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May update: 23/52
I managed to get a PS5! I also played a lot of games and have a lot to say about most of them!
12. May 2nd | Ratchet & Clank 2 | Playstation 3 | 9h 51m | Replay | ☆☆☆½(/5)
Just like the first game, Ratchet & Clank 2 is very nostalgic and actually my first experience with the series when a friend of my brother's brought it over to our house to play it with him when it had just released. Took a while to actually own and play it myself though, honestly not sure when it was, but play it I eventually did, and it sure was more Ratchet & Clank. Yeah, 2 is a fairly big departure from the first game with its much more refined gunplay and smoother controls aimed more at combat than platforming than its predecessor's, but it's not like it feels like a completely different thing. You still travel from planet to planet, buy your gadgets and weapons while fighting a giant corporation trying to destroy parts of the galaxy, and all of that is still a lot of fun. The writing has also seen a clear improvement, with certainly much better comedy writing, but also a tighter and more focused plot that really builds well upon concepts and characters the previous game introduced and didn't really do all that much with at the time. Still some things that don't make much sense and the ending is very abrupt, but overall a big improvement over R&C1.
Despite better writing and tightening up the gunplay, I was never really the biggest fan of R&C2 without really being able to articulate why. Having not played it in 7 years before doing this, I feel like I had forgotten enough about the game to exist more in the now with it rather than thinking ahead about things later in the game at most times, and I think that helped me really "get" what I enjoyed about it, and also what I had always disliked because, honestly, my opinion on the game still hasn't really changed. The main gameplay is more enjoyable to me than the first game's in almost every single way. Sure, the platforming has been streamlined by a whole lot, but when the action is as fun as it is here, it's a trade-off I can live with. The slower pace and more strategical gameplay of the first game is fun and an interesting aspect of it that made it unique in the series, but I do prefer the higher pace the franchise would have from this game and onward. Also think the gadged puzzles are a lot more fun here than in the first game, but it's still annoying how gadgets like the swingshot basically has to take up a slot on the weapon wheel for the entire game if you don't want to pause the game and go into the weapons menu every time you want to use it (which is pretty often). I want to say that the gadget wheel was introduced in 3, so very much looking forward to that.
Where 2 really falters and why I don't really think it is a true improvement over the first game is in some of the gimmicks it introduces. Like, the hoverboard races in the first game weren't exactly great, but they were at least more fun than the mind numbingly boring bike races in 2 where every race feels like it goes on for about two laps too long and there's basically no challenge to them after maybe trying it out once and getting used to the fairly janky controls. Not sure why Insomniac thought racing was something from the first game that they needed to bring back in some form, but I certainly wish they hadn't. Also not sure why they decided to make some of the generation's worst space battles where no matter how much you play it, it just never stops feeling terrible and like an even bigger waste of time than the races with a terrible mini-map, awful aim and enemies that more often than not just feel like they're behind you and it's basically impossible to avoid their shots (and they shoot at you constantly). It's tolerable once you buy some upgrades for the ship, but more so in the way that it ends fairly quick than it being fun in any way. A real pace killer, just like the races.
Biggest offender of them all, though? By far the Giant Clank sections which, outside of the turret focused boss fight with the giant Thugs-4-Less robot in this very same game, have to be the slowest, most boring sections of any R&C game I've played. Not sure what happened with Insomniac after the at least very serviceable Giant Clank sections in the first game, but they somehow messed it up majorly here, with bosses that have about twice as much health as they should have, and the slowest knock back animation known to man. They're not really difficult, but it is very possible to screw up, and just a nightmare if you happen to die since it means doing all that terrible work slowly chipping away at the boss' health all over again and trying not to throw the game out the window when having to deal with the extremely sluggish controls. I think there's only Giant Clank section that's actually mandatory to do in the game, but it's honestly so bad that it drags the entire game down a notch.
