Oh damn I missed that in the OP text! -_- Shame on me for skimming. Happy birthday!

It’s no wonder the VII remakes feel like KH since they are being done by Nomura.

You know, Lost Odyssey wasn’t on the radar for me but you may have put it on the map. Will have to look into it.

Planetside 2 at its peak was such a cool and unique experience. Shame it’s withering and dying

Okay, but what game was she playing!? I feel like the reporter is leaving out crucial information here. We need to know!

I’m not a huge fan of the excessive use of exclamation points in the writing, and there is also something about the entire thing that strikes me as off. I don’t think this author actually likes video games. Especially as the cited illustrious examples of video game excellence at the end are more art pieces than games, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (I also like that genre) I think there is more to gaming than simply making slightly interactive movies.

A good example is the discussion of Celeste compared to Getting Over It. The author acknowledges that repeatedly performing the gameplay loop in Celeste feels good and is fun, but then immediately dismisses it out of hand as having “no meaning”. Again I think this author is too firmly stuck in purely narrative and artistic media. The operative verb in gaming is “play”. It is closer to dancing in that sense. Why do people dance? It has no meaning either. But it feels good. We enjoy exercising our hand-eye coordination, we enjoy moving to a rhythm, we enjoy learning and executing patterns. These are all elements of gaming too.

There is space in gaming for art, and I think there is something to the suggestion that a game that is purely narrative and/or artistic does not need a gameplay loop. But I think it’s also important to not lose track of the fact that games can exist in a pure “medium is the message” state akin to sports or dancing or whatever else - playing an instrument. We don’t play a pickup game of basketball with our buddies because it has a higher meaning, and we don’t denigrate it for lacking that meaning either.

Gaming is just something we do with our free time. It can have a “higher meaning”, or it can just be the pure dopamine of clicking heads and watching them explode in Doom. Both types of games are valid. Either way we’ll die eventually and that time will have meant just as little whether we played another hour of Doom or spent it reading Dostoevsky.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is calling.

Have you played STALKER Anomaly? It has the looting and shooting without being an extraction shooter, but still scratches a similar itch.

You will not regret it! I hope the sequel sells millions of copies because this guy needs to be let loose on a AA budget. I was completely shocked when I found out he composed the OST himself (apart from one track and one Bach piece). Some people are just too talented.

Haven’t had this much fun exploring a dangerous and interesting world filled with weird ass NPCs since Dark Souls 1 all those years ago.

My condolences.

CDPR gambled for the masses and won with Witcher 3. I agree with you and would prefer the combat to be more methodical, require more preparation and be more visceral. I wish you’d have to actually manually brew the correct potions and oils in preparation, and then see those have a huge impact on whether you win or lose the fight.

At the same time, the super lightweight combat they went with allowed the game to be so approachable by the causal market that it sold millions and millions of copies and singlehandedly catapulted CDPR into a AAA studio. So it’s hard to argue they made a mistake not catering to players like us.

Some games have started to crop up that straddle the line between Souls and CAG, The Nioh series and First Berserker: Khazan come to mind. I’ve also heard good things about AI Limit, it looks pretty fast and it doesn’t have stamina.

Also not a Soulslike but I assume you’ve played Ninja Gaiden?

I finished Withering Rooms a few days ago, having done both a full first playthrough and a quick run through NG+ to get the ending exclusive to NG+. Since then I’ve been in that odd spot where I’m kind of having trouble moving on to the next game. I just keep thinking about Withering Rooms.

This game was so amazingly good, it is seriously unbelievable it is the work of a solo dev. Especially since he also composed pretty much all the music - and the music is as phenomenal as the game. I don’t think I’ve been this impressed with a solo dev since Lucas Pope and Obra Dinn.

If you vibe in any way with what you see on the Steam page, I heavily encourage you giving it a shot. It is one of the most unique games I’ve ever played, which is funny because it simultaneously wears its inspirations on its sleeves. But the influences never end up leading to derivative end product, instead they are just the foundation for the very distinctive artistic vision of an auteur developer that is doubtlessly doing his own thing.

And it’s not just about the story and world building and art direction and atmosphere, but the gameplay and build variety is also really good. All the gameplay systems are so well designed, the puzzles are intuitive and the game has so many thoughtful little touches you wouldn’t expect from the first game of a solo dev, especially on the QOL front.

The combat itself is a little clunky, but you do get used to it and there are several ways to build both melee and spellcasting, there is a ranged weapon build that leans more into consumables, you can sneak around and place traps, you can be a summoner… Probably more that I didn’t think of yet. And using all these different tools is a lot of fun.

Having played this I am unbelievably excited for the sequel, which enters Early Access this year.

It can be a little moon logic at times and might be frustrating to play without a guide, but yeah it’s great and quite funny.

It’s a very fun series, they play very differently from a lot of other games so look up some video footage first maybe, but I think they’re fun. The missions are somewhat sandboxy and can make you feel pretty clever when you figure out how to set up a nice sequence.

While I think Rise of the Ronin has the better combat, the presentation for the duels in Ghost is much better for sure. I loved the fight amongst the lanterns too, was probably the most memorable part of the game for me as well.

I played some Desperados last year and tbh they hold up pretty well apart from some graphics/UI stuff. I don’t think I ever played Robin Hood beyond the demo back in the day, but I played enough Commandos/Desperados to know it’s quality.

One final subject i wanted too touch on is that this game makes me wish for a Robin Hood game.

I don’t know if it’s your type of game but Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood is a classic.

Rise of the Ronin is like Ghost but less cinematic and less graphically impressive but with better combat. I guess it depends on what you’re looking for exactly.

I don’t think I play enough retro games to warrant owning one of these, and if I was to buy a handheld it’d probably be a Steam Deck. But they are such nice objects I kinda want one anyway.

Great article as always, I love your content. I especially appreciated the developer interviews about the 8GB RAM limitations.