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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

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dhaabi:
04. Demon Quest '85 || Playdate || 01.11.24



As I've now completed my seventh Playdate game in the five weeks I've owned the system, I'm still greatly pleased with how capable this little device is at providing fun experiences across a myriad of genres and themes. Since most games have short playtimes, I've found myself playing all sorts of games that I ordinarily don't play but have enjoyed immensely, and Demon Quest '85 is no exception.

Based on the game's title, Demon Quest '85 could have been a game adopting any number of genres: first-person dungeon crawler, turn-based RPG, action-platformer, puzzle adventure, and so forth. However, what I wasn't expecting was for it to be an open-ended narrative adventure game akin to choose-your-own-adventure novels. The developers themselves are even on record for classifying the game as a visual novel, and I think that there's enough overlap with the genre to even classify it as such too. With all that said, Demon Quest '85 is all about summoning demons as a high school student, taking place in 1985.

With an ancient grimoire in hand outlining the darkest horrors of some of the most dangerous and cursed fiends from hell, you as the player-character gather three friends to spend an afternoon in your musty attic to summon these demons. Over the course of several days, your friends serve as vessels for the demons to communicate through. With the summoning requiring both a party of four and willing participants who meet certain criteria for each specific demon, three of the twelve who accompany you each day present problems for a demon to solve or knowledge for them to impart. And, surprisingly, as more summonings are performed, your influence over hell and its leaders becomes more paramount with increasing concern. Meanwhile, the influence each demon's effects has over your friends becomes either welcomed or worrisome.

To accomplish all of this, there is an involved process to prepare the event. While the hellish text offers a fair amount of overview, the most useful information will be gathered from the demons you summon, which will allow you to call upon the next. In time, you will learn about the demon's interests, what powers they control, their values, and their political alliances. With all this information, you will then need to set the scene: leaving a suitable offering, preparing the preferred musical ambiance, and inviting the correct friends to form a party of the demon's liking. Of the twelve classmates to choose from, there is some challenge, as only short blurbs for both who the student is and what kind of audience the demon demands are available. In truth, this step will likely require some trial-and-error effort, but it is a small puzzle to solve.

Having mentioned the game's genre above, I finished my playthrough surprised at the degree of narrative-branching that's offered. Demons may be summoned in a multitude of ways, largely with the combination of classmates to choose from being varied. Once the summoning is ready, only one of three is then used as the demon's vessel and only one may be influenced. However, whether they actually take that influence is also a presented choice for the player to decide. While human outcomes greatly vary, so do the outcomes for the demons themselves, as how you interact with one directly alters the next summoning. Of course, the game's ending operates is also varied, with my personal choices leading to a more lawful evil conclusion.

Since each demon can only be summoned once, the narrative progresses quickly. Because of that design, Demon Quest '85 offers an impressive amount of replayability which actually seems worth investing in. Once the player knows how to summon each demon, progressing is simple, meaning to play the game from beginning to end can be done quite quickly. Something worth mentioning is that, if one is interested in playing through a number of paths, the system's crank can be used to speedily scroll through dialogue.

In the end, Demon Quest '85 stands as one of my most preferred games bundled with the system, and I can easily find myself revisiting it. While open-ended narrative games generally aren't ones I gravitate toward, the game's short but serviceable length only made the experience more approachable.

dhaabi:
05. Rusty Lake Paradise || PC || 01.12.24



Eager to begin the third and final Rusty Lake entry, I was curious to learn just how much there actually is in connection to the Vanderboom family's cursed history and, ultimately, Laura's end fate. After the previous Rusty Lake entry Roots, I wasn't expecting there to be that much more, but I was fortunately mistaken.

Set even further back in the past than what's been shown so far, Paradise takes place in 1796, nearly two hundred years prior to the game's most current events of 1981. With the player assuming the role of a son named Jakob, you return to your island home referred to as Paradise in light of your mother's death. On this small island in the middle of Rusty Lake, only your small family of now six make it their home. Upon your arrival shortly after your mother's death, a series of disasters plague the land and its inhabitants, with each one serving as a plot point which breaks the game into ten chapters. With a high number of plagues taking place, a good variety is introduced as problems to overcome, including water having turned into blood, diseased livestock, and an outbreak of boils.