It really is too bad that these mini-games exist and, at least to me, makes the overall experience of playing R&C2 a lesser one, because, like I said, the core gameplay is great fun! All weapons are fun to use, the upgrade system gives even the earlier weapons new life and a reason to use them even late into the game, and the level design while not being as focused on platforming does feel better thanks to being more optimized for combat and better use of gadgets. Like, the things that make Ratchet & Clank... well, Ratchet & Clank are much better to me and having actual strafing is a huge game changer (as is not having to grund for bolts as much for new weapons), but somehow Insomniac didn't seem to think that was enough for a sequel, so they just threw in some pretty terrible mini-games here and there and thought it would improve the experience. The endgame is also very easy and anticlimactic, but it's mainly these unnecessary gimmicks that keeps me from enjoying R&C2 as much as I think I could have (plus that painfully boring fight against the giant robot. Really the franchise's low point when it comes to boss fights). I feel like there is a world where I'm having constant fun with Ratchet & Clank 2 and where it doesn't want to stop my fun here and there with these half baked concepts, but I sadly live in this world where that is the case. At the end of the day it is what it is, I guess, and it's overall not a bad game at all and most of the time actually really good, but too much unnecessary weight pulls it down and stops it from really surpassing its predecessor. I remember 3 being a bit too focused on the action, but we'll see what I think of it when I eventually replay that one as well.
Soundtrack highlight:
Todano - Megacorp Armory
13. May 9th | Horizon Zero Dawn (+ The Frozen Wilds) | Playstation 4 | 50h 46m | Pseudo-Replay | ☆☆☆☆
Thought I'd replay this before I got myself Forbidden West and a PS5 later in the year (and somehow managed to get one while playing through it) since I hadn't played it since it released in 2017 and thought there might be some plot points that could be good to be reminded of. Also hadn't played Frozen Wilds before, so this was a good excuse to experience that as well. Remember really liking the game, but that it also lacked that extra something to really elevate it from the great game that it is to something amazing, and having now spent a lot of time with it once again, I still feel that way.
Horizon Zero Dawn is still a beautiful game. Character models can look a bit weird and their animations a bit stiff, but the art direction for this world is still one of the most pleasant open worlds to look at that I've experienced. It's not full of interesting things to do and the different robots are very much confined to their own zones without much room for any dynamism there (though replaying the game on ultra hard, a lot of them seem very eager to run from a mile away to join in on a fight), and the collectibles within it really aren't that interesting, but the reward of exploring this world is simply finding new, amazing views where you can just marvel at what Guerilla has constructed here. It's a world that feels very unnatural in its content, but also extremely natural in its design, while still having a strange beauty that you wouldn't find in most worlds of this sort and I'm someone who usually needs a goal in my games to be able to enjoy them all that much, but in HZD, I was perfectly content a lot of the time just running around, looking at what vantage points I might find, or how the lighting looked around this particular set of trees or something like that. Really relaxing gaming when the robots weren't around.
The robots are there though, and while I certainly wish there was greater variety I still really enjoy fighting them, especially on ultra hard where you really have to use all your different resources to fell some of them and every encounter feels dangerous. Certainly not something I'd want to try out outside of new game plus, but now that I did and had the entire arsenal and skills from the start I greatly enjoyed my time fighting all the different robots (not so much humans, but that's an issue no matter the difficulty), especially the larger ones toward the endgame where basically any wrong move would result in my death. Frustrating when I did die of course, but such a great feeling when taking them down, especially the stormbird who can be a real nightmare if you don't utilize everything the game's taught you up to that point. But honestly, I'm pretty easy to please in any game where you're main weapon is a bow and arrow, so your mileage may vary. Something so much more satisfying about it than using most guns (though I'm not really sure how arrows can pierce these robots).
Where HZD does start to falter a bit is in the story. The backstory and lore for this world is extremely interesting, but the actual plot of the game and the adventure Aloy has to go on really isn't that interesting when it's not about her finding out about her origins, culminating in a huge "the world is ending" event that I honestly never really started caring about, which is strange considering how much I do like the world. Maybe it's because no characters outside of Aloy are all that interesting or that the plot lacks a clear focus before pretty suddenly reaching its climax, sort of just happening until it feels like the game should be over soon. It's really too bad when the rest of the game feels so special. Not exactly innovative in its mechanics, but it iterates on previous open world concepts in a fun way, certainly feeling familiar to other games while still very much having its own identity. With a stronger and more focused plot (and fewer side quests involving tracking footprints), I feel like this could have been an all-time classic to me, but instead it feels like a fantastic playground, held back by the player in order to move forward having to do the main plot that doesn't seem to be all that interested in itself, and the occasionally uninspired mission design of the main missions that come with it. Just like with Ratchet & Clank 2, it is what it is, but it's annoying to feel like you're this close to greatness, but where the game just misses the mark on such a fundamental part of the experience. Hopefully Forbidden West remedies my issues with the writing, but who knows. I expect a fun game either way :).
