This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I have mentioned ad nauseum in these write-ups that I was a huge fan of adventure games growing up. I did grow up in the “golden age” of adventure games, and from a parental decision it certainly made more financial sense to buy an adventure game that can appeal to more people in the household, then something specifically catered to one of the kids. I played everything under the sun that we had, including games that were certainly not meant for my age range (7^th guest, Gabriel Knight, etc.) but I figure my parents didn’t mind because they could make a leap that spending time playing adventure games was pseudo education as it worked on some skills that I wouldn’t be honing while playing Doom or Wolfenstein (still played those too). One of the games that was towards the tail end of the “golden age” was The Dig.

To set the scene, The Dig was a game that went through development hell ever since Mr. Spielberg came up with the idea of the story. I’m not one to really dive into the development of games, because while it can certainly give some background as to why elements of the game come out the way they do, it doesn’t really jive with what this series is about. I’m not about to get into an argument where IF Duke Nukem: Forever had a better development, that it might be better than Goldeneye 64. Nope, we are only grading what is on the paper that was turned in. So let’s take a look at that paper.

The Dig starts by showing that an asteroid is about to collide with Earth, a crew is quickly assembled and their job is to essentially blow the Asteroid off course with carefully laid explosives. You take on the role of Commander Boston who leads a team to do just that mission. After planting the explosives, you and your team realize that there is something not quite right about the asteroid. It’s hollow and has strange symbols about it, and through messing around inside the asteroid, learn that it is actually a craft that packs up (with you inside) and flies away to its home planet. Now, you and your team must try to investigate the world you suddenly find yourself on and see if it is at all possible to find your way home.

Before we get deeper into the story, which we will need to do. I need to stress that this game has an amazing atmosphere to it. Everything feels cinematic and awe-inspiring. Exploring the planet, taking in everything that is other-worldly or alien, finding the technology they left behind, all of that was incredibly interesting to do. Cutscenes of traversing the planet in the transportation orb or unlocking new rooms gave this game a sense of wonder that I don’t get from exploring other adventure games. All of that atmosphere only grows when accompanied by the music of Michael Land, as the score fits perfectly with the vibe of the game. I still felt that wonder almost 30 years from the release of the original game and I still found it all very engaging to experience despite remembering a lot of the twists and turns of the story and where it goes.

Of course an Adventure game lives and dies by its puzzles and sadly I think The Dig’s puzzles are underwhelming. In terms of difficulty, the puzzles skew more difficult and obtuse then previous Lucas-arts games. You can chalk some of that up to, trying to fit puzzles into an alien world, so that the puzzles seem alien to the player… which works, but it just makes solving them that much more difficult. Early on you have to control a drone by giving it directions from a control panel, but none of the buttons give you any clues as to what each does. So, not only are you trying to work out where this drone needs to go, but now you have to work out what each button does so you can combine the two and make it work together. Not insurmountable by any means, but it now feels like I have to decipher the rules of the puzzle and then the solution, when compared to other games where I just have to figure out solutions. Perhaps the worst puzzle for me, which is a seemingly rather easy one, involves tracking down a buried treasure using an orb. The problem is, you don’t actually know the rules that the Orb operates under. All you can do is take it out of your inventory, and if you do so on 90% of the available screens, it just spins around and your character says “can’t get a good reading.” I didn’t solve it until I backtracked to an area that you think you are presumably done with and pull it out before it starts working, and the only reason I backtracked that far was because I was at a loss for all the other puzzles happening at the time. A good adventure game, has multiple puzzles going at the same time. The ability to solve those puzzles vary, but eventually you get to a point where a domino moment happens and you can close the loop on 3 or 4 puzzles in a row, and it creates a nice feeling in your brain zone. The Dig does the same thing, by stringing along multiple puzzles at a time, but because of the obtuseness of the puzzles you never know if you are one step away, or if you are just doing the puzzle wrong. Going back to that orb puzzle for a second, I didn’t know that the item I found from using the orb belonged to another puzzle, because the logic connecting those didn’t fit in my brain. It might make sense now that I know the answer, but it didn’t click until I resorted to the “try everything on everything” solution that I hate doing.

Now that’s not to say all puzzles are bad, because they aren’t, but they certainly skewed harder than some of the contemporaries. Hell, people really hate the turtle puzzle in this game with a passion and while I certainly won’t defend it, it is a puzzle that personally wasn’t a top 3 bad puzzle in the game. The problem specifically for this game, is that even the easiest of puzzles is still tedious as it adds unnecessary junk to the system. Locked doors require a code to open, those codes are usually 4 symbols of different shape or color. So maybe the code is blue triangle, red square, red triangle, and green star. Should be simple solution, but you don’t know which door that is to, so you manually input that same code into each and every door you come across, just to find the one single one that it opens. Why couldn’t this puzzle have been solved by you “using” the item on the door, and it working that way? I have no idea. So, instead we take something that should be a simple solution and we add an annoying layer on top.

We have to get back to the story, because I would argue that the two most important aspects of adventure games are the story and puzzles. While on the planet you have a crew of three people, you only ever play as one, but at any time you can “call” the other two to talk which can presumably help you solve solutions. In theory this is a good idea, but I can’t think of any help the crewmates actually gave me about a puzzle I was struggling on. What really happens is you call them up, ask about an item or room in the dialogue section, and they say either “I don’t know, seems alien” or “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.” Those aren’t great hints when I am trying to solve getting a tram up and running. Ok, back to the highlights of the story. You realize the planet you are on must have had intelligent life on it, but you can’t find anything outside of a few small animals. You eventually stumble upon a crystal that can raise the dead, but it also comes with drawbacks, and eventually very late in the game you get to converse with an alien. I’m bringing those up quickly, because the real part of the story I want to talk about is how bad the ending is and I need to get that baseline out there so that the ending makes a little bit of sense. Through events you learn that using the crystals on a dead thing will slowly drive it mad, and make it addicted to the high it gets from the crystals, you witness this firsthand as one of your crewmates befalls this fate. As you start reaching the pinnacle of the game, the other crewmate is like “hey if I die, don’t bring me back, just leave me to die.” Wouldn’t you know it…. they die, and you actually then have the option to bring them back or not. There are two different endings to the game that all hinges on this choice. The ending if you honor your friend’s wishes is the most Deus Ex Machina bullshit that results in not only you finding your way back to Earth via a new magical spaceship, but the crew that you left dead on the foreign planet being revived with no ill effects to come back to Earth with you. Not only do you travel back to Earth a survivor, but now get to bring back the knowledge of ancient alien races (because they are saved by your shenanigans), you have bettered yourself, the aliens, and Earth because you pushed a few crystals at the right time.

It is such a letdown for a story that I think had promise with some edits. I think the concept of you going back a broken man who lost some of his crew on an alien planet is far more interesting then the 100% super Mega Happy ending, where everyone is better and now you have cool new alien friends. Your crew’s death should be a warning to Earthlings that aliens exist, but to not meddle in things you don’t understand, etc. etc. I’ve beleaguered the point enough, I think the ending sucks (no matter which one you get) and it reaffirms my belief that I need to complete games before I rank them, because playing this for an hour or two and not seeing the ending would have placed it higher on the list then where it will eventually fall.

Now, I spent a lot of this writeup pretty much crapping on the game. I didn’t think the puzzles were as fun to figure out (or intuitive) as its contemporaries and I thought that the story biffed it pretty hard at the end, which should be damning for an adventure game. A point and click adventure game with seemingly bad story and bad puzzles, should be a recipe for disaster, but I somehow still ended up liking the game. Some of it can be chalked up to nostalgia, and I will own that piece, but I do think the game nailed the atmosphere, sense of exploration, and look to the game (within context of the time). I would never put it on a pedestal above some of the great games of the time, but the feeling of scope and the production values of this game made other games feel kiddie in comparison. That is not all good, as I think that bloated production and scope is why it took so long to make, why it had such a troubled time, and ultimately why it probably has a rushed ending and some bad puzzles, but I do remember the feeling of booting that game up for the first time and thinking I was playing a real movie.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: So how do I rate this game with all things considered, and while trying to keep my nostalgia bias in check? It’s a game that will always hold a special place in my heart, but I know that it isn’t in the peak range of adventure games, but not in the depths either. It’s a game whose promise was greater than what it delivered and has not aged particularly well. People playing it for the first time now, aren’t going to be wowed by the atmosphere, the big names attached to the project, or even by the production value that it had for the time being. There is no way to simulate that for a new audience. So, while The Dig might live on in my personal top 10 adventure game list, where nostalgia is king.. In reality the game charts much closer to the middle then I would have expected. I have it ranked as the 70th Greatest Game of All Time out of 171 total games. It sits between Psychonauts (69th) and Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (71st).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Theatre of Sorrow 2) Operation Darkness 3) Vampire Survivors

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I am hearing a lot of talk about Pikmin 4 these days, so I should throw my thoughts in to the ring… but I haven’t played Pikmin, so instead lets talk about Tinykin. I think it’s crazy that Tinykin is a year old already, because gun to my head I would have told you that it came out this year, but that could be how the passage of time works for me now. Not that anything I have to say about the game is particularly timely, so no big deal there.

