a decent amount of detail to them. Perhaps the only exception here is the player character, whose simple design actually does pass for a sprite from the '80s. Along with all that, the game has a top-down perspective that makes the entire thing feel like a classic Zelda game (albeit with a more muted color palette and a sense of scale that makes the player feel puny). I didn't think much of the music at first (apart from the overworld themes being chill tunes to explore to, as well as fitting the vibe of the locales), but once I started hearing some of the boss fight themes, I was thoroughly impressed by how epic they were and how they fit the mood of the battle. The theme of the Avarice fight in particular was my personal high point when it comes to the soundtrack. GAMEPLAY: Titan Souls is an action-adventure game with a 2D top-down perspective. Again, think of it like the old Zelda games where you explore the world and fight some enemies; if you've played any game of that style, Titan Souls will feel like another one of those on the surface. However, this game is a much more contained experience. Whereas something like Zelda will have you exploring a decently large map, exploring expansive dungeons, fighting hordes of enemies and bosses, and solving puzzles, Titan Souls is much simpler. The world you explore feels large due to the perspective of how small your character looks, but it's actually just a wide main area with entrances to a couple of much smaller sub-areas. It feels overwhelming to explore given how tiny you look and how much space you have to travel between landmarks, but with how large the landmarks are and how simple the layouts are, it's unlikely that you'd get lost. That said, the game's environments feel unnecessarily large, and it takes quite a bit of walking to get from point A to point B. Exploring the world of Titan Souls will quickly lead you to the main point of the game: killing Titans. By looking around, you'll stumble upon arenas on which you will face off against the game's various bosses. Most of the entrances are pretty obvious and require little effort to find, while others will require a bit of puzzle-solving and secret-finding. The game takes more inspiration from Zelda on the latter point, as the methods for unlocking the other boss arenas range from a Lost Woods-style puzzle, a torch-based puzzle reminiscent of A Link to the Past, or finding a door obscured by background elements. I'm glad that there's still some elements of exploration like that here, even if it's not the game's focus. The game has 19 bosses total, each of which is a completely unique fight. For pretty much every fight, the idea is the same: figure out where the weak point is, find a way to expose it (or find a good opening), and fire. Unlike most boss fights that people think of, you don't have to worry about whittling down the boss's HP to zero in a war of attrition: once you hit their weak point, they're dead. That's it. There are some bosses that have multiple phases, but the rule still applies: all you need is one hit to move onto the next phase. As the protagonist, you can only do a couple of things: aim and fire your singular arrow, recall your arrow and have it fly back to you, and dodge roll out of the way. That's all. This isn't Zelda where you get rewards for killing bosses or unlock neat new weapons. Your abilities are the same for the entire game, and if that's not enough, you die in one hit, too. It might sound horribly unexciting for some to have a character that doesn't get stronger the farther you get, but I think that's what makes this game so fun. The challenge of using your limited skillset to kill a wide variety of bosses was one I found incredibly engaging, and the satisfaction of figuring out the boss's patterns and finding that small opening to kill them was unreal. Some of the bosses are pretty straightforward (as in all you have to do is find your opening to shoot the weak point), but a couple of them have a slight puzzle-solving element to them where you have to use something like elements in the environment to render them vulnerable. I enjoyed pretty much every single fight in the game, as they all had completely distinct behaviors and weaknesses (but it wasn't hard to figure out what to do and what to avoid), they all offered their own brand of challenge, and it was possible to kill all of them at the first available opportunity (and it is goddamn satisfying to do so). Apart from that, there really isn't much else to the game. It's pretty much just one big boss rush with a smattering of exploration in between. While I certainly enjoy large-scale adventure games with lots to do, something about the straightforward, contained experience of Titan Souls was super enjoyable to me. I went out of my way to fight every single boss just because it was so much fun to die a bunch to figure out a solution and eventually land the killing blow. That's all the game really is and yet I was engaged all throughout. This game is pretty short even if you go and fight every boss (I clocked in at around 4 hours), but there's a bunch of alternate modes you can try. You have your standard Hard Mode (which makes the fights tougher by adding new attack patterns), Iron Mode (the permadeath mode: if you die, you start over from the beginning), and No Rolls Mode (you can't roll; it sounds miserable). You don't actually have to kill every boss to beat the game, but if you do, you'll be able to take on an extra challenge, and beating that unlocks a neat surprise. These extras aren't much, but they're there for people who want a more difficult experience. Perhaps the only other gripes I have with the game are how retrying bosses can be a chore, since you have to walk from an area's central checkpoint all the way back to the boss arena, and how there's no aiming indicator when you're readying your shot. VERDICT: As somebody who gets a weird sense of enjoyment from the trial-and-error of fighting a challenging boss, Titan Souls was a fun experience for me. Every boss was memorable (and had great battle themes), each fight was tough in a different way, and the fact that it's one shot, one kill made succeeding unbelievably cathartic after dozens of failed attempts. Although I wish the exploration aspect was more fleshed out and the story was explored more, I'm pretty happy with my time with this game. If you're anything like me and similarly enjoy challenging games all about learning from failed attempts or fighting tough bosses, this might be a game worth trying out. Again, it's pretty short and offers little replayability apart from the alternate modes, so consider that before making a purchase. On the flip side, if you don't have the patience for trial-and-error or are easily frustrated by unforgiving game mechanics, it's probably best you avoid this game. This game is designed to be all about trying and trying again, and the fights are meant to be difficult, and if that's not your scene, you may find Titan Souls infuriating. The game is available on Steam here: Titan Souls on Steam (steampowered.com) Here's the soundtrack on Spotify: Spotify – Titan Souls (Original Soundtrack) - end - I got plenty of reads sitting in my backlog, and among them are a bunch of random Five Comics themes I've put together. I ought to start knocking these off so my backlog count finally dips below four digits (no joke, I literally have thousands of unread digital comics). THE THEME: This time around, I picked out five comics adapting popular animated series. If you enjoy cartoons like I do, this might be a theme of interest to you. THE COMICS: ADVENTURE TIME WITH FIONNA AND CAKE (FCBD 2018) Publisher: BOOM Studios Writer: Kiernan Sjursen-Lien Artist: Christine Larsen Fionna and Cake must deliver a bowl of punch to Prince Gumball's party, but along the way, they face some obstacles. Cake is hoping that her fanfiction will guide them on their journey, but Fionna has other, much simpler ideas. Fun story, and I like that the art's slightly different from the original animation style. - FREE on Comixology THE LEGEND OF KORRA (FCBD 2021) Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Writers: Kiku Hughes, Nadia Shammas, Sara Alfageeh Artists: Sam Beck, Nadia Shammas This comic has two short stories. The first is set in the Legend of Korra timeline, as Tenzin recounts a tale from his childhood to help his daughters settle their dispute. The other is set in the Legend of Aang timeline, as Uncle Iroh finds himself a romantic interest frequenting his tea shop. Both are a healthy mix of humorous and heartwarming. - FREE on Comixology DISNEY MASTERS: DONALD DUCK (FCBD 2020) Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Writers: John Lustig, Evert Geradts, Dick Kinney Artists: William Van Horn, Mau Heymans, Al Hubbard This comic's got three stories for the price of one, all featuring Donald Duck. The first sees him and his nephews as exterminators (who remove pests in creative ways), the second has him tag along with Scrooge McDuck hunting for a hilarious cryptid, and the third has him endure the shenanigans of his cousin Fethry Duck. It's nice to see Donald not be a rage-fueled duck for once. - FREE on Comixology SUPER DUCK: THE COMPLICATED ABSOLUTE MERINGUE CAKE Publisher: Disney Comics Writer: Augusto Macchetto Artist: Paolo Mottura It's a short comic where Super Duck tries to help Ludwig von Drake bake the absolute meringue cake, and it goes about as poorly as one would expect. - FREE on Comixology MIGHTY MOUSE #1 Publisher: Dynamite Comics Writer: Sholly Fisch Artist: Igor Lima In what I found to be a surprising twist, this story sees the classic cartoon mouse transported to the "real" world, where he encounters Joey, an outcast kid who gets bullied in school. I wasn't expecting this kind of story at all, and I want to read more just to see how it all plays out. I also like the appropriately jarring juxtaposition of the highly cartoon art style of Mighty Mouse next to the realistic look of Joey's world. - Comixology link I did my best to diversify the animated series represented in this post, ranging from classics to more modern titles. Though I'm admittedly behind on the fresh, new cartoons these days, I still enjoy my animated stuff from time to time, and reading these comic adaptations of stuff I've watched that have their own self-contained side stories has gotten me back in the mood to revisit some of my favorites. PANEL OF THE WEEK: - end -
