Hell is Us

• Genre: Action Adventure
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 48
• Too Short/Long: Maybe it's drawn out a little bit, part of that may be by design, but it didn't really grow too tiresome.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It has a dark atmospheric and heavy soundtrack with a lot of loud booms and crashes that enhance the experience for sure. I don't know how great it's to listen on it's own, but I may end up using tracks from it to set the mood for tabletop games.
• Why I played: I'm honestly not sure. I think at some point I just saw a trailer and was like "that looks neat" and decided to go out on whim. It's not the most talked about game and fills a weird niche of not-AAA design(non-derogatory), while kinda being a AAA-esque game.
• Jank: It's mostly jank free. Took me a little longer to get used to the controls than maybe it should, and feels loose at first, but that all goes away with more time in the game. I think it's otherwise pretty polished - no glitches, or weirdness I can recall.
• Difficulty: It seems to have some good options for setting difficulty as you see fit, but it was pretty much where I like it by default. Combat could be challenging at times, and some sections requires me to retry a few times, but nothing crazy. The real difficulty comes from the puzzles, and I guess it's not entirely all that hard in many cases. It just requires a lot of reading and memorization.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm extremely pleased with this. I expected more or less another actiony souls-like, and it's more of it's own thing. It's still an action game primarily, and it has some elements typically associated with souls-games. It even has options for souls-like progression(regression?), but it's more of an action game with some pretty in-depth puzzles.
• Recommend to others: I definitely will be mentioning this to other people. I've already started in fact. It's kind of a weird game as it's not exactly like too many other games I've played as a whole, so it fits a neat spot where there's nothing exactly like it I could recommend over it, but also makes it a little hard to know exactly who may want to play a game like this.
  

Hell is Us is a rare kind of a game that looks and feels familiar but is actually pretty unique. It has all the trapping and style of a lot of Souls-esque games. A cryptic world that is more than it a appears when mysterious enemies. A combat system that relies on precise timing with parries, dodge rolls, a stamina bar, etc.

But it also has problem solving, and a lot of it. Something you'd more likely see in a pure old-school adventure game. I'm not gonna say it's as extensive as something like Myst, but... it definitely has some of the most unique and sometimes obtuse puzzles I've seen in a game a in a long time. A lot of them are simple and just require you to pay attention to the environment, or make sure to read your notes and remember which note you need, but some definitely require a bit more than that, some sound reasoning, context clues, etc. There is no map in this game, no waypoints, no quest markers. It leaves a lot of the responsibility on the player to figure things out, and honestly it's pretty refreshing.

Even though it's arguably less of the time you'll spend in the game, it feels like that was actually the primary focus. Not that the combat isn't satisfying, but I managed most of it without using too many spells/special skills outside the first and last couple hours of the game. Considering how long I played, that the vast majority of the time not even fully engaging with it. The enemy diversity isn't it's strongest point, and while there are a few boss battles, it's really only a few. They're great, but arguably too few, and the end kind of just ends when you think maybe you're coming right up to the climax of the game. Turns out that was it.

But the experience as a whole was great and it was an interesting and different kind of setting for this kind of game. A modern game that truly has some more old-school minded design choices, without just relying on pixel art or just fully replicating something like an NES platformer. It's not exactly something I'd put in my "PS2-ass" games list either. It just felt like a different route certain modern games could have taken if being more hand-holdy wasn't so more accessible and arguably more successful. I appreciate it for that because every "win" felt like my own. Even if I did have to read a novel's worth of text. I guess it was classic in that sense too.

Arctic Eggs

• Genre: Cooking Simulation
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 2.3 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine for what it is I guess. There is a sandbox mode where you can make any combo of items presented in the game, so you can squeeze just about all you can out of it.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Actually surprising good. Nothing too crazy, but it's a vibe.
• Why I played: A friend really liked it and said it was probably her favorite game she played all year.
• Jank: Not really enough to be janky, pretty much everything it does it seems to be with intent. 
• Difficulty: A little tricky, but nothing too crazy.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It was nice, but I'm just disappointed there wasn't much more to it.
• Recommend to others: Not really, not that it's bad. There just isn't much to offer unless you really like games with cooking mechanics.

I thought Arctic Eggs was going to be a lot more than it was. I thought there was going to be this depth that you peel back as you go through. I thought it was going to be a surreal experience that would leave me thinking. But nah, you just cook some eggs and other miscellaneous things with some obstacles or challenges in your way while you do so. It's set in a weird setting to flavor it, but in the end, you're just cooking some fried egg, both sides, as usual.

