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52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!
kashell:
13. Silent Hill: A Short Message
If this is the future of Silent Hill, then I'm glad I fell off from the series years ago after Origins and Homecoming. Short Message shined when you were slowly exploring the building and learning about its history. I liked how the series was brought to a modern scale, touching on the Covid-19 pandemic, social media and its issues, and other triggering subjects. Sadly, those shining moments were clouded by these ridiculously frustrating chase sequences. You have to outrun a manifestation of evil that the MC created, but all you have is a smartphone flashlight. Naturally, these areas are messy. Even without those, Silent Hill was always more subtle in delivering its messages and themes. Short Message threw them right in your face, and those trigger warnings occurred frequently enough to break immersion. In the end, I'm glad this was free because I would have felt robbed.
realpoketendonl:
3. A Mortician's Tale
TW: death
This is MUCH more serious than most messages here, but I think that's the only way I can do this game justice. If this is not something you want to read, feel free to skip this post. But I will say here: I highly recommend giving this game a look.
This is a short game, only taking about an hour to play through, but I've had my eye on it for a while and I'm glad to have now played it. This is a short narrative experience about a mortician. You go through her daily routine of preparing the bodies of people for the funeral service, to help their loved ones say goodbye and offer the deceased a respectful send-off. You do this by reading the emails from your clients and your colleagues, and preparing the bodies of the deceased as to their loved ones' wishes. You go through all the steps to embalm or cremate the person's body, and then attend the service. And that's your work day.
What drew me to this game was its death positive message. In case you don't know, death positivity means (in my words) an acceptance of the concept of death. It means not fearing the concept of death or avoiding it, but viewing it as something to openly talk about. I honestly think this is a wonderful sentiment. Death, however sad, is an inevitable part of life. And I feel that if we were to lift the taboo on talking about it and allow ourselves to better accept the reality of mortality, it could really help us deal with the difficult feelings surrounding passing and grief. Allowing these feelings to exist, rather than surpressing them. Of course this is much easier said than done: I wish I was more death positive than I am. I find it really hard to discuss or think about too. But change is a slow process, and this is exactly why I wanted to play this game.
And the game depicts this subject beautifully. It shows both the good and the bad that happens in this world, deals with both the beauty and pain of memorial services, and it offers a particularly interesting perspective on this from the position of the mortician. As a player you always just want to do whatever you can to be as respectful as possible, and it's nice you can do this for these people. You really feel everything your character and the other characters feel, and the ending did make me tear up.
This is a short but very sweet experience, that I think addresses the topic beautifully. I hope it can lead to conversation between people about this topic, and maybe help some people find a little more peace with death. I highly recommend checking it out. The creators of this game deserve the support.
(Also, technical info: the game is for Windows and macOS, but I played it on Linux Mint with no trouble at all. And tip: I got this from the Racial Justice and Equality charity bundle that was available on itch.io in 2020. So if you bought that, you already have this!)
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Also also, completely unrelated to the challenge, but I've also already finished 3 books thus far this year! One of which was Disrupting the game by Reggie Fils-Aime, which I highly recommend, especially to Nintendo fans.
kashell:
14. Astro's Playroom - Platinum'd
I've been a fan of the PlayStation since the jump, and this game pays homage to that while also being a super fun, super tight, and super adorable platformer. And it's all free. There were so many trips down memory lane along with a huge number of references to favorite games. The way it all came together in such a unique, polished package that highlights gaming excellence is very impressive for a free game. I'm glad I took a break from the serious and my usual RPG battling to play this. My first platinum trophy of the year!
tripredacus:
8. Tales From the Borderlands
First my history and biases. The first Telltale game I played was The Wolf Among Us and then Batman.
My play order of the BL series has been: BL2, BL3, Pre-Sequel, BL1, Tales
So the only other Telltale games I've played were the "detective" types and not the same type as this BL game. Now it is also obvious that this should be played before BL3. I knew Rhys from that game and he was a fine character, and I understood what the easter egg regarding his facial hair was referring to (this TT game). Dealing with fictions out of order are not an issue with me.
However the style of this TT game is not really fun for me to play. On a gameplay level, there is no observable downtime. By that I mean you have to be ready for a QTE at any point. Unlike the other two I've played, there were large portions or areas where you know that you can relax more.
Second issue is the story. You play as two characters, Rhys and a girl. And you do so as a "recollection" because the majority of the actual gameplay happens during flashbacks. And as you are made aware early on, the story you play is what you are telling to your captor in the future, AND that you can tell him things that are false. It means that the story (and thus the entire game that isn't in the present) doesn't actually matter. It is sort of like those new commercials for cell phones where you can use tools to remove people or things from photos and video. Which in reality means that you are able to create records of events that didn't actually happen. So because the game is set up this way, the story becomes worthless and makes no difference what you do because it could just be made up.
Having Jack in the game is not enough to keep me interested. I don't care about any of the characters, except maybe Jack. Not even Rhys. Maybe if I had played it before BL3... Also there is a point in Episode 2 where Jack notices he can physically control Rhys and there is a QTE to prevent him from doing this. And it highlights another issue I have with these games, they may be choose your own adventure but there are still too many limits put in by developers. In this QTE, you can't actually fail. It will stay on the button press screen forever and loop the animation.
I may end up watching an LP just so I can get the story, but there was not enough in the gameplay or story for me to want to do it myself.
kashell:
15. Castlevania: Dracula X
My Castlevania Advance Collection finally arrived. I thought I'd celebrate by finally, and officially, playing Dracula X. I guess I can say I got the worst out of the way. This wasn't fun. The stiff controls might have been too to playing on the Switch, but that's just one issue. Things just seem extra unfair in this iteration. I don't remember Rondo of Blood having so many "eff you" moments. Save states and rewinds were used heavily. Then, there's the lack of extras like playing as Maria and the different levels. It was just an all around unfun game. Luckily, it's short and included as part of the collection; no need to worry about dropping a couple hundred bones on that cart.
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