12) Atomic Heart(XSX) 2/20-2/21, 2/23-2/24, 2/26, 3/2, 3/4-3/5
I was pretty hyped for this game. XBOX Game Pass Day One, a very interesting visual aesthetic, seemed like tons of weapons and enemy variety in the previews, a soundtrack that features 80s Russian pop with metal(Led by Mick Gordon of Doom 2016/Internal/Killer Instinct fame), so much was going towards this game's favor for me. Despite me not even being a huge First Person Shooter fan, I will still psyched for this game so upon it coming out in FEB 2023, I was all in.
Then the game came out and it left me with a real lukewarm feeling. Don't get me wrong, there's tons to like. In fact much of what I mentioned above ended up staying to form but Atomic Heart was an easy case of an unproven, brand new studio trying to be overambitious despite not knowing there limits. Simply put, Atomic Heart suffers from such a lack of polish in many aspects that ends up holding back what may have been a damn good gaming experience and gives you such a giant "What could have been".
Where to even begin? The platforming tries so hard to incorporate parkour that it becomes a clunky nightmare upon trying to navigate bar to bar to progress in a high up, elevated area of the game where your character can blatantly miss a landing despite clearly being in position to normally make the jump. The combat suffers from fatigue where the game falls under the booby trap of 'Underpowered at first only to get stronger if you explore and dedicate yourself in the world' which normally is fine by me. Put more effort into the game=get more out of the game. Except this is meant to be a first person shooter that still has linearity, enough of it that you can't venture too far off of the main missions of progression. We're talking running into bosses with limited weapons that barely do any damage and ends up becoming a game of "Circle around the enemy in a game of hot footstepping". We're talking fighting the same couple of enemies(Probably the lone thing that didn't come to be from my expectation of this game upon finally playing Atomic Heart) with the same various means. Yes the game does give you a ton of ways to combat enemies. You can shock enemies, you can freeze them, you can use telekinesis, melee them or shoot them but they are such bullet sponges where the excitement of rinse & repeating the methods towards killing them get old real quick. The game tries to be Doom 2016 in elements of being a fast & frenzy arcade-ish shooter where you need to be on the move and have quick reflexes to succeed but the issue being enemies take so much damn damage, especially early in the game that you end up feeling better about just avoiding combat until you cannot.
There's a certain enemy that is one of the worst cases of being a bullet(Or should I say melee) sponge where I don't understand Atomic Heart's studio, Mundfish's obsession in throwing this boss at you numerous times. An enemy that is immune to firepower or much of your abilities where the game literarly ends up becoming "run around the enemy while hitting them with your melee weapon while you heal", add in some quick time events that if you fail once becomes a game over and yeah, this specific enemy had me yell outloud "NOT AGAIN!" at my TV upon it appearing because it was a waste of 5-7 minutes of the same, repeated way of hot to beat it. By the final time, I gave up and just ran past it and ran to the nearest save point where it was still following me until I reached the destination/building....not because I was afraid to face it but because it was such a dullfest fighting it the same way over and over again. That's really the name of the game with Atomic Heart, lost somewhere is a way to use your side abilities along with the weapons you have. However, between how many enemies are put at you and the very obnoxious game design choice where robots can be brought back to life by infinitely respawning recovery bots made it not worth your while to explore the open world and fight.
Some of the good that is had with this game is it's a beautiful looking game. Yes there were glitches that made me restart the game including getting stuck in a spot in between a platform & vehicle where I could not crouch or jump or get out of the way and again the parkour design left so much to be desired but the game is a visual looker, especially when playing this on a Series X. The game had me laughing a little with it's over the top humor(Lot of sexual innuendos and jokes, take that as you will) even if it got old sort of fast. Again, on paper the bosses should have been so much better but depending on if you went above & beyond with exploring every nook & cranny of the open world, you might see the boss fights as a thrillride. The game gives you so much optimization where you can test out different combinations and each enemy/boss has weak points so they can be downed in different methods. The music when it shines, it really shines.
The blemishes for me is lack of polish, such an uneven story with characters coming and going of significance, and an open world that goes out of it's way to be tedious. Even driving in the open world becomes frustrating as cars catch fire & explode faster than the Grand Theft Auto series. I feel the game sort of is uneven as well with the pacing as far as levels go with the 1st level before it becomes open world sort of overstaying it's welcome. Puzzles can run a bit much where they really had a fancy over color puzzles or needing to hit buttons correctly during a timer or an electrical puzzle that you have to make the fuse reach all parts to progress but they are fun at first before it gets to be a bit much. I think the main protagonist is better than what he's given credit for but man this game does suffer from "Side Note diarrhea" where the game puts so much lore and so much wordy dialogue behind files and the game expects you to read up on it to fully get the plot. It isn't the first game to do this but Atomic Heart definitely is up there for a recent game that takes it up a notch with how much is put on these files.
