New game from the creator of Dadish about a cactus. 🌵

What do you get when you combine the following:

1. A game that was review bombed
2. Said game being not optimized/is unsupported for Steam deck
3. Someone who has never played anything like Call of Duty, except for maybe that one section in L.A. Noir



The What: Demons have invaded the Earth in hordes and a gun wielding witch fights back. A simple plot, even though a couple of things didn't make sense or were not explained but we're just going to go with it.

Firstly, I do like the concept. I like the idea of using guns and magic in combat. The main character and weapon have a cool design, and while the look of the weapon doesn't vary much when you rotate among the different forms, it has a nifty spin animation when you switch. That's about where my pros end... there are some long expanses of area to travel and while you don't run particularly slow, it can feel like slow going as it can be quite a distance from point A to point B. From what I've read, it was so much that a developer debug ability was added in that allows you to fast dash over long distances, which made it into the Steam port I played. Despite being unsupported for Steam deck, it's actually quite playable. The only trouble I ran into was most cinematics not loading and were automatically skipped as a result, and just once in mission 5 everything went black and only the reticule was visible. I still heard things happening in the game but I couldn't see anything; it wasn't anything a reboot of the game didn't fix. As I was able to watch the cinematics I missed on YouTube, that wasn't a huge problem either.

Some of the gameplay mechanics could have used some work. If a sniper got you in his laser sight and shot you, it was instakill no matter how much health you had, the same as if one of the brain-looking-floating "Walnut Heads" threw something from the environment at you. The support AI was... odd. If my soldier backup guys weren't getting right in my line of fire when I was emptying a clip of bullets, other times they penned themselves in a 6-inch-ish depression in the floor that they could not escape as they have no jump functions and lacked the ability to step out of it. To be fair, they were probably safer in there.



One of the AI in particular, that blond Captain guy on the left, was not given any consideration for continuity. In mission 3, he kindly decided to provide some backup only to get transformed into a monster. It was disturbing to see him literally spazzing out all over the place as he tried to attack me, so unfortunately I had to put him out of commission. I look down at him to see if there was anything I could do, but you can only use the healing spell if the subject is not dead, and as he was 100% D-E-D dead, there indeed wasn't anything else I could do other then move on. I needn't have worried, as in the cinematic immediately after that mission he turned out to be alive and well, and apparently none the wiser. All that was missing was for the game to break the fourth wall by saying, "WELL ANYWAY..." Mr. Captain also followed me along in mission 5 with some other soldiers, but I lost track of him a some point. I looked around and wondered where everyone went before thinking that they probably went missing some time around when I called down that huge tornado that wiped out the opposing forces. Not to worry, Captain probably started with nine lives as he again showed up in a later cinematic.


Screenshot taken from a YouTube video later, as I was laughing too much at the time and missed my chance.

If you're read my previous blog entries, you might be wondering where I'm going with this. From what I've covered, the issues are largely out of the player's control. With a game with questionable mechanics and sometimes bugs, how did it get a spot here?

The Moment: It's the final boss, and it has some strong shields that I can't get through. My soldier friends are there to help me, but I have to stand around and wait for them to shoot it enough for the shields to break. They eventually regenerate, so I have to wait for them to break every time they go back up for me to do any damage. They eventually just stay gone, which invites more of an ongoing problem of where to shoot it, and am I even doing any damage when I'm shooting it. I'm shooting at it for so long that I actually Google it to see if I ran into a bug but it turns out that if you didn't get the gatling gun, it really does take that long to take him down. So it's a lot of him walking back and forth, feeding him bullets, trying not to hit my friends and healing them when needed, dodging snakes and green ectoplasm and hiding from fireballs. I hadn't died yet and finally all three snakes were cut off and boss guy is limping away from me. The disembodied voice in my head tells me to finish him so I get close and cut loose with the recently unlocked most powerful spell that the game has to offer, Meteor. It rains down on him and... he's still limping away. Ok fine, my magic has been used up but maybe a few more shots will do it? As he turns around, I run over to him, take out my gun, and drop dead.

As I stared at the Continue screen in disbelief, I theorized on what had happened. As with the previously mentioned Walnut Head enemies, one hit from thrown debris kills you instantly. Considering the debris that was around, it is my belief that I was ended at the end of the boss fight by a random flying rock.

Post-mortem: If you're playing on easy mode, a disembodied voice in your head says to finish him, and you feel like you're going to finish a Mortal Kombat fight with a Final Fantasy Meteor spell, you expect to finish him. You do not expect to experience death by random flying rock.

I’m tempted to play this again but I’m really trying to focus on unfinished games. Between this and Robs a Bank, I prefer this one for gameplay genre reasons. 100%-ing this doesn’t make you go too much out of your way and I’d say it’s worth it to make the effort. A fun time and accessible for anyone to pick up.

Favorite document: Jerry’s Check

Wavetale is still on sale for $3 on GOG until 2/5. I played this recently; had a lot fun and a great deal for that price.

There was a lot of chopping this month.

