“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” – #028
8 min read
A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
The first week of August is finally in the books and we’re sitting in the middle of the dog days of summer. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s defined as a period between July and August where North American weather reaches its peak sultriness. Metaphorically, it also establishes a period of stagnation or inactivity. Still, you wouldn’t notice it through our writers, as they’ve been hard at work getting premium content ready for your eyeballs to consume. Even so, they have found time out of their busy schedules to get some gaming in. So, let’s check in on them and see what they’ve been up to this week:
Happy birth month to me and all the August babies out there and also to me!
This week I grinded (ground?) my way through another chapter in Live A Live. What was initially a humorous breezy prehistorical experience with a defined premise of “rescue the girl” turned into a real drag in Imperial China that put me off playing the game for several days. Live A Live promises variety between its chapters but that presents the risks of some of them being… not very good. The China chapter follows a martial arts teacher who decides one day that he needs students, so he goes to get them, runs into 3 in the game’s 3 accessible areas, and then the player has to engage in fighting them over and over again, about a dozen times. It’s a grind that essentially takes up most of the chapter’s playtime and it’s followed up by a tragedy that falls flat for not having spent any meaningful time with the characters on top of being completely self-inflicted. The final dungeon of the chapter is straightforward but at least it’s eventful and provides the chapter with some, albeit late, direction, momentum, and drive.
I have a feeling this’ll be an uneven experience. Edo is next!
Beyond that, I’ve successfully re-hooked myself on Total War: Warhammer II for Steam. There are so many factions I still want to play and while I thought I’d initially burned out on the game, the depth of the turn-based strategy campaigns and real-time tactical battles reeled me right back in and successfully reminded me that I really really really suck at this game. I still get my precambrian patootie handed to me on Normal difficulty, but I’m trying out three factions I never really spent much time with before: Emperor Karl Franz in the Empire, Isabella von Carstein with the Vampire Counts, and High Queen Khalida of the Tomb Kings. The Empire is your balanced team that is decent at everything and there’s a lot of politics to manage with other imperial factions. The Vampires can summon undead armies in a jiffy and slowly spread their corruption, but they’re melee focused which isn’t always my thing. The Tomb Kings are incredible but wow is their economy slow: while there’s no upkeep cost for their units, you have to really be creative with raising armies and plan out how to get more lords to lead and unlock more units for your skeletal vengeance.
I have a feeling this’ll be a game I stick with for quite some time. Now if only I could find someone to co-op with…
Loop Hero is officially complete! Well, at least the final boss has been beaten once. There’s still a good deal to do, but I also have a good deal of other games on my plate. I may come back and achievement hunt in the future, but for now, I’m ready to move on to other things.
So what’s the other thing, then?
It’s a secret! Here’s a hint: it’s a cartoon-styled point-and-click adventure. Keep an eye out for a review for a brand new game from me next week when the game launches!
I’ve been playing a lot of Sword and Fairy: Together Forever this week. Check out my review on The Pixels if you like the sound of a Chinese-themed action RPG!
When I haven’t been on an epic quest to save the world, I’ve also been playing a little more Yurukill: The Calumniation Games. As a fan of the Zero Escape series, I’d heard this was quite similar: a bunch of prisoners being forced to solve puzzles and getting sequentially bumped off until only one remains. The difference between Yurukill over other escape-the-room games is that this one has a bizarre genre mash-up that occurs at the end of every chapter.
Once you beat the escape-room puzzles and discover more about your chosen prisoner’s crime, you are given a quiz on what you have learnt. So, no falling asleep through those dialogue sections! Correct answers appear to give you more lives as you start to play a… shmup?! Seriously, I was as baffled as I was impressed that the developers have, somewhat successfully, created some kind of The Room / Ikaruga hybrid! What’s more, I’m genuinely invested enough in the plot and characters to see where they are ultimately going with this!