Overall: 7/10. What is frustrating with a game like Atomic Heart is with enough time and learning from the 1st games mistakes, I know the sequel or followup to this game could be damn good because it's simple stuff that can be cleaned up but because of those issues, it's really tough to say this game is an easy recommend. It's such a fascinating game where it tries to do too much when it clearly is unable to but you can't help but appreciate how hard it tries to swing a home run. It's one of those 7/10 type of games for me, can't say my time was wasted. Not in the least bit....but I simply wanted my high expectations to be met.
13) Hope Left Me(PC) 3/11
Not too much to say on this one, this is a short 30 or so minute visual novel that isn't graphically wowing nor has too deep of a story. I mainly bought it since it was a mere 2 dollars and because I really enjoy the music of the person who made a soundtrack based off this game/concept, Astrophysics. There are very few takeaways from the game itself, but I did get all achievements in which all but one are tied to you completing all of the endings the game has to offer which go based off of dialogue choice. One of the biggest takeaways is this VHS filter mode that Hope Left Me has which is kind of neat and is something Astrophysics does in their Youtube videos/music. They are best known for tons of anime synthwave combos or having some Hatsune Miku(Have not played much of that series!) chiptune sort of music, stuff I would normally not give a second look to but it just
works...
The music may actually be the best part and I would actually recommend playing the game in the other OST mode over the visual novel mode that the game offers to you at the beginning of the game. Both play the same story, dialogue choices etc. but the music is just far better on the OST part IMO. It's a good soundtrack and even one I went out of the way to listen to after finishing this game. Also thought it was kinda cool to have an achievement that is based off of the name of your character which triggers if you enter certain keywords from games like Omori(Which this game has a similar art design choice to) or Undertale.
Overall NA. Won't grade this one because it's such a short game/visual novel. I wasn't even considering counting this on the 52 game challenge but given what I have ahead of me, I will take this brownie point. It's a basic standard 30 minute story with some very solid music behind it, and if you at all like 80's Synthwave or Industrial Goth sort of music, you will like the soundtrack IMO. The price of entry is more than fair and it was again me more so giving a little back to the tons of good music I got from Astrophysics on Youtube more than anything.
14) Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo(Switch) 3/9, 3/11-3/15, 3/18-3/19
What a pleasant surprise this game turned out to be! When this game was first announced, I was hoping to get something similar to the mold of visual novel that I played last year in Spirit Hunter: Death Mark and at least in the beginning, I feel I got that sort of experience. I do agree with the majority that the game has a very spooky beginning that sort of drags it's own feet midway through with too much lore & in-game universe discussion with loads of emphasis on the countless notes inside the game. By the end, I didn't actually mind the game as it sort of becomes a mystery story where the game ties all the loose ends all at once and sort of brings closure to the various characters in this universe.
I get people really hoping for a continuous dark theme of horror throughout the visual novel but I don't necessarily mind the heavy emphasis on the murder mystery elements and the curveballs that Paranormasight was attempting to throw throughout the 10+ hour story, especially towards the end. My major gripe was the middle portion really dragged on and got a bit too technical with all of the Japanese mythology lore and more so tons & tons of case files/lore dump. It gets to be a bit too much in fact that there was a point that outside of character bios that are routinely updated with events in-game, I tended to just skip the Japanese lore parts because it was just too much detail for what seemed so minimalistic in effect for the story of Paranormasight.
The story without giving away too much is there are rare artifacts that are scattered all around the setting of this game, that each character ends up stumbling upon through various means. These aren't just any mere artifact though, each is possessed with a curse that if specific requirements are met, can end up killing whomever is in the way of the artifact holder. The concept of reviving comes into play where if ____ people are killed, if the artifact is met at 100% completion, the artifact holder may revive whomever from the dead...which offers an interesting morale conflict of 1 life vs many with each character having a different stance towards that said concept.