In Tinykin you play the role of a scientist/explorer who gets sucked up into a new dimension and must figure out a way to get home. When you come to, you are in what appears to be an abandoned house that is inhabited by tinykins, but for the purpose of the story they might as well be aliens. You meet what would be an elder, who thinks he has a way to send you back home, but you need to gather certain items that will allow him to complete his invention. The story is ok, but it is mainly a backdrop in order to get you to the main draw of the game, collecting.

See that abandoned house that you are in, is doing the “tiny person – big world” style that we all love from Pikmin and those Mario levels. Each room in the house is a different level, but since we are playing with scale, each level is jam packed to explore and find stuff in. Yes, each level will have one of the main components for the invention in it, but they all require you to actually work for it, which translates into accomplishing some minor task that will result in the characters giving up the item. That might involve you getting a Stereo to work, or throwing the perfect party, but what it really involves is solving a bunch of smaller puzzles that will add up to that big one. For instance getting that Stereo to work might involve finding and bringing batteries back to it, or connecting it to a power outlet. Now how do you solve these issues, you ask? Well with your Tinykin friends. In each level, you will come across pods that contain Tinykins who depending on their abilities can either be used to carry things, run an electric current to something, explode, or create a makeshift ladder for you to climb. These tinykin are everywhere and you will need a set amount in order to accomplish each goal. Those batteries might require 10 purple Tinykin in order to lift and carry the batteries back to the stereo. That obstacle in the distance might require 20 Red ones to blow it up, and so on. You won’t start any level with these amounts, so you will need to explore each level in order to gather the necessary Tinykin in order to complete each level.

Of course while you are out and about, there are other things to collect that will either help you during your adventure or are just regular old collectables to stare at in a vault. Relics, chunks of Nectar, Optional mission items, costumes, are all to be found in the level (well costumes are earned from winning races, but I digress). Since these numbers appear right on the map screen, you can see how many of each category you have collected in said level. This is really what the game is, the drive to collect everything in these levels. To be clear, you can beat these levels in the game sense by not 100% everything, and you are not punished if you are missing a Tinykin, or piece of Nectar as you will eventually be driven batty because you are missing 5-10 items in a whole map that you swear you have looked everywhere for. However, the game is short, and fairly easy to complete if you are just looking to mainline the missions, but I think that might miss the point. If we go back to an early example about getting a stereo working, you might only need 10 purple ones to lift the batteries, and the level might actually have 20-30 purple tinykins to find, so you can beat the game with doing 50% or even less if you are looking to mainline it.

A perfectly normal way to play the game, but I would suggest that you are missing some of the charm. This game is a pleasure to look at, has a very cozy game feel, and some of the joy is exploring these levels and seeing what was created in them. In the bathroom you will see a toilet paper tower that you can climb. In a kid’s room there are hanging planets from the ceiling, that with skill you can jump on and navigate high above the map. There might not be a giant reward for checking all these boxes outside of achievements (in-game or external), but inhabiting the world and explore all the nooks and crannies are primarily what the joy is. If you don’t vibe with collecting or the cozy vibes, then you can just give this game a full pass.

Gameplay wise you don’t actually control any of the Tinykins you come across. Simply bumping into their pods will cause them to follow you for the entire level, but you will only control your little explorer through the worlds. Outside of moving and jumping, you can do a little float that will allow you to navigate the world easier, which can be expanded in each level if you fulfill a quest from the nectar merchant, and use a soap board to slide around shortcuts. While there is no combat in the game, you can still die from falling from too high of an area or wading into water for too long. Death is meaningless, as you instantly respawn prior to your fall or water walk, with all the same Tinykin in tow. Much like another game, you do have to physically throw your Tinykin at an object to have them complete an action, as they do not have a mind of their own. While this can occasionally be frustrating when setting up the electric current Tinykins, overall this process is pretty painless.

I really enjoyed Tinykin, but I really don’t have much else to say about the game. Each level was a joy to discover, and I developed my own process in order to make sure I was combing through every area to maximize my collection in each area. There is always way more Tinykins in a level then uses for them and you can’ work yourself into a situation where you soft lock anything, you just might have to come back to something later. The game is short and cutesy and that just might not be everyone’s vibe, but I can attest that this will pass the partner and kid test as it is wholesome as hell. I didn’t end up 100% the game, because in a single level I was missing 2 pieces of nectar and I swear I looked through the whole level 5 or more times, but outside of looking at a guide for every single piece of nectar in a level (there are hundreds) and retracing my steps, I’ll just let it go. You can unlock races that will grant you costumes, but I will admit they are not easy (as compared to the rest of the game) as it requires you to really prioritize navigational speed, when you haven’t thought about that for the rest of your playthrough. I only ended up getting the first unlockable costume and skipping the rest.

One thing that I would love someone to explain to me is the ending of this game, because despite paying attention, I must have missed something. I won’t say any spoilers here, but in the last level you presumably learn why the house is abandoned or empty, but how you fit into that story I am not as clear. Ultimately you return to normal size and your own dimension, but I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to ruminate on how what you have done changed the other dimension, or if it is all nonsense and I’m just overthinking it. Anyway, Tinykin is great, not the greatest game of all time, but a great cozy game to play while you await the release of Pikmin 4…. Wait, That game came out already!? For the love of Gorp!

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: Sometimes I feel if I don't drone on and on about the game, perhaps it doesn't give the impression of how much I like the game, but I need to stress that I really do like Tinykin. Tinykin is a great cozy game that you play to wind down from a day or put in front of the kids so that they can watch you (or play themselves). Its not exceptionally deep, and its not hard, but it can still be fun to just wander around a big room and collect things while solving the most basic of puzzles. It's not the greatest game of all time, but it's a very fun playthrough. I have it ranked as the 59th Greatest Game of All Time, out of 170 total games. It sits between Jade Empire (60th) and Golf Story (58th).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Theatre of Sorrow 2) The Dig 3) Vampire Survivors

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I came into this game with incredibly low expectations. It wasn’t because I had heard bad things, or that it was a developer that is known for putting out bad games, but because of my own dumb brain. See, I reviewed the first Shantae game back 100 years ago, and that was a re-release/re-make of the original game. The game itself was fine, and had some good ideas, but I questioned how such a rabid fan base can be borne from such a game. I mean don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate my first foray into the Shantae series, but it would have been a late release for the Game Boy Color that we can just admit that not a lot of people played, and review scores were between 7 and 8s, so we aren’t talking about the world’s next Mario, Sonic, or Matt Hazard. See, I believed in my heart of hearts that all the love for this game was almost solely from people who liked to ogle the sexy ladies that exist in the game. The comments the community made from my write-up from the first game educated me in both how the games get better (gameplay wise) and how the people at wayforward maybe lean even more into the “aren’t these ladies sexy” vibe. Turns out that I should listen to the community… they might know what they are talking about.

Obviously we will talk about this game in depth, but the community nailed it in both regards. Shantae and the Seven Sirens plays surprisingly well. At it’s heart it is still that Metroid-vania/Zelda game where you have a semi-open world that has areas blocked off until you learn a new ability, and once you get that ability can traverse more. And it is also a game that has a heavy investment in the female form. Every conversation scene, every cut-scene, and nearly every girl (excluding the kids and elderly) makes sure to show you exactly what she is working with. I started the game planning on tracking how many times a pair of breasts were a prominent fixture in a scene, and lost count like an hour into the game. It never crosses the line to become something more adult, but it certainly isn’t going to dispel any of my beliefs that this game gained popularity because people are horny. However, lets focus on the actual gameplay.

So Shantae and the Seven Sirens starts with you and other genies being whisked away to an island to put on a genie show, or something to that degree. During the night of the show all the other genies get kidnapped and it is up to you to find them. So, you start exploring the Island, which has a vast underground network in an effort to find any of the other genies. As you explore the island you will slowly start filling out the map as well as coming across areas you can’t quite traverse yet, like pools of water, or big sand traps, or even tall walls. Eventually if you explore enough you will come across a dungeon where one of the genies are being held. Each genie that you eventually end up rescuing will grant you a power that addresses one of these obstacles, and allow you to explore even more of the map. Of course as you explore you will come across heart pickups (heart octopi), or golden nuggets (special currency), and/or the next dungeon to do it all again. In addition, you find save points or teleport rooms scattered around while you are exploring. Teleport rooms are fairly obvious as to what they do, as they will allow you to warp to other teleport rooms, allowing a quick travel way to get from one end of the map to the other, while save rooms, act as not only a spot to stop and save your game, but a checkpoint in case you die.

