“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” – #027
9 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
Happy Friday, people of the internet! This is your Game Master Deputy Editor, Coffee, and I’ve got some red-hot news to share. Our new EIC, ProfNoctis, made his grand debut and shared his thoughts on the future of the site. Go and check out here. We also have a new contributor on the scene with YemmyTheFerret and his first critique on Neon White. But, if you thought things at The Pixels were warm now, the coming weeks will send the temperature through the roof! Our writers are filled with fiery passion and we have some spicy content waiting in the wings for you to consume!
With that said, I will bid you adieu and yield the floor to my fellow writers. Let’s see what they’ve been up to this week, shall we?
Live A Live came out on the 22nd so, naturally, I picked it up that morning, and I ended up playing it quite a bit! It’s been a long time since I’ve played a video game on day one. I got about 5 hours in the game this week having played the Prehistoric, Wild West, and Imperial China chapters. I gotta say the Imperial China chapter is my favorite so far, but I’ve enjoyed all three. I’ve never really played a voice-acted pixelated game but I think it’s pretty funny how the entirety of the prehistoric chapter is illegible.
I’ve also played a little bit of Cuphead this week. It’s getting more difficult. Djimmi the Great is probably my favorite fight in the game so far. I also fought the giant bird. I still think run and guns are more difficult than the boss fights. I have a Demo Disk for the base game of Cuphead in the queue to be published, so if you want more thoughts on that, feel free to check it out!
Lastly, I didn’t anticipate playing this game at all, but I’ve been playing Monark in the last 4 days or so. Monark is an RPG by Lancarse and FuRyu (Caligula Effect, Etrian Odyssey). So far I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’m finding that this game is probably going to be grindy as well. I’m actually working on a Demo Disk for Monark as well so, please look forward to more of my first impressions of this game.
My weeks have been quite busy but I still manage to put a little bit of time into Elden Ring here and there. I thought I was getting close to the end but I’m now starting to doubt that. Besides that, I’ve also been putting a lot of time into Zelda titles while streaming. I’ve recently started a second Breath of the Wild playthrough on ‘Master Mode’ and I’m having a great time with it. I’m also doing a first playthrough of the Link’s Awakening remake on Switch, but with a twist! Since I’ve played the game so much on Game Boy (it’s my favorite game ever) I decided to do a three-heart challenge run. So far I’ve made quite a lot of progress, only two more dungeons to go!
The other game I’ve been putting a lot of time into is Stray. I’ve been having a really good time being a cat and doing cat things. There have been criticisms of the game regarding traversal which is understandable since the platforming is somewhat restrictive; I wouldn’t even call it platforming, honestly. But for me, it’s all about the exploration and the atmosphere of the dystopian underground city. I often find myself smiling at doing the random inconsequential interactions that I probably wouldn’t do if I wasn’t playing as a cat. The game has so much charm and I can’t wait to finish my playthrough.
So Live A Live is pretty! Yeah, pretty slow! Jk, I’m just slow at it. Nothing’s grabbed me with it just yet, motivating me to make time to play more of it, but then I’ve only had the chance to finish Prehistory at this point. Prehistory was cute in its own unintelligible gibberishy way, but I’ve seen YouTube commercials longer than that. I started Imperial China’s chapter and it’s still slow going. I’m hoping one of these vignettes has a wee story that clicks, but at least it’s fun to play. Oh, and pretty.
Besides that, I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work, juggling games like Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter though the hankerin’ to stream again is comin’ on me strong. I might just have to get one of my messy adventures with one of these up for the world to see again, and I know I’ve still got Final Fantasy V to finish. My life is a long road of unfinished tales. OH! And thanks to our newest writer, Yemmy (below), I’m downloading Multiversus. Happy Friday!
Most of my week has been taken up by Loop Hero. For a long time, it was a slog of “do a run, quit” because I wasn’t feeling confident, especially in Chapter 2. Once I was able to beat the boss and started to really understand how the upgrades and land tiles work, it’s become an addiction. It’s gone from “Just one run” to “one more run.” I honestly have no idea how far I am from being able to beat the game, but I’m definitely enjoying the ride now.
Despite playing a few RPGs this week, please allow me to talk for a moment or two about a new survival-horror release: Dreadout 2. I loved the original Dreadout when I played it on PC a few years ago. From an Indonesian indie developer, it took inspiration from Project Zero / Fatal Frame and thought: “What if you took pictures of ghosts… on a mobile phone?” Makes sense, right? Phones have flashlights and cameras on them these days! Add in a bunch of school kids on a broken down bus… exploring a haunted village, getting lost, and snapping pics of spooks… it was a good time!
