“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” #002
8 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
It’s the final week of the first month of 2022! How are you doing with games completion? Finish anything awesome in January?
I’ve been putting a surprising amount of time into the murder-mystery visual novel Gnosia. It’s basically a take on the classic game “Werewolf”, which in turn inspired popular titles like Among Us. Yeah yeah, I know, but trust me about this one – as the kids say these days, it’s a banger. Without spoiling anything, the way Gnosia’s overarching plot comes together as you play more and more rounds of the deduction game that makes up its framework is nothing short of amazing. I very much recommend checking this one out.
Having finished my playthrough of Final Fantasy XII by defeating the superboss Yiazmat (a ridiculous feat that took about an hour on 4x speed) I’ve moved onto Final Fantasy XIII! I’ve not touched this one since it initially came out over a decade ago. I’m a little shocked at how much I’ve been enjoying it so far as a story-heavy contrast to the gameplay-heavy XII. Not sure if I could recommend it as easily to everyone, but it might not be the disaster it’s generally held to be.
I was also able to try the demo for the upcoming strategy-RPG Monark. It’s made by many of the same people involved with The Caligula Effect and Lost Dimension, both of which are games I’m pretty fond of, so I’m not surprised that it’s in the same vein of survival-style strategy gameplay. It’s a bunch of goofy anime nonsense, but I’m as here for that as ever.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot has slowly returned me to my anime-loving roots from my teenage years. Last I checked in, I completed the Cell Saga (while subtly referencing Dragon Ball Z Abridged under my breath) and then moved on to the Majin Buu Saga. While the story is weaker than that of the Cell Saga, the action is still fantastic to watch and experience! As of the night before, I’ve completed DBZ: Kakarot, making it the third game I’ve beaten this year! This game has become a favourite of mine to play and I’m eager to dive into the post game and DLC content! But also, I need to put this game down, it’s starting to ruin my sleep!
Aside from that, I’ve continued my morning playthroughs of Majora’s Mask. My focus this week was preparing for the Great Bay Temple. To that end, I obtained the Gilded Sword and my horse and then undertook the game’s stealth section (a joke thanks to the Stone Mask!). I’ve started to gain an appreciation of how Nintendo tackled the three-day cycle approach for Majora’s Mask. Though a lot of patience is required to pick up everything this game has to offer, nothing in this game can be missed. If you mess up during a timed sidequest, you can just play the Song of Time and redo it. I can see the annoyance factor in repeating the same things over and over again and losing your items every three days, but planning ahead for the next cycle helps to mitigate these minor irritations.
It’s the final week of January, and I still haven’t beaten a single game! I look at Red’s 5+ completed games with envy and shame. It’s mostly due to my exclusively playing RPGs, but once these are out of the way, I’m wanting to dive into some shorter indie games.
I’ve been voraciously playing Dragon Quest XI S. It’s my second playthrough—I played the base game at launch—and the many mechanical improvements and story additions really bring out the best in an already fantastic game. The characters are all so well-written and likeable, even more so in DQ11S. I’m nearing the end, with about 70 hours of playtime, so this is a massive, globetrotting adventure. If you haven’t picked it up, do it immediately! It is such a pure, joyful JRPG experience.
I’ve got 7 Gym Badges in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, and I’m having so much fun. Criticisms aside of its sameness to the original games and the lack of Platinum content, it’s been a blast revisiting the region of Sinnoh. I love the Pokés, I love the art style (which I hated at first), the remade music is seriously amazing, and there are small improvements that give the game a unique identity to the originals, like having my Pokémon follow behind me. Now I’m even more hyped for Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
This past week I’ve continued to play Terraria Master Mode. As of last night, we beat the wall of flesh and entered hard mode, so from this point on this playthrough will be blind. Looked around a bit in the world and there are many new enemies. Terraria is a pretty fun multiplayer experience. There are currently three of us playing consistently so it’s better than nothing and it’s good times.
I’ve started a save in Dark Souls III this week. I’ve played through some of it already, so right now nothing is blind, and I’m probably getting through a little easier. I’m still struggling enough to remember why I dropped the game because it’s difficult and you need to fight/run through the same enemies every time you die. Losing all of my souls quite a bit too. I’ll try to stay committed but I’m still stuck to only having finished one game this year in January.