What this game does really well is the execution of this concept. Paranormasight gives you a buildup of each character and as to their desire towards wanting to revive someone, each with a different morale & reasoning behind what they will do. The interactions amongst each characters who all have different motives adds to the story once the characters start to meet with one another upon the flowchart. You need to send a fax to be saved and that fax that initially does not happen upon your 1st play of a portion of the game, as you suspend the game, you suddenly get the now sent fax to go and save someone from potential peril. Little things like that sequence really help web together the flowchart and link the characters to one another that one action from a character's arc leads to something else happening to someone else's.
Another side perk that this game offers is the couple of moments that the game requires you to interact with menus in order to progress the story. Without spoiling, one in particular requires you to mute the sound entirely to avoid getting killed by a curse. Another requires you to save as a way to recollect a memory which you need to progress. Another has you take off a certain item to avoid dying, which can only happen after an initial trial and error. Of the visual novels that I have played, Paranormasight really sticks out as one that happens to break 4th wall with instances such as this. The game is told and set through a narrator as he speaks to you here & there to let you know where you went wrong upon a death with subtle hints.
Outside of the inconsistent pacing of the game which again for me dragged on a little bit by the middle of the game, I found that some characters were far more prominent than others. One character in particular is one you heard about and see mentioned but don't ever interact with them at any point in the game despite being considered a semi-important figure in the game's world. The major twist of a character's reveal also sort of falls flat because there was little to no interaction for the longest time. The fully fleshed out characters were done proper but the ones that weren't just felt like side characters at best and I felt there was more potential to make them maybe more relevant to the player.
The artwork of the game is very pretty even if some of the art design's choices of characters having closeups during dialogue(Think As Dusk Falls sort of as the closest thing in gaming to this) were a little bit much for me. The music fit the themes of the game and 1-2 tracks were pretty catchy too so that is a plus. There's no voice acting which is fine considering the budget and the accessibility features are always good such as save anytime or increasing the subtitle size. Stuff you'd expect from a 2023 visual novel but still appreciated nevertheless.
Overall: 8.75/10. Had a blast with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo and it was such an unexpected horror/mystery thriller that despite some of the inconsistencies like pacing & certain characters getting more shine than others, it is most definitely a good recommendation for anyone looking for a good visual novel that has horror & mystery elements. There's a ton of lore dumps and they rear their ugly head at the worst times but they are skippable and you don't need to fully divulge yourself to get the grand scheme of the story. Had a good time with this one.
15) Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty(XSX) 2/26, 3/3-3/6, 3/7-3/13, 3/18-3/19
Amazing how things work. I came away so unimpressed in the game's 1st beta. I didn't get what the game was going for at all. Didn't think the parry system was very user friendly, felt the game really hammered it on home that you needed to use it almost like a crutch and I felt the game was almost too much like NiOh in a sense. It was going to be a pure skip, despite it being free Day 1 on XBOX Game Pass. I didn't even finish the beta's final boss(Which became the game's 1st boss), that's how turned off I felt after playing this game!
Then the 2nd beta came out............and the game changed. Felt like the game was more friendly with the parry system from a window standpoint of how lenient the game was to get it. Also, loved the fact that you got to play the 1st couple of missions and that save progression happened among it so it didn't feel like a total waste of time. This one did a full 180 degree turn and got me right back into the thick of things of being Day 1 on Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.......
And I am so glad I did because as of today(Before Resident Evil 4 Remake granted), this is my GOTY and a very solid 9/10. Can't believe it myself but really.......anything of that Team Ninja/NiOh engine is always going to win me over. The combat is fluid enough where it isn't some Dark Souls total knockoff, the amounts of customization you can do gives you full control of everything in the game and while the level design isn't always top notch admittedly, there's so many missions, both side and main you can do where you can realistically never get too overwhelmed at a level if you are playing things accordingly. I liked NiOh 1 alot and felt even NiOh 2 stepped the bar up. I'd rank Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty right on par with NiOh 1 and while I don't think the game progresses as good as NiOh 2 ended up doing, it's still a heck of a 1st stab of this series.
So what does Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty do different then the two aforementioned games? Well first off, this is going under Chinese history and mythology versus the Japanese culture that both NiOh games was going for which is a nice breath of fresh air. Talking not just story but the bosses, the aesthetic, the music, so much of this game feels like a love letter to Chinese folklore. I can even say it, despite not being a big Dynasty Warrior fans, if you at all like this long standing series, you are going to remember so many of the names. I only played Dynasty Warriors 3 and even marked out a little after seeing Lu Bu and knowing the eventual encounter was going to be a pure war!
