“Whatcha Playin’, Pixels?” – #016

A weekly roundup of games enjoyed by the writers of The Pixels

It was May the Fourth this week! (Followed by Revenge of the Fifth and Return of the Sixth, today). From Star Wars on the Atari to Fallen Order on modern consoles and everything else in between, we at The Pixels hope you had a great May the Fourth this year! And now, like the Jedi he is, our deputy editor will use his mind tricks to convince you to read up on what our writers have been up to this week!

These are the games you’re looking for.

I usually stray away from multiplayer modes in games. I have people to play with, sure, but I consider multiplayer, in many games, to be boring and one-sided. I can’t say that about Halo Infinite. A large bulk of my gaming time for the last two weeks has been dedicated to playing the surprisingly deep multiplayer mode of this title, and with the second season recently dropping, the experience has gotten even deeper. Season 2: Lone Wolves introduces players with nearly 28 gigs of content including new maps, game modes, and a plethora of character modifications and skins. Sure, MTX (microtransactions) are still a part of the experience, but gaining rewards without spending a single cent is all the easier in Season 2 thanks to a streamlined daily and weekly event system. It also helps that I have old college friends to play with, that’s the real draw to the multiplayer. 

Of course, I don’t stay in the multiplayer bubble. After all, I am a well-cultured gamer with a palette for the weird and bizarre, and thanks to my involvement with a group called The Indie Game Collective, there is no shortage of those games to play. I recently streamed a gem of a title called Pets At Work. This adorable puzzle platformer allows you to play as both a cat and a dog as they work together to get out of the office their owner accidentally left them in. The puzzles are pretty straightforward, and the game is not incredibly challenging, but it is cute, and that scores high in my book.

~Sommerfeldt

This week I’ve mostly been playing Elden Ring and, while I’m pretty bad at it, I’m considerably better at it than I have been with other Souls games! I even have a gang of ghost wolves to help me… ghost wolves!!

I’m also back on DayZ, along with most of my team at work like some weird post-Armageddon team-building exercise. What have we learned so far? Don’t trust me with an automatic shotgun… things get messy!

~Bizarro

Things have heated up for me this week! Starting off with the Sunday stream, I continued my journey through my first playthrough of Phantasy Star IV and man… I was not expecting Alys to kick it. I really liked her, both as a character and as a party member. Oh, spoilers BTW! Beyond that, Phantasy Star IV has been such a treat! It’s a challenging, yet fair RPG, with a good story. It also has a pretty bangin’ soundtrack too! So, I’m glad I’m having a good time with that.

I’ve made the decision to permanently move my Tuesday and Thursday streams to noon as of this week. It’s been awesome to just take a break from my busy work schedule and hang out for a quick hour to play games on Twitch. I’m still playing Oracle of Ages and I’ve just started one of the most interesting of dungeons – the Mermaid Cave. What’s neat about this one is that it takes place both in the past and the present, similar to the Spirit Temple in Ocarina of Time. Things that you do in the past have a direct effect on the dungeon in the present. On top of that, you need two separate Mermaid Keys to even enter the dungeon. Both require playing some mini-games and engaging with trade with the Gorons to gather these keys.

Off-stream, I’ve reached the final chapter in CrossCode. When I saw it for the first time on a friend’s stream, I was drawn to the smooth visuals, the combat system and the puzzles that bear a striking resemblance to that of Alundra, one of my favourite Zelda-inspired titles. What I didn’t expect was an emotional story and a deep insight into the ramifications of artificial intelligence within an MMO. Plus, Lea is such a sweetpea. Despite spending roughly 90% of the time mute, the game does a great job of expressing her personality through expressions and the phrases hard-coded into her avatar. And man, those expressions are adorable haha. CrossCode has really become a favourite of mine and I’m interested to see how it all ends. I might even get the DLC for it too!

~Ryan C

I’m BACK! Did you miss me? I apologize for being so bad at remembering to write, haha. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sinking a lot more time into Elden Ring, I’m playing it VERY slowly, but still very much enjoying my time with it. I’m nowhere near done with it and I’m not sure I could contribute to the overall discourse with something that hasn’t already been said. I also started playing The Last of Us Part II, so perhaps I’ll have something to say about it soon.

