New Year, New Games

Just some quick words on my latest games. In unusual manner I have not completed most of them this time for different reasons:

• Spirit of the North
  

  8 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• Cats in Time
  

  9 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• Mana Spark
  

  28 hours playtime

  19 of 20 achievements

• Giraffe and Annika
  

  15 hours playtime

  31 of 33 achievements

• Crypt of the NecroDancer
  

  182 hours playtime

  44 of 53 achievements

Spirit of the North: I saw this game a few years back on the playstation and it seemed quite nice visually. So as I saw it during the sale I thought why not. While it is a visually impressive game in terms of landscape, it is also somehow empty because on most of your journey you don’t encounter any other life outside of spirits from dead humans and a fox. Which is a bit of a shame. Gameplay self is running around in more or less linear levels, solving simple puzzles with your spirit power by activating shrines, portals and some easy platforming elements. As bonus you can search for staves and bring them to their deceased owner. All in all a relaxing experience which can be a bit boring though. As said, nice to look at and not very demanding outside of the final level where you are running around a giant map with very few pointers where to go to. Achievement-wise also on the easy side with lots of story-related achievements and each chapter can be selected afterwards to get missed stuff. Also the lost staves are shown if you found them. If you like cute foxes and need some relaxing trip in the nothern land, go for it.

Cats in Time: I had a lot of fun with this and so had my girlfriend which rarely plays something. Again, a very simple puzzle game where you objective is to find all 10 cats per level. A few cats are out there directly in the open while some others need solving of basic logic puzzles by shoving levers, pressing switches or finding and using items. Levels consist mainly of one large building which you can rotate to access all the different puzzles. There are 7 worlds with 4 levels each and 4 additional bonus levels of different themes. Very enjoyable, hardly frustrating and very cute cats.

Mana Spark: This will end up on my pile of shame of uncompleted games. The final achievement (in a neglect of research) is simply to ridiculous and I even tried it a few time. The basic game is actually quite enjoyable. A simple rogue-lite game where you can chose one of four characters (actually only one at the beginning and the others will be unlocked easily) and then have to travers multiple levels of a dungeon. Game is more on the slower side with movement being slow and attacks needing to be precise or otherwise the enemies will take you down quite easily. On your way through the dungeon you get power-ups to increase your power. The dungeons consists of separate rooms where you have to kill all enemies before proceeding to the next room. The enemies have set patterns which need to be exploited and as a bonus a few enemies can work together, creating new patterns although it doesn’t happen to often. But even with the power-ups the final boss fight is very harsh which is also bound to some bugs making it impossible to win. Although there is a clear winning strategy on all characters to beat it (which consists of stacking attack speed and getting the freezing item).
Achievement-wise most is fair game with beating the game with every character and beating each sub-dungeon without damage (annoying but doable). The missing achievement though is a pure insult. It is Spicy Burrito mode which not only takes away your base power-ups. No it removes also all in-dungeon power-ups and reduces your health to half a heart making you a one-hit wonder. Which gives you the option to chose the close!-range attack warrior, getting some easy hits; the slow shooting sitting duck hunter which doesn’t move for a second while shooting; the faster but weaker guard which can move but needs twice the hits or the tamer which runs around trying to survive while his dog does all the damage because the bumerang doesn’t. The first two sub-dungeons can be completed more or less easily. But starting with third sub-dungeon many enemies per room need a dozen or more hits with narrow navigation area and multiple enemies. I won’t even imagine doing the third boss fight, not even thinking about the final one. Yea, this is a challenge as intended but it is a bullshit one. And so far I have doubts many people have done this legit. Astats insist on five people having done this. But looking at there unlock times and total playtime I am pretty sure, they have cheated it.

Giraffe and Annika: Oh, this was enjoyable. You play Annika, a small cat-girl in a 3d platformer, exploring the island on the search for Lisa. All this is done while getting help a fried called Giraffe. There is a lot to explore, some minor sub-quests, a cute story and graphic-style and some dungeons. As a change in pace, the dungeon ends with boss fights with a rhythm game. Though you can do this on easy where it is hard to fail. If you are going for the achievements though ….. you need to beat all of them on hard with a S-rank which is challenging already. An impression of this can be found in this totally unrelated to me video link. Reason the game is beaten but not completed is because of a timed achievement bound to Christmas. And I bought it after and played it after. I could technically switch the system clock but meh. Will wait a year (just need to remember ^^’).

Crypt of the Necrodancer - Synchrony: I don’t think I have to explain much about this game as it should be widely known. A rogue-lite dungeon crawler where you and the monsters move at each beat with set patterns. Simple learning, hell in mastering, especially with all the additional characters. Last time i stopped playing I had 34 of 44 achievements. With the rest simply being out of my skill level. And then five yeary after a NEW DLC dropped introducing more characters. So I challenged the Crypt one more time and actually managed to beat all new characters and their challenges as well as some other minor new achievements like Aria No Beat mode and another character. Now, I am standing at 44 of 53 achievements still missing the same bullshit difficulty stuff. Great game though and there are people which actually can beat this fairly. Not me though. DLC is still early access, so they might add more or change things. But for now I have completed the DLC.

And that’s it. Next will probably be Cross Code. Or maybe I try some more mana spark or go for one or two other achievements in No More Room in Hell. Or finally back to RE0? I think Cross Code is the most likely.