Something wonderful happened this past week that fueled a nostalgia binge of a game that I obsessively played when I was young. Re-Volt, the arcade racing game where you control RC cars, was released in its original form on Steam. Other versions of Re-Volt never compared to the PC release. The PS1 version was missing the soundtrack and in the Nintendo 64 version, you couldn’t race more than four cars at one time. Re-Volt was one of the first games that I played. My Uncle burned it onto a blank CD along with the original Rollercoaster Tycoon and the rest is history. Re-Volt may not be the most interesting game out there but it still plays pretty well and has a killer late 90s soundtrack. The maps are places like the supermarket, a garden, and a toy store but you are only a small vehicle. The course design is fantastic and there is also a track editor that you can use to create your own. Obviously, you won’t be able to create courses like the ones featured in the game but it’s still fun messing around and seeing what you can create. As you race your RC cars around the maps you’ll pick up items such as the bowling ball, oil slick, and bottle rocket to get the edge over your opponents. The Steam release is the same one I played back in the early 2000s and I’m happy that they didn’t change anything about it.
There are a plethora of James Bond games out there and I ended up replaying Agent Under Fire on stream recently. It’s not as good as Nightfire but it holds up pretty well. There were some great level design ideas and gadgets but the story was very weak. If you go back to revisit it yourself make sure you configure the controller settings to pre-set 3 for a more modern feel.
Hooked on You is a Dead by Daylight visual novel dating simulator, which looks like I just grabbed random words out of thin air. I thought it was just a joke back when the developers first announced a dating simulator based around murderers all…dying…for your affection. It’s weird but presented very well. You are washed up on a beach with memory loss and quickly find out that you are at a resort. The characters are all playing volleyball and quickly become infatuated with you. I’m interested in continuing my playthrough and hopefully, I can escape this crazy island.
I continue to play Live A Live, and I’m sad to say I’m mostly unimpressed. It’s fine, but it’s just not the game I wish it were. Makes me want to play the new Octopath DLC, to be honest.
Next, I started playing co-op Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise, and I’m having a BLAST. I don’t know how it fares in single-player mode but playing with two of my best friends has been a sheer delight. The plot, though a retelling of the original Final Fantasy, is utter nonsense… but as a game played with friends? A must-have.
Finally, after seemingly months of attempts and life disruptions, I finished streaming Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster. Phenomenal enhancement of the classic game, with beautifully redesigned visuals and a fully orchestrated soundtrack. The standout moment of the game was the iconic opera scene. It absolutely blew me away. Now sporting actual vocal tracks (including an obviously less trained voice for Celes– a very nice touch) and Octopath-Esque HD2D graphics, the developers went all out on this one. Oh, and I also have to mention the final boss theme, “Dancing Mad.” The revamp of that piece was utterly next level, cementing its dominance over the lesser “One-Winged Angel” of FF7. (Bring it, haters).
I took the week off of streaming, but I managed to fit one stream in on Monday. After surmounting the Garuberk Tower and defeating Dark Force (again!) in Phantasy Star IV, our team learns of a secret, fourth planet called Rykros. It’s here that all the answers about the Algo system would be answered.
Away from streaming, I finally finished Neo: The World Ends With You and the ending did not disappoint! Without spoiling things, there was a definite payoff in Rindo’s character arc as he learns that being with his friends in Shibuya is what makes the city so special. To add to that fact, several returning characters from the first game make impactful appearances that help to bring the whole saga to a close. Overall, Neo has become to me what the first game was back when I played it in 2007: an iconic, instant classic that will remain with me for a long time.
Now, it’s time to gather the secret reports to uncover the details about Neo’s plot and then, I can finally start on Live A Live!
Not really too active this week outside of Live A Live. I can tell you that there have been pleasant in-depth discussions about Live A Live on The Pixels Discord server. I’m enjoying the game so far, I just can’t talk about it too much until my future works here. Looking forward to picking up Xenoblade Chronicles 3 after this though!
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.
