Last post for this year

Not that it is surprising with just two more days left ^^’:

• Teslagrad 2
  

  8 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Resident Evil 4
  

  97 hours playtime

  46 of 46 achievements

Teslagrad 2: So after having “replayed” the remastered version of the first Teslagrad in my last post, I was now up to the task of Teslagrad 2. Same as the first game, it is puzzle platformer. Though, the game areal is a lot larger, more complex. And the movement is more fluid. Right from the beginning, you have the Lightning Step and you get a lot more abilities to move fast which is quite nice. The main puzzles aren’t that difficult and the surrounding ones aren’t that difficult either. Exploration is interesting because right from the beginning, there are some branch-off ways you can look into although you get stuck pretty fast because of missing abilities. Story-wise it is as abstract as the first game mostly told visually and supported by scrolls you can collect. In contrats to Teslagrad 1, the Teslamancer are not shown as a “noble” force alone anymore but also with their issues. The game also relies a bit on the third game from the publisher (I think they share the same protagonist).
The game doesn’t come without issues though. Movement is not always as precise as I would like for a platforming game. Bosses are often annoying. And there are moments, I wasn’t sure what I had to do. And whole exploring is interesting, you often face a missing abilities wall which makes you think that you should play through the game first before going for the bonus stuff. However, the best movement ability - the double jump - is hidden behind a bonus section, so that you only get it late into the game and just for the bonus things which is ….. a bit wasted.
What I liked though was the “quick travel” system which uses steel wires, you can move along as lightning bolt. You can find harpoons across the map, creating new wires, to reach the spot again. Though, even this is a bit annoying as it means you have to travel around certain points. Especially, since not all places are easy to get back even with the wire system. If you are searching for things without guide, this means a lot of backtracking. Achievement-wise, there are some story-achievements. But most of them are tied to finding the bonus abilities and the scrolls. I did it without guide and managed to find, I think about 80 of 81 scrolls and 3 of 4 bonus abilites. The last one I had to look up. It would be nice if the game gives you the position of the bonus abilities after clearing the game once. Because after getting all four you get the secret map, showing the position of the scrolls. Would have been helpful earlier. Overall, still a good and interesting game. Better than the first Teslagrad in my opinion, despite its faults.
Also, I have no idea why achievements are not found by BLAEO O.o They game definetely has them.

Resident Evil 4: The remake one, I think in my old posts I still have the comment about the original I replayed some years ago. So, I got lucky and won this game. Otherwise, I wouldn’t play it in release year. I think, most people know the game, so I don’t have to comment much on that one. Overall, the remake is done well. Even if some design and story decisions are a bit weird. For the most part, it felt the same. To me at least. Level design has been improved (although it still has old weird aspects) and there are some bonus sections to explore.
Achievement-wise, the game demands a lot from you. Replaying the game several times is a must like for most Resident Evil games (RE0 and RE1 have partially the very same achievements): Play through with no healing, not talking to the vendor, only using knifes and pistols, play on the highest difficulty, play on the highest difficulty on New Game and with only a few saves ….. Most of this is built into the game design though. So for some achievements, you can use your NG+ save, meaning all equipment from end of game, making for a rather easy experience. For the most difficult achievement, you are allowed to use bonus weapons which can be upgraded mid-game to unlimited ammo when doing enough sidequests. So, the difficulty is getting to that point. And for the main game, this seemed reasonable. For the DLC - Separate Ways which I bought this sale (although not on sale since still fresh) - though it is a bit different. Not sure if the three weeks between main game and DLC where I didn’t played made the difference. But Separate Ways felt a lot more difficult to me. I got all achievements from the DLC normally, outside of the last one. Getting S+ rank on Professional. The game has a lot of narrow spaces where you can die quite fast and the bosses are simple ammo eaters (more so than the main game). So, I came to the El Gigante fight and hadnt enough ammo to kill him. And since I didnt want to waste more ammo, I had to replay the factory with two chainsaw villagers over and over again. The game also did not drop any submachine gun ammo for me at all, even replaying the section ten times. In the end I gave in and just bought the Upgrade Ticket DLC, allowing me to get the infinita ammo on the Chicago Sweeper two chapters earlier. Then, I could finish the game easily. Luckily, while there are in-game challenges for no healing/only knifes&pistol runs, Capcom was nice enough to not make them an achievement. Appreciated, because I think I had enough RE4. I will probably deinstall pretty soon unless I hear they intend to do another DLC for it. Overall a very good game with a good atmosphere. But achievement-wise a bit exhausting even if multiple replays are baked in the system. In my “defense”, I played the game with controller, as such my aim is not as stable as with K&M. This might be the reason why I ran out of ammo more easily in the Separate Ways DLC :P

And now back to my favourite game. Deciding what to play next. Probably make another map for Crystal Caves, playing through One-Shot I also bought in the sale. Maybe I will buy something else or start working down those everlasting games in my unplayed section. Maybe take another look at my shadow-backlog. Want to try some more shorter games 2024 since my Steam review confirmed that I played less different games this year.

Anyway, for a better and great 2024! See you next year.