“You guys can’t envision the final collapse of capitalism? Incredible!”
2024 is almost over. I played quite a few games this year. Here are some brief thoughts about them (in alphabetical order). There shouldn’t be any major spoilers, but readers who are especially careful about them should probably not read below this line.
Antholoy of the Killer
I’ve already written quite a bit about my love of Stephen Gill-Murphy’s little indie games, so I won’t retread old ground. This little series is great fun. Highly recommended.
Buckshot Roulette
Cool little indie title. The addition of multiplayer is what sold me on it.
Dead Space (2024)
I enjoyed the first six hours the most, which features some solid gameplay with nice environments. After that, however, I found that the game overstayed its welcome. The story is unoriginal and uninspiring. Not something I would recommend or ever play again.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
A deeply flawed experience. I enjoyed FFVII: Remake quite a lot. The developers handled story beats with aplomb and found a great balance between drama and comedy. The combat felt like a refined version of that found in Final Fantasy XV. My expectations for Rebirth, then, were fairly high. It seemed like Square Enix knew what they were doing.
Unfortunately, Rebirth is not what I was hoping for. It’s not to say that I hated it, merely that I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.
Here is a list of the major issues that I had with it:
I don’t mean to sound overly harsh, of course. It’s obvious a lot of time and effort went into the game. Despite the criticisms above, I enjoyed the game enough to put over sixty hours into it. If I had truly disliked it, I would’ve simply stopped playing.
To balance out my critiques a bit, here are some of the reasons I kept playing:
I have no idea what the third (and final?) entry will look like. I’m hoping for something closer to Remake, which felt way more cohesive. I will still give it an honest try whenever it may release.
Growing My Grandpa
Love the aesthetic and overall vibes. Inspiring.
Higurashi When They Cry
As I write this, I’m about four hours into the final chapter of the Higurashi series. Reading through the series has been a highlight this year. I originally read the iOS version of chapter one in 2018 (gosh, has it been that long?). Nowadays, the first chapter is completely free to play. Chapter one works as a stand-alone story if readers prefer to stop there.
For those curious about the rest of the chapters, rest assured that there are some incredible moments throughout the series. It transcends its flaws to be something that anyone interested in reading horror visual novels should try.
The House in Fata Morgana
Overall, I enjoyed my time with the characters in this story. Its localization is well done and the prose is readable and sounds natural for the most part. I like it about as much as I like Higurashi Ch. 1. In fact, its pacing is better than Higurashi’s in some ways, since Higurashi is occasionally over-burdened with unnecessary fluff.
The horror elements are fairly sparse, which could be disappointing to some readers. The story that unfolds is interesting enough that I felt invested the whole way through. The main cast of characters grow as people over the course of the game. It’s pleasing to see such satisfying character arcs.
The House in Fata Morgana suffers from a few repetitive sections: long passages where the plot isn’t advancing and the writing isn’t refreshing enough to keep a reader interested. This verbosity seems to be a problem common to visual novels. Perhaps having a more merciless editor would help? I don’t want to come down too hard on this VN in particular, of course. I’m describing an issue I have with VNs in general.
More than anything else, what drew me to The House in Fata Morgana is its artwork. Moyotaro has made some truly beautiful characters. There’s a gentle grace to the characters. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the visuals in visual novels are just as important as the quality of the prose and story. When I hunt around for new VNs to try, I can’t help but judge them by their aesthetics. Am I willing to spend however many hours looking at this artwork? If not, I move on.
Resident Evil 4 (2024)
Excellent remake. I found some parts to be a little tougher than the original, but overall the team did a great job on this one. Both titles are still unique enough that there are good reasons to play both.
Resident Evil Village
Really enjoyed this one. It’s funny that after the seventh title didn’t meet Capcom’s sales expectation, the follow-up went back to the tried-and-true Resident Evil 4 style of gameplay. The setting of Village is more appealing to me compared to the setting of RE VII. Nothing more cozy than gothic horror in a cold, snowy castle.
Soma
I bought it specifically because I heard it had a decent narrative. Pretty cool experience overall. I’m especially glad that the game has a mode that allows players to completely ignore the stealth mechanics (something I have zero interest in).
Armored Cored VI
What I’ve played so far has been pretty fun. I’m not familiar with the rest of the series. The difficulty seems to be a bit gentler compared to From Software’s other offerings.
Nidus
An arcade game with a unique control scheme: players control both a flower and a wasp simultaneously and must use both in tandem to fight off insects and other creatures. The psychedelic artstyle is interesting.
Nightmare Kart
An impressive indie kar racer that pays loving homage to Bloodborne. It’s free to play, and includes a solo campaign game and local multiplayer. Highly recommended to folks who enjoy Mario Kart.
Pseudoregalia
A neat little indie 3D platformer title. It feels more like a proof of concept than a completed game, perhaps owing to its original inception as a game jam entry. Overall it’s pretty fun to play around with the protagonist’s moveset.
Steins;Gate
About an hour into this one so far. I’ve heard some good things about the story overall, so I’m optimistic.
Unicorn Overlord
Only completed one or two missions so far. Not sure if I’ll enjoy the gameplay enough to see it through to the end, but I do intend to go back to it.
Xanadu Next
When I bought this one, I was in the mood for something akin to a Japanese take on Diablo. Xanadu Next isn’t quite Diablo, but it’s not a bad little dungeon crawler, especially for something that was originally an N-Gage game from 2005. There’s a good sense of progression as you buy ever more powerful equipment and level up.
Fear & Hunger
I played Fear & Hunger: Termina first and greatly enjoyed it. The first game is just not as interesting to me as the sequel. Maybe I’ll go back to it eventually?
Gris
It’s all right. Decent art style. Just need to go back and finish it.
Hylics 2
It’s solid. I think I enjoyed the first one a bit more. Possibly because I’ve used RPG Maker before and found Hylics to be an impressive achievement considering the limitations of that engine. I think when I go back to the sequel, I might try the easier difficulty option. I’m uninterested in overly difficult turn-based combat.
In Sound Mind
I picked this one up on a whim (it was quite cheap). It’s a first-person puzzler with light shooting mechanics. It’s not a bad game. It has a decent aesthetic and gameplay. Its writing is a little weak and I can’t help but feel it’s not handling the serious topics all that well.
Morodashi Sumo
For true sumo fanatics only. It’s pretty great.
The Silver Case
killer7 is one of my favorite games. I’m not familiar with much of suda51’s other games, and, in effort to rectify that, I decided to give The Silver Case a shot. I think I would like it more if it completely eschewed any adventure game mechanics. Specifically, I don’t really like how the movement controls work. It slows down the story a bit too much.
I do like the style and I know I’ll go back to it eventually. Probably just have to be in the mood for it.
2024-12-08