#xbox one
#xbox one
by Amr (@siegarettes)
For as much charm and style as the Shantae series has had, I’ve rarely found most of its entries to be genuinely exciting. Despite their lavishly detailed landscapes, their level designs often left me unimpressed, and the moment to moment gameplay rarely diverted enough from its established design to keep it from feeling routine. Shantae and the Seven Sirens doesn’t exactly shake that feeling, but it does bring welcome change to the formula that points at a more interesting future for the series.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Bathed in blood and neon, Valfaris presents a vision of the heavy metal apocalypse that’s lush and overgrown. Machines are as likely to have arteries as they are circuits, and the industrial environments are infected with prismatic wildlife. The overdrawn, overstimulated flora and fauna can sometimes obscure your path, but your objective is always clear: slaughter everything in your path.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Bizarre, bewildering and frankly disgusting. That’s how I’d describe pretty much any other game from Mommy’s Best Games. Thankfully, they’re also a lot of fun, Pig Eat Ball included.
The trademark Mommy’s Best Games originality is here, with out there mechanics and art. Previously, their games all shared a similar rough, overgrown art style. There were grimy textures that felt as if they’d been melted and reconstituted into ridiculously detailed tableaus.
Pig Eat Ball goes for a more animated vibe, with a lighter hand on textures, more broad strokes of colors and expressive characters. It’s still made up of an absolutely bewildering combination of imagery, but there’s a more confident, less chaotic approach this time.
Not that the chaos is gone, no, no.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
I’m the last one. I’m really the last one.
I guess that’s what happens when you disappear into a wormhole. There’s no way to tell how long I’ve been gone. I came back to a planet covered in ice. Almost thought that the traces of humanity had been wiped out until I plunged beneath the ice to find where they’d retreated to. Everything is so different now. Eco-terrorism, giant sealife, the quiet rumble of the ocean floor. And the architecture, it’s beautiful. Sprawled out in interlocking capsules that’d be impossible on the surface, where gravity’s pull would snap the supports. Mystery and terror flood this underwater world–it feels like I could find anything lurking here.
Well, maybe that’s a half-truth. You see this is my second trip into The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human. It’s been three years since my last one. I can forget a lot in three years. But looming large in my memories is the wild scale of the Aquatic Adventure, and the atmosphere–carrying both a booming depth threatening to swallow me, and subdued, lonely currents carrying me away.
I’ve overdue for a revisit of this one. This time it’ll be a more relaxed trip, away from the pressure of a deadline. So join me, as I chronicle this journey through these haunted cities and sunken ruins.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Razed hides a lot behind its difficulty. It’s easy to look past its loop of trial and error platforming with its near instant restarts, or forgive missed jumps as a mistake on your own part. But this hides a simple fact: Razed lacks the visual communication and consistency that you need to make a good platformer.
One of my immediate frustrations with Razed was its energy system. Life is tied to your speed, gaining speed increases energy and slowing down depletes it. Get too low and BOOM, you explode. Problem is, ANY action you do takes a huge chunk of it, including jumping. Ya know, that thing that’s the core of every platformer?
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The Momodora Diaries are a chronicle through Momodora Under the Moonlight.
I finished the final boss only to be greeted with this. It turns out that I needed to obtain two items in order to be able to properly purify the final boss and lift the curse on this blighted city.
So I trekked back, realized that an item I had found basically useless after I found it was really the key for unlocking the final item, in a place I’d long forgotten I had to unlock.
I’m so glad I’m playing this game long after the FAQs have been written for it.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The Momodora Diaries are a chronicle through Momodora Under the Moonlight.
Turned off one of the defensive items. Mostly because I wanted one of the additional passive abilities and there’s only two slots for passive, but it’s also helped me get a better feel for the combat rhythm. Not that I didn’t before, but being forced to be more careful does change up the space a bit and makes me more aware of the arrows’ utility.
I’ve also found out that the poison clouds that my arrows now make can also poison me. Rude. Though I do appreciate when effects and environmental dangers have the same rules applied to both the player and the enemy. It doesn’t happen often, but every time I interrupt an enemy attack or knock them into spikes I get a big kick out of it.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The Momodora Diaries are a chronicle through Momodora Under the Moonlight.
I found the new way. A strange underwater prison area. Its real dark, and can only be illuminated but a small item. Seems like a mostly meaningless gimmick but does add to the atmosphere. There’s a weird use of the water to let you use infinite jumps for exploration. It leads to an interesting area with instant death spikes that require careful timing. I’m glad I have the air dash otherwise this would be a lot harder.