What this game does so well is it takes what the NiOh did always well and not really touch much of it outside of a couple of elements. You can play as a magic user, you can make a build that's pure combat melee(that's me!), do whatever the heck you want. The combat still uses the parry system as a pure crutch but I felt this was a more satisfying mechanic than what From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice provided, although with Sekiro, I didn't really use the parry much up until end game where you basically had no choice but to. Again, the window is very generous with this and the overall feel and damage you get when you perfectly connect one is satisfaction guaranteed. This game is setup nicely where unlike in NiOh 1 and 2, you have to back off and bait for the red unblockable attacks that despite how much damage they do, it is a pure feast/famine mechanic where the payoff is too good if you land a perfect parry. Bosses like Lu Bu became not a war of nutrition but more so needing to hit your parries to perfection to pick your spots and it was pretty good in that regard. It's a culture shift for tons of aggressive players, myself included....but once you get it, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty gets pretty damn good. One thing that blew my mind was that you don't die instantly from falling in a level, you are respawned with 1 HP sure and can be cheapshotted as you come back from your respawn but to not die instantly after plunging to the waters or off a high cliff was something I am not used to out of these types of games!
I felt the game had the right difficulty amount, it wasn't a breeze in the least bit but nowhere did I say in this game that there was a truly unfair segment. There are very few instances where Team Ninja missed the mark and threw multiple NPCs at you as some sort of challenge(The funny part is the enemies brag about honor, what the heck is honorable about a 2vs1 or 3v1 bout! LOL) although they actually did nerf the aggressive AI of that specific mission "The Tigers Loyal Subject" and after seeing the new patch of this specific mission myself, this feels like General Radahn of Elden Ring 2.0 where the fight was insanely annoying and is now a joke of a fight, so the patch made it almost too easy to deal with. I took it on immediately and it was right there with Lu Bu as the most difficult fight of the game but it felt good to just get that one out of the way. In fact outside of the post game missions, I finished every submission and main mission so I got a good 25+ hours worth of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. One of the things that makes the game also easier is with a few exceptions, you are given 1 or sometimes even 2 NPCs to join you in battle which makes thing so much easier. Yeah the AI of these companion NPCs aren't great but they can at the very least relieve you from aggressive enemies/bosses while you can heal or regain your composure. As someone who rarely if at all summons or uses NPCs, it felt sort of good to have people with you rather than having to do everything solo every single time. With NiOh, that was all the time, but with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, I felt it was part of the gameplay & game design to want to have these companions with you whenever, even if the game gets a bit easier with them. Team Ninja does a solid job by having you solo the biggest, most epic fights but for the other stuff, you are given a companion to tag along with and work together to fight the ____ enemies all at once.
The game is not all glowingly positive as again Team Ninja falls into a trap of not having enough enemy variation nor are any of the stages truly memorable which has always been their biggest issue, even going back to the NiOh games. By around 10 hours, you've seen all of the enemies this game can throw at you where you know all the tricks of each enemy by the end of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. What is equally pretty bad is there's a carbon copy enemy ripped straight from NiOh 1, moveset and appearance and all, only this time Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has a version of this enemy that is a jumbo version even if it does the same exact moveset outside of one parryable attack. The level design feels very linear, almost too much in a way where there isn't much room left to explore and where the game feels very "same-sy" with the levels outside of the scenery. The main hub of this game feels too much and it became a hassle to get to find a NPC or having to navigate through the area to get to someone to give them an item.
Oh and the inventory system, still Team Ninja does not do a good job of. Why in a game full of fantasy & make belief that we have to have a set amount of items you can carry at a time? 500 items you can carry which sounds like a lot at first...........but it fills up fast. By midgame, I was told you cannot carry anymore items, so I had to either discard items on the fly or take 15 or so minutes each time my inventory was getting crammed and have to sell off items in typical NiOh fashion of least strongest weapon till I had enough wiggle room to pick up future items in runs on levels. At least with NiOh you can move them to a storage box but in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, there isn't such a thing that exists(Unless I missed it) so you will be subjected to have to sell off or decompose items(Break down items for material to be used on your current gear to better it) items for the sake of getting more inventory availability. I wish Team Ninja would just have infinite storage room for the armor and headgear and weapons you pick up, just try it once on your games, pretty please. It really ruins the flow of the game, and it has been this way since NiOh 1.
