“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” #005
8 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
Here at The Pixels, it’s not heart-shaped candy and chocolates that we gorge on post-Valentines Day. No, it’s the games in our backlog! See what we’ve been up to this week:
Having rescued the fourth Star Spirit, I believe I have crossed the halfway point in Paper Mario. I am still very much enjoying the game even if the last chapter, Shy Guy’s Toy Box, was by far my least favorite. With Watt, I have collected my sixth party member, and I look forward to whatever comes next in my adventure.
With everything going on in my personal life, I haven’t touched Hollow Knight for the most amount of days since I started it. It’s been over a week. With only the majority of the Pantheons left, I feel like I may just call it quits. 108% is good for now. My mind just isn’t in the right place for that kind of gaming at the moment, and every time I am reminded of a game I’m looking forward to coming out this year, I take a long, hard look at my backlog.
My first big anticipated game as a new Game Pass user has been downloaded! Total War: Warhammer III is out and I will blood for the blood god all over that thing whilst wondering about the nature of digital ownership in the subscription service age. I’ve been seriously addicted to the Total War games since grabbing a PC some months ago and the fact that I get a brand new game for beans in that series is kind of mindblowing.
On top of that, I had a lot of downtime this week due to taking a break from streaming and feeling under the weather, so I took the opportunity to complete the story for Pokemon Legends Arceus. As any Pokemon player knows, now the real game begins: the post-game cleanup. Legends Arceus is so enjoyable to play and explore that I’m looking forward to completing the Pokedex and then perfecting the Pokedex. I even want to start stacking up shiny chances and go shiny hunting. My first living shiny dex? I doubt it, but I just wanna be the best like no one ever was.
Oh hey and I even got to guest on Popzara podcast to discuss the game!
~Red
I’ve been doing some post-game achievement hunting in Superliminal, trying to find all the little easter eggs and interactables or just Do Game Good. I managed to get the “Beat in under 1 hour” one without really trying, but the “under 30 minutes” one might take more effort than I’m willing to put in. Still, one out of two is pretty good. The developer commentary one is actually pretty fun, getting to hear the thoughts of the dev team while you run through, find out what were holdovers from certain ideas that didn’t work, what were last-minute plans, what needed convincing and what everyone loved right out the gate. I’d love to see more games with this sort of thing, but I know it would only really work well in certain circumstances.
With Superliminal done, I decided to try another short game that’s kind of a mystery to me: Nubarron: The Adventure of an Unlucky Gnome. You see, I have no idea where this game came from. I don’t remember downloading it free because I usually immediately install them, I definitely didn’t buy it, and I’m pretty sure I never got it from a Humble Bundle. I sort all my Steam games by genre almost as soon as I get them, as well as record them in the various backlog trackers I have. This one was just in my small unsorted list, uninstalled. As far as I know, I’d never heard of it before I found it in my Steam list. So against all common sense of “don’t play mystery games you didn’t buy, nitwit” I played it. It’s all right. A small puzzle platformer, it’s a cute story about a gnome who’s lost his lucky hat and is now haunted by a thundercloud. Sometimes you can control the cloud, sometimes you just have to run. I found the early and mid-game to be enjoyable and charming, but the late game began to lose that charm in favor of difficulty. I’m still not entirely sure how the final boss worked logically. I beat it, but I’m not really sure how.
Lastly, I’ve FINALLY started Return of the Obra Dinn. I’ve avoided streams of it for years because I wanted to play it myself, but I just kept…not. I’m only about two hours in and having a good time, even if I generally have no idea how to figure out who people are. Gonna have to sit down and do some puzzling, but that’s the whole point of the game, isn’t it?
I’ve had plenty of time to invest in the release version of Monark, a Japanese RPG about high school kids going crazy and shutting each other up in lockers until dehydration sets in. It’s a little grim when it wants to be. From a gameplay perspective, though, I’m reminded of Lost Dimension, one of developer FuRyu’s previous games. Imagine something akin to Final Fantasy Tactics where your characters can share stat changes and status effects and you’ve kind of got the idea. It makes for a system where you need to use buffs and debuffs as a force multiplier to get anything done, and it’s got a really solid addictive quality as you attempt to optimize your characters’ actions.
Rise of the Third Power, meanwhile, is the latest from Ara Fell developers Stegosoft Games. It nails that classic RPG feel in a way that so few indie games can – up to and including writing that feels positively Woolseyish. Combine that with its unique Age of Exploration setting and Octopath Traveler-style combat animations and you’ve got a sleeper hit on your hands. I’m not sure I can recommend this one enough.
A week off work with typically terrible British weather outside has left me plenty of time to thrash through the PS5 version of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which has only made me even more excited about what Naughty Dog might have in store for the franchise. It proved without a doubt that the series can move forward without Nathan Drake and that their Uncharted-verse has so many more stories to tell in that inimitable way. Chloe is a fantastic lead character and I would love to see more of her adventures with Nadine and Sam in tow. Here’s hoping that the movie (which I really enjoyed, by the way) does well enough to rekindle interest in the series moving forward.
In other news, I checked out The Forgotten City on PS5: a game that started out life as an Elder Scrolls mod but eventually became a game in its own right. Basically stealing the best parts of classic TV shows Quantum Leap and The Prisoner, the game places you back in time in a lost Roman city where any crimes committed will turn the whole population into gold statues as punishment. It’s an intriguing enough premise, but coupling it with a Shadow of Memories style gameplay mechanic had me hooked to the story right up until the platinum trophy unlocked. If you like your games a little unusual, this is definitely one to keep an eye out for!
Aside from my onward march through Mass Effect 2 (Garrus and Mordin recruited, let’s get the rest of them!) and my adventures in DayZ (my super geared player fell to a sniper, so a new character it is!) I have returned to a game a reviewed positively on this very site.
Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 got a massive update and that’s the perfect excuse to go back to Night City and enjoy new features and fixed bugs! Let’s go choom!
Saturday night, I hung out with some friends online and played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Mario Kart games are a lot of fun, but they’re even more hilarious when you play with friends over voice chat! It was a great time overall and I’m looking forward to doing that again.
On the All-Star Sunday stream, I took a fast-paced cruise through various locales in SEGA AGES: OutRun for the Nintendo Switch. It’s a great, classic title and was vastly different from the Genesis version, which I was first introduced to. While I didn’t reach the end, there were plenty of times when I got close to it! And the music is fantastic, specifically the M2-created remixes! I’m hoping to come back to that one in the future.
Meanwhile, I continued grinding and whittling through the remaining side quests in Octopath Traveler in anticipation of fighting the super boss. I’m in the midst of taking a course about world-building in fantasy stories and through that, I find myself appreciating the game’s side stories more. They flesh out the world of Orsterra and make it seem believable and compelling.
During this week’s installment of Retro Adventure Mornings, I’ve finished the Great Bay Temple in Majora’s Mask and have started hunting down masks before taking on the Ikana Valley. I’m getting closer to finishing this title and I’m hoping by mid-March I can move on to either Oracle of Seasons or Oracle of Ages on my Zelda Marathon list.
Don’t forget to let us know what you’ve been playing this week!
Ryan Cheddi – our friendly, neighbourhood caffeine addict – is a man of many talents: an engineer, a gaming historian, a fiction writer and a streamer. He is also a self-avowed Sonic the Hedgehog fan. You can check out his cool beans at his site – Games with Coffee – or find him on Twitter as @GameswCoffee, and Instagram as @games_with_coffee. He streams on Twitch, also as GamesWithCoffee.