I can finally finish this blog entry! Thank goodness! BACKGROUND:
My college friend group is pretty big into co-op game experiences, and this one was decided upon by a majority to be our next big time sink late last year. I was personally going to hold off buying the game until a few weeks later, but one of my friends demanded I join immediately, even resorting to sending me money to buy the game on Steam just to drag me into it (I paid them back the following day, don't worry). Fine. You win. Here I am. As for why this took so long to write, we all got distracted by other games (Hades in particular became a hot topic for the second year in a row), and it took us three months of procrastinating to get back and finish the available content. Truthfully, this could have gone up between then and now, but I really wanted to see as much of the story through as possible before I thought about publishing this post. PLOT: You'd think this game would have no plot, but surprisingly, it does have a story going on in the background. At some point, you'll find yourself on islands that reveal that the mostly ocean-covered world was the result of a global cataclysm, and notes found on said islands are written by the people who were around during different points of the apocalypse. It's one of those stories where you have to go out of your way to find and read the details (again, not the most popular narrative approach for many people), but I enjoyed the bleak picture they painted of the ocean world. Unfortunately, this game isn't fully complete yet story-wise, and we only managed to get to the end of the latest content update during our last play session. I am curious as to whether the story will have a through line or an ending, or it will continue its method of world-building from previous portions of the story. PRESENTATION: As far as art style goes, Raft looks pretty solid, sitting in a comfortable midway point between kinda realistic and slightly cel-shaded. It looks nice on higher graphics settings, but in terms of actual style, it didn't really do anything for me. The music is more on the ambient and chill side, which is about what I expected from a game like this. I'd probably have appreciated it more if it weren't drowned out by our group's constant chattering and laughter. GAMEPLAY: Raft is a survival game where your base of operations is a floating... raft. Huh. Anyway, the basic idea is to collect trash floating in the water to craft tools and facilities that help you survive, expand your raft, and let you explore islands that you can loot for more resources. If you've played any similar game with lots of crafting, base-building, and exploration, this game won't feel too foreign mechanics-wise. As far as your character's survival goes, you only really have to make sure that your hunger and thirst don't drop too low, otherwise you will slowly take damage until your HP drops to zero. Also, you'll have to avoid hazards like asphyxiation, and hostile creatures like sharks, as they will damage you as well. Dying is only punishing in the sense that you'll lose your entire inventory when you respawn, but other than that, respawning warps you back to your raft, which may or may not be convenient depending on the situation (e.g. it may be inconvenient when exploring a large island). In multiplayer, there are ways to bring your friends back, which makes the fear of losing items less of a problem at the cost of some time spent mounting a rescue. At the start, the crafting materials you'll be using will be the garbage you see floating around in the water. These materials will be enough to craft simple tools (hooks to gather trash with, fishing rods, spears to stab sharks with, etc.), helpful facilities (grills to cook food on, water purifier for drinking, plots to plant crops in), and expansions to the raft itself (extremely important not only for space, but because sharks bite off the outer edges of your vessel). Once you get yourself going, you'll want to stop over at islands to gather valuable resources like tree seeds, as well as dive near the coast to gather stones, clay, and more. These materials expand what you can do, granting you access to things like smelters, anchors, enhanced versions of water purifiers, cooking pots, more durable tools, and even engines for the raft. Other foodstuffs also let you cook recipes that provide significantly better hunger and thirst restoration, and you can even craft things like shark bait to make swimming safe for a brief period. Eventually, you'll even gain the ability to wrangle certain animals and raise them for drops like eggs, wool, and milk. It's nothing I haven't seen in other survival games, but all the things you can make and find really mesh well with the seafaring setting you find yourself in. With the amount of stuff you can do, multiplayer teams can really divide and conquer the tasks. I, for example, take on my usual role in games like these and maintain order on the base through menial busywork, keeping cooked food stocked and making sure facilities like the purifiers have water, and anything that needs fuel is still running. My friends take on various roles, with one in charge of navigation, another in charge of organizing the base facilities and expanding the raft, a bunch in charge of resource gathering, and even one taking on decoration duties. I wager this could be a lot in a single player run, but as far as multiplayer goes, there's plenty of room to settle in a niche and be able to contribute to the team's greater success. A lot of the gameplay loop is gathering resources, building and expanding the base to aid in survival, stopping over at islands to gather more resources, rinse and repeat. Eventually, you'll get to a point where you'll want to research materials in order to expand the amount of things you can craft, and that'll then lead into crafting items that'll let you discover the game's various story locations. This is where a lot of the fun of the game is, since you'll run into locations apart from the generic island, encounter puzzles and simple platforming challenges, and discover special crafting blueprints, lore notes, and coordinates to the next adventure. Overall, I thought the game's twist on the survival game formula was cool. I found the fact that you're on a mobile base scouring the ocean to be a novel twist; instead of our usual approach of finding a place to settle down and set up shop, majority of our time is spent on our very base and expanding it right then and there. I enjoyed that even in long stretches between islands, you could still accomplish basic resource gathering with all the shit scattered on the surface, and the eventual arrival at a new landmass is rewarding both in the sense of materials and stuff to explore. The story locations were also a fantastic way to break up what could easily be a monotonous experience, providing a healthy amount of adventure outside of maintaining the raft. As for the main crafting aspect, a lot of the game has is serviceable. There's the usual stuff you come to expect (tools, survival-related facilities, material refineries), stuff that makes sense within the game's context (anchors, sails, and the eventual engines), quality-of-life gear (flippers, oxygen masks), and a smattering of optional stuff (like the dozens of kooky decorations we eventually ended up placing on the raft). There isn't a lot of wacky automation options (much to the chagrin of one of my friends, who loves optimization-based gameplay), and there's no insane gear like Minecraft, but I thought what the game had was enough to provide a decent amount of variety. Now, to address the elephant in the room: this game is still in Early Access, and has been for many years now. In its current state, the game is fun to play (especially with friends), but once you reach the end of the available story content, there's little point to keep going unless you're that invested in souping up your raft to be the ultimate naval base ever made. From what we've read, it's been quite a long time since the last big content update, and there's no signs as to when the next thing's gonna come out. At this point, I'm more invested in the game's lore than I am with any possible expansions to the gameplay, so the fact that it's not content complete yet bums me out a little. VERDICT: Raft was a really fun survival game experience with a one-of-a-kind conceit of maintaining a mobile base, exploring the high seas in search of resources, and uncovering the mystery of the game's world. Though some aspects aren't all that unique compared to stuff I've encountered before, a lot of the gameplay mechanics complemented the setting well, and I got more than enough enjoyment from the mix of base-building, exploration, and the occasional story mission. Plus, the experience was enhanced by the fact that I was playing with friends. There's still the matter of it not feeling like a complete experience as it is now, but I'm content with what we've played so far, and I'm still looking forward to what comes next (hopefully those are still on the way). If the concept of building a raft that doubles as a mobile headquarters for your adventures sounds appealing,, Raft is worth taking a look for any friend groups who are into co-op survival games. Again, I must reiterate that this game is still in Early Access and as such still isn't complete, so take that into consideration if your party wants a more complete experience. This is the game on Steam: Raft on Steam (steampowered.com) - end - Well, this was an.... interesting read, so to speak. BACKGROUND:
I don't really know anything about this one since I've pretty much never heard of it. I asked a friend and the most they said was that it was a slice of life kinda deal. The title did give me an odd feeling that this was gonna be a little weird, but that's about it. THE WRITING: This manga follows an as-yet nameless junior in a high school living out his existence as a student in relative silence. That all changes with a fateful encounter with Nagatoro, a sophomore who has taken an.... extreme interest in the guy. Most of the volume chronicles various situations where Nagatoro pretty much endlessly torments her "senpai" as the guy struggles to have some peace and quiet. Nagatoro's teasing ranges from trying to be suggestive around her senpai (only to taunt him and call him a pervert immediately afterwards), shitting on virtually anything he does, physical abuse (which ranges from unsolicited touching and being slapped in the back of the head), and generally not leaving him alone. The senpai in question's responses go from becoming extremely defensive, relenting on aggressive and incessant requests he doesn't want to do, and even breaking down to the amount of teasing he endures. Still, the dynamic persists, as "senpai" continues day in and day out to put up with Nagatoro's horseshit. Although my description certainly sounds harrowing, the manga takes a more light-hearted tone to its approach, and it's clear from the start that the dynamic between the two characters is meant to evolve into something more (with hints that there are deeper feelings from both characters). That said, majority of the flirt-by-bullying shit Nagatoro does is the exact kind of thing I have had to deal with in my actual life (well, minus the flirting) and the flashes of real-life bad experiences that I see as I read this otherwise quirky and funny manga really put me at such a state of unease. I have a strong aversion to people who act like Nagatoro does, and I avoid anyone who tries that shit with me. I am not joking. Other than that, this story is pretty straightforward. A lot of the scenarios the two find themselves in are typical high school situations, and as of this volume, most of the chapters are episodic in nature and don't really have an overarching narrative that it's following. Still, there's still somewhat a sense of progression in the chapters, as tiny bits and pieces of each character's true feelings slowly peek out in the seemingly subtle things they say, do, or witness of the other person. It's a lot like the progression of any new connection between two unfamiliar people, except this involves an almost cruel amount of accosting the other guy. THE ART: I found the art style to be quite charming, with cutely drawn characters who have very animated facial expressions, detailing that's mostly simple overall but still conveys a lot of information, and some neat-looking movement for the more dynamic panels. It's a delight to look at the manga from cover to cover; everything looks nice and neat, and it doesn't look too busy. And while it's far from being graphic, some of the visuals involving Nagatoro involve her being.... aggressively suggestive, and that probably means I'm on some sort of list just by the virtue of having read this. VERDICT: My own personal trauma aside, Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro is a fun and silly high school comedy featuring two polar opposite characters who play off of each other so well. Nagatoro, though a completely deranged lunatic throughout this volume, does have an endearing quality to her, and her senpai's awkwardness is a trait I can relate to all too well. The manga put the two in a good variety of situations for their dynamic to let loose, which made for interesting reading. I did enjoy this book for what it was in a vacuum, though the fact that some of the situations are painfully close to some legitimately horrible experiences make it a little hard for me to fully get into the manga. If you're into slice of life stories on the funnier side, I can see this book definitely being up your alley. If your idea of flirting is the same as Nagatoro's, please stay the fuck away from me, I'm serious. Check out the manga on Comixology: Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro Vol. 1 - Comics by comiXology - end - I've been sitting on this game for way too long, and I finally found the time to sink my teeth into it. BACKGROUND:
I watched one of my go-to streamers play this game many years back and I was immediately charmed by the game's vibe and how its gameplay is reminiscent of Viva Piñata (one of my personal favorite farming sim/creature collector hybrids). This has been sitting on my Steam wish list for several years at this point, and it was only during a sale last year that I finally got my hands on it. PLOT: You play as Beatrix LeBeau, a young woman who moved from Earth to the Far, Far Range, an alien planet inhabited by cute slime creatures. Here, she hopes to start life anew as a slime rancher, rebuilding a derelict ranch and exploring the world along the way. Once the initial premise is set, you're off to forge your own path in the Far, Far Range and there are no story missions to worry about. However, you do get to follow two plotlines as you play and explore more of the world. The first involves letters from someone named Casey, who is implied to have been in a relationship with Beatrix prior to her move. The letters wax nostalgic about a previous life, and explores Casey's feelings about Beatrix eventually leaving to chase her dreams. There's certainly a bittersweet vibe to Casey's letters, as you get a sense of the fond memories they have for Beatrix, and how they miss her and wish her well on her new life. Finally, an ex story that isn't bitter. The other story is about a man named Hobson, who was the previous owner of the ranch Beatrix is currently tending to. He's left notes across the entire Far, Far Range for Beatrix to find, and they detail his adventures. At first, a lot of it serves more as gameplay guides, or simply adds some neat trivia about what he used to enjoy in certain locations, but at some point, you learn that he finds something other than adventure in the Far, Far Range. By the end, you learn that he found himself choosing between continuing his adventuring ways or following his heart. I was not expecting this game to have much of a story, let alone two emotional tales, and I appreciated them both for being about love without being painfully saccharine. They're mostly in the background, though, so if you're interested, you'll have to go out of your way a bit to read everything. On the flip side, if you're just here for the gameplay, you can freely ignore this part of the game, but I personally think it's worth exploring the story if only to see the credits. The world-building for the Far, Far Range and everything in it is minimal, since the few NPCs there are don't have much to say, and while there's a Slimepedia you can access that gives lore for pretty much everything you can encounter, it's mostly just flavor text. PRESENTATION: Visually, the game has a cute, cartoony art style with lots of vibrant colors, adorable designs for the various slimes, and lots of squishy animations. Along with the chill and cheery music plus a smattering of cute sound effects, it all comes together to deliver a pleasant vibe that one can't help but smile at. GAMEPLAY: Slime Rancher is, as the name implies, all about building a ranch full of slimes. The basic idea is to go out into the world, capture some slimes with your vacuum pack, gather resources to feed slimes (who will drop Plorts, which is pretty much just slime shit), sell Plorts on the market, and use the money to expand the farm to keep the loop going (or to optimize your gains). In addition to that, there's a good amount of exploration you can do to gather the stuff you need to get your ranch going. There are about a dozen or so varieties of slimes, each with unique Plort drops, diets, and living conditions needed to keep them happy. These little bastards can be quite unruly, so you'll need to build corrals to keep them in, and depending on the species, you'll need to take additional precautions to prevent any untoward escape incidents. Though the collector in me wishes there were more species in the game, I think the variety that's already available is fantastic enough. In order to keep the Plorts flowing, you'll need to keep your slimes fed. Barring a couple of special exceptions, a slime's diet falls into one of three categories: fruit, veggies, or meat. You can find these strewn about when you explore outside the ranch, but you can set up chicken coops and gardens so you can have a steady supply at the ready. Most slimes have a favorite food; if you feed them their favorite, they'll produce double the Plorts. If you want to maximize Plort production, you can create slime hybrids called Largos by feeding slimes with a different type of Plort than they produce. This will create slimes with all the quirks of both slimes, down to their respective diets, allowing you to mix and match slimes according to their preferred food type for convenience. For example, meat can be scarce, so combining a carnivore slime with a herbivore slime can make things more convenient since you can simply feed the resulting Largo with fruit/veggies. Feeding Largos will produce Plorts of both the slimes it's a fusion of, making things efficient since you get two for the price of one. Maintaining Largos can be risky business, since some slime combinations can be troublesome depending on their behaviors. Riskiest of all is the possibility of Largos becoming Tarr, which happens when a Largo accidentally eats a third kind of Plort that it doesn't produce. The Tarr can completely ruin your ranch, as they mercilessly slaughter regular slime until you kick them out or douse them with water. Once you've got a stash of Plorts, you'll want to cash them in at the market. The market has a bit of an economy to it, as the value of Plorts fluctuate each in-game day. As such, you'll want to diversify your portfolio (Plortfolio?) by having access to as many Plort varieties as you can (achieved by raising slimes of different kinds). There's also an interesting normalization mechanic where selling too much of one type of Plort will cause its value to go down considerably, which means you can't rely on a small assortment of Plorts for maximum profit. Money in this game is primarily spent on expanding your ranch. You'll need to pay up to build basic structures like corrals and gardens, pay more to upgrade said facilities (e.g. higher corral walls or sprinkler systems for gardens), and shell out extra to access new areas of the ranch (which have more spots to add facilities in, among other things). Additionally, you can also upgrade Beatrix's gear, increasing her stamina, adding a jetpack, improving her vacuum pack, and more. At a certain point, you'll be able to unlock the ranch's laboratory, which grants access to a fun new mechanic: Slime Science. You'll need to spend more money to unlock blueprints for all sorts of contraptions, which require Plorts and special materials to craft. You'll have to start out by crafting extractors that gather said special resources, but once you have enough, you can start crafting extra useful