Another blemish that goes against this game is the performance of the game. I have heard tons of horror stories about the PC port of this game but playing this on the XBOX Series X, there was tons of stuttering and frame drops whenever there were special effects which in a Soulsboune game, is really frustrating to say the least. I can overlook this in tons of cases but not in a series that is heavy on you hitting the right inputs(Rolls, attacks) and where a game like this rewards and/or punishes you for your inputs. There is also instances where I thought the game glitched as the screen stopped, though the game comes back to life within a couple of seconds. Likewise, of all the current gen games that I have played, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty by far has the longest load times of any game I have played thus far. It's not pre patch Bloodborne bad but it's still pretty bad each time you boot the game to wait almost a minute for the game to come up(Which I know is blasphemy to say given so many older games take this long to load), not when you've been spoiled with split second loading times in games today.
Overall: 9/10. Make no mistake about it, this is still a heck of a game all things considered. Yes it's very much another NiOh with a few new tricks.....but sometimes more of the same thing isn't the worst thing ever. I said it when I played Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart 2 years ago, I know what I want when I play a game from the same series/makers. I came in wanting another NiOh game, and for the most part, I got it and I am pretty happy to get another 25+ hour game. So glad I got past my trepidation and ended up playing this game because as it stands right now, it's my favorite game that has come out thus far in 2023.
16) Jumping Flash(PS5) 3/25
So while I waited for RE4 Remake to come in the mail this past Saturday, I ended up playing something on the PS5 in the meanwhile, a PS1 retro game called
Jumping Flash which was a launch title for the system(And one I owned but due to being like 7 years old, had not a clue what I was doing in the game). This was made possible via the PS Plus Collection that dropped a little under a year ago so given how little use I got of this subscription, it made sense to play a quick enough game before my long awaited game came.
And yeah when I say quick enough, we're talking maybe the game running you 2 1/2 hours. It's amazing that this was considered one of Sony's "system sellers" when their then brand new attempt at tackling on the video game landscape dropped in the form of the Playstation 1 because man this game was a quick and admittedly, average experience.
The graphics are PS1 style so you either like it/grew up with it or you didn't. The game is certainly colorful and full of zaniness & wackiness by design and the game's different levels show it, which is the biggest takeaway from something like Jumping Flash. Yeah the game isn't really deep gameplay wise nor are the levels long, especially if you know what you're doing but they are just so wacky that it's very reminiscent of gaming in the 90's. Think NIGHTS: Into Dreams sort of wacky. Jumping Flash is one of those games that would never be thought of nor will it ever come out in present day and despite me not loving the game, I do appreciate Sony Japan and their ambition to do something unique, which of course is ancient history to modern day Sony.
The story I admittedly didn't really pay much attention to, it has the typical cheesy voice acting and 1990's choppy cutscenes that one would expect out of a game from this time. The gameplay on the other hand is a game where you control the protagonist named Ribbit who is some sort of robotic frog and you are basically moving via hopping all around while trying to collect carrots in order to progress and move onto the next level. Yeah it's about as zany as how I described it lol. You run into enemies that inhabit these areas and you are able to shoot these enemies or use powerups that range from roman candles to firecrackers to do further damage(Best to save these for the boss fights that are the final act of each world, 6 altogether).
I think the major issue I have with Jumping Flash as a whole isn't the graphics nor is it the simplicity(Which can sometimes actually be a very good thing).....it's just it doesn't really offer up much to do with the worlds themselves. Yes there's a bonus stage every now and then and sure there are collectibles but there's no real incentive towards going all around the levels and sightseeing or trying to engage combat with the enemies scattered throughout each level. In addition, the controls of the game are pretty bad. We're talking your character is inching/moving a bit when you are trying to rotate the camera which caused me to fall to my death on a narrow platform when trying to see what to jump to next. To further the lousy controls is how tough it is to make jumps on moving platforms where it's you either succeed or die. Thank goodness for the updated rewind abilities which I shamefully had to use a few times due to these pretty poor controls. I would chalk this up as to this game being so old that it doesn't have the luxury of seeing 3D platformers control well but for a game that is heavy on making platforms itself, this is the one gaming nuance that could & should have been better.
Overall: 6.75/10. If you can look past the tons of outdated gameplay issues and typical early/launch PS1 feel of the game, you can have a nice evening with Jumping Flash altogether. It's a short experience, again the art & design of the game is zany & original and it isn't an overly hard game to get or play. The controls absolutely let the game down when needed most and the worlds despite the colorful art & whimsical themes about them, feel sort of dry from an objective standpoint where you are simply better off just getting the carrots/items to progress and move on. It's a solid attempt from Sony back in the mid 90's upon trying to bring something new to the table of gaming but 25+ years later, Jumping Flash has been left in the dust by father time itself.