Most of your minute to minute gameplay is guiding Shantae through these screens and navigating the maze to find your next area of interest. Shantae is equipped with a hair whip that can be upgraded to do more damage and/or attack quicker, and then you can purchase essentially a magic power that can be used as long as you have magic meter. Something to note is that the enemies littered throughout the island are not all dispatched by a single attack and in some instances can block and charge through your attack. While this isn’t Dark Souls, it will pay to learn the attack pattern of certain enemies as Shantae starts off rather weak in this game in terms of how many hits she can take. In fact one of the early frustrating aspects of this game is that enemies damage amounts can seem unfair in the beginning of the game. Some enemies might only hit you for a 4^th or ½ of a heart which seems about on-par with what you would expect, but then you will come across a seemingly normal enemy that in a single hit can take out two full hearts. This wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t the type of game that starts you with only 3 hearts to begin with. At first you might believe that you are in the wrong area (an area later designed for after you have powered up more), but since areas are only gated by the powers you have, presumably if you can explore the room, you are meant to be in the room.

One of my biggest hangups with the game is that the difficulty curve is very poorly balanced in this game. In the early stages, when you are just starting off and trying to save your money for upgrades that make you a stronger person, the game can be somewhat difficult. I struggled with the games first boss (A sexy plant lady), because I needed to play the fight almost flawlessly because I had so few hearts and no healing items. Sure, I could have abandoned where I was in the dungeon and bought healing items, or grind for gems to purchase them, but I was stubborn and refused. However, the farther into the game you get, the easier the whole game is. Eventually you purchase all the upgrades you want, and there is nothing left to spend money on outside of potions. So I would have a max number of recovery potions that would auto-consume when I ran out of hearts. While similar games like this are designed so that you can feel more powerful as you go throughout the game, trouncing earlier enemies with ease, this game went too far in that direction. I could fight the last boss or second to last boss, refusing to dodge any attacks because I knew I had more hearts and potions then they could do anything with. Combine that with a special spell/dance that can refill hearts and you might never need to dodge again.

While you can eventually walk through the enemies, the game does give you a reason to fight them even upon repeated visits. Outside of hoping for money or heart drops, enemies can sometimes drop food (an item to be used later for refilling health) or special cards. Shantae can equip three of these cards at a time which can also help her power-up in different ways. Now this was a mechanic I was initially very interested in, as every enemy variant you come across can drop a card of itself, and I was determined to collect them all or at least see them all, so that I could spec Shantae exactly how I wanted, but like much of this game, you quickly outgrow these cards as the best ones are ones you can only exclusively pay golden nuggets for (special limited currency that is found). Since the limit you can equip always stays at three from the start of the game to the end, buying one or two of these special cards really limits what else you will equip. To level set, some cards will be something as simple as “Shantae can crawl faster” or “item X does 2x damage now.” A mechanic that I thought I would be switching on the fly depending on the area or boss that I was facing, ended up being me finding 3 serviceable cards and only switching them out when I bought a new special one.

I ended up only finishing in the 70% percentile for total completion rate for this game, simply because I no longer needed to look for heart container pieces, or try to farm cards out of enemies because the game gave very little reason to do so. Is it possible that I missed a cool ability from a card, almost certainly, but unless it was a card that made the game more difficult it wouldn't have impacted how I played the game.

If I give Shantae credit for anything though, it is that the world is bright and colorful and overall a joy to explore. When I first started I loved seeing all the special interactable areas that I would need to come back for, or the different biomes in the caves. I would get excited over a new power and think about all the areas I can now explore. I delight in games when I find stuff tucked away or hidden from view, I always feel like I outsmarted the game in some way, even though it was designed to be there for a reason. That anticipation however starts to die when, like the first game, you realize that the powers don’t actually reveal much besides potential shortcuts and the next area you are supposed to be in. That doesn’t take away from the colorful and vibrant world, but as the boundless possibilities eventually give way to reality, it makes it feel slightly shallow.

I don’t want to come off being too negative on the game, because there is a lot to like. The game feels good to play, Shantae’s attack is responsive, her jump doesn’t feel floaty. There is a decent variety of enemies that aren’t just palette swaps of earlier enemies. The map is also the perfect size, as it seems crazy big when you are first starting to explore everything, but then when you open up teleporters and fully flesh it out, seem like it is rides the line without seeming too cramped or expansive. I also talked about the overall aesthetic to the game being bright and shiny, it caught the eyes of my children if they saw me playing it on the TV and were immediately sucked in. When you get the ability to use different abilities or do different dances, it is all really simple controls that makes traversing the world nice and easy. All of my complaints are really focused on the difficulty curve being non-existent, the exploration holding more promise then actual results, and the overt sexualization of characters that all seem like teenagers. This is a better game than the original, and has changed my mindset that maybe this series can be fun to play, even if I might feel the need to hide these games from the shelf if friends came over. Overall, I think both Shantae games exist in a weird in-between world where they are easier than I would want them to be, but not quite kid-friendly enough (not just in the bewbs, but in the navigation of the map and knowing when to use abilities) that I would put this in front of my five year old to play.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: This game actually has a relatively good showing being ~20 spots better then the first Shantae game. Nearly everything has improved over that core game, but I still wish the world had more to discover and I certainly wish there was a difficulty curve so the last 1/2 of the game didn't feel like I had turned on cheats. While I hope to be proven wrong, from what I have heard, I feel that all the "newer" Shantae games will fall into these same positives and negatives. They will be good but not great games. I have this ranked as the 74th Greatest Video Game of all time. It sits between Guacamelee (75th) and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (73rd). For reference the original Shantae is now 95th out of 169 total reviewed games.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Tinykin 2) The Dig 3) Vampire Survivors

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

To set the scene, I have been playing this series since the beginning, and by beginning I mean the very beginning. We had a PC CD of Hitman 1 and I remember that I actually truly enjoyed the game. It became a game that I loved as a sandbox; could I snipe everyone in the first level including the helicopter? How many people could I take out in the hotel before being caught? I know it is a game that has not aged particularly well, but I feel like that can be said about any of the games before this collection came out. We are of course talking about the Hitman: World of Assassination collection and we are grouping these all into one game.

Why are we not tackling these individually? There are a couple reasons, such as the mechanics being the same throughout all 3 games, all of the games existing in the same hopper once you download the levels, and because if you were to buy it now, you would almost certainly get all of the levels combined instead of just the levels from game 2 or game 1. It might be a loose thread to tie this together and rank them, but I can’t imagine trying to separate these into individual entries, without just discussing the difference in levels, which are almost all personal preferences. I will still tell you which section I think has the best levels out of the three, but this is all going to get coded once on the report.

So, starting from the top.. This week we are discussing Hitman: World of Assassination, where you play as Agent 47 whom is tasked with executing a hit on different clientele. You work closely with your handler Diana who briefs you before each mission as to who your target(s) are and why they are bad news bears. You are then dropped off in a fairly big sandbox level where you plan and then try to put in place the perfect hit. Whether that is following one of the set story missions, or whether you want to do it your own way, there are always lots of opportunities for how to proceed. Will you disguise yourself as a chef or waiter and poison someone’s food, or will you find a sniping position and try to take out your target from afar? Perhaps neither of those are fun for you, and instead you want to create a gas leak in a shed and watch as the target blows themselves up when they go to light a cigarette. The true joy of this game is that there is not only lots of replay-ability for these levels to test out other methods, but also an incentive to do so.

At the end of every level, you will get scored and a list of objectives will get checked off as little exercises you can accomplish during a mission. These side objectives might vary from; gathering intel during the level, to wearing every disguise available, to simply exploring the space fully. Regardless of what you check off, you start to unlock bonuses for doing and more and more in a given mission. Perhaps with enough unlocks you can already start a level in a disguise, or new weapons or gadgets that can be carried through to other missions in the game. None of these additional objectives are required to be completed, and nothing that you unlock is essentially for you to complete the level, game, etc. but they add something to the game that make the game have legs.

I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t think these games are particularly difficult to accomplish your goals. No matter if it was the first time or the 20^th time I have played a level, taking care of the target and escaping the level are really not that difficult from a base level. For one there is never a hard time limit that locks you out of the mission. If you are just walking around and exploring every area, you could do that for 10 in game hours, and the target is still going to be doing their same loop in the level. You might miss some very specific timed events or opportunities for the hit, but in no means will you lose. Also, if you so choose, following one of the story missions to set up the hit, walk you through all the steps you need to do in order to put you in perfect position to make the kill. So with a little bit of patience and know-how of the stealth mechanic you should have no trouble completing those missions on a first or second run through of a level. Now enter those bonus objectives you can check off and the game offers a little more challenge to those that want to take that on. Maybe a challenge is shooting a plane out of the sky with a cannonball, which you would only be able to accomplish if you know the level intimately enough to set up that domino chain ahead of time. And if you don’t care about any of that stuff, you can treat it like a 3^rd person shooter, and try to kill everyone on the map. That tactic probably won’t beat every level in the game, but you can probably make progress doing it that way too. Some of the best fun you will have in this game is when something goes wrong, (you get compromised, a body is found, etc.) and figuring out how you get out of this mess that doesn’t involve just loading a previous saved game to do so. I mean this is Giant Bomb, and I would encourage people checkout Hitsmas with Vinny to just see what he accomplishes.

