#mt23 july

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43. The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Release: 2023, PC Beaten: July 13th, Steam Deck Playtime: 2h 30m

First disclosure: Steam glitched out and didn’t track my playtime properly.  It showed me 2.5 hours and then immediately reverted to 2 hours.  I think 2.5 is correct.  Second disclosure: I am not a Sonic fan.

That being said, this is a really fun game.  I like Sonic conceptually, as in its characters and world, I just don’t like traditional Sonic gameplay.  But a visual novel with those characters?  AND it’s a silly April Fools joke?  Yes.  Although “silly April Fools joke” is not giving it nearly enough credit; it’s clear a lot of passion went into this.  It’s worth playing (reading?).  Very fun.

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42. Gato Roboto

Release: 2019, PC/Switch Beaten: July 11th, Steam Deck Playtime: 3h 6m

A pretty straightforward metroidvania (albeit mostly quite linear) that varies between brutal and easy.  The overall movement and game feel is really good.  The idea that you can exit your mech for a more vulnerable but nimble form is really cool and implemented pretty well.  Boss fights were pretty hard for me but partially because I was being impatient, which I realized after multiple attempts and an eventual win when I’d become familiar with their patterns.  The story isn’t anything too complex but it’s still engaging.  Visually, it’s mostly pleasant, with easily understood 1-bit graphics (I guess a fancy way of saying “only two colors of pixels”) and alternate palettes that range from eye-straining to calming.  It’s pretty short and very enjoyable, so I’d recommend it to people looking for something brief to sink their teeth into.

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41. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Release: 2008, Wii Beaten: July 10th, Wii U Playtime: 7h 6m

Playtime accounts for Subspace Emissary (adventure mode) completion.

Brawl is one of those games that you look back on fondly but isn’t that fun to go back to.  Everything feels so slow and clunky compared to Ultimate, which makes even characters I’m comfortable with significantly less fun to play as.  Still, SSE is pretty enjoyable, primarily for its cutscenes.  Seeing your favorite characters interact in silly or cool or dramatic ways is just a lot of fun, and the story is just flat out good, with a lot of threads that run parallel and then end up tying together and a decent amount of twists.

The actual gameplay of SSE is rough, with some uninteresting level geometry that sometimes borders on unfair and a handful of enemies designed primarily to frustrate the player.  But sometimes it’s alright.  The final level, a giant maze of connected areas which needs to be full-cleared to progress to the final boss, is actually one of the better parts of the experience.  It’s not perfectly designed, but navigating it is fun and surprisingly intuitive.  And the enemies, despite being frustrating to fight against at worst, have really cool designs that gives the game its own identity.  I think the biggest complaint I’ve seen leveraged against SSE is that its enemies are original creations when they could have been pulled from the individual IPs being represented, but I like the new enemies.  I kind of wish there was a mixture of both, especially because it’s odd how only Mario enemies are represented alongside the SSE enemies.

Overall, I do genuinely think Subspace Emissary is worth going back to, even if I felt myself fighting against the game a lot (I still don’t know if I was having controller issues or if Brawl is just like that).  I wish we had something closer to it, particularly the full story plus cutscenes with every weirdo character interacting, in a more modern Smash game.

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40. Old Man’s Journey

Release: 2017, Android/iOS/PC Beaten: July 7th, iOS (Apple Arcade) Playtime: 1h 31m

I’m always excited to play a mobile game designed for mobile devices, because they usually work really well within their limitations.  Old Man’s Journey works within its limitations (albeit with just a tiny amount of finicky jank), but it also doesn’t really do anything spectacular.  It’s a sweet story with some nice art and a good overall presentation.  And, like, I don’t know what I was expecting besides that, so I guess it didn’t disappoint me.  I think my highest hope was that it would really move me, and it’s touching for sure, but my strongest emotion was feeling like the ending was not earned, which is a pretty bad note to end on.  It’s partially the consequence of their decision to present a story without words, so some of the growth I was looking for was probably presented offscreen.  (Can you tell I’m squirming around in an attempt to not just say what I didn’t like about the ending?  Even for a 5-year old game, I don’t want to spoil things in a review.)

Overall, I wasn’t really missing out by not playing the game at its launch window when it was receiving its initial praise.  It’s a fine experience, probably good enough to warrant the ~2hr runtime, but it’s not worth seeking out.  If you have Apple Arcade and want to kill a few hours on a sentimental puzzle game, this might be worth having a go at.

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39. Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

Release: 2020, iOS/PC Beaten: July 6th, Steam Deck (Epic Games) Playtime: 3h 29m

I really enjoyed Alba.  The game is primarily a low-stakes adventure where you explore a small island, repair things and help animals, and catalogue the wildlife.  There’s a really straightforward narrative about environmental protection which works pretty well because of the nature of the game being purely “explore the world because you like the world.”  For the majority of the game, you can interact with things as much or as little as you want, with some simple objectives that need to be completed for progression.  The characters are all really cute, not really having a lot of depth, but not really needing it.  The environment is pleasant, especially with the nature sounds, and the ability to repair broken objects or pick up litter feels really satisfying.

I think my favorite thing about the game is that it doesn’t attempt to do anything spectacular.  You play as a little kid on vacation with lofty goals and aspirations to protect nature.  And then you explore an island, dense with foliage and wildlife, and you bird-watch.  One great experience was realizing about halfway into my playtime that the guide they give you for cataloguing animals also shows you the basic appearance of animals you haven’t found yet, and the sounds they make.  So I started trying to find birds by listening for their specific chirps.  It just felt really good.  A majority of the story beats land really well, and there’s a few times where character dynamics really made me smile.

I’m kind of going all over the place with my thoughts because this is a difficult game to review.  It’s the type of game that just expects you to approach it with an open-mind and to allow yourself to get sucked up into a feeling of childish wonder.  It’s not a complex or challenging experience, and it won’t engage you unless you’re willing to accept it on its own terms, but it really clicked for me.

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38. Lunistice

Release: 2022, PC/Switch Beaten: July 5th, Steam Deck Playtime: 2h 6m

Lunistice is a short, cute, and inexpensive game with what seems to be a decent amount of replay value.  I got the bad ending (I guess?) because I didn’t realize there were collectibles I missed in every level.  I might go back to it, but I had troubles with the controls/platforming on more precise areas, so I don’t know if I feel compelled to fully complete the game.  The highlight is the art, which is gorgeous.

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37. Portal

Release: 2007, PC/Xbox 360 Beaten: July 3rd, Steam Deck Playtime: 1h 39m

I played this because I wanted to see how FPS games felt using the Steam Deck’s touchpad.  My main takeaway from that experience is that the touchpad is preferable to a joystick for FPS camera controls, but pales in comparison to a mouse+keyboard.  Even touchpad in tandem with gyro was still rough.  I just wanted to know if I could comfortably play FPS games on my Steam Deck (I’m really not used to FPS games on controllers anymore), and I think the answer is... well... comfortably?  Not completely.  It’s mildly uncomfortable.  But it’s tolerable.  I’ll still lean towards PC.

As for the game itself?  I mean.  It’s Portal.  I love this game.  It’s one of the best games ever made.  I did have a few new realizations/experiences.

I noticed that Valve cleverly hints at the ending segment by progressively making the “behind-the-scenes” sections more “behind-the-scene-y.”  Broken catwalks and locked doors start appearing between the cracks and you realize there’s a whole world behind the curtain, which leads up to the finale clicking into place because they basically showed you it was possible.  I also still find the humor exceptional, but I think I appreciate it even more now.  The dialogue in the final boss fight is astoundingly funny.