gadgets like drones that automate certain tasks on your ranch, teleporters that let you warp to two specified points, and even water turrets that deter Tarr. You can also craft stuff that's purely for fun, like lava lamps with slimes in them, a hoop to shoot slimes in, and even accessories to put on slimes. I really appreciated this mechanic for giving Plorts an additional function, one that plays off of the established lore in the Slimepedia (that they're highly sought-after resources with technological applications). Play long enough and eventually you'll have more money than you know what to do with. The game has a money sink in the form of a rewards program. Each payment unlocks purely cosmetic rewards, like refurbishing sections of the ranch, and the ability to customize the color palette of structures like your house and your vacuum pack. It's not required, but it's a neat reward for players who go all in on the Plort market. In order to get to the point that you have all this shit on your ranch, however, you'll have to venture out into the world of the Far, Far Range. It's through exploring that you'll run into the various kinds of slimes and their respective food sources that you can mass produce in your ranch. The game's open world isn't terribly large, but there's a surprising amount of it to explore, with a handful of unique biomes and plenty of secrets like treasure pods that give out neat rewards like special Slime Science blueprints. I liked the unique locales and was delighted at how much of the map you could actually explore, and I enjoyed venturing out into the wild just as much as I did tending to the ranch. It takes a bit of time to unlock new sections of the world, since you'll have to feed big slimes called Gordos lots of food to acquire Slime Keys, which then open one of many Slime Doors across the world. This part is a bit of a grind, but if you take time to build up your ranch, you'll end up with more than enough food to move forward. Some of the barriers are more fun to unlock, since the key to unlocking certain gates or activating special events involves finding slime statues and firing the corresponding Plort onto the statue. Again, a fun use of the Plorts outside money, and it's one that highly encourages players to encounter many different kinds of slimes. Perhaps my only gripe with exploration is the lack of a minimap. There is a regular map that you can access to see where you are, but I found that it doesn't help with navigating into and out of some of the more off-the-beaten-path areas of the game. I didn't get lost for too long, but I would have appreciated even a simple minimap or a compass of sorts on the HUD at all times just so I didn't get turned around as much because I keep toggling the map on and off. An alternate way to get resources is through the Range Exchange, where you can barter goods that you have access to with a small assortment of NPCs in exchange for other items. I personally didn't find much use in it other for some optional stuff, since it was more fun to venture into the wilderness to find what I was looking for. I suppose it's useful in the early game and you want to kickstart your ranch production. There's a few optional things you can do in the game, like three different minigames that give out exclusive rewards when you accomplish them (the minigames themselves are pretty simple, but fun), and weekly party events where you seek out a special Gordo that gives you unique decorative items. I found it odd that these are required for a completion-based achievement, but otherwise, I thought these were fun diversions from the main gameplay loop. If the regular Adventure Mode isn't to your liking, you can try out Casual Mode (essentially the same game, but with less of mechanics like the Tarr and Feral Slimes), or Rush Mode, which is all about earning as much money as possible within three in-game days. VERDICT: Slime Rancher was every bit as fun as I thought it would be, with its main gameplay loop being simple but satisfying (especially from a collecting standpoint; I love catching 'em all, so to speak), a cool crafting mechanic (which I felt could have been a bigger part of the game, but I found it fun nonetheless), and a surprising amount of exploration that can be done. I am extremely pleased to have spent a lot of time in this charming, squishy game; it scratched a lot of my life sim game itches and then some, plus it was just a delight to discover every species of slime along the way. I am hoping the sequel brings more of what I enjoyed along with new additions and some improvements to existing mechanics. If the idea of setting up a ranch where you wrangle cute slimes is remotely appealing to you, this game is absolutely worth trying out. It's a chill time where you can build your ranch up at your own pace, explore a small but vibrant world, discover slimes and secrets, and even encounter stories in the background that surprise you with their emotional impact. You'll probably hit a point eventually where you've done pretty much all there is and see no reason to keep playing, but before then, I think many players will have enjoyed a lot of what the game has to offer. Check out the game on Steam: Slime Rancher on Steam (steampowered.com) - end - I could have watched this in the theaters, but fuck that, that's a stupid idea. Instead, I waited for the Disney+ release for this latest MCU installment. The movie follows the titular Eternals, the champions of the Celestials on Earth, who are tasked to defend humanity from the monstrous Deviants and let them grow as a species. You'll get to see snippets of that 7000-year journey throughout the movie, but the main focus is on present day, as the sudden reemergence of the presumed-extinct Deviants brings the Eternals (who have all gone their separate ways since their last mission) back together.
It's a straightforward, perhaps formulaic premise on the surface, but things do get interesting once something called The Emergence is explained. Without expounding too much, it reveals the true purpose of the Eternals' mission (which they undertake at the Prime Celestial Arishem's behest), and I found the moral quandary that ensues among the Eternals to be much more engaging than a simple "get the band back together" tale to beat the shit out of some monsters. That said, this ends up making the Deviants angle nothing more than a distraction, which I thought was a shame. Along the way, they introduce Kro, leader of the Deviants, and there was potential for some interesting conflict based on what he says to the Eternals. Most of that is thrown to the wayside, unfortunately, and I felt that was a missed opportunity. There's also the matter of other contrivances, like how Kro himself came to be, and why the Deviants in general even do what they do in present day, but seeing as it's all thrown out in the end anyway, I saw no point in thinking about it too hard. We've got quite the ensemble cast of new characters, so I'll tackle this part in list form.
Overall, the cast can be a bit hit or miss, but I still found a lot of enjoyment in how they have different perspectives on humanity as they go about on their mission. Seeing those perspectives change or challenged made for engaging character moments. I can say something similar about the Eternals' relationships with one another; some of them could be better explored or fleshed out, but the philosophical clashes and the exploration of different kinds of bonds that got some focus were quite enjoyable to me. As I said, this movie goes back and forth from following the present-day plot and flashbacks to the Eternals' glory days of beating the shit out of Deviants. The flashbacks are a lot of fun, since that's where you get to see a lot of the ass-whooping, but there are some significant character moments in there, too. The present day has its share of action scenes, but a considerable amount (this movie is very long) of time is spent getting everyone back together, so I can see stretches of the movie to be not engaging for viewers who just want to see punching and explosions. I thought the action was decent, with Ikaris, Makkari, and Thena being the most fun to watch in combat, though I'll give bonus props to Phastos, Sersi, and Sprite for neat uses of their powers in some scenes. The Deviants didn't look too interesting design-wise, and I feel like their threat levels weren't portrayed consistently enough to make every encounter with them memorable (one moment they take a beating and then some, the next they go down like bitches). As for greater MCU tie-ins, this is more of a standalone affair, with the most being a mention of the events of Infinity War/Endgame (and how that affects a specific plot point, which I thought was brilliant), and the rest is just a bunch of throwaway lines that I thought felt inorganic as far as references go. This makes the movie easier to jump into with no background knowledge, but if you're looking for the "it's all connected" shit, this ain't the movie for it. Being familiar with how uncommon it is for the Eternals to cross over in the actual comics, this was about what I expected. This movie also introduces Dane Whitman, who is the Black Knight in the comics (wielder of the cursed Ebony Blade, a weapon tied to his family history). Unfortunately, he's just a regular dude in this movie, but I'm holding out hope that he'll be a full-fledged Avenger someday in the future (the history of the Ebony Blade is a fun corner of the Marvel Universe). The ending of the movie was intriguing, since it leaves plenty of room for a sequel with the main cast, but at the same time, how that hypothetical sequel can influence the MCU as a whole is still up in the air. I'd like to see more of these characters in hopes of fleshing them out more, and I really hope the two monumental events that occur in the final stretch are fully addressed in other MCU properties. In terms of scratching my comic book geek itch, Eternals does quite well. I liked how they changed the origin of the Eternals and Deviants and the motivations of the MCU Celestials, as their doing so led to a lot of the intriguing philosophical themes explored in the movie. I'm also a big fan of some of the deeper cuts, like how the Celestials feel like they're ripped straight out of the comics design-wise, how the Emergence is similar to a story revelation in a recent Avengers comic, the adaptation of an iconic Eternals ability, and