There is a story to this game, which is more than I can say for about any of the previous Hitman games. You start off working for the ICA, who is essentially being duped into eliminating a very specific group of people that you probably wouldn’t normally go after. Eventually you come across the person who has been organizing these hits, you find out the ICA isn’t as great as you initially thought they were (even though that should be apparent based on the work you do), and eventually plot to overthrow and dismantle the organizations that have done you wrong. That is me, doing a poor summary of 3 games, and the story isn’t going to win some award for best narrative but it certainly allows you to connect the dots between the missions a whole lot better than in previous games. I will fully admit that I didn’t get fully on board until we were partway through Hitman III, but towards the end of the game I was actually looking forward to watching the story cut scenes instead of just wanting to skip to the mission. I do appreciate that despite this being a game where you are a contracted killer, all the people you are going after are terrible people. We could argue that you don’t get to be on the target list by powerful brokers without probably being a terrible person in the first place, but I appreciate that you aren’t tasked with killing someone’s spouse so that they can get a life insurance policy.

Chances are, everyone knows all about this game at this point. If you have been watching Giant Bomb for any amount of time, you have seen dozens of videos of people playing this game so there really isn’t a lot that hasn’t been shown or said about this game, so instead I am going to wade into something controversial. I think that the freelance mode is bad. I started my playthrough with the freelance mode, because it was the most recent thing, and it almost made me want to stop playing the game. Here’s the thing, I was incredibly bored going through it and while I can appreciate it on paper, I think the execution is weak. Now some of my complaints with this mode are expected, since the targets are ‘randomized’ (not really, but let’s pretend) there aren’t going to be cool story kills that allow you to take care of your target after exploring the level, and that is fine, but because of that, most of your kills are fairly basic for each enemy. I know people would say, “you aren’t being creative,” or “there are so many ways to kill if you put the time in,” something to that extent, but for every enemy who has a walk path over a potentially exposed wire, or drinks a drink that can be poisoned, or walks near an edge that can be pushed off, a large majority of them are just on a normal patrol route and will need to be killed via melee (knives, fiber wire, etc.) or shot. And if you are actually trying to make it through the entire freelance campaign, then you have to really limit your risk so that you can make a clean getaway after each hit.

I should explain that the freelance mode, is Hitman taking a more system generated rogue-like game. You select a main target you want to go after, and you will do small missions first before you get to go after the boss of the area. These are missions that will take you through different campaign missions, but your target will be essentially a random person in the map that needs to be taken down. Since these are not story characters originally, you will have to get creative as to how you can kill them without being caught. There are no save states, reloads, and if you die in the mission then you start at the beginning of the freelance mode all over. Complete extra objectives in a mission such as; pacify three guards, poison someone’s drink, or kill the target with a fireaxe, and you will get currency that can then be used at an in level store that sometimes appears to buy gear or weapons. After you kill your targets escape the mission and go on to the next one. One big difference in this mode is that weapons you carry out of the level, go into your cellar (between levels hub) and then you can take those out on the following missions. For the boss levels, you will have to identify your target before you commit the hit, by looking at their appearance for clues as to if they are the person you need to kill. The penalty is minor for killing the wrong target, but obvious an extra body can alert guards and cause you more stress later. Beat enough levels (I think its close to 20) and you can complete freelance mode, which grants you like a golden weapon, and the ability to make freelance mode harder. However, you could technically pay it endlessly if you wanted.

Perhaps I “played it wrong,” but I was able to get through an entire freelance campaign on my first attempt. As I said, I find the hitman games relatively easy if you are patient, but I was also bored to tears playing the game, and I barely did any extra objectives in the freelance mode. After I visited the first few sellers in the early levels, I realized that have currency doesn’t really benefit me. I won’t need to buy a shotgun or a baseball in levels if that isn’t really jiving with my original plan of attack. Also since this is a hitman game, there are plenty of bricks, and knives and rat poison that litter the levels if you know where to look. My goal for each level was the same as it was for the main game. Make the cleanest kill possible and get out without people noticing, and that meant avoiding most bonus objectives. The only interesting levels were the boss levels, because it required more work to identify the target, but those are few and far between. My biggest gripe was that somehow over the course of a single campaign, not only did I get the same level twice (which makes since because there is only a limited pool of levels), but I had to kill the exact same target in those levels. Did I get a bad dice roll, or is there only a small pool of characters for each level that are available to be targets? I am choosing to believe that there is something that I missed that made Freelance a popular mode when it came out, because people’s whose game opinions I trust all loved it, but it never clicked with me. The Hitman game is all about replay ability, but if you max out on a location, or are sick of going after the same targets, I had more fun doing escalations or other “main” game modes then I did with the freelance campaign. On the plus side, I was able to play DLC levels in freelance mode, despite not having bought those DLC levels. If I could make one change to freelance mode, it would be that your notoriety would go up based on previous level performances. If you were spotted, if you left witnesses, etc. etc. it would make enemies in the next level even more alert than normal. I’m sure that is a lot of work, but it could have broken up some of the monotony of playing the Rave level for the third time.

Now don’t get me wrong here, Hitman is a fantastic game and once I got back into playing the campaign I immediately perked up. I see the benefit of just having more Hitman for people who have truly done it all, but I would say for the non-obsessive or more regular player, you have more than enough in the main game + escalations and the freelance mode can be ignored. There is something much more satisfying about the curated level design pointing you to specific targets, where you really feel you have to work at something, then just shooting guard 7 in the head while they walk behind the bathroom. Not anyone would make you choose, but in terms of best levels, I think it is game 1… game 3.. and then game 2. Each game has it’s standout levels, and I would obviously suggest getting them all if you are buying into the series late. My absolute favorite level would be Sapienza if it wasn’t for the “destroy the virus” objective, and Paris has it’s appeals, but I think my favorite level individually comes from the 3^rd game as I really enjoyed hunting the agents for the German Rave. Identifying the agents and devising ways to take them out via accident, or other means was very entertaining. The worst level I think can easily be the train level, but that’s because it is very story specific, if we are talking about main levels it is probably Colorado. Small level, everyone is a guard or soldier, and not as interesting as the other levels to look at or explore. You are telling me that there would really be like 3 different guard levels (costumes) within such a small area?

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: Hitman WOA is an amazing game, but you do have to approach it on its level. If you treat the game like a 3rd person shooter, or just play the freelance mode, then the game is going to give a pretty poor showing. However, if you take in the levels, play through the whole campaign, and poke at its sandbox to see all the things you can do, it is truly amazing. I have it as The 8th Greatest Game of All Time out of 168 total games. It sits between Stardew Valley (7th) and Into the Breach (9th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Tinykin 2) Shantae: The Seven Sirens 3) Vampire Survivors

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

There are certain times where I am playing a video game, where the story is trying to add weight to its scenes by showing the destruction of innocent lives, cities, towns in an effort to show how truly evil the bad guy is. In case there was ever a doubt in my mind if someone was evil, you just have them doing something truly heinous to make sure we are all on board with taking them down. Kefka poisoning Castle Doma in Final Fantasy 6, SIN destroying Kilka in Final Fantasy X, or Hulk Hogan existing. Sometimes the scene works (the aforementioned) and sometimes it doesn’t work due to either bad writing, bad acting, or a sudden realization that this is all just a video game and people didn’t really lose their lives. Perhaps you can joke about how terrible the game portrayed a death, or how stiff a line delivered, because its all just video games in the end. But, once in a while you play a game that is based on real events, where real people lost their lives and it’s a lot harder to talk shit about, because you weren’t there to experience it in any other way. Now, I’m not talking about the very loosely based on real events trope that encapsulates every call of duty game, where one soldier can single handedly wipe out an entire army with a machine gun, or even the gamification of real events like Just Cause or Dynasty Warriors, where we might be using real people that existed but greatly exaggerating their importance and abilities.

