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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

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dhaabi:
09. The White Door || PC || 01.20.24



With the Rusty Lake franchise having seemingly concluded both the Cube Escape and Rusty Lake sub-series of games, developer Rusty Lake's more recent endeavors have been expanding upon the overarching Rusty Lake narrative through other, slightly different, gameplay and visual types. At least, this is my assumption after having finished The White Door.

Controlling protagonist Robert Hill, players assume the role of someone seemingly new, foreign to the involvement of Dale, Laura, and the larger Vanderboom ancestry. However, that is actually not the case, as Robert has been shown at least on two occasions, although their presence and bearing on the overall narrative at that point was little. Having woken up in a room that's locked from the outside, there is a posted schedule to follow to progress time. As the game's title suggests, a white door is your most obvious obstacle in maintaining your state of being trapped. That said, shortly after starting, it becomes apparent how you're checked in to some sort of mental health facility.

As the schedule implies, you must follow it with each passing day. At certain intervals, usually when the day ends, a short flashback event will appear for the player to control through. As players will come to learn, Robert has connections with the murdered woman, Laura. These flashback sections place a heavy emphasis on story, with progressing through each line of dialogue or action requiring some sort of simple input to maintain player engagement. As the day continues, players will have to pass a series of short objectives such as eating breakfast and simple recreation at night. However, there are also other tasks such as memory tests which are often more like visual tests. Additionally, a staff member appears once a day to check Robert's well-being which often requires the player to recount information from details scattered about the room. Fortunately, the game doesn't force the player to actually recall information, as there are no consequences alongside the player being able to freely move about the room to further investigate specific details.

While playing, it's apparent how The White Door deviates from every single one of the previous Rusty Lake franchise games, which is likely why the game's name formatting omits any formal connection to either aforementioned sub-series. In The White Door, the screen is halved. On the left is a top-down view of the room you're in which allows you to see various items which you may interact with. On the right is an up-close screen showing the items you near which are able to be interacted with. This right side is how the actual interaction is performed, requiring the player to drag and click. At times, more detailed information is also presented on this side which highlights crucial details necessary to progress through the game's puzzle narrative. Unlike every other game so far, items aren't collected. In fact, items don't even interact with another. In truth, the amount of gameplay is perhaps lowest in this entry, as puzzle objectives usually appear as brief interruptions to the relatively fast-moving story. On that note, while the level of narration and storytelling has varied across each Rusty Lake game, The White Door is the most narrative-driven experience so far. After nearly every action being taken, narration follows. In many instances, the action even follows the narration, as if it's guiding players in what to do.

Bolstered by its emphasis on story-telling, The White Door presents a bleak plot about loss, the decline of mental health, and losing what it means to be one's self. By every account, the game is very much a side narrative to the ongoing story, but it's one which offers adequate details to fill in some gaps while remaining true to the dark and disturbing nature the franchise is known for.

kashell:
11. Shadow Hearts: From the New World

It's been nearly 20 years since I played this and thought a replay was in order. With the strategy guide in my possession finally, I had every intention of doing everything: side-quests, collectables, etc. Well, that idea got thrown out the window when I reached the halfway point (and the battle track went from epic to awful). This was worse than I remembered. I can see myself going through the original and Covenant in years to come. Maybe there'll come a time when I do another run of Koudelka. This, however, I will never play this game again unless there's a release of the entire Shadow Hearts series on one disc/cart that includes QoL changes, trophies, etc. And knowing how borked Aruze and the Shadow Hearts IP is, that's never going to happen. The game's goofy characters and lack of barely any horror themed atmosphere aren't my biggest issues, although they don't help. It's that the game's poorly balanced to the point that outside grinding is constant necessity. Since battles take too long, doing said grinding takes even more time. Building Stock takes time. Enemies constantly get multiple turns in a row. Maybe they wanted to make things more challenging but this wasn't the right way to do it. When those credits rolled, I returned the disc to the case and the case to the shelf. Out of sight/mind.

tripredacus:
6. Heroes of Might and Magic III HD Edition

Marked this as red, because of some bug or particularities with the game that prevent me from actually completing it. First, this is only the original release of the game and does not include the expansions. My plan was to just complete the campaign options, of which there are seven. There are three you can see from the start and I was able to play and complete the first two. The first campaign was easy. The second was challenging in the third portion and I had to restart it many times. Basically the issue was that I was going too slow. The third one was the same issue in the third segment but I decided to cheat to get past it in the end.