the two after-credits scenes. Lastly, I appreciate the fact that they leaned into these superheroes being the basis of many human myths in the MCU, a concept which made the Eternals in the comics interesting to me to begin with. Now that I've mentioned it, yes, there are two after-credits scene. The first is a bombshell character introduction, one that I was hoping for since it's establishing a key connection from the comics that I really wanted to see in the MCU. The second is a tease for the future of one of the characters in the movie, one that I expected (and am excited for), but they threw in an extra surprise at the end that made me even more hyped. Personally, I thought Eternals was a respectable, ambitious effort to integrate a pretty obscure, usually standalone corner of the Marvel Universe into the MCU. It doesn't hit all the notes and stick all the landings with all the shit it tries to juggle in a worryingly long runtime, but I have to give props to building a completely new corner of the universe with characters most fans of the movies haven't heard of. I recognize that the philosophical shit may not be to a lot of people's liking, but I enjoyed a lot of the themes they explored through this movie, and I liked a good portion of the main characters and their relationships. In some respects, It's certainly not perfect (and I completely understand some of the complaints I've read), but on the whole, I think my experience was a net positive. Given all the new shit that was introduced in this movie, I understand that this might be a lot for casual MCU fans. You know where to find me if you want some explanations or trivia that won't be of value to you in your everyday life. There might be some expectation for me to address the elephant in the room (this movie was quite divisive online in terms of reviews), so let me say this before I go: I don't give a shit. That's their opinion; they can keep it, 'cause I ain't asking. I'm perfectly capable of constructing my own without looking at tomato percentages. And on that note, I should stress that blog entries of this kind are just my opinions. I'm not trying to proselytize anybody when I write these; I'm simply writing my ramblings down and throwing them into this void. There is no expectation that readers will agree, no aggressive attempt to persuade anybody that I'm right, and no conflicts being sought against people who disagree. - end - Eternals is finally coming to Disney+ this week, and while I don't quite have an Eternals-centric comic in my backlog right now, I have something that's adjacent enough to mark the occasion. BACKGROUND:
Here's a fun fact for everyone before you go see the Eternals: Thanos is an Eternal himself (albeit descended from the Eternals who migrated to Titan, and a mutant one at that). This is a connection I really hope is established in the MCU, which is why I felt compelled to read this today. As for the book itself, I've actually read parts of this story arc, so I have a good idea of what happens. Still, I haven't read it cover to cover, so I'm looking forward to seeing more details. THE WRITING: This story arc shows us one of the most terrifying ways the Marvel Universe can end: Thanos completely erasing all life from the universe. We get a peek into the far, albeit alternate future (literally millions of years after present day), and it is as bleak as it gets: Thanos sits on his throne overlooking a barren universe, and is king to pretty much no one. Readers get a glimpse at how this future comes to pass, as you'll see Thanos vanquish the Avengers, decimate planets, and even topple cosmic beings like Galactus. If that doesn't hammer home how hopeless things are, the comic frames this as, on some level, an inevitable fate for the universe. Plus, the way Thanos flexes one of his specific conquests is as hardcore as it gets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, King Thanos is a bit unsatisfied despite the complete and total victory that he's wanted. Turns out, despite all he's done, the one thing he's always wanted still eludes him: the hand of Mistress Death. In one last attempt to get what he wants, King Thanos drags his younger self from present day out of his timeline and into the future, and seeing the still-hungry younger version clash with his more experienced, jaded self was a great way to explore Thanos as a character. In particular, seeing present Thanos react to what he becomes despite achieving his goal is quite interesting. Though this future is devoid of life, there are still a few other beings lingering about. First is an aged Hulk, who is sadly nothing more than Thanos's pet at this point. Second, there's the Silver Surfer, who's gotten a super badass power upgrade in hopes of avenging the universe (something I was hyped to see since the Surfer is probably my favorite cosmic Marvel character). Last, but definitely not the least, there's a new version of the Ghost Rider who is imbued with the Power Cosmic and is stuck serving Thanos. This Rider's backstory is explored in full, and his true identity prior to his power-up comes as quite the surprise. I thought the arc was a neat alternate future story, even if the initial premise isn't shocking (after all, a desolate universe is the natural expectation when you think "Thanos wins"). You get to see how Thanos changes after he gets what he wants, and how his younger self feels about that. Plus, there's a bunch of cool moments (like Silver Surfer's appearance, or the result of Galactus fighting Thanos), and we get a straightforward but fun origin for a new version of the Ghost Rider. Also included in this collection is the Thanos Annual comic from 2018, which collects a handful of short stories centered around the Mad Titan. Though all standalone stories, the connecting thread is that Cosmic Ghost Rider is narrating them, which adds a slightly humorous spin to the whole thing. Most of the short stories here are pretty funny, putting Thanos in hilarious situations (him helping an old lady across the street) or having him act in a more comedic manner (him tormenting a regular dude named Dave for seemingly no reason). The few more serious ones are interesting in their own right, with the standout to me is the story where Thanos destroys a civilization's version of the afterlife, and how the ensuing existential crisis changes how they act. THE ART: The overall style has a kind of "gritty" feel to it, if that makes sense. A lot of the fine details and textures are achieved with a generous amount of hatching and rough lines. Along with some pretty dark shading, it all comes together to give off the vibe I describe. It's also fitting since there's a lot of violence in this comic (almost all of which is Thanos's brutality), and the art style complements the often bloody fights. There are some new designs introduced in this comic. The King Thanos of the alternate future is weirdly more pudgy than his young version, but he does have a costume that has an awesome-looking crown. Cosmic Ghost Rider naturally boasts a unique design, and the fusion of the classic demon aesthetic with more sci-fi elements looks pretty neat. The Thanos Annual features a wider variety of art styles, since each short story is drawn by a different artists. The ones that stuck out in my memory were the callback to the older art style of the Infinity Gauntlet comic, and the one that depicts Thanos in a hyper cartoon world (it's as unnerving as it sounds). VERDICT: I found Thanos Wins to be an awesome The End-style alternate future story. Seeing the Mad Titan be victorious is a chilling sight on its own, but what makes it memorable to me is how Thanos changes after millions of years alone in his victory, and how his younger self reckons with the thought of his victory (and how it could possibly change him). Plus, I liked the introduction of Cosmic Ghost Rider, was pleased with how cool Silver Surfer was in the story, and I had fun with the variety of short stories in the annual. If you enjoyed Thanos as a character in the movies, this is definitely one book worth checking out. You'll get just enough of what makes his comic version different from the MCU version (his obsession with Death), be treated with a quick origin story, and the rest of the story is standalone enough that you need not read the previous issues of this series (or anything else, for that matter). Comixology link below for those interested: Thanos Wins by Donny Cates - Comics by comiXology - end - This isn't exactly part of my backlog, but since I've played a fair bit amount of this game, it's a good time to write about it. BACKGROUND:
A friend of mine streamed this game on our Discord a couple of times a long while back, and I was immediately interested (it was a rogue-like, after all). The game sat in my Switch wishlist for a very long time, until the same friend.... strongly insisted I get it on PC. This coincided with a bunch of other people in the friend group getting the game, so we've all been playing together regularly since. PLOT: The most plot the game explicitly presents is in the opening cutscene, which shows the survivors discovering a mysterious alien planet and going to it. The implication is that they get stranded on arrival and must fight to survive one way or another. Other than that, there's not much story, as even the environments you explore are minimal when it comes to the story or lore details they present. The game makes up for this a little bit with the Logbook, which not only documents stuff you encounter in gameplay, but also comes with snippets of lore for each entry. Here, you can really start to figure out what the deal is (and it's wild), but that's only until you unlock a substantial amount of log entries. I like the approach of "play more, learn more" they take for the game's story, but I completely understand that it's not a satisfying way to convey a narrative for many people. PRESENTATION: Risk of Rain 2 has a style that I'd describe as a cel-shaded look. There's not a lot of textures that show off intricate detail; most things in the game have a flat color with little to no accents. It's simple, almost to a fault, but the game makes up for it with a fair amount of flashy visual effects and distinctly-shaped models. I think the style has a certain charm to it, but it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish objects in the far distance (at least on lower graphics settings). The music was a pleasant