What I am instead talking about is the game that I just finished called “1979 Revolution: Black Friday” which tells a very real story of events leading up to the Iranian revolution. Can I say with any certainty that every element of this game is by the letter historically accurate? No, but does this feel more like a true tale than the “based on” games I listed above? Certainly. I want to be upfront, I knew next to nothing about the Iranian revolution that took place. I have a terrible American education where we learned next to nothing about other countries histories, I was born almost 10 years after the revolution took place, and in my adult life, I am no history buff. I might be the dream target for the game, because the creators can tell a story to impart their history and experience to me, a vessel that is coming into this with no previous knowledge or biases about what happened.

So let’s talk about the actual game here. As stated earlier this takes place during the events leading up to the Iranian revolution. You play as a photographer who gets wrapped up in the revolution because of friends and family members that are already involved. The game plays a lot like a Telltale adventure game, and this is very much an “interactive story” genre as opposed to the adventure genre. You will make conversation decisions that can impact your relationship with people around you and make some minor changes to the story, you will take pictures with your camera, and you will engage in the tried and true QTE (quick time event) method of action scenes. Now this is a serious game, with serious consequences so you can in fact die at certain instances if you fail some QTEs or you repeatedly choose the wrong dialogue choice in those conversational choices. However, those deaths are a double edged sword when it comes to playing the game, because any death just sends you back to a checkpoint to play through a scene again, but it also now removes the illusion that you can truly pick any choice you want. This is a greater failing with the genre, and certainly did not start with this game, but these games are designed to tell a story, and no matter how you behave, the game is going to progress to tell and show scenes that it wants to show you. There is no choice that you can make that prevents the revolution from happening, there is also no choice you can make that spares you from joining the revolution at all. This game has no role for people on the sidelines.

Trust me, I tried. You play as a man named Reza and there are choices early on where you can be less than enthused about the revolution or flat out refuse to help, and I tried to play Reza as ‘on the fence’ as you could, but as long as I didn’t die the story moved on as if I was in since day 1. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why that happens in games. Why would I purchase a game about the Iranian Revolution, and then try to get out of experiencing the actual revolution? But, much like my issue with tell-tale games is why make some of these choices seem like they matter when they really don’t. Either my character could not be given a choice during that moment, or the choices I can pick from are changed, so that being on the fence is not an actual option. By allowing me to try and take the character in a different direction, but then pulling me in the opposite direction anyway it shows my choice doesn’t really matter. Sure I could die and then have to restart a conversation, but then we are really narrowing down my choices, since I know one will lead to death.

Okay, back to the game. You play this game in two parts and most of this game is a flashback, because the other portion of this game is played in an interrogation cell, where you are being accused of being a big player in the revolution. The interrogation scenes are the most powerful scenes in the game. They are well acted and well written, and you will feel the pressure of whether or not you are going to try and stand up for yourself and push back against the interrogator or whether you want to make it as easy as possible and just give them everything they want to hear. The timing on choices here felt extremely fast, so that you couldn’t sit and stare at the options for too long, and failing to answer is not a choice your interrogator wants to hear either. It was in these rooms that my only Americanism knowledge was at its worst. I am not naïve, and I know that the criminal system in any country is broken and that people are abused and treated like crap even today. However, I wasn’t prepared for Reza to get cattle prodded or beat to within an inch of his life because he took a photo, but here we are. What the game does very well is give you context for everything that is showing you. As you progress through the story, as you take pictures of certain things, you will unlock an entry in your journal that explains things in more detail. It may be something an miniscule as what does a piece of graffiti mean, to explaining more about the very real prison and very real interrogator that you interact with. It is this reminder that you aren’t just playing a game that is some alternate history or fake political strife that is background information for a larger game, but instead a real event. Learning about the titular Black Friday, when protestors were gunned down in the street, or the Cinema Rex fire, where 300 plus people were killed in an intentional attack that included women and children adds real weight to the game, at least for me, because these were tragedies that I never knew even existed. I read every single piece of real-world knowledge that the game could dish out to me, and I gobbled it up. Tell me all about the graffiti, the food that was sold, the cassette tapes that were given out to spread the word, all of it. Hell learning that the creators of this game worked under aliases and felt they couldn’t go back to Iran because of how this game was received is its own brand of interesting. How can I treat this like any other game?

When the game got further along, and I learned more about the situation at hand, I found the choices harder to make. There was a paralysis in me, where I didn’t want to make the wrong choice as if somehow I could pick something that ruined the revolution or made my character disrespect the importance of the movement. No one was watching me play, nothing I did in the game could change the actual history of what happened, and there was no “happy” ending that I could achieve by playing the game perfectly, but yet my gamer brain was still concerned with making “incorrect” decisions. The game is short, and you can easily play through the whole thing in a single setting, but yet I would find myself stopping every 20 minutes or so because I would need a break because of the severity of the game. I am perhaps giving the game more credit, or making myself seem like a real weenie, but there was something uncomfortable about playing another countries history, and knowing that the U.S. played a key role (and not a positive role) in why a revolution occurred. Again, I am not ignorant and I have never been patriotic about the country I am from, and these events occurred before I could have had any impact on the world (voting, protesting, etc.) but I still felt somewhat guilty by association.

When I was as invested as I could possibly be in the game, it ended. Poof! Just like that. There are 19 total chapters in the game, but they vary drastically in length, and some chapters can be completed in as short as 10 minutes. From what I could tell, there are two different endings you can get based on a relationship swap here or there, but neither of the endings is a good or bad ending, and they both wrap up in roughly the same way. While it makes sense from the story perspective, it did leave me wanting more. You don’t get to see how the revolution ends, you don’t get to have your moment in the sun when all of your hard work pays off. At the end of the game, the developers tease that they are going to re-visit this world and that the characters have more stories to tell, presumably about the Iranian revolution and beyond, but the only other related thing we have seen from this company is a VR game that puts you back in the interrogation chair inside prison. For now if you want to see/hear how the revolution plays out you will need to do some research on your own.

1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a very hard game to rank, because from a “gameplay” perspective it doesn’t have a lot there. While in some chapters you do physically have to move the joysticks to get your character to walk, the real gameplay is just QTEs and conversational choices. Those gameplay elements aren’t done especially well, and as fault of the genre, those choices are more hollow than you might originally feel. Replaying sections because of a failed QTE or choosing the wrong dialogue choice, is not good gameplay design and the novelty has worn off since the days of “The Walking Dead.” However, the experience was more than the sum of it’s parts. I learned about a part of history I knew nothing about, I finished the game and checked out a book in the library about the history because I found the topic interesting, but I also know I am in the minority here. The majority of people who will play or buy this game, are probably people who have some connection or knowledge of the event and are coming in with their own biases ahead of time. For those people the game might mean a hell of a lot more then what I get out of it, and other people might play through its quick 2 hour story, get a few achievements, and never think about the game again because of its outdated gameplay. I’m not going to lie and say that this game is the best thing ever, because I know it’s not, but it’s a middling 6 out of 10 that will stick with me for longer than some better games.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: 1979 is an interesting story but not a great "video game." I respect what the creators did for this game, it sparked me wanting to learn more about a blind spot in my history knowledge, but it plays like a bad phone port of a telltale game and that doesn't make for great gameplay. Do I still think it is worth a playthrough? Yeah, kinda... but I also know it's not going to play on this list very high. I have it ranked as The 134th greatest game of all time. It sits between "Down in Bermuda" (133rd) and "Rain on Your Parade" (135th) out of 167 Total video games.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) TBD 2) Shantae: The Seven Sirens 3) Hitman: World of Assassination

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I have been busy playing a bunch of long ass games recently that I have been craving short games for my “not always weekly” series. I am still working on playing through all of the Hitman Collection, I am playing through Final Fantasy 15 with my wife, and I recently decided to board the hype train and start Baldur’s Gate 3. All 3 of those games are going to take me months to finish, especially the way (explore almost everything) and the amount of time I can dedicate to those games (almost nothing). So if you are anxiously waiting the placement of those games on the official list, you might want to check back later. However, what I can talk about today is a little game called Abzu.

It is going to be very difficult to discuss Abzu without drawing a lot of direct comparisons to a similar game called “Journey.” Journey is very much it’s own game and we can discuss that when I spin the wheel to rate that game (note: I have already played Journey, but I’ll gladly play it again), however there is a connection between the two as the founder of the company that made Abzu, just happened to be the art director for the game Journey. Abzu also shares a composer in Austin Wintory, who.. won a Grammy award for… Journey. I will do my best to speak about Abzu independently, but just know that there are lots of points where I want to shout, “Just Like Journey!” but I refrained from doing so. Obviously no matter how you slice it, Journey was very successful and influential in multiple games, but Abzu especially…. And no, we don’t need to talk about Flower or Flow and how that influenced Journey and then bring it all back to how Pong influenced all video games.