At first, I believed the puzzles to all be simple, but, in hindsight, I feel as if the game's puzzle designs has a much better gradual increase of difficulty which nearly every other game before it ignores. However, one change I greatly welcomed is that most puzzles are self-contained and not just items interacting with another. There are dozens of small puzzles which come together as one single path to reach the game's ending, and I found them all fun to solve. While a few stumped me, those moments were almost all relating to me overlooking one small detail to inspect or not knowing how a certain item is to be used. After glancing back at all of the game's puzzles in a walkthrough, the percentage of puzzles solved out of total puzzles was perhaps highest for me this time.

Something routinely mentioned throughout the series is how events are interconnected through past, present, and future, and that thought is greatly present in Paradise. Everything, no matter when or where exactly it takes place, seems to be influential over what has happened or will happen. Through the Rusty Lake series, cultish texts and ideologies are read and practiced by patriarchal leaders which dictate that our memories belong to the lake, our past lives must reach some sort of balance with future lives, and there is a chosen one in the midst of it all whose status is reached through enlightenment. What I quickly came to appreciate is that the series excels at presenting strange and unusual, but also grotesque, scenes. In one instance throughout Paradise, the game veers strongly toward body horror.

Even after playing through all three prequel entries, there are narrative details which I don't understand. That said, perhaps the remaining entries can explain some of my misunderstanding. Speculating as to what's to come next, I really don't know what that could be. If the series has an actual ending, I don't know exactly how that will occur or what exactly is needing to be resolved. In truth, I'm quite fine with the idea that each of the remaining entries simply fill in details to expand upon what's revealed so far without some conclusive end. Nevertheless, now I move forward to play the next and final Cube Escape entry.

moonlightvalkyrie:
1. The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope (PS5)- I have to say that The Devil in Me update they gave to this game doesn't fit well. I still recommend at least a playthrough of this one! I am hoping to finish the Anthology this year!

Cartagia:
3. Star Trek: Resurgence (PS5)

I'm a bit conflicted on this one.  The graphics and gameplay would have been outdated 5 years ago, and the branching path narrative is incredibly simple.  Despite that Resurgence might be the most purely Star Trek game to have come out in 30 years.  Moral dilemmas, big sci-fi concepts, cool technobabble.  It's all here.  There are some bits of the writing that don't really make logical sense in a chain of command style outfit like Starfleet, and it just kind of ends leaving a few dangling plot threads.

Overall it's a ok video game, but a very solid Star Trek game.

bikingjahuty:
I decided to go all in on the Real Bout: Fatal Fury series tonight. I've played 2 of these games before, however, I've never actually played the first RB game prior to tonight, at least not that I remembered. But anyhow, here are my impressions.


6. Real Bout: Fatal Fury (PS4)

Supposedly a lot of people don't like this game. And yeah, I kinda get it, particularly some balancing issues with a few non-boss characters as well as the ring out mechanic, which I thought was kinda fun, but overall I liked this game mostly from a gameplay perspective. I liked it even more from a presentation perspective, as there are cutscenes, the stages look excellent, and the character sprites are all awesome. It does suck that there aren't more stages, but for what they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality. I don't know, I think this is a pretty fun game in the series, despite openly admitting it has its flaws and you can certainly do better for a Fatal Fury game. (1/16/24) [33/50]

7. Real Bout: Fatal Fury Special (PS4)

It has been a long time since I played the original RB Special, however, more recently I played its updated PS1 port Dominated Mind. While Dominated Mind and the original have very noticeable differences, I still mostly consider these games to be the same entry. However, even though Dominated Mind is supposed to be enhanced, I actually prefer the original if only by a small margin. Both games look excellent, the gameplay is an improvement over the first RB, particularly the balancing and the removal of the out of bounds mechanic, and the OST is still awesome. This was my favorite RB game I played tonight and definitely one of the best games in the franchise. (1/16/24) [35/50]

8. Real Bout: Fatal Fury 2 (PS4)

I had really high hopes for RB2, mostly because I remember thinking it was really fun and also because most people consider RB2 to be the best Fatal Fury game, second only to Mark of the Wolves. While I think it's a fun as hell game, I actually didn't find it as enjoyable as RB Special. My main hangup was the game seemed to veer back into some bad habits with it's balancing. However, it mostly made up for this by having more character, stages, and retaining those excellent visuals. The soundtrack isn[t half bad either. I had fun with RB2, but honestly I felt like RB Special outshined it, if only by a little. (1/16/24) [34/50]

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