“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” – May 2024
8 min read
A monthly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels
May brings a wealth of insightful reviews and critiques here at The Pixels, as well as a plethora of new writers making their debuts! Leading the month off was ItsATM with a first impressions post of Die in the Dungeon: Origins. Fans of Slay the Spire will want to take a look at this. Next up, the uniquely named 700×700 pens a review of The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered. The game was originally released on the Nintendo DS.
The first of our new writers, 4JGaming, wrote an excellent critique of Phantasy Star IV, one of the few RPGs for the Sega Genesis and an excellent one, at that. Our second new writer, Derek Wright, reviews the remake of the classic PC survival horror, Alone in the Dark. Skies of Arcadia: Legends for the GameCube gets The Pixels treatment, thanks to our third new writer, Kayan Rochester.
Rounding out this month, Bibbz, who wrote that excellent review on Shinobi III, dives deep into Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. A tactical RPG, Ogre Battle shares DNA with the revered Final Fantasy Tactics. Maggie Maxwell then takes a first look at Hauntii, a platformer collectathon with a stunning visual style and adorable characters. And rounding up the month is our EIC, Linguistic Dragon, penning a critique on the CRPG game, Skald: Against the Black Priory.
Now, this wouldn’t be a Whatcha Playin’ post without us telling you what we’ve been playing this month. So, let’s get to the action, shall we?
Good day, fellow games people!
Over the last few months I have been playing back through one of my very favourite video game trilogies, Metro 2033 and its two sequels, Last Light and Exodus. Based on Dmitri Glukhovsky’s Russian post-apocalyptic tale, these narrative heavy shooters always drew me into their murky world. Well, I just finished playing Exodus, and it was just as fantastic as I remember it being!
But that’s not all, folks! I’m also still chipping away at World of Tanks with my dad and brother, and I’ve finally made it to the big leagues of Cold War era 3 in my cruddy soviet T72! The bad news: it’s very, very punishing for those who refuse to pay out for premium content and it’s getting just a little bit unrewarding and tiring at this lofty level!
May was a slow month of backlog clean up and healing.
Started with finally completing Sea of Stars and confirming my belief that I was playing a different game than everyone else. I enjoyed the game, though I found the ending lackluster, combat repetitive, and many of the nods to be memories from better games. I felt that many of the emotional beats were dragged out. While I completely understand that many loved the game, I found it to be a decent, if disappointing, experience.
Recently I completed Tales of Kenzera Zau. An EA Original that seems to have turned people off because it’s from EA, I thought the game was beyond solid. Some animation lock glitches, and an over reliance on insta-death mechanics mar a beautiful story. Emotionally this game helped me work through the loss of my mother in 2019 and as my wife said upon my completion of it, I was able to verbalize some of the pain and sadness of my mother’s passing in ways I couldn’t previously. There’s a strong message of “it’s ok to not be ok” in Zau and while it can be a frustrating game to play, I encourage people to give it a shot for the story alone.
Something wicked this way comes, a few months early at least.
If you were to look at what I have been playing in the month of May, you would think my calendar is off-kilter. I started off the month finishing off my 2nd playthrough of March’s Alone in the Dark. While I was impatiently waiting for Crow Country to be released, I dove into Resident Evil 6 to finally give it a college try.
RE6 isn’t as bad as history has made it out to be and is actually a fun title. But the meat of the month was Crow Country. If you have a spare $20 lying around, I think its worth a look. There’s a demo out now as well!
I spent three quarters of May either sick with a nasty cold or suffering a pulled chest muscle due to coughing violently from said cold. Suffice it to say, May was a crummy month. But it’s all good – I still was able to play some games despite my troubles. In this case, it’s been mostly Final Fantasy XVI.
