Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! This is a bit late because I mostly wrote it on a Word doc on my laptop and then kept forgetting to copy-pasta it to FB. Whoops.
Before we get to the actual games I played this past month, I wanted to talk about various games that were announced during Sony’s latest State of Play, Nintendo’s latest Indie World, and the Video Game Awards.
The State of Play announced two great games coming to PS4: Superluminal, a puzzler that uses optical illusions to solve rooms, and Untitled Goose Game, the sort-of stealth puzzler that everyone should be playing. They also officially announced the Resident Evil 3 Remake, in line with the Resident Evil 2 Remake that came out earlier this year (that I may play before the end of the year... but probably not). And finally, they had a teaser for Ghost of Tsushima, which was very exciting.
The most exciting things about Indie World were sequel announcements to two of the best games I’ve played on the Switch yet: Sports Story (sequel to the immaculate sports RPG Golf Story) and Axiom Verge 2 (sequel to the fantastic Metroidvania Axiom Verge). They also announced Murder by Numbers, which looks like a more investigatory Phoenix Wright. A few final games that were kind of exciting were: Gleamlight, an RPG with an interesting stained-glass art style in which you are the sword; SuperMash, a seeming game-creation engine in which you can mash multiple video game genres together to create something new; and Boyfriend Dungeon, an RPG/dating simulator in which you can date the weapons you find in various dungeons. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous and amazing.
The Video Game Awards had a ridiculous number of announcements, but I didn’t care about most of them. The biggest thing was the Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 announcement as an Xbox Series X exclusive, and oh yeah, the Xbox Series X being the next generation Microsoft console. I am seriously considering this console because this is not going to be the only high-profile exclusive announced for the XBX after all of Microsoft’s studio acquisitions the last couple of years. The Ghost of Tsushima teaser from State of Play was fulfilled at the VGAs, and came with a summer 2020 release window. There were also announcements for Naraka: Bladepoint, a wuxia game that initially excited me, but then I found out it was an MMO and I have no time or patience for MMOs. The next Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 DLC was announced, and features a bunch of new X-Men playable characters, but no new story. Sigh. The first Control DLC Expeditions was also announced, and dropped at the same time (though I haven’t played it yet). And the last thing that excited me was the announcement for Weird West, a top-down action RPG by some ex-Arkane devs. The weird west genre is one I like a lot, so a whole game around that makes me kind of happy.
Okay, enough about games that aren’t actually out yet. On to the games I actually played!
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (Switch) - I played a lot more rugby sevens and football on this thing, almost exclusively. Like I said before, rugby sevens alone is worth the price of this game. I am having tons and tons of fun with it, and now I’m hoping for a Mario version of just rugby sevens (a la Super Mario Strikers (GC) from way back when).
Ring Fit Adventure (Switch) - I did this a few more times before our trip to the US, and then I got super sick when we got back, so I haven’t been able to continue my exercise adventure since then. But I want to, and as soon as this cold/flu/death plague is over, I will get back on it, if for no other reason than for the Ring to tell my my “sweat is so shiny and beautiful” again.
Guacamelee (Switch) - I got the Guacamelee: One-Two Punch Collection while I was in California, and started on the first game almost immediately (when I wasn’t letting my nephew borrow the Switch). It is a super fun platforming Metroidvania steeped in Mexican culture and folklore. You play as Juan, a man murdered by Carlos Calaca, a skeleton charro, and find a luchador mask in the afterlife that immediately makes you an awesome superhero.
I mean, how not to play this game?
There is an Aztec witch, an alebrije, a fused mariachi trio, a jaguar warrior, and a hilarious goat-man who is more than happy to show you how similar to Super Metroid this game is (and also angry that you keep destroying his “Choozo” statues).
Over the course of two or so weeks (one in California, one in Singapore), I beat the heck out of this game. And then I went back and got very close to 100%-ing it. That means grabbing every chest, completing every sidequest, fully exploring every map, finding every entrance to Chac Mool, and getting gold medals in every Infierno challenge. All I have left is getting gold in three challenges, and they are of course the most difficult challenges in the game. The only other challenge that came close to being that difficult was the Tree Tops platforming section to reach one of the Chac Mool doorways. It wasn’t quite Celeste-levels of hard-as-nails platforming, but it got close.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4) - I finished the game! Yay me! There are spoilers here, so be warned. If you are still playing, or will soon be playing, I suggest you skip to the end of this post.
I finished this over two days when I got back to Singapore and fell horribly ill (that seems to be how I get most of my gaming done). I was only able to play it twice in California over Remote Play because my parents’ Internet is super not good. I played it in Incheon International Airport during our 5-hour layover to California, and during our last night in LA at a hotel before our flight the next morning.
I eventually learned the combat well enough that I wasn’t getting killed in every other combat encounter, though I don’t think I learned it as well as I should have. A lot of times I still went in swinging my lightsaber like a crazy person, and when I learned how to Force Pull regular troopers, I did that and immediately stabbed them to thin out bigger groups (towards the end, I could do this 3-4 times before my Force meter ran out and I’d have to start swinging my lightsaber like a crazy person). What I should have done is learned how to parry a looooooot better. There is a PSN trophy that you get when you parry 100 different enemies that most people undoubtedly get while just playing through the story. I did not get this because I do not parry. I do dodge a lot, however, but I do not parry anywhere near enough. Needless to say, I never upped the difficulty back up to Jedi Master.
Towards the middle of the game, traversal across the planets became a bit tedious, especially as I started to hunt down whatever straggling collectibles I had missed and/or couldn’t get the first time around. Zeffo and Dathomir are especially horrible areas to traverse.
Let me back up a second. During the course of the game, you visit six locations. Three are familiar, like Kashyyyk, Dathomir, and Ilum, but the others, Zeffo, Bogano, and Nur, were created especially for the game. With the exception of Nur (which is the final area, and you can only go through it once), every area can be revisited as many times as you want to pick up whatever collectibles you missed. Sometimes, those collectibles are in stupid far away places that aren’t particularly difficult to get to (by the end of the game, Cal is pretty powerful and can mow down most enemies with one lightsaber swing) except for them being so far away. There’s no fast travel in this game, so Cal has to foot it to wherever that missed collectible is, even if that means traversing a large portion of the map twice (once to get there, and again to get back to the Mantis). Every map technically has shortcuts so you can bypass various areas, but most of those shortcuts don’t actually cut things very short. So yeah, a lot of slogging.
I liked this story a lot, even if they kind of copped out with the ending. This game takes place between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One (around the same time as Solo and Rebels), so it’s quite obvious that Cal and his friends aren’t going to restart the Jedi Council or anything (the main thrust of the game). Everyone assumed that meant Cal and his friends would get horribly murdered by the Inquisitors or Vader, and that seemed super likely when Vader does show up at the very end and Cere, your new Jedi master (who’s having some issues wrestling with the dark side) just tells you to run as Vader tosses her aside. Unfortunately, they do not follow through, and Cal and Cere escape Vader, and decide to destroy the holocron with a list of Force-sensitive children they’d been chasing the whole game instead of starting a new Jedi school. Which, okay, yes, obviously that was never going to happen, but again, I wish Vader had just murdered us after we destroyed the holocron. Give me my Rogue One ending, dammit!
Some of the set pieces in this were pretty great, and I especially enjoyed the aerial fight with the enormous owl/moth thing called Gorgara on Dathomir, and the whole final sequence on Nur.
I will likely get the platinum trophy on this, as most of the ones I have left are fairly easy (assuming I ever learn how to parry). Though I do have to kick someone to death, and kicking in this game isn’t super easy. Maybe I should drop the difficulty down to super easy to get these combat trophies to ping? Something to think about...
And I’m done! Not a lot of games this month thanks to that 2-week California trip (which I enjoyed the heck out of), but I’m hoping to play a bit of Death Stranding, The Outer Worlds, and/or Outer Wilds before the end of the year, and before my Top Ten list goes live. Oh yeah, there’ll be two Specials up before my next monthly column: the Best Video Games of 2019, and the Games I’m Most Excited About in 2020 (hint: it will look quite similar to the Games I’m Most Excited About in 2019 because like half those games didn’t come out in 2019 :P )
Until next month, play more video games!
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