Axiom Verge / Axiom Verge 2

 I got both of these, among others from a Humble Bundle. I had been meaning to play this for a while, but never got around to it, but finally I did. Thank you Humble Bundle and Steamdeck.

Axiom Verge

It starts out extremely NES Metroid nostalgic. I really liked that. The progression was sensicle, and the backtracking wasn't too bad. At least for a while. Later on in the game, especially so if you are trying to go back to that area you know you can now explore, is very tedious and time consuming. The bosses were a mix of shoot them before I die (success eventually), oooh I found a spot they can't reach, but it takes a while to kill them (slow but steady), or holy crap why won't they die before I do (this only happened a few times, but man it sucks when it happens).

The story was alright. I liked how they added a reason to keep progressing through the game. The weapons could be sparse or frequent, so the bosses/save rooms were the main indicator that progress was happening.

The map was functional enough, and was the main thing to use to figure out where I had to go when a new gun/move/ability was unlocked allowing further progress

The one very nice thing in the game is the few key places in the game where you cross a point of no return, and you can't backtrack until you get the ability required to backtrack.

I will limit my gripes on this, since they took most of what was in this game, applied it to the second, and changed some things around. But I have to mention a few key gripes

Key gripes:

• Backtrack is very tedious
• There are some areas between save points that are absolutely brutal to traverse through. You do what you can to blitz to the next save point before you die.
• Even with the gated areas, it can still be confusing on where to go next. It's typically the place on the map where you couldn't finish exploring.
• Guns are nice, but once you find the one you like, I rarely have a need for others. Like the first weapon I used until I got a second one, then never went back. Same until I found the 2-3 weapons that worked well for area damage or ranged damage (I did not find all of the weapons).

But, there was some good

• The traversal mechanics of the game went much deeper than I expected. I was expecting a few moves like NES Metroid plus a few move, but they did a lot more. And then more than that. And not in the way you expect.
• When you die it throws you back to your last save point and SAVES the game. So you don't need to re-explore, re-acquire anything you got right before you died. Assuming the save point is not too far off, that's a really nice touch.
• Having a gun that worked well in specific areas was a fun way to explore the other guns and try them out.
• The movement

Axiom Verge 2

To be honest, after the grind of beating the first game I really didn't want to jump right into this, but I'm really glad that I did. They took everything they had in the first game and improved it in a few amazing ways.

There is an accessibility menu! If the game ever gets too hard, you can tune the enemy damage or your own damage until it feels better. That's absolutely amazing, and the only thing better is I didn't have to use it! I was able to beat any of the hard mobs eventually without feeling like I was being punished.

 The map allows you to scroll around, and zoom. And you can actually see the features of the world in the minimap, to help you remember! You can also mark a dot where you need to come back to later. I found this extremely useful in a metroidvania because there are very obvious places to come back to after you have the required ability (ledge too high, pit too wide, locked door, etc.). That's so easy to manage and use!

For wepaons there are melee and ranged weapons, not just guns. I found myself using melee for most of the game, but the option for ranged was always there when the enemies would stay out of reach.

There are ability points! You get ability points by finding urns in the game and can level yourself up how you see fit. I went for hacking ability to unlock some special gates first, and health. No regrets.

The movement of your character at first felt a bit slidy, but after getting further and further into the very smooth platforming I absolutely loved it. I think because the first game needed double D-pad taps to move faster versus dedicated buttons in the second game, that was much smoother on my hands.

Most of the big bosses are optional, and give you extra ability points to kill them, otherwise you can skip. I killed every one I found and loved the challenge. Reward of killing bosses is a more powerful player. Yes please.

The story on the second one is a lot more, and found throughout talking to people and notes scattered through the game. The history was a bit much, so I started to glosss over the notes. I understood why I was moving forward, so that was enough for me. Outside of an achievement, I didn't get extra value from finding the notes. Sometimes they were helpful in filling in a knowledge gap, but usually not.

Without going too spoilery, I will say that they almost completely avoided the backtracking burder the first game had. I felt I had to backtrack a very limited number of times, and when I did it was for a well-understood reason.

Quick list of gripes for the second game. These are very minor, and overall the game was extremely enjoyable. There is no good list because all of the writing above is how good it was.

* Very late in the game, it can be a bit confusing on how to get to your objective. BUT, they put an indicator on the map, so keep trying things
* Later ability points in the game can lose impact. Once I maxed out hacking, and health, the rest could be put into anything really. I found myself using melee attacks a lot, so I boosted those

I ended up beating the second game in a single day. I was really good. I highly recommend it. There are some tie ins to the first game, so while you could play it without the first you might miss some things.

The Fall

Finished this with our games group.

Didn't mind the point and click adventure portion of this, although the spacing made me look up things to avoid some tedious back and forth a few times.

The gun fighting mechanics were a nice addition. Still, it would have been nice to see more examples of using your gun to solve things in the environment in addition to the usual use-inventory-item-on-thing solution.

The platforming mechanics felt clunky, but effective enough to vary the otherwise simple traversal methods (walk left/right, ladder, elevator).

Finding things with your flashlight made it easy to miss things. This was my common reason to go online to see what small object I did not notice while waving my flashlight up and down in hopes of finding interaction points. This was potentially a tricky issue to solve when 3 interaction points are very close to one another.

The visual style and ambient audio helped set the distopian theme. It felts like the ambient audio trailed off pretty early. The voice acting was solid throughout. Having a very dark color, it made screenshots difficult to take.

The ending was enjoyable, but I'm not sure where the next episode could go. Maybe there's more to this than they've revealed.

Firewatch

Picked this up for the video game of the month club thing we're doing at work.

The controls are intuitive, the graphics decent, and the story was compelling enough to keep playing.

I was surprised how well you could traverse the world being tied directly to the nav mesh -- no jumping allowed. It worked, and only when you got stuck on a tree did it feel even slightly awkward. I really enjoyed the mobility mechanics they used, it added physicality to your traversal in the world -- at least for the first time through a new area.

The voice narration was a very strong point, and it was great to see the decisions or indecision being responded to later on down the line. I didn't need branching story/dialogue to feel my choices were observed. I don't think my choices actually mattered in the overall story though. I should check on that later.

I'd have to recommend this game, if only because it felt like a story driven narrative done in a way I haven't seen before. It was an enjoyable experience, and only took maybe 6 hours to get through.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

My brother picked up this game for me. We both had originally played it on GameCube, but I bowed out before he got past the Earth and Wind temple (I think).

Recently, I haven't had as much time to play games. Between work, attempt at getting sleep vs waking toddler, there's just not that much free time. With that, I think I've become a little angry at any type of grindy game mechanic. That is -- any mechanic that solely requires me to spend a minimum amount of time to get past.

While writing this review, I found myself getting quite annoyed at a few things in particular, and only when I stepped back and looked at it, did I allow myself to see it for what it was. A normal game mechanic, that used the rules of the game, but required some amount of time to get past.

Enter the wind and earth templates. Where you have a companion that helps you get through a dungeon. That's neat! You have to use your wind waker to play the control melody to switch to controlling the companion so you can solve puzzles as a team. Also neat! So when I had to constantly switch between myself and someone else, then back, then re-position, then back, etc. I felt that this was just a time grind. It kind of was, but it was also a neat game mechanic that kept me in the game world, while allowing me to do something new and unique.

There were some really annoying parts of the game, that even upon stepping back and re-evaluating seemed kind of awful. I'm not going to bullet list these, because I think they're worth explaining in detail.

The target locking mechanic is horrible. The enemies you absolutely need to target lock, seem to constantly disappear from target lock. Also, target locking uses character facing, instead of using camera facing. That's just inane, I'm usually running away from the thing I want to switch to locked on camera, so I can switch to strafing around it, but without turning my character into incoming danger, the game does not allow me to go into target lock. Similarly, if I switch to any aimed item (bow, hookshot, etc.) then it will assume that my facing direction is the direction I want to shoot. It should be auto facing the camera. I understand this could easily be fixed by a game option, but this option does not exist. Lastly, if I hit the target lock button, and don't have anything valid to go into target lock mode, please give me a game option to disable whipping the camera around so that I am now likely facing the opposite direction of the incoming danger. Dark Souls and other games are also guilty of this last one. Just add a game option please!

While on the topic of target locking, this also made some bosses insanely frustrating. Particular target prioritisation on things you don't need to shoot vs things you do. In particular any enemy that spawns other enemies is usually really far off and extremely difficult to get target lock on.

While there are a few things this game does infuriatingly wrong, this game is also really great.

One of the mechanics that I had forgotten was mapping the islands by feeding the fish. This was due to playing this in few hour chunks, separated by days between. While this feels immediately grindy at first, it also comes across in two other mechanics that work great. The first is that it allows you to see where you have not been. If I've mapped a square, then I've likely been to the island, or maybe I wait to map the island. Secondly, when you map the island, the fish gives you a tip about something in the world that you might not have been able to figure out without the tip. This is a great way of having hidden gems in the game, and allow the player to get access to them without going to a guide.

The items, and pacing of the game was pretty good as well. I think I would have found the wind direction changing to be much more tedious if I didn't beeline for the quick sail as soon as possible, but with that, the speed of getting around felt great.

