Blog: Games of 2020

2020 has worked out to be a pretty good year in terms of games I've played. I managed to play six games released this year. They were all pretty good, but I certainly like some more than others. In particular I have been absolutely blown away by Hades and I'm pretty sure you should go play that right now. Then you can come back and read the rest of this post later.

For this end of the year post, I've broken my list down into: games I didn't play much, games I thought were okay, games I thought were good, games I thought were great and games that were outstanding.

The Ones I Didn't Play Much

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

I played the Demo and about the Demo again after the game came out in full. (The fact that Zelda games almost always drop on my birthday make it pretty hard to avoid).  So I'm pretty clear on the first 2 or so hours of the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. It's pretty good, I think it has a ton of interesting ideas and the quality of the game is very good. The thing that kept me from picking it up more was the fact that I just have no intuition for musou games. I've tried to play a few (including the original Hyrule Warriors) and every time I find myself baffled about what I should be doing. The gameplay always feels too loose and like I'm not involved with what actually happens. Age of Calamity feels similar, although they've definitely made things make more sense. I'll try to push into it a bit more in 2020.

The Okay

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Tactics

When I first saw a trailer for this I thought it looked a lot it had visuals that looked like Muppets. Sadly in the end, the graphics didn't wow me in the end and the game play felt very slow. My partner and I pushed through and watched the whole of the show, which I generally enjoyed, but I think the game did not come out as well as it might have.

I think my general lack of skill at tactics games (despite my love of them) is holding me back some and then I think compared to other games like Final Fantasy Tactics or XCOM it just feels a little stilted. I might come back to it at some point but it's not really calling out to me.

The Good

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I'm sad this is only good. I think New Horizons had a lot of opportunity to be exceptional and instead Nintendo played for the Instagram shot. I like the game, it certainly has moments where it's fun and charming. Other times it ends up feeling lifeless, like it's designed to take a good photo but not much beyond that.

New Horizons modernizes a lot of things with other Animal Crossing games and generally makes playing very easy and comfortable. Customizing your own island is fun. Unfortunately it's missing enough personality in the villagers and the factors outside your player that it just isn't great.

Mario 35

I liked Mario 35 quite a lot. Especially when it first came out, I found it to be a huge amount of fun. It forced me to learn a lot about Super Mario Bros and then to learn a lot about how to play this competitively. I'm not great, but I'm certainly good enough on any given day that I have a session last 10-15 minutes.

It has slightly different mechanics than other Super Mario Bros ports, so I found trying to go back and play those harder than it might have been. That being said other than in trying to get better at learning the game, there's no real need to go back right now.

I've found having played for a few months that it's a little less exciting than it was when I first picked it up. I will say that Nintendo's plan to stop letting people play in March seems anti-consumer, but I think shaking up the game play over time is going to be necessary to keep my interest.

Paper Mario: The Origami King

I wrote up a Things About post on this game, but generally I found that this was a good and well executed game. I also found that it was so highly polished that it slipped off my mind. I may have just not been in the right place when I played it, but generally I think I remember Color Splash more and enjoyed that game more.

This game is worth playing. It's beautiful and fun, with an interesting and fun combat mechanic. However, the story is not very interesting and the characters are somewhat forgettable.

The Great

XCOM: Chimera Squad

I really enjoyed XCOM: Chimera Squad. One of the primary problems with the original XCOM was the that the missions were very slow. Xenonauts is possibly even slower with it's large map size.  New XCOM definitely struck a good balance and XCOM:2 tried to shorten times by limiting the number of turns you were allowed to take (which I didn't love).

XCOM: Chimera Squad takes the whole XCOM formula and then asks what if we just did the setup parts. In each mission you "breach" into a space and then spend a turn or two fighting the bad guys you didn't take down on your way in. It speeds the whole game up and makes every mission quick and fun.

I also like that you play as a police force rather than a military force. The investigation game play between missions is minimal, but it's a nice flavour change and I like that the game directly rewards you for disabling enemies rather than killing them. I think they could have pushed it a little farther, but overall it's a really nice experience.

The only thing I'm sad about with Chimera Squad is that there are only 3 and 1/2 real investigations. Even though those have a little bit of variation on replay, I could really happily take on a whole bunch more game.

The Outstanding

Hades

I am absolutely blown away by Hades. It is immediately and continuously fun. It feels good to play. The story is interesting and the characters are deep and engaging. 

I started playing after watching a few Let's Plays and streams. I found I wasn't great at it, but there was always enough progress each time I played and I felt like I was learning to get better each time.

Later I watched some of those Let's Plays again and was fascinated to realize just how carefully constructed the tutorials were. From the order in which boons are introduced, to the way enemies are introduced, to the way the story is introduced it's all extremely carefully structured to guide new players into understanding each mechanic and how to really take advantage of each idea. 

