So here something about a number of games I finished or retired over the recent months, that I had forgotten to write about here:
Silent Hill Downpour (played via Xenia)
Ran surprisingly well, it's kind wild to me that we already have pretty stable emulators for 7th gen consoles. They are not as rock stable as say Dolphin, but then again, no other emulator really is.
The actual game starts out pretty strong. We are a prison inmate who is essentially about to commit a "contract" killing on someone, the guards are basically helping us to make sure cameras are off and so on. So right away it sounds like a mob thing, but then we understand that our protagonists motivation is about revenge, having lost his kid to what sounds like pretty massive child abuse and subsequent murder by our target. Then we cut away to our hero being relocated from the prison. It's not clear whether what we saw happened in the past or is some kind of foreshadowing. The bus that's transporting us has an accident, and then we stumble our way towards a town (Silent Hill of course) and the supernatural stuff starts from there.
While I liked the start of the game, as it went on, the negative stuff starts to dominate. Combat is just incredibly boring, but also becomes more and more of a focus as the game goes on. The moment I hit the actual town, all the enthusiasm I had was gone, and it was tedium gallore. Fundamentally, I just don't think this dev really understood what Silent Hill was about. The "underworld" sequences you get in the story are ok, but even in the short bit I played it was starting to become monotonous: more monsters and then some weird void that chases you, until you get back to the real world. They did that twice, and I'm sure it would happen half a dozen more times in the rest of the game.
Uncharted 1 (played via rpcs3)
Pretty simple game, but of course one has to judge it based on how it already had much of what would become Sony's staple for AAA games, back in 2006. Until the rise of open-world games in the 2010s, this was basically the core formula that a lot of the industry followed. You still have some PS2 looking elements here, like the doors you need to open via switches, all the time. Combat is incredibly bad, it's floaty to aim and enemies are absurd sponges, unless you headshot them, which is made very hard by the poor aim and twitching enemies.
The story feels like something from an Indiana Jones fanfic, but it's entertaining enough that I won't complain. It's ok for things to be dumb. The writing feels like peak Joss Wheadon-esque one-liners, but it was also 2006, so in many ways Naughty Dogs was even ahead of the curve there. That shit really peaked with Avengers 1, which wouldn't come out for another 5 years.
So overall, a short and interesting game. Would recommend turning on cheats to ignore most of the combat. WOuldn't have finished it without it.
To A T
Bit of an odd game by Teika Takahashi. Whereas with Wattam, I kinda got the connection to Katamari Damashi, this feels like a complete different thing, and it's basically a video game version of a kids cartoon. It's all very wholesome, covers things like bullying and discrimination and tells overall a pretty charming story.
My only issue is that it's just boring to play it. I miss some of the "fun" that his previous games had. I don't understand why it needs to follow the episodic format of a show so religiously. It makes it all so boring and repetive, when you could explore things in more interesting ways in an interactive medium.
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered
heard about this one years ago when it first dropped on 7th gen consoles and never materialised on PC. Now that I played its remaster, it's ... ok? It's not a bad game and there is some of the typical Suda51 madness here, but given how this was hyped to be this great game produced by both Suda51 and Shinji Mikami, the ensuing game feels just kinda basic, clusmy and at times essentially unfinished. Many of the chapters don't naturally connect to other bits, and even though it's a short game at around 9 hours, there's tons of padding. I feel a better version of this game would have just been done in 6 hours and cut out all the minigames and repeating stuff.
So overall, pretty mid and forgetable.
(which explains why I only now wrote about it, despite having finished it in January, genuinely forgot that I played it)
Trails in the Sky 1st
So, as for any "review", I'll just refer to whatever I wrote for the original Trails in the Sky FC, years ago. It's such a faithful remake that there isn't much new to say. It's just the graphical representation that's new, and Falcom have really outdone themselves with this one. A stunningly beautiful creation that brings Liberl to life in a way the original never could.