Stray - PlayStation 5 - January 29th, 2025
Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery - PC January 23rd, 2025
Eastern Exorcist - PC - January 21st, 2025
Concrete Genie - PlayStation 4 - January 13th, 2025
Shovel Knight Dig - Nintendo Switch - January 11th, 2025
Wavetale - PC - January 5th, 2025
Overcooked 2: Campfire Cook Off - PlayStation 4 - January 5th, 2025
Overcooked 2: Sun's Out Buns Out - PlayStation 4 - January 3rd, 2025
Overcooked 2: Winter Wonderland - PlayStation 4 - January 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Chinese New Year - PlayStation 4 - January 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Carnival of Chaos - PlayStation 4 - January 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Surf ‘n’ Turf - PlayStation 4 - Jan 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Moon Harvest Festival - PlayStation 4 - Jan 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Chinese New Year - PlayStation 4 - Jan 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Winter Wonderland - PlayStation 4 - Jan 1st, 2025
Overcooked 2: Spring Festival - PlayStation 4 - Jan 1st, 2025

1.21 GIGOWATTS!!!!

So, anyway... FFVI is wild

You mean she wasn’t talking about nursery rhymes? Great Scott! 😲

Stray

I see what they did there...

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered

This was an accident.

Ratchet & Clank (2016) - PlayStation 4 - December 23rd, 2024
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank - Nintendo Switch - December 17th, 2024
A Shelter Full of Cats - PC - December 11th, 2024
Whispering Willows - PC - December 5th, 2024

Top to bottom matches up with favorite to least favorite.

Aww, poor Toby. I would have liked for there to be a way to save him but it doesn’t look like there was. I cheated and looked up a bit about Katrina; seems now she feels about Cinder is determined by your actions in the game. Guess you did something right!

This topic was never about Persona 5, I don't know why it's in the "Game Specific" section instead of the "Gaming" section.

Accidental selection, it was intended to reference the topic to Nier Automata (very first post was edited). Likely due to all the endings it has and what you need to do to get them. Particularly the true one…

Ok it's 12/25 and now safe to post this. Sis loved it. 😊

Merry Christmas all!

I’m a constant saver if it means I won’t have to redo stuff. Even if it’s a tiny thing it gets annoying when I have to reload, so I’d say reloading to avoid doing a section twice makes plenty sense to me. It’s not lazy, just efficient!

That's because 20 or so of your completions were added before 2024. Cataloged looks at games that you added in 2024.

Ah thanks, this makes more sense now.

These are so cute

Thanks, I had tried to get plushies of these two earlier this year but it didn’t work out. Had to make my own instead. 😤

Are the catalogued year in review stats a little off? My total completions seem lower than if you change the filter to “completions” and then check the chart. The most played on catalogued seems off as well, with the section on the completions filter looking more accurate. Or I could be interpreting it wrong, not sure!

Made Dadish & Turnip Boy. Finished Turnip Boy Robs a Bank very recently, not bad for my first roguelite! I have 1 more Big Project that I also finished but I can't post that here until Christmas for reasons. Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by accident.

PlayStation



Nintendo




Steam




I see a Devcats game, I play it.

HLTB
https://howlongtobeat.com/year-in-review/Illusera
Filtering by completions seems to be a little more accurate.

I suppose it’s Xenosaga III. I almost got the lenticular version near release day but ended up waiting and got the standard. No hard feelings about it as I was only interested in the game.

Nope, can’t get over it. That gypsy really does look like Gaston.

I feel like the whole gypsies + werewolves thing happens often in some stories. I was kind of expecting it when you went to the camp, but I’m glad they didn’t eat you! 👍

50 books this year with 14 being manga/graphic novels.

Favorite read - Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Biggest surprise - Geekerella by Ashley Poston
Biggest disappointment - Lucero by Maya Motayne

True endings don't bother me unless it has an unreasonable amount of BS. Some collectables, maybe another dungeon, ok. Do part B for subsection E-2 that has a prerequisite of elements III, IV, and VIII and my morale suddenly plummets. I'm aware of the true ending requirements of the Nier games.

Required hidden areas/items that I would have never found w/o a guide (Metroid)
Lag, any kind
Unskippable cutscenes, with those before boss fights most offensive
Animation delays
Attacks that can't be canceled
In-game driving sequences (looking at you LA Noir)
Unpausable games/sequences
Limited saves
Death punishment by lots of sequences to redo
Overpowered bosses that can wipe you out in 2 turns or less despite being armed to the teeth (Fantasian, why)
Not being able to manually save in an autosave only game
Missable items/achievements/etc.
Extremely tight time limits
Races in non-racing games (Croc 2 and don't get me started on Kao 3)
Lack of local co-op, which has become frustratingly common

OKAMI 2



WE MUST REJOICE

I’m not sure what to be more surprised with:

- Someone named Punny who isn’t funny or punny in a Sierra
- Candy and flowers worked
- We still haven’t seen one vampire despite seeing more garlic content than in garlic sauce