Abzu is a game about the deep blue sea and the inhabitants that call it home. While there is a story here, it is 100% interpretational, as there is no dialogue and no text in game that can be read to infer what is going on. I don’t want to use the old trope about the amount of energy you put in will inform what you get out, but it’s kinda true in this essence. However the actual genre of this game skews closer to a meditative adventure game. You control a diver who just starts the game already in the water. We don’t know where they came from or what their purpose is, but damn if they aren’t great at swimming. The controls are relatively brief, there is a dive/swim button that needs to be held down in order to propel you forward in the direction you are pointing. There is a boost button that can be used up to three times to speed up your characters swimming (and if angled correctly can have you jump out of the water), and an interact button that has your character make a little chirping sound, but will also be used to turn cranks or dust off robots.

From when you start to when you finish the game progresses in roughly the same way. Each area you find yourself is freely explorable but has a single pass through section that is blocked off that you have to figure out how to get through. In some instances these require you to find a crank that will open it, a robot friend to help you, and in other instances you might need to navigate other smaller puzzles to solve the issue. How quickly you go through these puzzles is based on how much enjoyment you are getting by being in a certain area. If you were to bulldoze your way through the game, I imagine that you can complete this game in an hour and that is not using any speed-run strats. This is by no means a long game, but the length is determined by how intrigued you are by the environmental storytelling and how much enjoyment you are getting by just being in the game.

The game is absolutely beautiful to exist in. You are spending nearly 100% of your time underwater and they have spent a lot of time crafting your surroundings and the inhabitants around you. This might not have the fidelity of Flower, but I don’t think a lot of people can argue that the game is not amazing to behold. In some areas, you can dive for what seems like miles underwater, swimming below whales and sharks and find hidden ruins on the seabed. This won’t net you anything but some environmental story-telling, but its nevertheless fun to deep dive and see what the game has to offer. In some areas bigger fish will allow you to hitch a ride by holding on to them, and in each and every area is a meditative shark stone where you can stop and watch the fish around you. It may not seem like much, nothing more than an old windows screensaver, but you can flick between watching different fish and just watch them exist which can be fascinating. They might get eaten, or even eat other fish, and while I know they are nothing but 0s and 1s, it can still be relaxing to just watch them. I did not verify every single fish, but these are all recreations of existing or extinct real fish and perhaps you will find your new favorite. Pair the meditative mode and the soundtrack from Austin Wintory and you can sit back and take a load off.

As you progress from peaceful enclosure, you will eventually start getting to the more sinister aspects of Abzu. Gone is the singular threat of a rogue shark, and instead it is replaced by ancient technology that is existing in the ocean that can do real harm. These are navigable obstacles that act like proximity mines that explode when you get to close to them, and while you can’t actually die in Abzu (your character is just stunned for a few seconds), it can be annoying to be hit by these things. Once you have a grasp for the controls and understand the proximity these things explode at, you can navigate past them with some ease, but obviously this can cause frustration. While these obstacles only exist in a few chapters of the game, they are short lived and the game will go back to regular exploration moments.

There are collectables on your journey that serve two different purposes. Outside of the meditation stones (which can sometimes be hidden), there are mysterious pools that when activated will release more fish into the water, but there are also hidden shells that can be found in each chapter as well. While there is a unlockable suit for collecting all the shells in the game, it probably wont be something that you get upon a first playthrough, as some are very well hidden and one particular nasty one only gives you a single chance to collect. So unless you are using a guide on your first playthrough, you will just have to get them on future explorations. There are a few in-game lore walls, that will show you how many shells you found in each area, and presumably have something should you collect them all.

All that is really left to discuss is what is the interpretation and theme/moral of the story here, because it is so ambiguous. The answer is, I don’t know.. Unlike another game that shall not be names again, which I had a fairly good grasp on my interpretation, Abzu seems even more ambiguous. Sure I could tell you that the theme here is about the mysteries of the deep and how wonderous and magical the ocean world truly is, but I think that is surface level stuff that I could have told you before I played the game. Who put the ancient technology in the ocean, or was it made by aliens? How is the diver connected to that technology, a rogue agent, or a robot designed for research that went too deep? Does humanity exist outside this ocean, or is this an entirely new planet/civilization, etc? I think the parallels are there between how this world/ocean etc. is being ruined by the proximity mines, robots, and factories, and how in the real world we are destroying nature and the oceans by our consumption and growth into nature.. and perhaps that is all there is. There are certainly some fascinating takes online, and people smarter and more dedicated than me have looked over the murals and done far more research into the findings, and that’s ok. Abzu is a game that if you give to a regular bro, they might miss 100% of the lore and just beat the game and call it easy, and someone who dedicates dozens of hours exploring all its environment can call it an amazing piece of narrative. Abzu is what you make it.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: I truly like Abzu, but I also know that it isn't the greatest game in the world. It's a memorable quick trip and it is absolutely beautiful to behold, but for all its beauty it is a shallow game experience and after a few trips to the deep you might be content to just put on the soundtrack and remember the game. I think this is a game certainly worthy of your time, considering the small amount of time it would take up, but only those willing to let the world envelop them will really get enjoyment out of it. I have it ranked as the 60th Greatest Game of All Time. It sits between Pathway (60th) and Kinect Sports (61st) out of 166 games.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) TBD 2) 1978 Revolution 3) Hitman: World of Assassination

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I’m back. Sure it has only been a week, but I was trying to keep a set cadence of write-ups and that has gone down the drain. Honestly it will probably go even further down the drain as I have been all over the place trying to fill my free time. Did you know that other hobbies can be engrossing too? Crazy, right! However, before I bow out again, lets talk about the last game that I completed. It is possibly one of the harder games to describe, because visually if you don’t see it, then my descriptions sound like nonsense.

Today we are talking about “The Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars,” but Its going to get shortened so many times in this article that we might not say the full name again. This game is the first game of a trilogy based on it’s style. As far as I have looked into, there is no story tie in, character or even location that any of the games share to make it one overarching world. It is tied together through the gameplay and aesthetics of how the game is being presented. That gameplay and aesthetics for Voice of Cards is best described as an RPG that is played through a deck of cards. Every character, every action, every location that you visit is a playing card. Not in the sense of a standard deck of playing cards (Ace, 2, 3, etc.) but rather they all look like they belong to a tabletop game you backed on kickstarter.

In fact if one wanted to, they could turn this into a tabletop game very easily. The game already plays where there is a single dungeon Master that is laying out cards for you, voicing all the characters, and guiding you on a quest. All you would really need is a set of the cards and some dice to roll. If that sounds like I am describing one of many versions of Dungeons and Dragons, then you aren’t wrong. While most RPGs are inspired by D & D in some sense, this game takes it the extra step. You are sitting at a table, there is a mysterious man who is narrating the story, laying out the cards and guiding you through the game. I will say this fairly early on, the draw of the game is the aesthetics and having the feeling that you are sitting down at a table to play solo D&D. We can discuss the RPG elements, story, characters and everything else later, but you are either going to be really intrigued by this setup or be indifferent at best towards it. If you aren’t intrigued or excited by this premise then you might as well move on.

The RPG mechanics are your relatively old fashioned standard. There are random battles as you move on the world map or in dungeons. Fights are turn based (more on that later), with each characters speed stat determining who goes first. When you gain enough experience your characters level up and gain set stat increases and will learn new moves or abilities on specific levels. There is a hard cap at level 30 that you can’t go past (at least that I am aware of), and everyone regardless of being in your party for a battle will gain experience. You equip new weapons and armor that will adjust your stats, but there aren’t boosts or really resistances to consider, so the newest weapon and armor is almost universally the best option to remain equipped. Outside of the look of the game, you could be convinced you are playing an RPG from the SNES generation.

Combat while turn-based is done a bit differently. Each character can equip 4 “moves” that they can then bring into battle. These can be changed out outside of battle and you will learn new abilities as you level up, but these moves can be a mix of support or attacking moves so that on your characters turn they can activate them. This game does not use MP, in order to activate bigger or stronger moves but it does use something similar, in terms of gems. These gems are shared for the whole team and unless you use a specific move that adds gems to the pool, they will generate 1 gem on each characters turn. While that does mean that you will have at least one gem on every turn, some of the moves that you will eventually equip for your team will require 3 or more gems in order to use. That means that most of your combat encounters is about managing this pool of resources so that the right people on your team can use the right skills to win the fight. There are generic attack moves that can be equipped that do not cost a gem to use, but this obviously takes up one of your 4 slots and it is a fairly no-frills move that won’t be doing a lot of damage. You can also have characters pass on their turn, which won’t use up a gem, but obviously won’t impact the battle in any way. It is this push-pull of strategy that can make combat feel a little more exciting then just mashing the attack button, but I would be lying if I said the combat was challenging. Now, part of this I will admit is because my nature of “explore everything”, means that I got in a lot of random encounters to gain levels and potentially be stronger than I needed to be, but this is not some 40 hour RPG with big areas to explore, this is simply moving 10 spaces in the opposite direction here and there to fully uncover a dungeon floor. The other part is probably my general experience with the genre. I know general weaknesses of enemies (blue beats Red, Red beats Green etc.) and I know which statuses are important to inflict and which can be ignored. I rolled with the starting three characters throughout the full game with required exceptions where a character was out of the party and yet, I can still count on one hand the challenging battles I had where I could have truly lost it all, and they were: Optional boss fight and Final stage of final boss fight.