Yet, after beating the first three campaigns, it did not unlock the additional ones. I only got an achievement for the first two, and the third I got the cheating achievement. I come to find out that you need to play all of the campaign options on a single save or else the extra options won't unlock. This isn't an issue I had with the original game (of which I still own and will play again some day on original hardware) because the idea of using multiple saves was not something that had occurred to me back then. I did not know about using multiple saves until well after the youtube era where I watched others use them. I used a 1-2-3 save system and replaced them every time I started a new scenario. I partly blame the game for not having any sort of mention that when you complete a scenario, if you start a new one, it technically doesn't count as a continuation.

As far as it being an HD version, it in itself is fine. It isn't a full upscale as the battles get a border since it uses a grid that is designed for 4:3 displays and they did not add any new tiles for widescreen. The only issues I found was the dispell effect draws on the border and doesn't go away for the entirety of the battle. Other issues is that the sound mutes when you move the mouse cursor past the bounds of the window if you are using windowed or multi-mon. One time I encountered a bug where it played the monster removed sound in the map screen constantly.

I certainly remember this game and also remember *some* of the campaigns. Just the first two. It may be possible I could not beat it originally either and that I had only played the scenarios. Or it is possible that I did not spend that much time with this game. I still do prefer HOMM2 and 4 over this version. I also recall HOMM4 was exceedingly difficult to find in the US because it got short printed and that the only way to find it for a decent price was to import it from UK. It did eventually get a reprint in the US as a budget title that showed up on the Walmart jewel case rack, which was how I finally managed to get it. HOMM2 was one of those situations where I had gotten the demo from the PC Gamer CD and then was able to go out and get the full game later on.

I'll leave it installed because the scenarios can be fun still. We'll see if it manages to stick around.

telly:
Game 2 - God of War: Ragnarök (PS4) - 41 Hours

I didn't realize when I started this game that I would have needed to have a minor in Norse studies beforehand ;) Jokes aside, I did enjoy my time playing this game, though as you can probably guess, I didn't really enjoy the story. I knew it was going to be a bad time after I watched the GoW4 recap and still had no idea what was going on in the first game. I dunno, it just never really clicked with me. It was very long, very twisty and convoluted with tons of lore and backstory that the game just assumes you know. And even with all that, I found the story to be boring. It's ultimately a story about not trying to follow a preordained prophecy and then following it after all? That's what I got out of it anyway. I also really didn't like the voice acting, particularly for the older Atreus and Odin. Odin in particular was a very boring and cliche villain. Again, something that I know is well praised about this game, but just didn't connect with me personally.

What did connect with me though was the combat, exploration, and visuals. The game is very beautiful just like the first, and scored masterfully. My favorite moments in this game were just exploring the world, riding in my boat, doing quests as they became open to me and enjoying the game's satisfying combat. Were there a lot of glitches? Yeah. Are there arguably TOO many combat mechanics, weapons, and equipment to manage? Sure. Did I die more times than I thought I should have on normal? You bet. Nonetheless, I didn't want to stop playing purely because I was enjoying the gameplay that much. It was especially nice to be able to visit all of the realms this time around.

Looking back at my previous review of GoW4, I was not surprised to read that I basically have the same thoughts about this game as I did the previous game. Great combat, great visuals, great exploration, kind of a bad story. Not a bad experience though at all.

telekill:
I won't be doing a blurb for every game completed, but I just finished Star Wars: Jedi Survivor (PS5). Great game. I had been interested in the first for a while, hearing it played like Uncharted and finally it released on PS Plus. Played it and enjoyed it. Then the sequel had a half off during Black Friday that I couldn't pass up.

Game in general starts you with the powers you gained in the first game. Something I'm thankful of as most games just have you start from scratch and it sucks. Without going into too much detail, by the end of the game, Cal is basically a God. I expect with a rumored third game in developement, that they could have him take on Vader and win, but somehow Vader lives for his cannon death in the movies.

Quite a few plot twists in the game that I won't be detailing, but it felt right when the game was about to end, the team decided to extend it a few hours just because. Still good. Looking forward to a third game. If one is made, I expect we won't see it until the end of the PS5 generation.

Starting God of War Ragnarok (PS5).

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