In other news, I finally finished another game… Death’s Door! I had a good time with it but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to. I had heard much praise from some close to me so I think my expectations were a bit too high going into it. The level design is really well done, but because it had so many split paths and connecting routes I got a bit lost a few times. I only wish the game had a map, but that’s a minor complaint. The combat I thought felt great and the challenging bosses were not too much of a hurdle to overcome. Overall, it’s still a very solid recommendation from me.

~Kalas

I’m now seven hours into Triangle Strategy, and sadly, it still has not hooked me. I am enjoying it more as it goes, but it’s still a bit boring. I’ve finally started to care a little bit about some of the characters, I’ve finally seen the consequences of some of my decisions, and I’ve leveled up and learned new abilities. But there are so many cutscenes. It’s so much dialogue. It still feels more like a movie than a game which is too bad because the battles are really fun and the conviction mechanic is very interesting. I still hold hope that it will get better since it is getting better as I play more, but seven hours is a long time to not be super into it, still.

~ABXY Reviews

I have a new addiction, and it’s called Fantasy Life. Pretty generic name, right? I’d been aware of it but mostly ignored it because, well, generic game is probably generic, right? A friend highly recommended it to me and when Nintendo announced the eventual shutdown of the 3DS eshop, I figured I might as well grab it now, and hoo boy, no regrets. Now, for all its weak title, it’s not a weak game. You may recognize the developer, Level 5, as the makers of series like Professor Layton, Ni No Kuni, and Dark Cloud. Yeah, they make good stuff, and Fantasy Life fits the mold they’ve established: bright and cute fantasy worlds filled with quirky characters and Mechanics. Lots and lots of mechanics.

Fantasy Life takes the concept of game mechanics and amps it up to 11. You can swap mostly freely between 12 jobs: 4 combat jobs, 3 foraging jobs, and 5 crafting jobs. I started at the bow-wielding Hunter job, then moved to Carpenter so I could learn to make my own bows, then to Woodcutter because you can’t make bows without wood. There’s lots to buy and you’re given plenty, but a determined player can be completely self-sufficient. There’s also some kind of story about the sky falling but I don’t know much about it. I’m 30 hours in (this week alone) and have barely touched the plot. I know I should, but I’m having too much fun exploring the world and trying to improve my jobs.

~Maggie M

I’ve been working my way through Chinatown Detective Agency on Xbox this week and.. ooff.. where to start? This game looks great – the pixel artwork does a great job of detailing a neon-infused, cyberpunk-tinged Singapore of the near future. The story is fantastic, with some great writing and witty dialogue throughout.

However, there are some pretty serious issues with the game at the moment and ones that interfered with my overall enjoyment of it. I won’t go into too much detail here about how there’s seemingly no way to quickly switch between hotspots, or that the (admittedly excellent) voice acting just vanished halfway through the game. The biggest sin, for me, was that the answers to some of the puzzles were actually wrong. Even a walkthrough I looked up online could not explain some of the solutions. Unless there’s a leap of logic that I missed, I really found my enjoyment dulled after that, wondering at each ‘incorrect’ answer I gave whether I was wrong or if the game itself was.

Thankfully there’s an in-game hints and solutions system that was easily used to see the rest of the story, and I would recommend trying it out… but if you do, play it on PC where you can use a mouse. Trust me on that one.

~TeeBee

This was a huuuuge pickup week for me! I’d been eyeballing a Nintendo Switch OLED for a while, thanks in no small part to my two kids who are growing up to hijack my OG Switch for their own nefarious Minecraft-ey uses. It’s great and what a comparison. I still do play handheld now and then, but having the 2nd dock is also crucial.

I’m currently infatuated with Dragon Quest Builders 2 on the OLED, which not only looks marvelous, but the game astounds someone who has played a TON of these kinds of games. Its automating systems for its villagers doing all kinds of work for you is a great way to scale the game so it’s easier to complete bigger and bigger projects.

I also picked up Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age (what a mouthful). FINALLY! I hear it’s a masterpiece. Zone of the Enders and Cris Tales also join the backlog.

But the best announcement I have this week is for NES Pro, the new all-NES magazine coming this year! It’ll be published quarterly, physical & digital, and featuring yours truly. I’m really excited about this project, which is over 60% funded in 24 hours. Check out the Kickstarter for more info! Thanks!

~Red

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.