Crescent Tower

• Genre: RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: There isn't much to spoil, but I do talk about the mechanics of the final boss.
• Time Played: 24 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Too long, considering about half of it is grinding, especially at the end.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It's fine.
• Why I played: It had cute art and I know a friend enjoyed it. They always get me with that classic anime pixel art though.
• Jank: The menus are pretty clumsy. When trying to optimize my class changes I kept having to go back and forth and back and forth. There are tons of times where I opened the wrong menu because it didn't have the correct information. Made worse by all the real estate on screen where they could have had some of the stats. I think maybe they felt it would be silly to have the same information on multiple screens, but having to exit all the way back to another to compare your stats or abilities is not the way to clean things up.
• Difficulty: I'm not sure how much of it is difficulty that required me personally to grind, rather than difficulty of the actual strategy required of the game. I do think there are some interesting things touched on some rpgs ignore, but ultimate the difficulty lies in it being a grindfest.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Overall I enjoyed it, so I'm pleased enough. It just managed to push my patience a few times.
• Recommend to others: Not really. There are overall better little dungeon crawlers than this one, and even though it has a lot of cool stuff, the last section really prevents me from recommending it. Or if you wanna play it, I'd probably recommend doing so on the easier mode.
  

Crescent Tower isn't bringing anything new to the table necessarily, but it's a nostalgic jaunt that brings some interaction, puzzles, character art and class changes. It really drew me in at first, but then I needed a bit of a break when it just started feeling way too grindy in the middle of the game. Sometimes you get a random encounter 1 step after another. It's a little too much. I'd say on average it's like 5-10 steps, which is just too much for a game focuses a little more on an open exploration and figuring out the trick of the area as opposed to something with a linear path. It's not too complicated, but with all the other navigational quirks, it's possible you may just forget what you're doing exactly and get caught in a endless loop of random encounters because they're so frequent.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if not for the way it soft-locks the level cap. It just gets to a point where the next level requires exponentially more experience than the last. This is exacerbated to the nth degree by the final area. I would say my last third of my play time is just spent in the last hallway before the final boss. The final boss has very high defense, immune to all status effects, resistant to all magic, and fully heals every round, so you can definitely be "too weak" to finish it, even with every buff on your own characters in the game. It's arguably not even about strategy at that point. Unless I missed some gimmick that was there and was just unnecessarily brute forcing the game. It's crazy that you can get to the point where it takes you dozens of battles to level up but still not be strong enough to beat the final boss. It can literally, based on the average experience the final enemies dish out, without using "special techniques" take 100+ battles to level up - not even close to a max level, just a level where you are still learning new spell levels.

It's just crazy how much the leveling up comes to a halt at that point despite the fact there are more levels that grant special skills. It's not a level 60-99 grind of your standard rpg where you learn your last skill at 60 or your skills are tied to something else so there is always new stuff to learn. This is like 14-15, 15-16. My highest level character was 16 and some classes learn abilities up til level 21 or so. I think this is where the "modern" mode differs from the classic and maybe it doesn't feel so restricting, and maybe I should have played in that. I started in it, but then I saw there was a little "modern" badge on my screen at all times. This signaled to me this is meant to be "little baby mode" and you are to be chastised for it because we'll put a reminder on screen at all times for it. So I restarted before I really even began to play in the classic mode, maybe that was a mistake, maybe those levels and skills would have been attainable in modern, but the game clearly didn't consider that the "intended experience".

So instead I grinded, class changed to get more abilities and increase stats, rinse, repeat, and eventually knocked it out. To be fair, it's kind of what I was in the mood for - I just thought I was gonna wrap up earlier in the day and move on to something else after, not keep playing for an additional 6-7 hours after I thought I was about done.