So the combat is “meh.” It’s not necessarily bad, and the gem system could be interesting, but playing on normal didn’t offer much of a challenge where I had to truly focus or strategize on 99% of the fights I encountered. But how about that story does that draw you in? The story has its moments, but I don’t think it is something that I will remember much longer. The story starts off with a request from the queen to slay a dragon that is causing the world grief. Your character and his ally are treasure hunters and dream of hitting it big so you sign-up to try and kill the dragon so you can collect the reward. As you travel you will recruit other characters (3 more) that all want to tackle the dragon for different reasons, and eventually join your party. Of course you aren’t the only people trying to take down the dragon, and twists and turns happen, until eventually you are really going after the real evil of the game and surprise surprise, it’s not the dragon. The best moments of the story are the offshoots of the main story, but I wouldn’t call them side quests as the game really doesn’t have those, so perhaps we call them side-stories. For instance visiting a town where humans and creatures live in harmony is a decent story beat, as well as exploring the alchemist’s town. I’m certainly underselling the story, its fairly common in terms of other RPGs, but the world building and ambiance is fairly good. A lot of that has to do with the music and narration which is pulling a lot of the weight. To state it again, you have to approach this game as if you are playing Dungeon’s and Dragons with a DM sitting across from you. They read out all the cards, they don’t do unique voices for all the characters, but it all still works well together. The narrator isn’t overbearing and cracking jokes, or constantly chatting because the game is afraid to have you play in some silence, but you will still hear his one off battle remarks repeat a few times.

All told this is a small 15-20 hour RPG, and that greatly depends on if you are trying to explore every card, or just moving from scene to scene. While nothing blew me away with this game, the aesthetics and the comfort I get from a, lets say simplified, RPG was enough for me to want to play it and finish it. I should mention that there are multiple different endings and one “mega-Happy-ending” (ala Wayne’s world) that you have to earn by getting 10 unique cards throughout the game before the ending. Those cards are earned by exploring and helping people in need, but I was only able to get 9 during my playthrough so I missed earning the Mega-Happy-Ending. I watched it later, and truth be told, I liked the ending I picked (got) because I think the Mega-Happy-Ending is a little too cheerful for the game. While I won’t spoil the choices at the end, but essentially you are given an item that can help do 1 of 3 different things, I used it on my traveling partner since the beginning of the game.

Ok, got off topic there… I’m biased towards liking this game, because it allowed me to get a nostalgia hit of old-school RPG played on an old table with cards. This game was seemingly tailored made for me, but if I remove myself from the equation, I would say that most people can probably skip this. It’s not that there is anything inherently bad or broken with this game, it is a very competent and well-designed game, but it is also forgettable outside of the aesthetics. I think it would be more interesting if all 3 games in the trilogy were connected in some way and it told a grander story, but seeing as they are all individual instances then at best you can get the one that sounds most interesting to you and forget about the other 2. Even despite enjoying most of my time with the game (again because it is tailor made for me), I don’t feel the need to get the other 2 games in the series. I don’t think I will be as enamored with what it has to offer if I see it for another full game or 2.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: no

Where does it rank: I think this specific Voice of Cards game is a solid RPG of yesteryear with some nice aesthetics to it, but it is by no means essential or even a game I would recommend to people unless I truly knew their likes and dislikes enough to see if they were freaks like me. If you are craving a shorter, streamlined, old feeling RPG, then this is up your alley... if you aren't you can move along. I have it ranked as the 67th Greatest Game of All Time out of 165 games. It sits between "Psychonauts" (66th) and "Elli" (68th). It might be a little inflated because, again, this game is tailor made for me, but even removing myself it's still gotta be above Sonic Adventure.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Abzu 2) 1978 Revolution 3) Hitman: World of Assassination

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

There is no way to deny the existence in how time and place affects the games that we play. Whether you want to admit it or not nostalgia is incredibly powerful and games we grew up on are going to hold a special place in our heart no matter how long it has been since we first played it. Kids growing up today, will be nostalgic for the first time they played Tears of the Kingdom, and some kids first Final Fantasy ever is going to be Final Fantasy 16 which they will believe is the greatest in the series forever. Hell, as I write this little blog, I am listening to a Chrono Trigger soundtrack, so I get it.

However, while our own personal nostalgia can encompass a set time period of era of gaming, not all games get a glow from just existing during that time period. If we didn’t play a game, we can’t be nostalgic about it specifically. I grew up in the SNES era and while I can wax poetically about games that I loved like “Secret of Evermore,” or “TMNT: Turtles in Time,” I can only offer a passing nod to games like “Super Metroid,” or “Earthbound,” because I didn’t play them during that nostalgic forming time in my life. We never owned either of those games, so while the art and music can tickle the nostalgia hairs on me, they don’t resonate with me as much as they should.

The reason we are discussing that, is because today’s review is a game that I just played for the first time, Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64. A game that I think a lot of people have nostalgia for, but something that I never played when I was growing up alongside the Nintendo 64. I know that this game is good, because I played it, but I don’t have the love and admiration that other people are going to have, because I wasn’t there to champion this game a long time ago. To me this was a wrong place and wrong time of game, because I can certainly see a different timeline where I grew up with this game and played it ad nauseum. However I put the cart in front the horse on this review so lets dive into the game.

Mario Golf is a golfing game staring everyone’s favorite cast of characters. You can square up and tackle 6 different 18 hole courses as well as 2 different mini-golf courses. For the main golf courses, there are multiple modes that you can play in order to tackle the courses and if you earn enough points overall then you can unlock new courses. There is a tournament mode where you play all 18 holes and try to do the best out of a field of multiple other golfers. A ring shot mode, where you have to hit the ball through certain rings before finishing the hole, a speed golf mode where you gotta play fast and even a character challenge mode where you can unlock new golfers by beating them on the course of your choosing. There are a lot of modes here, but I spent most of time in the tournament and character challenge modes as it seemed the closest one could get to “beating” this game.

As for the courses themselves, there is a lot of variety in terms of how they look and it varying difficulty. Some holes require precise hitting and landing shooting between islands or on top of mushrooms to avoid going out of bounds, and other holes are more traditional big open greenery. In the final course you unlock, all the holes are extra challenging and require you to hit very specific shots or end up in tall grass or bunkers that look like various Mario characters. Obviously these aren’t real golf courses that you would be familiar with from watching TV or playing in real life, but I think that these 6 courses and 108 holes is more than enough to add variety to the game and prevent you from burning out on the courses.

The original Mario golf includes 18 playable characters, but 4 required the use of a transfer pack of the Gameboy game. Without that beautiful transfer pack, you are left with 14 playable characters but only 4 are available at the start of the game. The other 10 all need to be unlocked, most of them from the character challenge mode, but a few of them from completing other modes and challenges. (Donkey Kong from the Ring Shot, or Metal Mario from getting a birdie on every hole). Nowadays you would expect that all 14 (or 18) playable characters would be lovable Mario characters, maybe dipping into the enemy reserve to get them, but this was before that time. In fact there are 5 characters that are just regular ass people with no connection to the Mario world that I am aware of. In fact 2 of the 4 people you start with are these generic people, and yet you don’t start with the ability to play as Mario, which is baffling. Listen, Mario is not my favorite character in the world, but he is the namesake of the game and a character kids have gotten used to playing in nearly every game, to make him like 4-5 characters back in the unlocking order is certifiably insane. I am sure there will be some hardcore “Plum,” “Charlie,” or “Sonny” defenders, but those people are freaks and shouldn’t be trusted. Each character has a maximum distance that they can hit, and a preference as to how straight their shots go. For instance Peach can’t hit as far as Luigi, but Peach’s shots are usually straighter. There is no level-up mechanic or more powerful clubs to use, so you won’t be able to turn Peach into a powerhouse, and those starter characters will be easily forgotten once you start unlocking newer and better characters.

