Game Thoughts #9
XeodrifterThis game is a super basic, super short Metroidvania. It’s not a bad game, but it also doesn’t really have anything going for it.
Paint Park PlusSilly little ‘creative’ tool on the Vita.
Valiant Hearts: The Great WarI quite like games that have a neat little twist about them like this one. The artstyle is great and you play regular people doing regular stuff during the war, including a medic dog! It has some light puzzle solving and is a pretty straightforward narrative experience. One of those games that isn’t particular great in any way, but is still worth a play
Metal Gear Solid 4 & Ground ZeroesPlayed these back-to-back so decided to lump them in the same entry.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is… an okay game. There isn’t much gameplay to it and it really is more of a movie. Now, I know that MGS is always story/cutscene heavy, but not like MGS4. As someone who doesn’t watch movies, that made it pretty difficult to get through. That being said the story wasn’t bad and the gameplay (what little of it there was) was a decent enough MGS affair.
Ground Zeroes on the other hand? I have nothing good to say about it. Bored the life out of me and I only played a couple hours. Safe to say when MGSV was promised to be just like Ground Zeroes but bigger and in an open-world that was enough to put me off playing it… So I never did
Last point to clarify, I am not an MGS hater. I like the earlier entries!
Goat SimulatorI only did the base game, but this was okay. Much like Valiant Hearts above, it is one of those games that isn’t great in any way, but is short and worth the experience of playing. For anyone who has been living under a rock, this Goat has a more exciting life than most
Teslagrad & UnmechanicalI played these back to back for the quick platinums… though Teslagrad took a little longer than expected to work out some latter puzzles
. These are both average puzzle games.
Actual Sunlight This is a short visual novel about a guy who is depressed with nothing going for them in life… Clearly the developer understands this reality well, but the entire thing is mundane and depressing… Like I think that is the point, but it didn’t resonate with me
Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight BelowThis is a musou game set in the Dragon Quest universe. It is a pretty fun experience all round and unlike a lot of 3rd party musou games where they play pretty much identically to the main Dynasty Warrior games, this one mixes things up a bit.
The core gameplay is still the same, but different techniques are more effective than others against certain enemies and there is almost like a tower defense/offense bit thrown in where you call in DQ monsters.
As much as I liked this game, from everything I have heard the sequel improves upon it in basically every regard and also has co-op!
I never got around to the sequel, but most people recommend just going straight to that one and I might play it one day, but musou games are a big time commitment.
Fallout 4This is not a good game. It’s functional at least, but there isn’t anything redeeming about it. Was a bit of a slog to get through the plat and I never bothered with the DLC. At the very least, I am sooooo happy that crafting and base building is *mostly* Optional.
Also the story and locations… I don’t really remember them. I can remember the factions (minutemen, brotherhood, institute and railway), but I can’t really remember the world, which Is odd, because I can remember Fallout 3’s world better despite playing it years prior.
Everyone keeps telling me New Vegas is the one I really need to play… Maybe I will get around to it one day. I certainly preferred 3 to 4 though!
EntwinedWasn’t a fan of this one. I gave the story a once over as it only takes a couple hours one afternoon. It’s an arcade game where you control 2 entities (one on each analog stick) to collect/avoid things along a route. There is an entire challenge mode I never touched but honestly I think I’m happy just to have seen the credits on this one.