Despite the menacing look, it is very hard to actually hurt yourself in this room.

I watched a video about the game's dialog system and was really impressed by how carefully constructed that is. Having a pool of reasonably interesting things for each character to say, prioritized by the things that are the most pressing.

I absolutely love this game and feel like I could play it for years to come. Probably it'll fade a bit, but I think this is a true classic and absolutely think anyone should play it.

 

Blog: Things About Paper Mario: Origami King

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a pretty interesting game. It's the most recent result of the crafted world games Nintendo has been working on and the latest Paper Mario game. As such I found it to be beautiful, but also a little over polished.

Honestly it 's a game that was fun while I was playing but thinking back on it a few months later, I'm finding it a bit bland. Still it has some interesting elements and I think it's worth talking about.

Please be aware of spoilers right up to the ending for Paper Mario: The Origami King.

Things I Liked

The visuals of the game are pretty awesome. The designers have put a lot of effort into constructing a world out of paper and crafts. The game feels very natural and also like the kind of idea they were looking for in the early Paper Mario games. 

That said, I liked the "real world" style more than the origami style. I think they did a lot of really interesting work in the origami creatures and settings later in the game, but somehow the lacked a little of the charm of the crafted style. Totally impressive, but I think not just the thing I really liked.

I liked the two new combat systems that were introduced for Origami King. I think the card-based RPG-style battle system used in Colour Splash was enough to keep the game interesting, but it wasn't a draw to the game. Both of the two systems used in Origami King are much more engaging. I like the minion fighting system, where you have to group enemies together to hit them either with an attack that's the right shape. It's not a knock out, but it's certainly enough to make you sit up an pay attention to every fight in the game.

The star for me, though, is really the system for boss fights. You have to create a path for Mario to travel to the boss, picking up power-ups and magic along the way and then hit the boss with the right kind of attack. These turned out to be interesting puzzles and sometimes really dynamic and interesting fights. I found it took me about half the game to really figure it out, but once I did I really enjoyed the puzzle and fight-control aspects the game offered.

Another thing I really loved is that the game has a quick help mechanism to get you through combat. You can choose at the start of a turn to spend some money for support from your audience of Toads. If you spend a little money you might get a point or two of damage to the enemies (pretty much useless but maybe lets you finish up a battle). If you spend more they might refill your health. If you spend at least 100 coins, they'll actually help solve a step in the puzzle. This can really help sometimes when you just can't see the solution. The game throws more than enough money at you that there's no real penalty to using the system.

The only downside to this is that the game does a terrible job of explaining how the system actually works. I spent a while frustrated with the game especially when I was really tired or stressed trying to win a boss fight before I lose and have to start over. Once I understood, it was nice to be able to choose if I felt up to tackling the puzzle myself or if I needed some help.

#PaperMario #PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/lWaLbNzwOf

— Games TJ Plays (@GamesTJPlays) October 28, 2020

Things I Didn't Like

Honestly as a game with this level polish, there's not much to not like about it. The story is a little linear, but that's not too uncommon for a jrpg-style game and it doesn't have quite the same level of personality as I though Colour Splash had. 

I think the thing I disliked the most about this game is that it's as polished as it is. I recently watched Tama Hero's video on the evolution of Animal Crossing villagers, and she discussed the transition of the villagers from somewhat frustrating, but realistic characters to very smooth town decorations. 

Paper Mario has a somewhat similar trajectory as a series, with a very rough first outing on the N64 to an sprawling but esoteric adventure on the Game Cube to the smaller and more streamlined games that followed. At the end of the day this feels a bit like a pretty view and funny quip dispenser. 

Oh. One more thing. This is a Paper Mario game that doesn't end with a parade. What the fuck?

Things I Noticed

The Paper Mario games are known for the their excellent writing. They tend to have a charm and wit that gets left out of a lot of Nintendo's other games. Recently, Treehouse has really added a lot more personality to the games they translate (such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons), but the Paper Mario games have had a strong identity right from the start.

That being said, I think that Origami King didn't have the same level of attention as Colour Splash. There's a moment late in Colour Splash where you meet a troop of 50 Red Rescue Toads. They all look identical, but every single one of them has unique dialog, not just once but trees of dialog that lasts to the end of the game. Origami King lacks a little bit of that, there's just a little bit less life in the NPCs and in the world. 

I also had a bit of a hard time with the music. It's very good music, but it's completely unmemorable. Honestly every time I started playing I was surprised that it didn't have the theme from Colour Splash. 