The money mechanics in the game felt a little trivial. For the most part I was either completely full on money, or completely out of money. Feast or famine. There was almost no in-between. And while that's kinda dis-engaging, it's interesting to think about how this system worked itself out in the first Zelda. When you shot an array, you lost 1 rupee. That works, monsters already drop rupees, I have a rupee UI indicator already to boot. So that's kind nice.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable game, I just wish I had more dedicated time to play it. On the other hand, it would be nice to have games in more digestible chunks, since I don't have the large blocks of time anymore. With Windwaker HD, I think they did a pretty good job of allowing me to bite of chunks of the game until it was completed

Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel

So, the DLC starts out quite a bit like the Painted World of Ariamis from Dark Souls. I absolutely love the references, just like they had the throwback to Anor Londo.

I played it with my endgame character, level 95. I didn't get a single level the entire run.

Boss boss fights were epic, and really rewarding to beat. We got a more circular lore, and a PvP arena, woot!

It probably took me a solid 8 hours to beat the whole thing. I didn't use a guide until I beat both bosses, but I might have talked to Luke... and brought in a couple of summons... I didn't manage to get any boss fighting screenshots, because I was usually dying repeatedly.

Overall really enjoyed it! Sorry for the lack of epic words, this is the second game I managed to beat on my birthday.

AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake)

So I really love metroidvania games. They're amazing.

When I picked this up, I was super excited to play a Metroid game I missed, but without having to play on the old game boy system. In my brashness, I choose to play on the hard difficulty. This was a mistake.

It was brutally hard. Like - backtrack to a save point every time you kill any boss-like creature, so that you don't utterly die to the second one - hard.

The entire game is setup like spokes off an elevator. You have central saves, a bunch of branches with boss creatures to kill, then when they're all killed the elevator mechanic in the middle lets you go further down. All the while you're getting new powers, and equipment, and the E tanks. The E tanks are much more scarce than any other Metroid game I recall.

Enemies hit really hard on the hard difficulty. You will lose half an E tank in 1-2 hits from a normal enemy. By the time you get to that really hard boss, that is placed strategically 10 screens away from the closest save point, you will lose your mind.

One minor relief is that the death/reload time is pretty quick.

Most of the bosses I ended up having to kill in a somewhat cheesy way. Kneel in a corner and shoot in a locked upward angle in a spammy fashion until the tender un-armored underbelly is destroyed. Later on this is replaced by the trusty hide in a tiny hole, pop out for a strategic sucker missile shot, go back to hole. this last strategy held for quite some time.

For boss fights, you need to learn the tells of when/what attacks are coming, and you need to take very strong advantage of the portion of the boss fight where you are expected to shoot something that is not the boss to potentially get your life/missiles topped back up. If you neglect this, you will die.

I mostly collected things that were obvious on the map.

She is the worst. 10+ screens from the save point. Hits like a truck. Very little maneuvering room.

Aarklash Legacy

I did not end up finishing this game. I absolutely think this is worth buying and playing.

This game plays a bit like a MOBA. You have four playable characters, with four unique skills each. Some play DPS, healer/support, and tank roles, or a bit of a mix.

Each combat is difficult, and requires you to play tactically for at least the first half of the fight.

The things that this game did specifically well.
* Brilliant choice to style this like a RTS MOBA as far as camera, controls, and feel

** You can issue a queue of actions to an ally

** You can pause and inspect any enemy, which is critical to surviving

* The game allows you to respec a character anytime you are not in combat. This removed analysis paralysis and allowed exploration of builds and team options

* Each enemy had unique abilities with tweakable values (stun duration, distance, cast time, etc.)
* Enemies required you to take them down tactically. If you ignored their tell, then they would heavily punish you. You can also interrupt abilities, and many times have to do this to win.
* The optional boss fights were very rewarding and quite difficult
* Progressing through the story forced you to try out new party compositions and ability pairings
* Non-standard healing abilities. I loved seeing healing abilities that were more than just heal for X amount, or heal over time. The mechanics in this game were stunning.

The pretty good, but could have been better
* The UI that you needed to use to dig into which enemy had which ability was a bit tedious
* After a certain point, you can pick your own team and you'll likely never change it up once you have something that works
* The puzzles in the game were interesting, but sometimes seemed to be more tedious than clever. It also didn't feel like it was necessary.

* The voice acting was fine, but the story line just didn't engage me

The one thing they did that could be improved was equipment. Enemies drop random equipment of a normal, magical, rare variety. Most of the time it's crap, and you throw it ino the equipment grinder that will produce an ultra rare version. Basically you're just rolling the dice over and over until you get the best of the various state (+heal is great for healers, +physical damage is not typically). I ended up save scumming this a lot to abuse getting the best equipment, but in the end it wasn't a huge difference. It almost felt like an entire system that could have just been left out.

The reason I didn't finish the game primarily was that I wasn't engaged enough with the puzzles and story to continue. I absolutely loved the combat, abilities, and character classes they created. Once I had my ideal party, the fights just got a bit repetitive. Perhaps the UI improvements would have held my attention longer, but I doubt it. Still a great game!

PS: I have no idea how I don't have any screenshots for this game.