Solar Ash

• Genre: Action Adventure
• Spoiler Free Review: Yeah. 
• Time Played: 6-7 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's not that long but it maybe feels a little drawn out at times - as much as it can be hard to control the speed of the game in some tighter more precise sections, some of the more open areas could benefit from being able to traverse more quickly.
• Did I cry: No
• Soundtrack: Pretty good soundtrack, atmospheric and dynamic and fits the setting.
• Why I played: I've had it for awhile. I liked Hyper Light Drifter a lot - I backed it on kickstarter... now 13 years ago, though released 10 years ago, yet I only finished that 4 years ago. It's hard to believe that Solar Ash was already released 5 years ago, time just goes too quick. Before I looked it up, my guess was 2 years ago. I thought I got to it much quicker. Though in only half the time. Maybe I'll try out Heart Machine's next game only two and a half years after release, oh wait I already played it. I only just started Possessor, but as I was playing it, hot off the heels of Sword of the Sea, I thought of Solar Ash. A game by the same people, with gameplay leaning more into the feel of Sword of the Sea. I guess in a sense Sword of the Sea was "Too short" for me, as I still wanted something with a similar vibe. Thankfully, I had some options.
• Jank: The jankiest part of the game probably is also the best part of the game, the controls. When it works well it's fluid and fast, fun, and snappy. But sometimes it just doesn't work how you'd think. Rei - the character you play as, fails to snap to rails, has weird collision with walls, or maybe doesn't grab a ledge you'd think she would. Sometimes you can also get stuck in a bunch of items where you awkwardly fall hover until you can control the character again. You could probably just teleport to another location or something in the worst case scenario, but I never had to. Just had to endure a moment of impatience.
• Difficulty: For the most part the game is pretty easy - except when it's not. The final phase of some of the bosses can be pretty arduous.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I enjoyed it. It's not mind-blowing. It's hard to live up to the expectation set from the creators of Hyper Light Drifter, and Giant Squid is better at that floaty exploration that I liken this game to Sword of the Sea for.
• Recommend to others: I may if it's your type of game, but I wouldn't go out of my way to. While it has more action and actual challenges than a typical Thatgamecompany or Giant Squid game, it does feel like that kind of game play. It's like Journey+Mario Galaxy+Jet Grind Radio+Shadow of the Colossus blended together, but not necessarily the sum of it's parts or surpassing them in any way. It's just an easy comparison to make.

Having just played Sword of the Sea, it's hard for me to not compare it to that. It's a very floating exploration game with kind of a sports-like movement. Sword of the Sea was like surfing/skateboarding across the desert and other various environments. Solar Ash has you skating across clouds in space and other various environments. Solar Ash does have things actually attacking you pretty regularly and combat, though it's pretty simple. As soon as you are near an enemy and attack they are defeated. Some take a few hits - but it's more about avoiding their attacks and closing the distance than it is skillfully aiming your hits toward them.

Fighting the bosses of this game is pretty unique though, and a friend compared it to a Sonic boss battle - having never played a Sonic game. To be fair, she was kind of correct. There are some Sonic boss battles that are similar, but it's not as common as it ought to be. The boss battles, or more like challenges, are kind of like Shadow of the Colossus, where you climb up a giant beast and hit is glaring weak points. Except in this game where momentum is key, it's very different from the stop and attack, practically the opposite. If you stop for just a moment, you've taken too long and will be knocked off. You also have to deftly aim your jumps and landing, for if you land within a crevice of their armor you will be knocked off as well, having to start the little challenge from the beginning, and you have to do this three times, each one more difficult than the last. For me, for each boss, only the final challenge posed any problem, but it was a drastic increase in difficulty in most cases.

The world is unique and obtuse. It's interesting though, and definitely alien - as it should be, unfortunately with it being a bit of a shorter game, as soon as I began to grasp and understand everything, it was over. It may have served better to have a bit more exposition about the situation from the beginning, but it's not an uncommon issues with sci-fi/fantasy that is making an attempt to be wholly unique. When you disconnect it from what is familiar too much, and especially when you have a bunch of unique terms for what things are, you risk alienating any kind of familiarity the audience has to comprehend what is happening. It's not the worst offender, and the story is more or less secondary to the experience as a whole, so it's more or less forgivable. 

Mouthwashing

• Genre: Horror Adventure
• Spoiler Free Review: Yeah. 
• Time Played: 3 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It might actually be too short. I feel like not enough of the story is presented. As part of how they present the narrative, there are significant jumps in time, but... why? It doesn't feel necessary and the characters aren't fleshed out enough.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: No? If there was music in this game I don't remember.
• Why I played: I was once again not really feeling motivated to play anything but thought I could find the motivation to take interest in something my wife loves, as I did with Resident Evil and Silent Hill. 
• Jank: At first I thought it was part of the game, but it definitely did some weird stuff during scene transitions where it made an annoying repetitive sounds for a solid moment before the actual transition that I don't think is the usual experience. Otherwise, it's just a little obtuse at time but you could excuse the theming and genre.
• Difficulty: None - very little? There are only a few brief scenes that require you to perform any kind of skill challenge, and the general area to traverse isn't all that big - if a little confusing visually, so it usually only takes a moment to get wherever you need.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It's fine. I'm more or less neutral. I didn't go in with any kind of expectations, just thought I'd play a game Alice likes.
• Recommend to others: I wouldn't really, personally, but despite playing a few games in the genre this year and liking at least one more than I thought I would, horror games aren't a genre I typically enjoy.

Mouthwashing feels like a project lost in time, and it's not just due to it's PSX graphics. Or perhaps it's all part of the intent and so the PSX-esque visuals were more than just a visual style choice.

To be clear it doesn't feel like an original PlayStation game - it feels like a game that would have been someones weird little free download on PC before "indie games" were a super recognized thing. I mean it is more equivalent to something you see on itch now, sure, but there is a specific vibe I'm talking about that predates current game distribution.

It's the kind of thing that as a teenager I may have thought was the deepest thing ever. Looking at some of my favorite movies and even other types of media from the era of "It's so deep". I'm not saying that in a bad way. It's just that you have a hard time not falling into that kind of narrative when you're playing from the perspective of someone else's psychosis, but those are exactly the things that an edgy teen is drawn to and I would say it differs little in that sense from what I would consider some of my most formative anime and film interests. Such presentation of the genre wasn't exactly as prevalent in the games industry - at least not in any mainstream capacity, at the time, because there was a much bigger buy in to games, and even though there were definitely weirdo and experimental games - they were usually more robust of product.

All things considered, while I don't think it's bad, I don't understand why it's gained such popularity and isn't a bit more niche. I think the unique visual identity is doing a lot of work, and I will give credit to some of the interesting imagery and effort in making you have a such a good idea of the dystopia the characters exist within in just a couple hours, without even leaving the ship, but that said you're barely provided with much of a look into those characters who are present. What you see feels like mostly caricaturizations, and arguably some of the most important characters have the least dialog and leave the most up for interpretation. So it felt lacking.

Sword of the Sea

• Genre: Adventure
• Spoiler Free Review: Not much to spoil the way the story is presented.
• Time Played: 4:17
• Too Short/Long: Good for the type of game it is.
• Did I cry: A little bit.
• Soundtrack: Amazing. It's key to building the atmosphere of the game. 
• Why I played: I've liked all of the teams previous works, though I need to go back to Pathless because it's the only one I haven't finished.
• Jank: It's pretty much jank free besides some weird "can I land on this" and "no" via invisible walls.
• Difficulty: Practically none.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased, as I have been with all their games.
• Recommend to others: I would if it's the kind of thing you're into. All of their(Giant Squid, and Thatgamecompany) games are a bit abstract and enigmatic. They're defining examples of games as art, and definitely more art than game.
  

There isn't much to explain if you're familiar with Flower, Journey, and Abzu. It's very much in line with those. Even visually, it's pretty much like they smashed Journey and Abzu together. We like desert AND the sea, so what if the Sea was in/on the desert?

You pretty much just ride around on your hover sword and interact with the environment until you can go to the next area. There are hidden collectibles, there are upgrades, and there are even little trial trick areas. It's fun to explore and take it all in, but there isn't too much more than that. Not that it needs to be. I do think with the sword being such a focus, the game could have maybe had some more combat of some kind of variety, but obviously those aren't the types of games these people are generally trying to make. 

I didn't play Pathless which did have some combat if I recall, but maybe that's just it. I didn't play it. How many other people also skipped on it - their one game with combat? So back to what they were best known for - something you more... experience, rather than "play" in the typical sense. I mean it's still very much a game as far as how it controls, it's far from what I would call a "walking simulator" but stakes are barely existent and difficult is rather low. Finding some secret may require some sufficient skill or ingenuity though. 

I don't know if it beats out my experience with Journey, but unfortunately Journey is more of a "your mileage may vary" experience with the infrastructure. I did really enjoy Sword of the Sea though, probably a better instance of capturing the same magic completely solo though.

Pragmata

• Genre: Action/Third Person Shooter
• Spoiler Free Review: Pretty much.
• Time Played: 18 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A lot of people complain that it's too short to be a "full priced game", but I'd take a dozen Pragamatas over one game stuffed to the brim with filler and meaningless secondary objectives. I thought the runtime was pretty much perfect for the intensity of the gameplay. There were times I needed a break after only a an hour or two of playing because of how on-point the game requires you to be.
• Did I cry: A whole lot. Maybe not the most I've ever cried playing a video game, but if not, damn close.
• Soundtrack: The atmosphere of the game wouldn't quite hit without the soundtrack. It's very good, and it knows when to take to the sidelines. It can be somber, it can be intense. Not much to jam out to on it's own, but great for setting the scene none the less.
• Why I played: No real reason, other than a Capcom game outside their main three franchises as it's been for sometime. Seemed fun, seemed like it my evoke something familiar and be something new.
• Jank: It's a rather polished game so it's pretty jank free. There were a few moments I remember when playing thinking "I should mention this" but they must have been so minor I forgot about them.
• Difficulty: Just about right, I'd say. I played on normal and there are more difficult... difficulties, but for where I like to play it felt like it more or less matched my skill level each time, and the action was intense and took all I had, without actually failing - except in the training challenges. Which can be pretty difficult later on.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased. I think this is an excellent game, maybe the best game I've played thus far this year.
• Recommend to others: I would definitely recommend Pragmata. It's a great game with a touching narrative and unique spin on the typical third person-shooter. It makes you fully engage with it's systems, which makes it a unique experience.
  

Just to get it out of the way, I think "game timer" vs playtime gets in the way of this one again. Another game I seldom let hang, and yet my PlayStation playtime is hours after the "game timer". It might be another that doesn't count something like cutscenes, or reading notes, or time in menus. I'm not going to test each to find out, but my console timer was hours after my save data timer and I think that skews peoples perception. Or maybe people just don't engage with all a game has to offer? Reading? That's for nerds. Collecting objects? Losers. Training Sim challenges that offer significant rewards? Sweaty.

Before I even got my hands on the game I saw people chastising it for being too short. It's about the same length, if not a bit longer than Resdient Evil requiem, Capcom's other big recent release, and if you ask me, personally, a better game overall. I played that 18 hours and that was a very slow... going back and forth constantly because I'm paranoid/scared 18 hours. I imagine a good bit of that time would have been reduced if I wasn't trying to play it as safe as possible and was better at horror games.

I remember a time when people would disapprove of games being "too long". Do people forget these days? 40+ hour rpgs were mocked for being something only nerds and weebs enjoyed. The average game used to be well under 20 hours, if not under 10, and honestly without much reason to keep playing. The shift toward such an expectation of pointlessly extended runtimes is something that just irks me to the core. Especially when presented with a game like this that wastes no time at all and is just a great solid experience the whole way through. Nobody should be docking this any points for not offer value.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

• Genre: Life-Sim
• Spoiler Free Review: Sorta? I don't know what is considered spoilers in a game like this, but there are some major event screenshots included.
• Partners: Alice most of all - since she provided me with items and a dozen of the Miis I used. I also had some other friends make Miis of their tabletop characters for me to use, and of course some Miis of my friends I have previously acquired from them.
• Time Played: 90 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's solid and it's definitely one of those games you can play pretty much as much as what you want. I think I actually rolled credits closer to about 60 hours. I may still play a bit here and there.
• Did I cry: Nah.
• Soundtrack: It has some cute sounds but nothing I'm gonna jam out to outside the game. Like Pokemon
• Why I played: Alice was really excited for it, and we had a little adventure trying to get it. It was actually pretty ridiculous, and we had to go to like 4 different place - one multiple times. I ended up playing the demo and thinking it was pretty cute and picked up another copy so we could "play together" and share some of the stuff we made.
• Jank: It's mostly pretty jank free. I'd say the most jank lies in the fact that certain controls change menu to menu, resulting in my often "miss-clicking" so to speak. Press the wrong button and doing the wrong thing.
• Difficulty: There is zero difficulty to this game. It's something you play, but isn't designed to create any kind of challenge.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pretty pleased. I wasn't originally interested in it at all, and ended up playing quite a bit, and will likely play some more. I ended up playing Pokopia over 125 hours before hanging it up for now, so I might play this a bit more, though I'm not sure Tomodachi Life will keep my interest quite as long - I'm pretty much just seeing the same things over and over at this point, and any remaining interest would be just creating new Miis - which I do have a lot of fun with to be fair, or doing some serious customization to my island.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would recommend this if it's your type of game, or you find it easy to be amused by your own jokes so to speak. A lot of the game is giving them prompts to use in interactions, so it's like you're co-creating the joke because you're making them say the thing you told them to. There are a lot of fun and lolrandom interactions, and if that sounds like something you'd enjoy you should definitely go for it.
  

Unfortunately I've summarized most of the main points of the game above in some way or another. Tomodachi Life mostly has you making miis, customizing your island, and making them interact. It's basically a digital dollhouse for those who have lost the wonder of banging a couple figures together while having a two-way conversation with themselves.