Oh yeah, Frozen Wilds, too. Cutscene direction and character animations have seen clear improvements, and the new machines are fun to fight. Wouldn't say the story is all that interesting here either and it does feel a bit weird playing it in the middle of the main story like I did, but it's a great new map with some of the best side quests the game has to offer, plus an extremely intense final boss fight against one tough bear. Not that much else to say about it that I haven't said about the main game. It's more HZD, which at least I think is a good thing, and the smaller map to work with also leads to some really good level design for the main missions. Getting every blazing sun for the region's hunting grounds was sort of a nightmare, though. Extremely satisfying once it's done, but the worst while replaying that final trial over and over again.
Soundtrack highlight:
Fireclaw
14. May 10th | Astro's Playroom | Playstation 5! | 4h 20m | ☆☆☆☆
Like I've said at least twice already, I somehow managed to snag a PS5 pretty much out of the blue. Was certainly not prepared for them to come back in stock anywhere,. but happened to have the money so I thought "why not?", and bought myself one. I'm not here to review my PS5 experience thus far, but it is pretty incredible to play something like Astro's Playroom with its almost non existent loading times, steady 60FPS and beautiful graphics while still being so quiet after having used my base PS4 for the last seven years where a lot of games certainly didn't load quickly, the didn't always run great and if I wanted to play something like God of War it constantly sounded like it wanted to either explode or shoot off into the sky. The future feels good.
Astro's Playroom also feels good. Actually, it feels great! Not just because of how good it controls and because of how it manages to introduce so many gimmicks to make you learn the controller without losing its way, but because it's so much fun the entire way through. Maybe if this was a 15 hour game like Kirby and the Forgotten Land that I'd grown tired of it and it would start to feel a bit repetitive about halway through that playtime, but in these breezy four hours I spent with it, I really enjoyed what Asobi managed to create here and how creative they were in crafting platforming stages based on different components of the PS5. Not like I'd really think "oh yeah, this stage is clearly supposed to represent the console's cooling fan" if the game hadn't told me, but since it clearly did tell me this, it's a fun detail to what would've been a great level in any platforming game anyway. I feel like to a lot of developers, having to create an entire game (albeit a very short one by modern standards) made to show off The Power of the PlayStation 5™ and the Dualsense would make for a much stiffer, safer experience, but Asobi gives it so much personality and really seems to have put so much love into crafting each stage that even some of the more suspect gimmicky sections (the monkey climbing certainly drags a bit) become really enjoyable. Doesn't hurt that there's some sort of reference to previous Playstation games placed in such smart places, but also basically everywhere and it's always as much fun to try and decipher which game these astrobots are trying to reenact, or just seeing Astro Dante and thinking "that's rad." The whole thing also controls like a dream, which I guess was to be expected with a game designed to show off the capabilites of the new controller, but it's still nice to see a non-Mario (a pretty clear influence on the entire game) platformer game feel this good.
Not often that you play a tech demo that turns out to be better than most actual games just made to be games, but Astro's Playroom is one of these few exceptions. Just imagine showing off the features of a controller by making a bite-sized cross between Super Mario 3D World and Odyssey while sprinkling in so many references to Playstation's history (I did not expect to see Jumping Flash in a Video Game from 2020!) that just adds to the already very charming world of Astrobot. It's not some revelatory experience or anything, but a very nice trip down memory lane with a much better than expected platformer attached to it, played with a pretty cool controller. Some really good music as well, which I feel is underrated by a lot of people.
Sort of wish I owned a PSVR so I could play Astrobot: Rescue Mission, but I never owned a PS4 Pro, so it wasn't really ever an option. Hopefully it becomes available for PSVR2 so I can try it out one day!
Soundtrack highlight:
Follow Me (Into The Storm) [Playroom Remix]
15. May 16th | Spider-Man: Miles Morales | Playstation 5 | 13h | ☆☆☆☆
I don't know if I made myself clear before, but I bought a PS5 in May, which meant I was finally going to play Miles Morales that I had ignored on PS4 since I wanted the best version of it. Really enjoyed my time with Spider-Man when that came out in 2018, and this midquel certainly didn't disappoint either. Insomniac's games very rarely do after all (except for when they make you do mini-games in Ratchet & Clank 2, I guess).
