“Whatcha Playin, Pixels?” #019
7 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
It’s the end of May! We’re almost at the halfway point of the year and inching ever-so-closer to the stacked summer release season! Summer will also be an exciting time for the site as we have a lot of upcoming content to share from our illustrious writers. In the meantime, here’s what our writers were up to this week:
I’m back from fishing (regrettably in real life and not in a Breath of Fire game) and happy to report I started up two new games recently that both clicked. They are Bloodborne, the 3D Castlevania we needed, and Minecraft, the 3D builder game that I’m not sure I needed.
Coming in hot after Elden Ring, I thought I’d ride the FromSoft high into another entry of theirs. That led me to the snootily Gothic horror slasher Bloodborne. It’s always interesting to take a step backward in a series or a lineage of innovation. I find myself missing features like jumping. All in all, though, it’s a frightening but engaging experience.
As for Minecraft, I’ve avoided this game like I’ve avoided Souls for many, many years. I figured it was time to jump in. I’m so used to top-down or 2D builders that I don’t know if I’d ever have tried Minecraft if not for Dragon Quest Builders 2. So far I’ve survived a few nights (on hard mode, my kids insisted) and built a lighthouse which may or may not be a replica of the titular tower from The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. I’ll never tell.
Ah and I also began another playthrough in Crystalis to refresh for the upcoming episode of MAGE CAST!
~Red
I started Dolmen on the PS5 this week. “What’s Dolmen?” I hear you ask. Well… it’s Dark Souls… in spaaaaaace! Seriously, if The Surge hadn’t already cornered the Sci-fi Souls market then I’d say Dolmen was at least innovative in one way. As it is, it’s a steady, careful, plodding trek through an alien world where the hostile inhabitants re-appear when you rest at a bon… er… beacon.
So far so uninspiring? Actually, it’s been like gaming comfort food for me this week to keep dipping into Dolmen’s world. Just to mash a few alien bugs and collect their… souls?… and level up. It’s just what I needed to help switch my brain off.
There does appear to be an interesting mechanic where you have to harvest items from bosses by respawning and re-defeating them. Not sure I like that idea, but it’s certainly something to differentiate it from the crowd.
All in all, I’m not blown away by Dolmen but I’m enjoying it. I can see little bits of influence here and there from games like Dead Space and Mars War Logs… but if anything is going to plunge this game into obscurity it’s that it was released in the shadow of the mighty Elden Ring. Shame really – a few years back, this would probably have been on more people’s radars.
The kids are officially out of school for the summer, so that means that they get to stay home and complain about being bored. Knowing that would be the result of living out in the country during the rainy season, I decided to take my kids to Gamestop and pick out a used game to entertain themselves with. Now owning a “new” used PS3, my son was more than happy to pick out any game that met his fancy, and I was more than happy to pay under $5 for it. What he landed on was Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing (2010), and of course, I had to try it out with him.
As far as kart racers go, Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing is a glorified Mario Kart clone in pretty much every way. This game adds a certain “edge” to the experience by adding commentary and speaking characters. The courses are colorful and detailed, so much so that it can be hard to find the roads at times. The character list is extensive and covers a wide range of Sega IPs including Sonic the Hedgehog, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, and even House of the Dead. The levels are also based on various Sega IPs, so it is certainly a fan’s dream come true. However, I’m not really a Sega fan, so the game really doesn’t do much for me, but my son loves it, and I thoroughly enjoy kicking his butt in it. Everyone wins!
My daughter did not find a game she wanted at Gamestop, so I let her get a cheap one on Steam. She found a cute little farm simulator called Bunhouse, and since we ourselves raise rabbits, this game ended up resonating with the whole family. The premise is simple, you play as a rabbit developing and growing a little greenhouse in the woods. You can customize everything in this game and work with other players to make the most productive greenhouse possible for a rabbit to make. If you like unique and cozy farming sims, then Bunhouse is an easy purchase. If you don’t want it on PC, then just wait for the Switch launch later this summer!
I’ve taken this week off from streaming, mostly because Kid Espresso was home with us (in-laws took a vacation), but I also had some work to catch up on too, so there’s that. I still managed to fit in a huge chunk of Phantasy Star IV on Sunday night. I had a ton of close calls, especially on the fight against Dark Force on the satellite, Zeral. With two characters down, two at near death and with no magic left to heal, I thought I was finished for sure. So, I used whatever strong attacks I had left with my two remaining characters and surprisingly, it worked out! I was pretty happy about that.
Off-stream, I played more of The World Ends With You. I had finished the first part of the story and have now started on the second, which involves Neku’s second partner, the enigmatic Joshua. The story beats are much darker than Kingdom Hearts; there are plenty of references to death, the right to exist, the meaning of life, parallel dimensions and a dude who has a serious math fetish. I had also forgotten how cringey Neku was – he’s a Cloud wannabe who has issues relating to people, but gradually opens up as the game progresses.
Despite numerous Nomura-ism’s peppering the game (there’s even a reference to zippers, a thing that he adores), the combat system is still so much fun even after all these years. Plus, the focus on chaining encounters and manipulating difficulty settings in order to gather rare pins and materials has kept me from progressing through the story. I tell myself that I should blow by this game quickly to get to the sequel, but with so much to do and collect, it’s looking like another 30+ hour adventure for me, haha!
The only thing to write home about this week is Terraria. We lost our original world this week. Quite suddenly the world file got corrupted… and somehow the backups were also corrupted to the point the latest non-corrupted starting point was pre-hard mode. The outlook of our playthrough was looking a bit bleak. However, it just so happens that, the host has another world file from an old game that was roughly where we were, just a tad earlier.
We took our characters there which sucks because we lost a lot of our good equipment like fishing and potion materials but we’re able to continue playing! We’re getting very close to beating Master Mode. As of right now all we need to do is beat Moon Lord and that’s the end of the game.
So, what were you 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.