Things I'd Put In a Game

Paper Mario games also inspire me to focus on those details that make the world really feel alive.

I like the general innovativeness of the combat system. The Paper Mario series is well situated in allowing for different kinds of combat that doesn't necessarily relate to the rest of the game. I'm not sure that's a thing that works smoothly in every game but it's still a fun thing to keep in mind for the right moment.

One this I definitely like is the low/no penalty system to make combat easier. There's been a lot of discussion about how to adjust difficulty and game play to accommodate players of different skills and players with different abilities. There are a lot of important parts to that discussion and different ways to implement it but I think making it a straight forward part of the combat is a really good way to be accommodating to all players. 

Final Things

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a fun game. It's pretty, it's charming, it sounds nice, it's worth playing. I finished it as much as I wanted in about 25 hours. There's more you can go back for to get collectables and such, but I was pretty happy just to get to the end of the story. 

Not every game has to be a ground breaking epic, sometimes it's nice just have something bright fun and quick to play and Origami King is that to a t. I really enjoyed my time with it.

Blog: Games of August 2020

Having taken a good chunk of July off to play video games (and like, vacation, sort of), I started back to getting things done. As such I played a little less and tried to focus a bit more on one game at a time.

My top five games (by play time) for August were:

1. Golf Story - I love Mario Golf, and I'm patiently waiting for a new one on the switch. In the mean time, I watched Proton Jon play Golf Story on his stream back at the end of July and the itch got me. I really enjoyed the golf mechanic, and thought the story was fairly charming. I think I'm going to do a post about it, but its definitely interesting to mix RPG mechanics with non-combat mechanics.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Still enjoying the daily grind in ACNH. Feeling a bit sad that there's stuff missing from New Leaf. I'm sure COVID sheltering has affected Nintendo's plans for the game, but the game is wearing just a touch thin finally.
   
   

   

   Fireworks!

   
   


3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I really enjoyed The Origami King. Conversely to Golf Story I think RPG mechanics without experience griding actually works very well. The Paper Mario games are also extremely well written and this one was no exception.
   
   

   

   Paper!

   
   


4. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I think taking modern XCOM and breaking it down into bite sized chunks works really well. I've been enjoying Chimera Squad more than I remember enjoying XCOM 2. It's not always the tactical game I want, but overall I think it's great.
   
   

   

   Clear!

   
   


5. Octopath Traveller - I *want* to like Octopath, but compared to Golf Story and The Origami King, this is really hard to pick up. That's a bit on the mechanics, it's very slow in the UI and requires a lot of menuing. The addition of very, very slow cut scenes is also not helpful. Finally, while I love the game's combat, if you are low leveled some fights can last up to half an hour for no particular pay off. I'm left wishing for them to use the engine to remake Final Fantasy VI.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of July 2020

I took a "vacation" and played video games in the last half of July. I'm not sure that was the perfect way to spend my time, but it was pretty good. I think I'd have liked something incredibly deep like a Final Fantasy to sink into, but since I didn't really have that I did the best I could with what I had.

My top five games (by play time) for July 2019 were:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Always a lovely game. It's not quite everything I could have hoped for in a "next-gen" animal crossing, but it certainly charming and I think compared to New Leaf, it does a good job of hiding the wires that make the world turn.
   
   

   

   Skye always brings a touch of joy.



2. Octopath Traveller - Knowing I'd need to get back to getting stuff done, I really pushed myself to play Octopath as much as I could. I ended up playing a bit more than I really enjoyed, since the game tends to push to long sessions. Overall however I think the game is pretty good. I'm planning a "Thought's on" post for Octopath, but that will be a little bit in coming.
   
   

   

   You know that thing where the ball gets really big when you're playing tennis...



3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I liked Paper Mario: Colour Splash, and I think that The Origami King improves on it in every way. I've been enjoying playing through and I really like the pacing and the length. It's been easy to play and I appreciate that I'll be able to finish it in a relatively contained time.
   
   

   

   Come for the jumping and hammering, stay for the chill coffee philosophy. 
   



4. Wargroove - I was getting my butt kicked by Wargroove (I have a terrible condition of loving tactics games but also being really bad at them). I adjusted the difficulty down a bit and found it really fun and playable. I appreciated being able to play how I wanted to play without having to "be at the game's level". It's possible I may have to go back and play at a harder difficulty later on, but hopefully I'll have learned the systems better by then.
   
   

   

   Caeser wins hearts, minds and combat encouters.



5. Xenonauts - I do really love the original X-COM style of gameplay and Xenonauts definitely does a good job of recreating the organization and careful combat. It does stick very closely to the original format, so I find myself thinking about elements I'd want in a new X-COM style game, especially when it comes to base building and organization.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for July:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: