finished a few games lately, i've been meaning to write something in this thread each time but never did lol. just gonna write about them all at once.
(I made a backloggd account (it's like letterboxd for video games, nerd shit i know) cause I often spend inordinate amount of brainpower into thinking bout video games and stuff, but I never write anything of those thoughts down. Made an account there to make a better habit out of doing it, mostly for myself, but also for anyone who maybe is passively interested. Slowly gonna try and catalog as many games as possible, including the stuff I played years and years ago. Also gonna try and hold myself to doing a written review for everything I review, and maybe try and do this for stuff other than video games too but we'll see. Critical thinking is good for the brain, probably. The following is just a little candid thing though, no analysis bullshit or whatever :) )
Professor Layton Unwound Future (and also the previous two games)
About a year ago I started playing through the Prof Layton games for the first time alongside a few other DS games that I never got to play when I was younger. I've been really loving them, and I just finished the 3rd one! Which concludes my play through the original trilogy of games.
They are very charming games, in a way I think few are. The art style is really great. I also think they're very exemplary of what I like about DS games too. They're rarely too big in scope, and they're usually pretty easy to pick up and pick down. You rarely have to commit to playing for long periods of time. And this rings true for Layton, but I think what makes the Layton games so special is how "realized" they feel despite this. One big example is the cutscenes. Animated cutscenes with that level of quality is rare in games, much less in a handheld game like this (even if they're compressed as shit lol). But also smaller stuff too. Later games feature a bunch of voice acting, and start to introduce more and more polish. One of my favorite little things from Unwound Future is the sound that plays when you ride a train lol. It's just really cool, and it's especially cool to treat a handheld point-and-click game with this much attention to detail. Puzzles are fun too. (Shout out to Curious Village puzzle #009, what the hell were they thinking).
I recommend these games, they've quickly become some of my favorites :)
Boku No Natsuyasumi 2
I mentioned this game offhandedly in
a post in my art thread back in June. I drew some art inspired by the game.
Very special game. Took me a few months to play this one. I'd always end up playing it towards the end of my day, and it's so calming that I'd end up getting sleepy lol. The first thing that drew me to this game were the visuals. The game features static hand-drawn foreground and backgrounds, but your character and other characters are 3D. Sorta like Resident Evil, basically. It's a very, very pretty game. Below are a very screenshots from my playthrough. Tried to keep the amount of spoilers here at a minimum :)
It's a cool game besides it's visual style too. You catch bugs and talk to people and stuff. The whole game takes place over 30 days while you're on summer vacation. I won't say too much besides that though. It's not hiding any big secret, it's just the kinda game you should make your own experience out of. If you don't wanna play the game though, I do recommend the
action button video on the first game in the franchise. It's a long video, but I watched it bit by bit over the course of a few months while I took breaks from my own playthrough. Good video :) Good game :)
Outer Wilds
After everyone I've ever known has told me to, I finally played it! Finished it just last night, actually. It's good for all the reasons you've probably heard. I tried playing it years ago when I was 15/16 years old? But I just kept flying into the sun, trying to "see how close I could get without dying", probably knowing full well that the sun's gravity would just suck me in every time. I did that for a few hours cause I thought it was funny and then never picked it up again lol. But I'm glad I revisited it. I always had a weird love for outer space since I was young. Makes me feel a lot of weird emotions, mostly positive ones. And I think Outer Wilds is the first game to really capture and represent some of those feelings for me. Some other stuff, not just video games, has gotten close, but Outer Wilds felt a lot more vivid. Definitely my new favorite space game. Here is a tiny 257kb gif of me crashing my ship into a planet at 500 meters per second.
thank you for reading :) video games are cool :)
