Peglin (PC) – Well, it’s a roguelike. And therefore highly replayable. Especially since it’s got a mode that adds a new handicap every time you beat it.
Inhabit (Switch) – A cute puzzle game about taking care of yourself. It took less than two hours to beat, so it was really just a li’l appetizer of a game, but it was fun. Also, I recorded my playthrough for YouTube.
Gargoyle’s Quest (GB) – An action-RPG spin-off of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series, and much more enjoyable in my opinion. While it’s got blind jumps and cheap deaths for sure, I did have fun revisiting this one for the first time in well over a decade.
Normally, when there’s a Nintendo Direct, I like to write down all my knee-jerk reactions while watching it. You know, give my honest first impressions of all the trailers shown. But I find that lately those reactions have either been “That looks great, I’m going to buy it,” “That looks great but I don’t have time to play it,” or “I have no interest in this.”
So today I’m going to do it differently. While there were plenty of cool-looking games in today’s Direct presentation, only two really made my pants get tighter. So I’ll just post the trailers for those and maybe some words, too.
A remake of Super Mario RPG is on the way! This year! In November!
Now, I’ve played this game at least a dozen times through over the years, so I’m really hoping that it’s going to have a little more than a touched-up paint job. There appear to be fully-animated cutscenes and a redone soundtrack, which are very nice to have. But otherwise, it looks like it’s going to be incredibly faithful to the original. At least, at a glance. I haven’t done a frame-by-frame analysis yet.
So what would I like to see changed? Well, maybe… better mini-games? Yeah, that would be really good. It would be nice if the puzzles were remixed, maybe some new spells would be nice. Definitely some additional text clarifying what some of the existing spells actually do. I don’t think there needs to be any new towns or dungeons or whatnot, but it would be great if some of the maps saw a little bit of change. Just to keep things fresh, you know?
Actually, a great example would be the sunken ship dungeon. When replaying the original game, I can just walk straight to the end, bypassing all the puzzles and monsters, and input the password (PEARLS) to the boss room. I would like for at least the password to be changed so that I’d have to engage with the dungeon as intended on my first playthrough of the remake. Ideally, the password is randomized every time, or the individual puzzles are changed so that learning the password is exciting again. Nothing that would materially change the dungeon itself, just some tweaks to make it feel fresh even for people who have already played the game into the ground.
Super Mario Bros Wonder, the first new Super Mario game since 2017, and the first new 2D Mario game since… 2012? Unless you count Super Mario Run, which I kinda don’t. I’m not really a big fan of the title, but man does the gameplay ever look solid!
Also, I have so many questions. Why does Mario turn into an elephant? Do the other characters turn into elephants, or do they all get their own animal? Are there more, unrevealed playable characters? What’s the deal with all those chatty flower-things? Why is there a goomba wearing a Toad hat? Is this game just one massive drug trip?
Fortunately, I won’t have to wait long to find out, as SMBW is due out in October of this very same year. How nice! While I was expecting something more along the lines of Odyssey 2, this is also very good. You will hear no complaints from me.
Peglin (PC) – Imagine Peggle, but as a roguelike. Not something I’d normally give a second thought, but it’s so much more fun than it has any right to be. It’s a bit short, but still in Early Access, so there’s potentially a lot of room to grow.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (Switch) – Now THIS is the heaping helping of fanservice that I was hoping the base game would be. Simply being able to go on another adventure with Shulk (and Rex too, I guess) made my heart so happy. Plus they added a similar system as the last few Ys games had that tracks all the collectibles and treasures you’ve found, which really should be in every RPG.
Lost Alone Ultimate (PC) – I watched let’s plays of all three chapters of Lost Alone when they were originally released last year, and really enjoyed them, so I was very excited to play this remade collection. Easily one (three?) of my favourite Steam horror games in recent years.
I know I haven’t been blogging much lately, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. See, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases tomorrow (but I’m getting my copy tonight), and if it’s half as compelling as its predecessor, I will be fully lost in it for at least a solid month. Honestly, it’s kind of okay that I’ve been completely failing at dating lately, because I ain’t gonna have time for no woman.
To say that I have been strongly anticipating this video game would be one heck of an understatement. Yeah, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were massive hype machines, and the Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty high up there, but both Pokémon and Resident Evil are effectively annual franchises now, which kind of undercuts how exciting a new release is. Zelda, though? It’s been six years since the last new game in the series. Sure, Skyward Sword HD happened, but that wasn’t even a remake. It was a port that looked a bit nicer and added traditional controls. It barely counts.
I feel like this is the part of the blog post where a good writer would be driving home some kind of point, but… I think I already got there? But just in case: Zelda, man! It’s gonna be amaaaazing!!!
Ghost of Tsushima (PS5) – I wasn’t too sure about this one for the first few hours, but it really grew on me over time. An excellent game in most regards, though it does feel very repetitive, as open-world games usually do. My favourite parts by far were the side-stories of Jin’s allies. Folks who ignore side-quests in games would absolutely be missing out on the best parts of this game. Norio and Masako in particular were characters that I really liked adventuring with. Platinum trophy’d.
Super Mario Land 2 (GB) – Yes, again. But this time, the colourized romhack! It’s… the same game, but looks nicer. Also, you can be Luigi!