Spider-Man (the 2018 game) did so many things right to not make you feel like Spider-Man, but make this Spider-Man and his New York feel, just,
right. It's not like most other Spider-Man games just completely betray the character or something like that, but I do feel like a lot of them have a hard time really showing off how much they both mean to each other, and how important the city has always been to both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. I mean, the overall story of that game was mostly fantastic and would have been even if it had been set in that weird story from the early 90's when Peter Parker travels to the UK and fights Knight & Fogg (I've not read the comics in years, but somehow I can never forget this particular storyline), but it gets an extra edge from this relationship between the two and you really want to save the city when push comes to shove. I also felt like the extremely satisfying swinging traversal through the city reflects this so well, with how Spider-Man so effortlessly just travels from point A to B with the fluidity and confidence that you only really do when you really know a city, which is sort of strange to say since I as a player am controlling him, but I really do feel like the gameplay mechanics says a lot about his character and how he sees his very familiar surroundings.
This isn't a review of Spider-Man 2018, but I do get similar feelings from Miles Morales. His story is more about finding that confidence in himself, but the love of the city is still there, and is probably even better reflected in his side content than it was for the previous game, and it's so interesting how Insomniac managed to both get that "this is my city" and "what am I even doing?" feeling to shine through in Miles at the same time throughout the game, both through the writing, but also through some great animation work where Miles, like Peter, is fairly confident in his swinging since, yeah, he knows New York and he knows where to go at all times which makes swinging easier for him, but he loses a lot of that confidence in combat where he certainly can fight, but he's also a lot clumsier than Peter and his banter comes off a lot more forced, like a scared kid still not really sure of what he's doing. The story of Miles Morales could be better and the short length means some things don't get the depth and time they deserve (still not really sure what Troy Baker's character really adds to the story that a faceless, evil corporation couldn't do on its own), but it does so much giving depth to his character through the gameplay and I was really impressed by that.
The gameplay's still absolutely fantastic, by the way. Swinging around is still a 5/5 experience no matter how much you do it, and though it's been a while since I last played Spider-Man 2018, I feel like Insomniac gives you a lot more options here on how you want to approach combat scenarios. Like, you can probably stealth every single encounter in the game outside of boss fights, but you can just as well fight your way through, or a combination of both and it absolutely feels satisfying as hell and not like you missed out no matter which approach you're taking. Some of the gadgets from the previous game are gone, sure, but I'd say Miles Venom powers (no relation to the character Venom who'll appear in Spider-Man 2, strangely enough) more than makes up for it since it's honestly one of the most satisfying combat mechanics I've had to pleasure of using in a good while. It's not like any of the powers are really much more than a more powerful punch, but the animation, sound and just overall impact of when you hit an enemy with them feels so incredibly good and it's great for getting more resilient out of the way far quicker than Peter ever could in the previous game, sort of making me afraid to revisit that game's combat after having become used to having these powers. I'm sure it'd be fun anyway, but I'd probably miss venom striking foes quite a bit.
The game looks great too, obviously. It's not mind blowing or several notches above what the PS4 could achieve, but those 60fps with ray-tracing do make for a very pretty experience. I do, however, feel like this game also has a problem with its side content. It is better than 2018's, but it feels like sort of an afterthought. The Spider-Man help app really needed a few more missions than it did to not feel so much like an afterthought, and the enemy bases don't really feel like they fit in with this game. It's still fun doing trials and finding backpacks with fun trivia about the characters, but other than that it feels like Insomniac put it all in under extreme stress and couldn't really put in everything they wanted, making a lot of it feel really half baked and over as soon as it begun. The main story sort of has this issue as well as previously mentioned, but it's still good for the most part + manages to be very personal in a similar way to 2018 while still doing its own thing, and ends on what is probably the best designed boss fight in any of these two games.
Overall, though, Miles Morales is more of the same, which is a very good thing considering how much fun Spider-Man 2018 was. It tweaks a few things here and there, mostly for the better, and is a nice little story to keep me content until the "real" sequel arrives sometimes next year. Do sort of wish it could have introduced at least one more new villain to the story, but you can't always get what you want and it's a mighty fine experience as it is. Also some absolutely fantastic alternate costumes (not as good as Peter's since Miles doesn't have the same rich history of having used a million different costumes, but still). Everyone talks about the (fantastic) Into the Spider-Verse suit, but that Daft Punk-like suit and Miles Morales 2099 look super good as well.