This past week I’ve been playing a lot more Nioh 2, which I may talk about a lot more in the future. But another game I played and finished (it’s very short) this past week is Abzû. A very soothing and laid back game where you explore beautiful ocean floors filled with vibrant sea life. This game is very reminiscent of Journey, and with good reason: the creator is also the art director of Journey, Matt Nava. I fully recommend it if you have a spare few hours.
Besides those two I’ve also put a lot of time into The Last of Us and… FORTNITE??? Listen… I never thought I’d be playing this game as the premise of battle royale never really interested me. I was invited to play one day by a group of friends and I joined because I mostly wanted to hang out with them. But, truth be told, we all had a really good time! I’m sure this has more to do with this particular group of friends than the game itself, I would never play by myself. I never thought I’d be sitting here confessing that I have fun playing Fortnite but here we are.
My test of courage and determination continues. I was eventually successful in Hollow Knight’s Path of Pain, and I have moved on to the Pantheons. The first one has now been completed with no binding as well as with the nail binding (which took forever and was very hard for me). In between attempts at that, I played through GoldenEye 007 last weekend in preparation for the MAGE CAST episode for it. Currently, still in between Pantheon tries, I am nearing the end of Kirby’s Dream Land 2, which is a bit more difficult than the first game (if you want the real ending, especially). I’m thinking of starting an RPG next.
After finishing up the awkward, cryptic but still enjoyable (especially if using a guide) Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, I had a spot to fill on my stream schedule. It’s always a tingling, exciting moment to pick a new game, although choice paralysis is REAL. I knew the last thing I needed in my life was yet another RPG! My pick ultimately went to Guacamelee, specifically the double-pack bundled with both Guac games. I played a mere smidgen of it and it was hilarious. I loved how easy it was to string together combos, aerial and standing, with grappling moves. Really looking forward to exploring the Mexican Metroidvania over the next several weeks. The game came highly recommended by ABXY.
On my own time, I’m still playing Starlink and I started up a new campaign as Dark Elves in Total War: Warhammer II, who definitely do not possess the same playstyle (or ethics) as Lizardmen. I’m planning to finish off the campaign and then kick off either a playthrough on a harder difficulty with High Elves or with Clan Skryre with Skaven.
Finally, I’ve been chewing through my SNES collection, beating The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, an excellent licensed platformer by Disney where the rat king can transform using various costumes, and starting up Prince of Persia, a real blast from my past. You ever totally forget the contents of a game after decades and then revisit it only to realize you truly forgot nothing? Yeah. Like that.
Oh and Pokémon Legends: Arceus is out now. Twitter whined about it not looking like a PS5 game which means I’ll probably wind up enjoying it, so I plan to pick it up sooner rather than later.
–Red
Well, I ran headfirst through all the House Flipper content I have (though I am seriously eyeing the DLCs), so Pokémon Brilliant Diamond is my main game at the moment. I’ve got a decent team put together: Torterra, Rapidash, Skuntank, Luxray, Altaria, and a Bibarel named Topper because I’m taking her all the way to the top with me. Screw the Bidoof haters, she’s my baby. Now to steamroll over Team Galactic and bring some peace to the galaxy.
Aside from Pokémon this week, I’ve played Button City, which was super cute but a lot smaller than I was hoping for. I also finished a point-and-click adventure called Darkestville Castle, which is pretty fun, though it does suffer from the common point-and-click flaw of moon logic for some of the puzzles, with few cases of “well, just try clicking every item on every thing until something happens.” I definitely recommend it for point-and-click fans, all the same.
Other than that, I’ve been working on cutting down the number of games I’ve beaten but still had achievements to get, because I’m a hopeless chievo hunter. Upside is that by formally finishing them up, I can clear up disk space on my PC. So far, I’ve cleaned up what I can or want to of Little Nightmares (not including the DLC) and Toy Tinker Simulator. We’ll see how many more I get through before I either beat Pokémon or get the itch to dive into something new again.
Don’t forget to let us know what you’ve been playing this week!
