What’s Good About: Holiday Grab Bag Edition
It’s that time of year again. The weather’s getting colder, the holiday season is in full swing and it’s starting to snow consistently. That means only one thing: It is Game of the Year Season almost and while I will be posting a collection of some of this year’s standouts (some of which I’ve already written about), it also means that I wanted to take this as an opportunity to write about some of the other games that I’ve played this year that while I haven’t posted about at length, still feel like they’re worth highlighting because I’m in a merry mood and there’s been some good stuff I went through this year. So kick back, grab your hot beverage of choice and enjoy the inaugural What’s good About Grab Bag Edition.
Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order
Man, this one is kind of a no-brainer huh? I should have written about this when I first played it back in April, but I was still in the busy period back at the beginning of the Pandemic. I’ll keep it brief: Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order is my favorite Star Wars game not named Knights of the Old Republic. And the reason for that is because it, much like the original Star Wars film, takes a bunch of disparate pieces and influences from different genres in its medium, and said mishmash ends up being greater than the sum of its parts.
You are Cal Kestis, Former Jedi Padawan and survivor of Order 66 as a result of the events at the beginning of the game, he ends up on a hunt to find a Holocron that has the list of names of Force Sensitive Children and keep it out of the Empire’s hands; all while also eluding the Inquisitorious, the empire’s faction of Jedi Hunters and their Purge Troopers. The game’s narrative is an exercise in less is more, focusing on a small handful of characters to keep the flow going. It also, like KOTOR and more recently with The Mandalorian, avoids beating you over the head with all of the “Remember Star Wars?” that a lot of Star Wars games in the 90’s did, and even goes so far as to avoid using the typical musical and cinematic flourishes until it has to for major plot points.
It also makes expert, judicious use of plot threads introduced in The Clone Wars TV series, between both the Holocron containing the names of Force Sensitive Children, as well as making several direct references to and showing the aftermath of Count Dooku and General Grevious’s genocide of the Nightsisters of Dathomir following their failed Assassination attempt against him.
The final product gameplay-wise is a pretty decent mashup of Uncharted style platforming and puzzle-solving, Souls inspired Combat (feeling like a Sekiro lite here) involving Cal’s Lightsaber and Force Powers, and Metroid style exploration with a map ripped straight out of Metroid Prime. It’s all riveting stuff, even if it stumbles a bit (those bonus combat challenges suuuuuuck). If you like Star Wars and want a decent action game, then I recommend it.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice:
The newest game from From Software that I’ve only recently gotten to. It takes a lot of the lessons learned from the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne to lay the foundation to make what could be more accurately called a spiritual successor to Tenchu.
The game takes place in the fictional Japanese province of Ashina during the Warring States period. You are the Shinobi Wolf, who is tasked with retrieving his lord, the Divine Heir Kuro, from a rogue faction of the Ashina Clan who believe him to be the key to standing against the recently established Shogunate. That’s as far as I can go without talking spoilers because Sekiro is already the most front-facing the narrative in a Miyazaki directed FromSoft game has been…ever? It’s kind of a wild thing to see after mostly going off of item descriptions for the longest time
Your primary focus is still to explore these massive interconnected areas, but you are way more agile, the areas are far more vertical to take that advantage of said agility, and you aren’t necessarily supposed to fight everything in sight even if you can throw down if need be. This is because Sekiro has none of the RPG mechanics its predecessors possessed and is a straight-up stealth action game, where your primary focus is to sneak your way through the majority of areas and pick and choose your fights carefully. Further emphasis is placed on using hit-and-run tactics and getting any kind of advantage you can get because this game is more unforgiving if you don’t play by its rules. Okay, you can say that about any FromSoft game from the last decade or so, but it feels more apparent here.
Your main defensive tactic is parrying enemy attacks to weaken their posture abs make them more susceptible to deathblow attacks. While the parrying feels super satisfying with a success being indicated with a sharp-sounding sword clash, each enemy is different and has different timings you need to learn to not get bopped. These as well as your ability to counter thrusts by straight-up stomping on the enemy’s weapon (god bless the Mikiri Counter) and your prosthetic arm’s tools all add up for a different, demanding combat system that’s super satisfying to learn. Also, the boss fights are fucking sick.
Project Warlock
I like project Warlock a lot. It’s also really short. Because it has over sixty levels that take around 5 minutes or less to get through if you ignore most of the secrets. It’s a throwback FPS made by a then 19-year old programmer who grew up on the games of yesteryear and I know that sounds odd, but then you remember that preservation of older games has gotten better in recent times, and also re-releases are a thing. Either way, it shows, because the levels are wide and labyrinthine ala Wolfenstein 3D. And as someone who loves Wolfenstein, I’m here for it. The arsenal of weapons ranges from the standard pistol, shotgun, submachine gun, crossbow, to the heavier stuff: like a minigun, double-barreled shotgun, plasma rifle, BFG equivalent.
The five areas you go to are all pretty neat. You got a medieval castle, an arctic research facility that’s an obvious homage to The Thing, an Egyptian tomb that felt a bit long in the tooth, a futuristic cityscape that has a lot of fun combat scenarios, and lastly Hell because it would not be a 90’s FPS throwback without a trip to Hell.
There’s not much more that I can say other than it’s a great Homage to the FPS games of the 90’sand that I’ve spent more time Than I’d like to admit hunting for secrets. If you like this style of shooter, give it a look.
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R
It’s Guilty Gear of Old. And It has Rollback now. ‘Nuff Said.
But Seriously, the fact that in 2020, I can play one of my favorite fighting games ever online and not feel like I’m underwater for the majority of the experience makes me so goddamn happy. It also makes me simultaneously miss and not miss the era of fighting games where it was okay for almost if not all characters to be a bit bullshit in their unique way. Because as much as I love Plus R, I’m not blinded by nostalgia enough to recognize that all of the wild, versatile shit you can do is the result of literal years of power creep. To the point that when Arc System Works was making Guilty Gear Xrd, they had no choice but to cut most of the nonsense out. But I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t miss having Order Sol and his +37 Frames on Block Level 3 Blockhead Buster because that shit was ridiculous, but I loved it anyway.
But yeah, these were some of the games I played that while I enjoyed, haven’t quite made my game of the year list because I either enjoyed something more than bumped it off of the coveted top 5 or in the case of Sekiro, haven’t finished yet. Come back next week to see what the coveted top 5 list is because I guarantee you, it’s what you’d expect it to be for a third then goes into different territory if you’ve been reading for a few months.