Soundtrack highlight:
Worst Enemies
15. May 20th | Uncharted: Drake's Fortune | Playstation 4 | ~9h | Replay | ☆☆☆
(Played on PS5, but since it's the exact same game as it was on PS4, I'll mark it as Playstation 4 here. Does that make sense? Not sure, but that's what I'll do anyway.)
Last time I played this was in October 2020, so it's even recent enough to have been covered in one of these threads, but I only played it on Hard back then, which was honestly challenging enough. I don't really know why, but after playing Miles Morales I get this absolutely insane idea that I should probably play Drake's Fortune on Brutal, which everyone says is a terrible time and the game wasn't at all balanced around. I guess we all make mistakes, because I obviously did play it on Brutal anyway, and it very much is like everyone says it is. Crushing is difficult enough in this game, but I honestly don't know how some of these chapters are supposed to be beaten without a hefty amount of luck, because there are cases where you're doing the exact same thing as previously and just suddenly get shot before even getting behind cover, and the enemies are so good at aiming and do so much damage that they can basically kill you with their backs toward you and a pretty good distance away. I do think Drake's Fortune does sort of have a worse reputation these days than it deserves (though you really shouldn't be playing the much inferior PS3 version now that the remaster exists), but it's been a very long time since a game tried my patience this much. I mean, I can easily beat this game in under 5 hours, and this took me 9. That should say at least a bit about the Brutal difficulty and just insane unfairness towards the player.
At the same time it is interesting how such a high level of difficulty really forces you to get to know the game on a completely different level than on any of the other difficulties. Like, in most of this game on other difficulties you can just hide in one place and usually not move around too much no matter the battle, but on Brutal you can't really stay at one place and really have to plan every encounter based on knowing where enemies spawn, which weapon they use and when you can spend those precious grenades (you can get hit while aiming with a grenade, by the way. Doesn't really make sense since Drake is still hiding behind cover when doing it. Just one of those fun Drake's Fortune things) and where the optimal cover is for the start of the battle. This is not a thinking man's game usually, but a lot of strategy gets involved when trying to get through this mode, and it made getting through certain combat scenarios extremely satisfying when I finally found a route that worked for me. Sure, there's still some luck involved even when you've planned several steps ahead, but after a while I learned to expect that sort of jank from the game. The final chapter, which is usually very easy on other difficulties, is pure hell, however, no matter how much I planned and strategized. Every single stage of it felt like a complete lottery whether I'd succeed or die within a few seconds. Absolutely awful.
Otherwise, it's still Uncharted 1, which comes with both its very clear strengths and weaknesses. It is still my least favourite game in the series, but that says more about future instalments than it does this. I'm lazy and I've already written 4706 words for this May entry, so I'll just copy/paste what I wrote two years ago:
First things first: Nate's Theme is probably the best main theme of any game in the last 2 generations. I feel like people don't talk about it as much as they should. It's absolutely amazing. Besides that, Drake's Fortune has a fun story (if a bit inoffensive), the gun fights offered a challenge without ever feeling too challenging or long (though there are som extremely cheap enemy spawns in the latter half of the game), and even though the graphics feel very "early PS3", I like the setting the game takes place in. 60fps for the PS4 version is also such an amazing feeling. Not having played these games since Lost Legacy came out, I had forgotten how much I like the Uncharted main cast of Nate, Elena and Sully.
Drake's Fortune does kind of feel like how the first game in Insomniac (and I know this is a Naughty Dog game) franchises used to (by which I mean Ratchet & Clank and Spyro), where the characters don't really feel like themselves and act much meaner than in later games, which is sometimes a bit offputting. People joke about Nate being a serial killer in these games, but he almost feels like one for real here. There's also just way too much platforming for a game where none of the platforming is ever really that great.
I guess that about sums it up? Great, on to the next game.
Soundtrack highlight (other than Nate's Theme, I guess)
Showdown
16. May 22th | Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards | Nintendo Switch | 5h |
☆☆☆
The year of the Kirb continues for me with this rerelase of Kirby 64, which I know I've beaten before though I'm pretty sure I used cheat codes to get 100% and just beat the final boss without actually playing most stages in the game, so it still felt like I was playing it for the first time. Also not sure how it emulates these days, but I played this on Project64 back in the day (maybe late 00's?) and it really couldn't handle the game that well and had a ton of graphical glitches. Was fun to finally experience the game as it's supposed to look, and like with most Kirby games a good time to play as well!