surprise to me. There's a healthy mix of techno and rock in the tracks, and the moods vary greatly, from chill (usually the normal stage music; great music to run around to), eerie (in some of the otherworldly settings in the game), to badass (the boss music). GAMEPLAY: Risk of Rain 2 is a rogue-like with combat that leans towards a third person shooter/hack and slash game. As with most rogue-likes, the basic idea is to buff yourself up with power-ups, tear through enemies and bosses, and go through the stages hoping to get to the end. And as expected, every run will be more or less unique, with different encounters every time. Before you start a run, you must pick one of the available character classes (called Survivors) to play as. Each class has access to a primary skill, secondary skill, utility skill, and special skill, and those are all unique per class. Though a lot of the characters take some doing to unlock, it's well worth doing, since every single one offers a completely different play style, and that variety makes doing runs over and over appealing. And if that's not enough, you can unlock alternate skill sets for many of these characters by completing special achievements. Once you've selected your Survivor, it's time to jump in. You'll be thrown into a handful of stages as you play, each with random enemies, loot, and landmark locations. The main goal in these regular stages is to find a teleporter and activate it. Doing so will summon the stage's boss, whom you must kill in order to proceed. Now, you could probably do this without any power-ups, but it would probably be wise to kill some normal enemies, earn cash off of them, and spend said cash on chests and terminals that hand out the power-ups you need. You can also run into 3D printers that take a random item of yours as currency in exchange for another item, scrappers that turn unwanted items into scrap (that can then be used on 3D printers), or even an assortment of drones and turrets that provide support in combat. There are a wide variety of power-ups to collect, each with a rarity value (denoted by their color), and each with unique effects. The power-ups can range from utility (buffing stats like movement or skill cooldowns), damage-related (crit chance), debuff application and more. There are even items called Equipment that are kinda like an extra skill, as you can use them as such and they'll have a cooldown. It's pretty fun to experiment with various combinations of these items, especially because you'll eventually start thinking about what loadouts work best for specific Survivors. A novel thing about the power-ups in this game is that unlike a lot of rogue-likes, you can acquire multiple copies of the same power-up. Doing so will stack the items effects, which I thought was really neat. There are naturally diminishing returns after a certain point, but it's a lot of fun to be able to go all in on a certain build because you got multiple stacks of a certain item. Enemy variety is pretty good, with mobs that range from mild annoyances to infuriatingly horrendous to fight. There are also a good variety of bosses, each quite formidable even without hordes of minions swarming you as you fight them. You can even encounter elemental variants of enemies if you're particularly (un)lucky. Though the bosses (especially late-game ones) can whoop your ass, I found the bigger challenge overall to be managing the swarms of regular enemies, since they'll just keep spawning the longer you dawdle in a stage. Speaking of dawdling, the way the game handles difficulty scaling involves time. An indicator on your HUD displays a meter that starts at Easy and moves up to higher difficulties the longer you play. As such, the simplest way to succeed is to progress through the stages (i.e. find the teleporters) quickly and hopefully get to the final boss while the difficulty is still manageable. On the flip side, staying longer may make things more difficult down the line, but you'll have the leisure of looting and farming as much as you please until you arrive with a build that you're comfortable with. It's a balance that's very challenging to get right, since either approach can go very wrong, but I quite enjoy this aspect. If this sounds daunting to you, worry not, as before you start a run, you can set your game to one of three difficulty modes: Drizzle, Rainstorm, or Monsoon (rain jokes, get it?). Rainstorm is the normal mode equivalent, while Drizzle is what you'd call easy mode, as it slows down the difficulty scaling and grants health bonuses. On the flip side, Monsoon is hard mode, speeding up the difficulty scaling and is less forgiving when it comes to HP regen. The minimum stages you can visit in a run is five, but the four normal stages (of which there's a set of around eight) are selected at random, and there are also a decent number of optional stages you can run into if you know where to look. The layouts are mostly the same, but the locations of stage elements will be random every time. It's also possible to loop back to the starting stages repeatedly by following certain steps, which comes with all the aforementioned boons and banes of keeping the timer running. Most stages also have some neat secrets, like ways to unlock optional stages (which lead to secret boss fights and unique item drops), ways to get special loot, and even uses for Lunar Coins (a special currency within the game that can be used to acquire Lunar Items that you can't get anywhere else). Players who spend a lot of time with the game will eventually figure out where everything is (or where they could possibly spawn, at least), but I'll say that the initial discovery phase of these secrets was satisfying. One of the special things you can unlock by finding a secret area is a modifier mechanic called Artifacts. You must unlock each of the 16 Artifacts one by one, which takes some doing, but a lot of them are worth getting. Once unlocked, you can choose to activate the Artifacts you have to enable game-changing modifiers on your runs. The effects range from painfully challenging (like doubling enemy spawns) to extremely beneficial (the ability to manually pick out your power-ups) or simply adds spice to one's runs (removing stage restrictions for enemy spawns). It's a great mechanic that adds further replayability to the game, and the neat part is that activating these don't lock you out of challenge-based achievements. I've alluded to this briefly already, but achievements in this game are more than just for bragging rights. A lot of the achievements will unlock new power-ups that can be encountered in future runs, new Survivors you can take out for a spin, and alternate skillsets for said Survivors. The achievements are also more than just variations of "beat the game with x", with some novel objectives like racking up 200% attack speed or spamming 3D printers. Achievements for the sake of them are something I personally enjoy, but I recognize that some players don't really care for that. As such, I like this game's approach to achievements since there's a proper incentive to go for them. If the core game isn't enough for you, Risk of Rain 2 offers a couple of alternate game modes. The first is Prismatic Trials, which I liken to limited-time events in other games. For a given time period, players can play through the same fixed seed run using any Survivor they wish. The goal is slightly changed, as one simply needs to clear two stages and along the way, must blow up some time crystals to unlock the teleporter. It's a fun speedrunning challenge if you're into that sort of thing. The other alternate game mode is called Eclipse, a mode that adds punishing modifiers for every run each time you beat it. It's as formidable a challenge as it sounds. Of course, I can't talk about this game without mentioning the very thing that got my friend group interested in the game to begin with: co-op multiplayer! Up to four players can play together in a run, and the difficulty will scale accordingly with the number of players. Coordination isn't a hard requirement (you can't really control enemy aggro states, so there's only so much a team can coordinate in combat), but communicating where things are and talking through who picks out which items benefits everyone on the team. Co-op is also an easy way to get some achievements, especially for beginners who've yet to unlock characters. Though I found the game perfectly enjoyable alone, co-op is its own brand of fun. Us newbies played co-op with our resident Risk of Rain 2 veteran, and it was cool to learn the game on the fly with a guiding hand. Once we got a hang of it, we simply enjoyed clearing several achievements in one run together, delighting in the absurdity of our busted late-game builds, or laughing when one of us does something dumb that leads to death (thankfully not as punishing so long as your team teleports to the next zone). We also discovered a way to do runs with more than four players (no mods required), which meant more people could join in the fun. VERDICT: Risk of Rain 2 is yet another rogue-like I'm glad to have sunk my teeth into. There's a lot of room for wacky power-up combinations like in Binding of Isaac, the playable characters offer a ton of variety in terms of play style, there are a ton of worthwhile achievements to collect, the Artifacts system is awesome, and the difficulty scaling offers a fun risk/reward balancing aspect to runs. A telltale sign that I enjoy a rogue-like is when I go, fuck it, one more run, and this game definitely gets me to say that. And the best part? I can play this with my friends! I highly recommend this game for people who are into rogue-likes. I think it has the variety and replayability most rogue-like fans come to look for in the genre, and I think it has them in spades. Plus, the novelty of a co-op rogue-like makes it possible to enjoy the game with friends. For newcomers to the genre, I think this is a tricky game to start with. While the game has an easy mode equivalent, it will take some effort to unlock new characters and such, and that may mean that it'll take some time before one can find the play style for them. If you're willing to grind it out, though, I feel like it'd be worth it. Check out the game on Steam: Risk of Rain 2 on Steam (steampowered.com) Here's the soundtrack on Spotify, by the way: Spotify – Risk of Rain 2 - end - My quest to clear my PC game backlog begins in earnest today. Next up, a game I've been eyeing for quite a while now. BACKGROUND:
I saw a trailer of this a couple of years back and was immediately hooked by the premise. I ended up forgetting about it since the game's development went dormant for a while, but I then found out that it came out last year. I was planning to get it on Switch on some sale in the far future, but a good friend made like Santa and gifted me the game on Christmas. Thanks, Jed! PLOT: Oh boy, this is where it gets weird. The game starts out with a husband (voiced by James McAvoy) comes home to his wife after work. The wife (voiced by Daisy Ridley) surprises her husband with some fantastic news and a nice meal, but the night takes a serious turn when a cop (voiced by Willem Dafoe) knocks on their apartment door and arrests both of them. Shit obviously goes down, but the man suddenly finds himself back at the start of the evening. Yep, he's in a time loop. The husband retains all the information he learns from each loop, so the entire point of the game is to use what you have in the apartment, your knowledge of the upcoming events, and exploring dialogue with the cop and your wife in order to figure out why all this is happening. It'll take a considerable amount of trial and error, but you'll eventually find bits and pieces of information that will bring to light some shocking truths about each character. I really liked the journey of going through numerous loops to discover plot threads that make the big picture clearer. Unraveling a mystery is always fun (unraveling a time loop mystery doubly so), but what makes Twelve Minutes a novel experience for me is the limitations that are set. Each and every time, you're working in the same exact place with the exact same items, and you have to get a bit creative as to how you apply what you know and what you have in order to get the next piece of info you need to progress the loop further. I'll expound more on this in the gameplay section (since this aspect more pertains to what you actually do in the game), but I just wanted to note off the bat that I was impressed by the approach they were going for in this regard. Piecing together the mystery in the first half was a lot of fun, and it was cool to slowly but surely learn why the cop was going after you, and what your wife's secrets are. However, things get real iffy when you get to the story's biggest twist: a revelation about your character. Without giving it away, the story goes in a direction that makes the early bits of the story feel rather uncomfortable to revisit and killed pretty much any investment I had in the characters. It also opens up a bunch of plot holes in the process, though I suppose those are rendered moot afterwards. After the big twist is revealed, the story completely loses me, as now the game leans fully into the timey-wimey, mindfreak nonsense. I suppose it was inevitable given how the entire game is built around a logic-defying time loop (and finding a way to break it), but a lot of what I witnessed in the final stretch of the game made the entertaining first half less impactful. Also, since the initial mystery is pretty much solved at this point, you're left with figuring out how to break the loop, and the answer to doing so was, to me, not that satisfying (more on that later, since one of the reasons why I feel this way ties into gameplay). While I'm sure many people might find this stretch of the story to be pretentious or poorly written (not unfair sentiments to have, I don't think), I'm personally just miffed at how it wastes what was otherwise a serviceable first half. Everything else about it, I'm mostly indifferent to. The characters here can be hit or miss. The standout for me is easily the cop, as finding out his deal gradually turns him from antagonist you seemingly can't reason with or stop to someone more interesting. The wife is kind of in the middle for me, since she only becomes interesting once you figure out her past, but is otherwise just an endearing spouse with no real personality outside of that. The husband is more a player insert in the beginning, voicing out any frustrations one may have as you play through the loops, though I suppose said frustration makes him relatable in a way. Other than that, I can't really say he has much of a personality, either. The couple as a unit is your typical couple in many respects: loving small talk, flirting, bickering... the usual. They're cute and charming enough together that I wanted to figure out how to get the two out of the shitty time loop (because it's definitely not a fun time for them), but it's nothing groundbreaking as far as fictional relationships go. This game has seven endings (at least based on the achievements list). Out of these seven, three lead to the game's credits and serve as "conclusive" endings, though you can go back and play some more after getting these endings if you want. The other four endings are less conclusive, and explicitly show that the loop doesn't end when you get them. I strangely found these more fitting "endings" to the story than the ones meant to actually signal its end. I would say this is because these aforementioned endings are built around the first half of the story that I liked more as opposed to the latter half. I should probably note here that the story depicts acts of violence that I can describe as "extremely upsetting in a 'too real' way". I don't know how to elaborate on that without simultaneously spoiling some story details or inadvertently triggering some readers, but it probably would have been wise to have some sort of content warning at the beginning of the game, especially considering the fact that this is a game about time loops and players may end up subjecting themselves to watching the same upsetting scenes over and over. There's certainly a conversation to be had about whether such violence serves some greater purpose or appears to be just there to upset the player, but that's not a can of worms I want to open here. PRESENTATION: In terms of visuals, I thought Twelve Minutes looked decent at best. The art style has a realistic, almost cinematic look to it, but if you look at it too hard (especially with the character models and certain textures that don't actually sport all that much detail), the immersion more or less breaks. Animations are mostly fine throughout, but there are a fair amount of instances where character movement looks unnatural or awkward. I will say that a 3D game like this having a fully top-down perspective is novel, however. The music is more on the subtle side, with melodic instrumentals that give off an ominous vibe (especially during key story moments when the music sounds more suspenseful). Though no one track really stuck in my memory, most of them did their job in setting the mood for specific moments. What raised many eyebrows upon the game's announcement was the small yet star-studded voice cast. James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley did well to voice their respective characters (the latter was rather charming as the wife), but again, the standout here is Willem goddamn Dafoe whose performance helps make the cop such a memorable character. Unfortunately, this aspect is not perfect, since characters have an annoying tendency to talk over each other, and for the most part, the characters don't get much to say that fully showcases the fact that these people are renowned actors (save for the big story moments). There's also the fact that player-initiated conversations feel jarring since the mood of the scene will switch on a dime out of the blue (I'll elaborate on that later). GAMEPLAY: Twelve Minutes is primarily a point-and-click adventure, which means clicking on the right interactables in a certain manner to progress the story. A lot of the gameplay involves inspecting the environment, picking up items, and combining both elements to solve puzzles. Pretty much every event in this game takes place exclusively in the couple's apartment, and the "puzzles" in this game require you to use the same set of items and interactables in different ways to figure out what's going on. The insular experience of the game really stood out to me as a unique take on the genre; instead of going to and from completely different puzzles across multiple areas, the game's all about understanding everything you have access to in your one location and using the same exact set of variables in various (sometimes creative) ways. Unlike most point-and-click adventures, the puzzles in this game aren't mere barriers to the next area. Whereas puzzles in other games of this kind would simply reward you with the ability to move on to the next area (or an item that will serve as a solution to some other problem), solving puzzles and exploring in Twelve Minutes rewards you with answers. Breaking the time loop is impossible to do on your first few tries, so a lot of what you'll be doing at first is fumbling around trying to figure out why the cop's after you (and/or how to stop the cop from arresting you). With the entire story starting out as a mystery, having the reward for solving puzzles be the missing pieces to the narrative is fitting, and I liked that a lot. In turn, the reward for applying the intel you receive is that the events that unfold will have different outcomes from before, which, in a time loop, is possibly the most satisfying form of reward one could get. There's gonna be a lot of trial and error here, since the game simply throws you into the thick of it. From a design standpoint, that can lead to some frustration, since you're left to figure shit out on your own (with close to zero indication from the game on what to do), some of the things you have to do aren't exactly intuitive or are downright obtuse (a common issue in many point-and-click games), and some of the interactables don't actually factor into anything. I can see this aspect getting in the way of players enjoying the game, but if you're willing to be patient and experiment, the journey of uncovering information leading up to the big plot twist can be satisfying. Some of the solutions to pushing the narrative forward were clever, and I mostly enjoyed the process of arriving to those solutions. I will note that for the many ways to interact with the environment and the many interactables you run into, the game can be oddly restrictive in some ways. Sure, there are a good amount of interactions that make you go "aha, that works!", there are