Early December post

Steam:

• Pony Island
  

  2 hours playtime

  13 of 20 achievements

Ok, so my PC progress this month is kinda pathetic (but I have a bunch of excuses for that! :p), but thankfully not completely non-existant. Pony Island turned out to be a truly unique and rather surprising experience. I might have mentioned it before, but I absolutely adore when a game brutally destroy the 4th wall, like Pony Island likes to do. Without going into too much detail, because of potential spoilers, Pony Island is a game within a game and consists of 2 “gameplay modes”. The first one being the actual Pony Island arcade game created by a truly particular developer, in which you majestically flap your demonic wings and annihilate stuff with your highly destructive lasers. The second one is sort of a small puzzle “hacking” game where your ultimate goal is to destroy Pony Island’s core files and finally free yourself from this madness.
The game has a thing for messing with you by means like performing fake crashes and has an incredibly particular sense of humour that should definitely be experienced by most.

PS4:

So now, we move onto the excuses. :p December 6th was a cold and snowy day here, but this certainly didn’t stop me from rushing into my fav console store and asking if they still have some copies of The Last Guardian left. And indeed they did. Someone made the comparison that The Last Guardian is like Ico, but you’re Yorda and there’s definitely some truth in this statement. The relation between you and the creature (known as Trico) is simply incredible. Trico isn’t simply a mean of achieving your goal, which is returning to your village after finding yourself in “The Nest”, he is your companion and as dependant on the protagonist, as the protagonist is on Trico. Throughout the whole journey you assume the more “passive” role in the relationship, guiding Trico through more or less hostile environments and thus enabling both of you the possibility to advance. Gameplay is mostly puzzle/platform oriented with various combat sections being handled almost exclusively by your companion. Sadly though, sometimes Trico’s AI derps out a little bit and he start wandering around cluelessly, but you can’t be mad at such an adorable face for long. :)
It’s a stunning game from both a emotional and graphical standpoint. The environments are truly breath-taking and Trico’s whole design, which according to the director represents all the childhood memories of his past pets, is on point. Many people have issues with the boy’s design, but I honestly feel that this is a great representation of how alien this world is to him and alien he is to this world.
I truly love it so much, and in case anyone asks, yes, I obviously did cry…
My only real big problem with the game are the trophies. xD I honestly feel like it’s going to take me at least 4 playthroughs to get a Platinum in it (one already done, one complete leisure, one no-death and one speedrun).

Speaking of Plats, I got one in Crimes and Punishments! :D It was a relatively laid back game which I played to just kinda relax a bit. The cases are interesting although rather easy, with some more obvious than others, but I enjoyed it. Sadly, I had the feeling that the overall background story of the game could be handled with way more attention than it actually was, so when the ending came I was kinda like “Uhm, yeah, sure, that’s a thing we’re doing now. Whatever you say.”
I guess it’s one of those “simply good” and rather casual games that are worth it on sale and that’s kinda it. Still, it was an enjoyable title even if I traded it away a day after completing it, but shush :p

Those aren’t all the games that I’ve finished this month, but seeing how the title which I skipped in this post is basically my GOTY 2016, I feel that it deserves it’s separate post which I’ll write on Dec 31/Jan 1. :)

Anyway, wishing you all a Happy New Year from the silly little owl. I^v^I