With that said, Kirby 64 certainly isn't the best Kirby. Probably not the worst either, but certainly my least favourite of the three I've played this year. I do want to say that I love how it looks and how creative HAL was with the different stage themings, not really recycling any of them as far as I can remember. Like, music is definitely recycled a lot (though still very good) and enemy variety is very low, but no stage is really that similar to another which of course isn't that hard when the game is as short as it is with its 24 stages, but it's very much appreciated after Forgotten Lands which is a better game than 64, but which also began running out of steam and new concepts about halfway through. This game doesn't have that problem, feeling fresh the entire way through. Also unlike Forgotten Lands, I very much appreciated being able to instantly exit a stage with my progress saved if I only needed to get one crystal shard or something like that (though it is very strange that this exit stage option is called "try again").
There is also a certain charm to this "Dark Matter" trilogy – which also includes Dreamland 2 and 3 – that isn't really seen in any of the other, often overall better, Kirby games. They are certainly slow and often a real pain to get through if you want to get the true ending, but they also have so much character. Kirby feels like he's about more than just eating cake, and these games really utilize his friends so good as well, with really making them feel important to the game and having some smaller gameplay sections to show off the power of teamwork in a very charming way. The animal partners from previous games in the trilogy are gone here, but Waddle-Dee, Adeline (who has to be the same character as Ado from Dreamland 3, right?) and DeDeDe are a charming bunch who interact with Kirby so well in a fun, pantomime way in the few cutscenes the game has, and while their gameplay sections aren't the most interesting they do give the game some needed variety here and there. Sort of wish more Kirby games would give him a team to interact with here and there, but it seems like he's lost almost all of them over the years. A bit sad to think about, honestly.
I do like to praise Kirby 64 because I feel like a lot of aspects that I enjoy about it seem to go unnoticed when people talk about it, but I can't deny the fact that this is a very mid Kirby game. It's not bad, but it's certainly not great either. Level design is boring and uninspired, not really giving you anything interesting until a factory level way late in the game, and even the NTSC version is insanely slow. Great art direction and fun concepts, sure, but actually playing through the game isn't as interesting as I wish it would have. Even worse is if you're trying to get 100% (which I did), you have to come into stages with the rigt set of power-ups in order to get access to the crystal shards. I used a guide for that and you should too, because even knowing what to use, that shit gets tedious pretty fast. It's worth it for being able to fight a supremely fucked up final boss, but not exactly fun to do.
The whole gimmick surrounding being able to combine power-ups also isn't that great. It's fun when you're trying out powers for the first time, but then you realize most of them are absolutely terrible and just stick to the very few that are actually usable. Would rather have seen that HAL focused on actually having a smaller pool of actually good power-ups than the high amount of terrible ones here. Even good ones, like electric + sword, loses a lot of its usability when Kirby can't even float while having his sick as hell sword out, and that's the case with most of them. Either they're just bad in every single way, or you lose something in the process of using them. I guess that does balance things out a bit, but it doesn't exactly make the game more fun, and almost like it punishes you for using the power-ups it wants you to use. It's pretty annoying.
Overall, though, Kirby 64 is a fun game, but more so thanks to HAL strong art direction and and its short length. I guess there's also some fun lore for those who care about that in Kirby games (I must admit that the thought of the Ice world being Earth is really interesting, though). It's also not like it's terrible to play, though it would certainly benefit from being just a few percents faster and having a bit more inspired level design. In many ways it feels like an extremely safe Kirby game, a franchise that's already very safe even in its most daring games, but it's got charm to last for a lifetime which, ultimately, did make the experience more than worth my while. This also isn't really anything impressive to anyone by me since this is 2022 and games look very good these days, but playing an N64 game with so many different background layers creating such a feeling of depth as this game does is very cool. Really good use of 2.5D.
Soundtrack highlight:
Factory Inspection
17. May 29th | Demon's Souls | Playstation 5 | 33h | ☆☆☆☆½
We're finally at the end of May, and it ends on a very high note. I played the original PS3 game last summer and it was very interesting to return to it with this very faithful remake. Once again Micolash
(host of the nightmare) traveled to the Nexus, fought giant beasts, shielded himself from dogs, walked through a very slow, poisonous, swamp and killed a lot of blue eyed knights to get some healing weed. The main difference this time was that the game suddenly looks absolutely beautiful and has a much more stable frame rate, but biggest of them all: the photo mode.