just as many that have you say "what do you mean that doesn't work?" I wouldn't call this a misstep of the game, as it's more of a missed opportunity, but it would have been cool if things were a bit more open-ended in terms of trying to arrive at solutions towards progressing the time loops. It's extra odd to me since there are plenty of interactables/interactions that don't provide you with leads and are just there for the sake of it. I make a point to emphasize that the bulk of my enjoyment in terms of puzzle-solving is before the plot twist, and that's not just because of my feelings about the story. I alluded to this in the earlier section, but at this point, all you must do is break the loop, and while I can appreciate the artistry in the way you go about it, it's more or less obtuse as far as puzzle solutions go. Also, the steps you must take leading up to this point get increasingly repetitive or absurdly specific, which a) is annoying, and b) is ridiculous to think about in-universe considering your character should have more than enough information to expedite certain steps or conversations. Of course, the time loop aspect plays well into the trial-and-error element of the game. One wrong move (or taking too long) will cause everything to reset (or will soft lock you, forcing you into resetting), and you'll have to either repeat what you were attempting or try something else in hopes of changing events, which is as tedious as it sounds. This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the puzzle-solving, as one minor hiccup in your inputs or even a few seconds of inaction can derail any progress you may have been making. I suppose the loops being frustrating (and, well, repetitive) makes sense in context, but I think a balance could have been struck between having the player directly experience the protagonist's struggle through gameplay and making the gameplay not tedious to get through/harshly punishing over one mistake. On the flip side, the time loops being how they are gives you the freedom to try all sorts of things to move forward. There's really no pressure to fuck up since you can easily reset, and even dumb ideas or failed attempts can give you useful information you can use for future attempts. That said, even forward progress won't feel that way, as the changes within the loop rarely feels pronounced. The game has a bit of a visual novel element to it where you can talk to your wife or the cop and explore some dialogue options. This is quite important, as a significant amount of progress can be made from asking the right questions or saying the right things. This aspect is unfortunately another one of the game's pitfalls, since the whole trial-and-error element will have you repeating dialogue paths over and over, which will get old very quickly. The latter half of the game is especially guilty of this, as the path forward becomes tediously repetitive. Again, that's probably the point, but I still think it's a bit overkill to also subject the player to the suffering. It's in this aspect of the game where the gap between what you as the player knows and what your character knows becomes painfully obvious. It's frustrating enough that you have to repeat the same set of conversations across different loops, but as I mentioned before, a lot of that could have been avoided in-universe since by this point, your character should know just as much as you do and can probably figure out what to say in order to speed up the conversation or get the point across to the other characters quicker. It makes the characters seem like fucking morons who can't be arsed to say something goddamn important, or they're being deliberately obtuse by dancing around the fucking point. Additionally, there is a real disconnect between the dialogue paths you can take, as the responses of your wife or the cop can flat out ignore the current mood of the scene (e.g. you could instigate an argument with your wife one moment, but she'll be cool with having dessert with you shortly after). It would take me out of the story every time this happened, and it happened a lot. On the subject of inputs, the controls could have been better for this game. As opposed to typical arrow keys, you move your character RTS-style and click a spot on the map to move him to, which can lead to a lot of wrong inputs (I've misclicked on a ton of interactables simply trying to move into the next room). Interactions between characters can also be wonky, since getting in the way of your wife or the cop can interrupt scripted sequences or prevent you from triggering dialogue. For everything else, however, the mouse controls work fine. This game has a couple of optional achievements I found interesting, since they involve interacting with otherwise useless fixtures of the apartment. If you're looking to 100% this game, these achievements are going to be a pain in the ass to get (the conditions for getting them are ridiculous), but I did appreciate what they were going for from an artistic standpoint with these interactables. VERDICT: Time loops, mystery thrillers, and point-and-click games aren't new concepts, but the fusion of these concepts in Twelve Minutes come together to create a memorable experience. I appreciated the novelty of a puzzle game where you try and put together the same set of pieces in different configurations (and how the time loops complemented that element), and I liked how the reward for figuring things out is more details on the initially mysterious story. But after pondering on my playthrough as I wrote this, I realized that I only enjoyed these aspects up to a certain point in the story. I thought this was a decent effort in the narrative-driven realm of games, and it had some really neat ideas gameplay-wise, but I must admit that I didn't like it as much as I thought I would when I first watched the reveal trailer. I felt like the game really lost me after the big twist, and many aspects of the gameplay could have been polished so that it didn't feel like a chore in many instances. The game's issues definitely stick out to me the longer I thought about it, and while I did truly enjoy the first half, I can't quite ignore the other qualms I have. I'd strongly suggest waiting for a sale to try the game, and that's not just because this is a short game (I got all the endings after five or so hours of playtime). Not only do I see the story being particularly divisive in terms of how it plays out, I can see the repetitive, trial-and-error heavy gameplay being frustrating (especially for casual players who may not have experienced old school point-and-click games). Also, there's the matter of the content warning I mentioned the game doesn't have for its disturbing elements; after reflecting on the shit that happens in this game, it dawned on me how fucked up it is that this game doesn't have one. If anything about this game that I described intrigues you in any way (like the time loop mystery, the puzzles, or the voice talent), and the caveats I mentioned don't deter you, don't let me stop you. Despite all my issues, I still think the game has some worthwhile ideas, and those at least merit a look. This is the game on Steam: Twelve Minutes on Steam (steampowered.com) - end - For the first blog post in the new year, I continue the tradition of reading something new. Five Comics is almost three years old at this point, and I want to make it a yearly thing. THE THEME: I'm doing another five manga theme to kick off 2022. I've mentioned it more than once that I've been trying to read more manga, and it made perfect sense for me to start my year fulfilling one of my resolutions. THE COMICS: THE FOX'S KISS #1 Publisher: Akitashoten Comics Writer: Saki Aikawa Artist: Saki Aikawa A girl named Koharu discovers that she's able to heal demons like her late grandmother did, and that leads to a fateful encounter with a fox demon named Iori. Now, Koharu must navigate high school while Iori follows her around and more demons take notice of her. Gets a little weird at the end as the story immediately jumps the gun on the romance. - FREE on Comixology HAREM DAYS: THE SEVEN-STARRED COUNTRY (CHAPTER 1) Publisher: Akitashoten Comics Writer: Momo Sumomo Artist: Momo Sumomo This manga follows the story of Hisui, a performer in a traveling troupe who is invited by the Emperor.... to his harem? Hisui accepts because the Emperor reminds me of someone from her past, but off the bat, things get intriguing with hints of political conflict and such. Can't say I'm not curious, though I'm mostly indifferent to the very clear romance being set up. - FREE on Comixology HEART BREAK CLUB (CHAPTER 1) Publisher: Media Do International Writer: Nikki Asada Artist: Nikki Asada Nima's a girl with a rather unfortunate curse: everyone she has a crush on falls in love... with someone else. Her uncanny curse sees her join a strange club who observes the love lives of other people in their school, and it's all super weird. I wanna read more of this simply on the merits of how sad yet funny the premise is. - FREE on Comixology KAMAKURA MONOGATARI (CHAPTER 1) Publisher: Futabasha Publishers Writer: Ryohei Saigan Artist: Ryohei Saigan This is a cutely-drawn manga about the married life of mystery writer Masazaku Isshiki and his young wife Akiko. The two have an endearing romance and peaceful life in the town of Kamakura, but the first chapter hints at something supernatural within the town. I like the art a lot, and I actually enjoyed the romance aspect. - FREE on Comixology THE LION AND THE BRIDE (CHAPTER 1) Publisher: Akitashoten Comics Writer: Mika Sakurano Artist: Mika Sakurano In what is probably the biggest red flag of a story in my selection today, this manga is about Yua, a high school girl, in a secret relationship with her teacher. After Yua loses her last surviving family member, she marries her teacher (oh god), and if that's not enough, the teacher has a surprising secret that'll make Yua's school life even more bizarre than it already is. This premise is much too uncomfortable for me to keep reading... - FREE on Comixology I've been slowly acquiring a bunch of manga in my backlog over the past year or so, and I have every intention of following through on my resolution this year. I'll be reading more manga this 2022, so expect blog posts on all that I've read alongside my usual consumption of Western comics. PANEL OF THE WEEK: - end -
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