December 2020: Final Wrap-up

This is a game that I had been meaning to play for more than a year, but I had audio problems with it that took quite a bit of troubleshooting to solve. While some games are playable without audio, this is definitely not one of them. I eventually found the solution on the game's forums which only required some minor edits to the ini files and I was able to enjoy the game.

The game itself is intriguing not for its story, or its graphics, or its fighting mechanics--although these are all enjoyable aspects of the game--but rather for its attempts to allow players to experience what living with mental illness is like. The protagonist-- Senua-- has psychosis and therefore progresses through the game experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations; the line between fantasy and reality is frequently blurred not only for her but for the player. The game designers consulted extensively with mental health experts (most notably a professor of neuroscience from Cambridge University) and individuals living with psychosis themselves to create as realistic a depiction of what it is like to live with this illness.

Many typical game elements (the existence of puzzles, the friendly ai that helps you figure out how to fight/interact with the world) is explained through the lens of her illness. Many people with psychosis look at the world for patterns and images, and this becomes a key element in game play as you attempt to solve puzzles based around recurring patterns. Similarly, the voices Senua hears (and you should wear headphones to fully experience them) are more than just additional narrators. They do provide plot information for the player through their encouragement or taunting of Senua, but they also pipe up in fights to warn her of approaching danger.

The game can get a bit labored at times; cut scenes are often too lengthy making the game seem plodding despite its overall short duration and the plot isn't going to surprise anyone. The pattern recognition puzzles can be tricky to line up properly so that the game actually registers that you've found the pattern (this was particularly annoying during a sequence when you are being chased by an enemy you cannot fight and therefore need to memorize the patterns quickly). Despite these issues, it is a game worth playing if only because it is one the few genuine attempts to portray the mentally ill as fully realized people rather than the 2D villains media so frequently paints them as. The experience is quite unlike any other game out there and its worth taking the single afternoon it takes to complete.

This game has been in my backlog for a while; I actually tried its sequel-- "Beholder 2" -- first but I found this game much more enjoyable. When I started playing it, I didn't have the DLC but I purchased it midway through my playthrough because I enjoyed the game so much. It has a very simple premise and very simple game mechanics. You play as the landlord of an apartment building in a dystopian regime where you must balance your personal morals, the needs of your family, and your obligations to the state. Mechanically, you must balance quests timers, reputation points, and your finances to progress and earn rewards. You spend most of the game looking at the same screen (you can zoom in and scroll up-and-down a bit, but that's it) but surprisingly that doesn't detract from the game's enjoyment. There are quite a few endings (you can check out achievements to see how many) and which ones you get are determined by many different choices you made throughout your play. If you're achievement hunting, the reloads to obtain different endings can get the tiniest bit monotonous, but overall I'd give this game a solid 4/5 stars.

Not a lot to say about this game. It's been in my library for ages but I never got around to finishing it. It's a redone version of a classic point-and-click game and the gameplay is typical for the genre. I enjoyed the humor well enough, but it was nothing spectacular. Overall I'd give it a 2.5/5 but if you are a particular fan of the genre, then you'd like rate it higher.

This was a game I won via the GGPlayers website and one that I have been making progress on over a few months. However, this December I decided that I wanted to fully beat it so I added it to my monthly plan. I have only played the single-player campaign, so there will be no discussion on the co-op aspects.

First, the negatives. This is one of those games that expects you to be online the entire time you play. Unlike some games, you can play it in offline mode (by putting steam into offline mode) but that messes with your game time and occasionally achievements. Why does this matter? Lag. So. Much. Lag. My computer has specs well above anything Borderlands requires (for comparison, I have no difficulty running Cyberpunk 2077 on it), and yet the stuttering was enormous. Fights were sometimes completely impossible to complete because every 2-3 seconds the game would stutter. Other times, I was able to play for hours at a time with no issue. My internet connection was theoretically fine, but Borderlands did not like it. If I played in offline mode, however, it would run smoothly.

My other main complaint with the game was how it respawned enemies. I had several occasions where the game experienced a bug of some sort and I had to reload (phasing through solid objects and becoming stuck was fairly common). But when I did so, my location was not saved and all the enemies I had killed had respawned. This meant a monotonous fight through the exact same hordes I had just fought. While some level of monotony is expected in a looter-shooter like this, the ones that arose merely because I had to restart the game were extremely frustrating.

Now on to the positives. I love the artwork. The hand-drawn, cartoonish style is gorgeous and unique. The characters are colorful (both literally and figuratively) and great fun to interact with. For every dull fetch quest, there is another hilarious easter egg ridden one. I caught endless references and- given how pop culture illiterate I am-- I no doubt missed twice as many as I noticed. There was lots of fun loot to collect and hours of swapping out different gear. The DLCs were basically identical to the base game, just adding new entertaining characters to meet. I'll probably never 100% the game, but I do intend to come back and play it some more in the future, even though I have beaten the main game and some of the DLCs.