Resident Evil 4 (PS5) – Everything I could have hoped for. It’s generally a very faithful remake, but remixes a lot of the content in different ways to keep veterans of the original on their toes. That plus a whole bunch of new elements, and MUCH improved boss fights across the board. Basically exactly what a remake should be, in my opinion. It also fleshes out the story and characters way more than the original, which is definitely a nice-to-have. I’ll absolutely be playing this a few more times before the year is done.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was already my most anticipated video game of 2023 by a very wide margin. Then Nintendo went and released the trailer embedded below and I… I don’t think I can wait another month!
Zeltik already has an incredibly thorough analysis video up (nearly an hour long!), but rest assured that I’m going to be obsessively watching him, BanditGames, MonsterMaze, NintendoBlackCrisis and other Zelda-focused YouTube channels as I soak in as much discussion of this footage as I possibly can until the game proper launches in May.
Windbound (Switch) – I want to say nice things about this game, since it’s all about exploring and building a boat and sailing that boat to explore more. A very fun gameplay loop, in my opinion! However… there’s combat, and it’s slow and janky and not very fun. Also the game tended to crash at the end of each chapter in my playthrough and that’s… that’s really bad. You can watch me suffer here!
Kwaidan ~Azuma Manor Story~ (Switch) – A survival horror set in Meiji-era Japan, where you’re tasked with saving a mansion from being occupied by yokai (or yoki, as the game calls them). The controls are truly mind-boggling, but it’s otherwise a pretty good, if very short and small, game. Also, made by a single person!
I really thought that 2022 was going to be the year that I purchased fewer than 50 video games. Got close, but those Q4 sales are killer…
Anyway, here are a bunch of numbers related to video games I purchased in 2022. I’ve included the figures from 2021 and 2020 for comparison.
2022
2021
2020
Total Games Purchased
56
71
73
Purchased Games Played
41 (73%)
58 (82%)
56 (77%)
Purchased Games Beaten
37 (66%)
49 (69%)
44 (60%)
Purchased Games Finished
32 (57%)
44 (62%)
36 (49%)
Physical purchases
5 (9%)
7 (10%)
8 (11%)
Digital purchases
51 (91%)
64 (90%)
65 (89%)
“Free” games
12 (21%)
18 (25%)
38 (52%)
Nintendo purchases
25 (45%)
32 (46%)
44 (60%)
PlayStation purchases
19 (34%)
15 (21%)
18 (25%)
PC purchases
10 (18%)
20 (28%)
3 (4%)
VR purchases
2 (3%)
3 (4%)
7 (10%)
iOS purchases
0 (0%)
1 (1%)
1 (1%)
The entire point of the exercise of keeping track of all my video game purchases (which I’ve been doing since 2015), is not just to share this fun data. Nor is it to cut down on game purchases in general. This is my way of trying to reduce the number of games that I buy and never play. It’s been going on for far too long now and needs to stop! What a waste of money! Sure, it’ll be great if I ever magically become rich and don’t work anymore and have nothing to do but muscle through my backlog, but let’s be honest… that’s never going to happen.
I like open world games. Some of my favourite video games are of the open-world variety (TheLegend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles X). But even so, it is impossible to argue that despite their ambitious, sandboxy design… they can kinda start to feel a little samey after a while. Travel around to points of interest, liberate dozens of effectively identical forts from enemy occupation, manage your skill trees, fast travel a whole bunch. At the end of the day, if there isn’t something absolutely definitive about your game, it’ll just end up part of the generic open-world blob.
Sadly, Ghost of Tsushima has, so far, not done anything that stands out as particularly special to me. Therefore, as I play, I can’t help but feel like I’m just going through the motions. Which makes me sad, because there was clearly plenty of love poured into making this video game! I think that it’s a very good game in a lot of ways (the story is engaging, the world is gorgeous, the quality of life features are bountiful), but I’m just a little too desensitized to this style of game to enjoy the “game” part of it as much as I would like to.
But I’d rather not dump on Ghost of Tsushima. No, instead, I’d like to point out my very favourite thing about it.
Most open world games allow you to go to the map and choose a destination that you’d like to travel to. The game then puts a big glowy thing in the world at the spot you marked, and usually gives you an arrow or something to follow to make sure you’re always going the right way. Ghost of Tsushima does none of that. What it does instead is change the way that the wind is blowing so that it’s always guiding you to your goal. So instead of a big ol’ arrow on the HUD or a line on the ground that you follow, you’re watching blades of grass, leaves, smoke, embers, and so forth dance on the wind, and going along with them.
It’s a nice alternative that blends seamlessly into the game world, and I very much appreciate it. There’s also a secondary feature where following yellow birds and foxes will lead you to fun secrets. Being resourceful and respecting nature are pretty important themes of the game, and as such, replacing HUD elements with more natural means of guidance fits it to a tee. Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t even have an on-screen compass! While that does admittedly irk me once in a while, I still appreciate Sucker Punch’s devotion to keeping the HUD as minimal as possible. It’s truly for the best in a game that’s meant to emulate old-timey samurai films.
These get a separate post because the main article is long enough as-is, but I still felt like they deserved a little recognition!
Triangle Strategy (Square-Enix / Artdink, 2022)
This was probably the hardest finalist to cut. I’ve never been able to truly get into any tactical RPGs besides Final Fantasy Tactics, but Triangle Strategy came real close. The story is interesting, the choices you make carry a ton of weight (and there’s almost never a clear “correct” choice), and the battles are great fun. Despite all that, however, I got pulled away from it when I was only halfway though, and never felt compelled enough to pick it back up. I keep looking at the case and saying “I should really finish that”, but I have a feeling it’s just not going to happen.
