But where it really shines is the meta game: most levels take place inside people’s heads, and reflect their inner damage. It is one of those nebulous “puzzle platformers”, meaning it involves both jumping and carrying things around until they can be used as keys. So let’s talk primarily about Psychonauts, which is an excellent game. On the other hand, mentioning a game on this blog makes its purchase tax deductible to me. Insulting things is easy, creating things is hard. On one hand, I try to stay away from negative reviews. Author Aceso Under Glass Posted on ApTags reviews, videogames Tim Schafer Videogame Roundup If you’re looking for something with similar themes, less terror, and better puzzles, I strongly recommend The Swapper, which remains one of my favorite games of all time. I was intrigued enough by the story to look up the ending. It’s more just testing what the environment will let you do until the problem somehow goes away. I thought I was cheating myself by looking up solutions so often, but then I solved a few myself and there was still no sense of satisfaction. Both Amnesia and Portal have puzzles so you have something to do while running from monsters and…eh. If we’re assuming the former, the problem is I’ve played a lot of puzzle games since Amnesia and my standards have gone up. I don’t know if my tastes have changed since I played Amnesia or SOMA just wasn’t as good, but I stopped playing two hours in.
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SOMA was sold as “Like Amnesia but sci-fi and underwater” and I love all of those things, so I had very high hopes. I said I wanted to get this done while the game was still in a Humble Bundle, and technically I succeeded, but it turns out it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to recommend it. If this very specific kind of zen appeals to you, now is a good time to check it out.Īuthor Aceso Under Glass Posted on JTags reviews, videogames Review: SOMA The same thing happened with Stardew Valley- I thought I was playing a fun game about farming I could play at my own pace and then I learned I was on a timeline to get married and build a house and I didn’t get the energy to pick it up again until it was updated to let you continue after judgement day.Īnyways, Dark Souls:Remastered is currently 40% off at Humble Bundle ( sponsored link). I didn’t consciously choose to quit then, and there were other factors like “my friend stopped playing” and “nothing is as fun as Blighttown”, but it played a role.
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Watching some playthroughs, I learned that interactions with NPCs could have permanent consequences. Even losing my boss XP was a non-event, it just meant I had to spend some time farming. My bad moves couldn’t poison the game because I was meant to die every 5 minutes. This could be incredibly frustrating, but I found it zen. Then you get mauled by rats before you can make it to a save point, and die again at the hands of the same zombies you’ve killed 40 times, thus removing any chance of using the XP you received for killing the boss. Three days later you kill enough to actually clear the area and find the boss, who you spend another three days attempting to kill. You run around, you kill some zombies, you die, you kill the same zombies again.
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It’s relaxing, it occupies my hands while listening to podcasts, and it helps me think by powering up the sort-and-organize modules of my brain without occupying them.ĭark Souls turns out to just as good for this if not better. For hard levels this can take days and occasionally weeks. I refuse to give them money, so for me Candy Crush is basically an exercise in pulling the lever until I happen to get a winnable configuration.
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This would seem to make me a poor candidate for Dark Souls, a game known for killing you a lot.īut there’s a kind of game that doesn’t have this problem: matching games like Candy Crush. It’s not a need to win exactly, more like I care more about building a thing than winning and once the foundation is cracked, the building is worthless. When playing games where suboptimal moves affect you later, I tend to quit and restart as soon as I realize I’ve made one. I am not a good sport when it comes to video games.