Now Dreadout 2 has been released on consoles and unfortunately, it’s a bit of a mess by comparison. It seems the developers wanted to squeeze in as many other inspirations as possible, including a rusty Silent Hill otherworld and a section where you run and hide from a naked butcher, taken straight from the Outlast school of horror. Heck, there’s even a village to wander (slowly) around and do sidequests in, like a smaller-scale Deadly Premonition!
Sadly, it feels like these sections have taken away from the identity Dreadout carved for itself and they leave the sequel a confused mess. I’m happy to stick with Dreadout 2 until the end, purely because of the love I had for the first game, but if there is another game to make it a trilogy I really hope it goes back to camera-phone-obscura territory.
This week has been filled to the brim with new releases I wanted to play. I’ve been playing the grotesque platformer Hell Pie the most. It’s a 3D platformer and collectathon that has more in common with Conker’s Bad Fur Day than Banjo-Kazooie. You play as a demon who has a cherub chained to one of his horns. This opens up the gameplay a lot because you are able to use the cherub as an anchor point, allowing for extra momentum from swinging and easier traversal of the world. It’s been a really fun time but also very disgusting at the same time (which is what they were going for). I previewed the game at PAX East 2022 and I’m glad I picked up the full version.
I’m still obsessed with Fall Guys and have been logging in daily to complete challenges while trying to get a few more wins. I’ve been playing since the game was released in 2020 and I can’t believe that I’ve been having more fun with it now than back then. Another free-to-play game I’ve been playing this week is Multiversus. The Smash Bros. clone certainly feels familiar even though all the characters I’ve used have had unique play styles and move sets. I was able to purchase my first character within an hour of playing but I can tell it will be harder to collect gold coins, the free currency in the game, moving forward. The game is still in beta but feels like a full-fledged game and so far I like it better than Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. I’m interested to see what changes or improves when the game officially is released. So far Finn from Adventure Time is my favorite character along with Harley Quinn (DC Comics) and Garnet (Steven Universe).
On stream, I’ve been switching between Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and Gears of War 4. So far I’m enjoying Space Marine much more, the characters have a weighty feel to them and the weapon variety is good. Gears of War 4 is simply not a good game, from the jokes spewed every 5 lines of dialogue to the poor level design I’m not enjoying my time with it. I’m going to stick with it though because at least it’s playable, which is more than I can say about a few games we’ve tackled on stream.
Thanks to a severe thunderstorm, I had to delay my Sunday stream to Monday. No matter, as I finally kicked Lashiec to the curb and started ascending the creepy Garuberk Tower in Phantasy Star IV. Tuesday, I finished up the final dungeon in Oracle of Seasons – the Sword and Shield Dungeon – and began preparations to finish the game and the Oracle series in full on Thursday, which I did! The final battles took little to no time at all, thanks to the combined might of the Master Sword and the Red Ring. Strongest Sword + Double Attack Power = Incredibly Easy Fights! Quod Erat Demonstrandum!
I finished off the shadow of Ganon so fast that I had enough time to start on the next game: Wind Waker! It’s one of my favourite Zelda games and I’m so excited to start streaming this title! I’ve gotten through the beginning of the game, where Coffee’s (what I’ve named Link this time around) sister has been kidnapped. So, next week I’ll hit up the Forsaken Fortress! Also by next week, I’m hoping viewers will redeem the newly created Sea Shanty reward, so I can start singing sea shanties on stream! (I even wrote a few myself.)
Jeez… I gotta find a pirate hat now…
Anyway, off-stream, I’m still hammering away at Neo: The World Ends With You and my goodness is this game crazy! It’s chock full of JRPG tropes, but even still, the twists in the story hit me right in the feels. I’ve started to appreciate Rindo now that I’ve played through half of the game – he’s different from Neku in the sense that he doesn’t get close to people IRL. Instead, he’d rather correspond with his online buddy, Swallow. He’s also indecisive to the point of paralysis, which I can totally relate to. I’ve now finished up the end of Week 2 and I can safely say I detest the main antagonist, Game Master Shiba. Despite his loathsome nature though, he has a charismatic flair for the dramatic that I can’t help but like. I even imitated him in the opening of this post, believe it or not! And as Week 3 begins, I can’t wait to see how the climax of this game unfolds!
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.