Despite its divisiveness, I found myself enjoying the title greatly. XVI hits all the right buttons for me, with its engaging story and worldbuilding that I may or may not be taking notes on for my own stuff. I’m right at the end of the game and hoping to finish it off by the end of this month. I’ll then throw on some Final Fantasy VII Remake to grab screenshots for the critique before shutting off my PS5 and putting my nose to the grindstone on the writing. I have a lot of catching up to do.
I finally got around to watching the Knuckles mini-series and that got me greatly inspired to replay Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles for the Sega Genesis. I haven’t played it as much as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but I still know the game fairly well in terms of finding Giant Rings and Chaos Emeralds. I also started a playthrough of Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster as I continue my season of all things Final Fantasy.
It would be incredibly wrong of me to let May pass by without mentioning the Paper Mario: TTYD Remake that released on the 23rd! I know for a fact I played some of it when it was released back in 2004 but I remember almost nothing from it, so going into this feels like a brand-new experience. I’ve been juggling this alongside Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Stellar Blade, and passing the halfway point in Elden Ring in preparation for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC coming out on June 21st.
There is something to be said about the special era of gaming we’re living in currently. June on its own has the new Elden Ring content, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, both Monster Hunter Stories coming as a package, and tons of not-E3 showcases happening during June 7th-10th. I hope you can look forward to a great summer ahead!
May kicked off in the same way the past few months have, with—you guessed it—more Ultima! This month it was Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams and Ultima Underworld, neither of which I had seen through to completion before. Martian Dreams was a fantastic steampunk romp over Victorian Mars (where else can you get Tesla to send you to space in a cannon to go chat with Teddy Roosevelt while Nellie Bly takes notes all the while?!), but it was Underworld that really surprised me. I’d never gotten far in any of my previous attempts—dungeon-crawlers aren’t quite my style when it comes to RPGs—but whatever it was that made it stick this time, I just couldn’t get enough. I’m already thinking through what different approaches I could take for next time, and I’m all the more eager to see what its sequel has in store down the road!
Further Ultima adventures were put on hold, however, to make way for a few games I had on my plate for review. Well, sort of, at least, in that one of them was Skald: Against the Black Priory, which drew from the Ultima games as part of its own inspirations. I’ll spare you the lengthy version, as I already spilled about three thousand words’ worth of ink on a critique of it, but the short version? Oh my gosh does this game get me. Even after the initial rush of completion has cooled down a bit, I’m still finding myself with the music stuck in my head and considering what angle I can come at it for my next playthrough, which I may start soon! Suffice it to say I imagine this game will stick in my memory for a while yet, and is likely to be a contender for personal game of the year.
As for what else I took a peek at for review? You’ll just have to wait and see!
As summer brings both hot weather and a shift in my priorities, gaming has taken a bit of a backburner position. Well, playing games that is. However, all things remain gaming-adjacent. I did manage to complete Enter the Gungeon several times over though! I killed the past for each of the starting gungeoneers as well as the Robot after I unlocked him. The elusive playable Bullet remained hidden from my finglets, unfortunately. I could see myself easily sinking a ton of time into this game. I suppose I really do have a weakness for rogueish content, but time marches on and so must I. To sate myself, I started Dead Cells which is excellent but has yet to click with me in the same way that Gungeon did. Do I need to get addicted to another game in order to count it as clicking? Not sure, but it may not stick or click for now.
I also took the opportunity recently, courtesy of a power outage post-thunderstorm, to start Dragon Quest XI. This has been a long time coming. Everything I’ve heard of it has generally been encouraging, especially when folk say that it reminds them of the RPGs of yesteryear. At a glance, its tonality and color are really vibing for me. I also appreciated that it seems to start with a riff on the story of Moses, my namesake! Baby in the reeds and all that. I expect this game will take me quite a while to get through… See you next millennium!
And so ends May. What have you been playing recently? What did you finish? And what’s next on your backlog? Let us know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you all again next month! Same Pixel Time! Same Pixel Channel!
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 Bluesky as @GameswCoffee, and Instagram as @games_with_coffee. He streams on Twitch, also as GamesWithCoffee.