Obviously the biggest difference was that I'd played the game once before already and therefore knew what to expect, but let's put that aside for a second and talk about this absolutely incredible photo mode. I feel like I really grew closer to my Micolash by getting all these photos of him merrilly going through these hellscapes, capturing a serene moment when laughing with Patches after he tried to trick me into some deadly trap, or when upper punching a Dragon God. It sort of gave this player avatar a lot more character and made me more involved in his journey when I got all of these photos and could manipulate both camera and expressions to really sort of give him a story and personality, and it also helped a lot in making me care about the other characters as well. Since I enjoyed the game so much and had already beaten it once before, I wanted to really see everything the game had to offer, so in this one playthrough I got pure white and pure black world tendency for every world, pure white and pure black character tendency in order to do every side quest, and I started out feeling great. From these photos, you could tell that Micolas was a friendly, happy guy who just wanted to help people and have a good time along the way. That was certainly in line with helping the NPCs and getting that pure white character tendency. Even beating their evil black ghost counterparts felt like the right thing to do since they were beyond saving by that point (and also very annoying to fight in some cases), but then I reached a point where all I had left before beating the game was Mephistophele's side quest which involves killing most of the NPC:s in the Nexus and I felt absolutely terrible about it, especially since you really don't get anything worthwile from it. Here I, as Micolash, was, killing the people I had taken these photos with while documenting the journey. These people Micolash saved, bought spells from, sometimes posed with and since I had somehow created this head canon for who Micolas was and all that, it felt so bad and it was great! This game really doesn't have much character depth or tangible story, but through this photo mode I somehow very much got into making one of my own, and even though that experience ended on a very sad note for me, it was still so satisfying and an experience I don't think I've ever had with a game before. And all that thanks to a great photo mode and main story that's barely there. That really is something you can't ever get from any other sort of medium than games, be they in video or board form, and this entire journey from happy to Punished Micolash is one that I won't soon forget.
Outside of my insane fantasies, it's also just a very good game. I guess some people prefer the original for a variety of reasons, but I feel like I'd have a hard time going back to that one after playing this absolutely incredible remake. It plays so much better in basically every single aspect, I mostly prefer the new look of it and the sound design should have won awards if that was a thing video games did (maybe they do?). From the first minute to the last, the Demon's Souls remake was an absolute pleasure to play through and while some stages are certainly better than others, there's not a single one I would want to remove or do any significant changes in. I certainly would have liked to see changes with some of the more uninspired bosses and the pretty broken Maneaters, but I guess you need some jank here and there to truly appreciate the good. Or to quote myself from last year's post about the game: "I did enjoy how hostile it felt, how little it cared about me, and how extremely janky it can feel at times."
To keep quoting myself because, you know, this has gone on for long enough:
Also really found myself enjoying the game's atmosphere. It's not exactly oppressive, but it's very clear that this is a world that doesn't want the player character to run around in it, and while the art direction outside of enemy design isn't all that interesting, the stage designs really brings home that this used to be a living, breathing world where something's gone horribly wrong. It's also just an incredibly dark games (visually, I mean. This is at times the Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem of video games) where you can barely see what's just a few steps ahead, and I love it. Makes you cautious and really respectful of what's potentially ahead. I didn't really feel it with Bloodborne for some reason, but getting to the next check point and clearing the next boss (despite them, as previously mentioned, being pretty so-so more often than not) really felt satisfying in this game, and I think it was because of this atmosphere. I persevered where I really shouldn't have, and my reward is to keep existing. Most of the time I also got most of my health back since becoming a ghost in this game is insanely punishing (though it is pretty generous with giving you items that give you your physical body back), but it's mostly down to atmosphere.
I really do think this will become a 5/5 whenever I replay it in the future because it is an incredible achievement both from FROM when making the original game and Bluepoint when refining the experience, but for now it'll have to stay on that frustrating 4,5 step before moving up to the highest point. As someone who just casually enjoyed Bloodborne a few years ago and never really thought I'd play another of these games, it feels so strange to say that, but I really am absolutely in love with Demon's Souls. What an experience this was to end the month with.
Soundtrack Highlight:
Maiden Astraea (which was better in the original, but even this more bombastic arrangement is really good)
*
And that's it for now! Look forward to the June update sometime in October!
Currently playing:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (3DS (I swear I'm almost at the end now))
God of War (PS4)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch)