The golf itself is good. It is a three click system (click to start, click for power, click for accuracy) while a bar fills up and bounces backwards. Mario Golf isn’t the only golf game to use this system and it is one I prefer to others that are around. You can cycle through the clubs you want to use and preview ‘about’ where your ball is going to land. You can add spin to the ball by pinpoint aiming where you want to strike the ball with your club, all stuff that creates a very competent golf game. While I never managed a hole-in-one on any course, there is nothing quite like landing a chip in or a long eagle putt because you took your time lined everything up, adjusted for wind, and hit the perfect shot. Outside of the starting characters ‘stats’ there is no difference to playing as any of the different characters, so when playing multiplayer or even against the computer (where you see their shots) there is no distinct advantage or special powers that any character can use to get a better shot. The only ability that players have is to switch to a power shot which can add some distance to your shot with a caveat. You are only given so many power shots per round of golf, so you can blow them all on a par 5 on hole 3, as long as you are ok knowing that the next 15 holes you won’t have that ability. IF you can land a perfect shot (full power, and perfect accuracy) whilst using a power shot, then it counts as a free one and your pool of shots does not decrease. That sets up the potential if you are skilled enough to use it for every single shot and decimate the competition.

Which sets up my next point, this game can be quite difficult. First and foremost, this is a game of skill in both reading the course and timing your hits, so you can get quite good and competent at this game, but for me coming in blind it was a steeper learning curve. Part of that is simply perception and it is a mirage, but you don’t know that until you have played a little bit. I started first with a tournament, thinking that the first one would be a breeze and all of my other golf game knowledge would put me over the top. No matter how you finish the first hole, you are going to look at the scoreboard and see that the top spot is a computer who is -6 through 6 holes, and you are going to freak out. That means that the top golfer is averaging a birdie every hole, and if you finished the first hole with a par or a bogey you might feel the pressure that you are losing ground, I certainly did. What you will eventually come to realize is that is roughly what that golfer’s final score is going to be. They might finish all 18 holes with a +/- 2 to that score, but they are certainly not going to continue that hot streak they were on to begin. If you are looking to win any and all tournaments you probably need to finish around a -8 for the whole course, which is still no easy feat as it equates to birdie-ing every other hole, but certainly not a perfect score as initially implied. Assuming you aren’t cheesing every hole with saves and restarts, one bad hole can potentially mess up your entire tournament because there is no mulligan option to redo a bad shot.

It's not much different with other modes, but in some modes it is just about losing or winning a single hole as opposed to a cumulative score for 18, so it is easier to come back from a loss in those instances. I struggled against unlocking the first character for awhile (luigi), because I was still learning the game and how to read the putting green, but once you have played a few tournaments, it should be fairly easy to unlock the first few characters. I can’t speak to more than that, because I got bored. Which is where my biggest hang-up about this game comes in. This game is a wrong place and wrong time for me. I can see all the machinations that I would have loved in this game had I played it when it came out. I would have spent countless hours unlocking every character, every course, trying to birdie every hole so that I could unlock all the characters and play this game 4p with other buddies, the same way I did with Mario Kart 64 or Goldeneye. But, I didn’t have this game then, and that time of my life is gone and I won’t ever get it back. So, I can’t sit there and think unlocking 10 other characters is rewarding, because I will have beaten the game 3 or 4 times over at that point. I don’t want to play the same courses 3 or more times so I can beat them once in tournament mode, once in ring shot mode, and maybe again in character challenge mode. It’s exhausting to think about much less do. I am very far removed from trying to 100% every game I play, and even farther removed from believing that I will one day get 4 friends together to play Mario Golf 64, and they will be impressed with me having a full cast of characters.

So, I can see that Mario Golf would have been my jam back in the day, and I can appreciate it now for being a competent golf game. I just don’t have nostalgia for this game and missing that nostalgia means that I look at Mario Golf from a very different eye. I can look at the game and see I would have loved unlocking these characters and cool extras, but now I can’t be bothered to care about that… and that is a big part of this game. I can see that it takes real practice and skill to get good at these courses, especially if you want to unlock Metal Mario, but again I just don’t have the time to invest in this game like that. Without that nostalgia, I look at this game not at what it was, but instead what it could have been. What if it had more characters from the universe instead of generic characters? What if each golfer had special abilities, or you could level up their stats to make them better than their counterparts? Don’t get me wrong I think Mario Golf is probably pretty good, but without the nostalgia pull on this game, I didn’t find it captivating and it didn’t make me want to spend hours unlocking all that it had to offer.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: no

Where does it rank: I feel like I have to grade this game on a curve. I can see a good game here, but it just didn't hit for me the way it could have and even as a golf game. I don't know if there is a lot to go back to for this game that isn't already covered by the plethora of golf games out today. I think I wanted a more energetic and fun golf game starring the mario characters rather than a tame sim game for Dads. I have this ranked as the 90th Greatest Video Game of All Time. It sits between Blazing Beaks (89th) and Shantae (91st)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) [To be determined] 2) Voice of Cards: Isle of Dragon 3) Hitman: World of Assassination

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

It has been a long time since I have played a game that made me change my mind on the game so rapidly and so many times. Of course, it has happened in the past where a game fumbles the bag at some point, or you go in with low expectations and then you actually start enjoying the game because it is outperforming your expectations, but games normally only change your mind once. In the Magister (our subject today) I changed my view on the game about 3 times in about 3 days. I know I’m leading with a cliff-hanger here, but lets start at the basics.

The first thing you will see with this game, is that it looks homemade. No one is going to confuse this game for something that EA or Nintendo put out. However, for me that adds a little to the charm of the game. The game is played at 3/4th top down and you move around a hand drawn background that lays out the blueprints of the area. The looks of games never really weights too much on me, as I care about it so far down the checklist of what makes a good game, but I can see a lot of people looking at the screenshots and waving this game away without another glance.

The Magister is a little independent game that is best summed up as a fantasy murder mystery game. You play as the game’s equivalent to a detective, known as a magister, who is summoned to a small town because the previous magister wound up dead in a hotel room. You are given a time limit to solve the case in 14 days and will thus have to interview witnesses, find suspects, and put together enough evidence to convict the right person for the murder. What the game makes sure to tell you right off the bat, is that your playthrough is going to be unique because the game is procedurally generated. The killer, the reason for the murder, the murder weapon, what the witnesses tell you is all procedurally generated, each game should be unique and you can’t just look up an answer to help you.

On top of those procedurally generated options, you also have some agency in picking a starting Magister and starting skills. You get the choice of 3 different Magister’s to start, and they each represent 1 of 3 categories of how skills are divided. You can, of course, choose to upgrade your character differently and you don’t have to play them based on the Magister you picked. Anyway, the three categories are Physical, Intelligence, and Cunning. Some of these are more easily explained by their names than others, but by picking a Physical Magister you will get a boost in combat encounters. By picking intelligence you can deduce more about clues and attempt negotiations, and by picking cunning you can utilize “dirty” tactics to gain an edge. Each category has about 9 skills in them, ranging from all sorts of different bonuses and you can create hybrids. Hell my first playthrough I had at least one skill in each category. To level set, because this game is all about replay-ability one full playthrough will probably only grant you enough EXP to get about 5 skills, so you will not be able to unlock every skill even if you stick to just one discipline.

Once you are in the game the different systems come into play. For most of your time you are walking around locations talking to people trying to do the investigation. For each location that you travel to from the world map, part of your day is taken up, and you only can really visit about 5 different locations a day. The reason this is important, is because almost everyone you meet that has pivotal information to tell you, does not start out trusting you, and in order to gain their trust you need to do quests for them. Some of the quests will pop up new locations on your map, some of those locations might be timed and depending on what you are juggling you will almost certainly not be able to get to every location that you want in a single day. However, complete enough quests for a person, and they will finally tell you where they were during the night of the murder. Should you have evidence that contradicts their account of the night you can accuse them of lying in which case they will usually crack and tell you a vital clue that you will need to solve the crime.

Here is where I peel back the curtain a little bit, everyone has an alibi and everyone is lying about their alibi. This isn’t just fun detective talk but a frustrating point in how this game operates when it comes to solving the murder. No matter the procedurally generated case, you will have to do 2-3 quests for, lets say the knight captain, just for him to tell you his alibi, and then find evidence that contradicts them, only to get the one worthwhile clue you need for the murder. Even when you have narrowed down your suspect list, you still need to break alibis of people you don’t suspect just so they can give you a clue to use later on.

But hey, lets get back to how the game is played. Sometimes when moving on the world map you might encounter an ‘event,’ or when going out on a quest, that leads to combat. Combat is handled in a hybrid of turn-based combat and card battling. You have a deck of combat cards that can be modified or added to throughout the game, and these will be drawn on each turn in order to facilitate what you can do. On your turn, you can move within a radius, and then play cards. However, each card you play has a time associated with them and that time will be how long before your next turn. If you play every card in your hand, you are almost certainly not going to act again until everyone else on the battlefield has taken at least one turn, and possibly two. So, there is a bit of strategy here to weigh, but if I am being honest, doing damage is still king in this game, so playing all your damage cards no matter the cost is almost always beneficial to trying to slow play your hand. Winning the battle will net you experience points and potentially other benefits (gold, an item, a new card, quest reward) however if you lose the battle you wake up back at the inn and have lost out on the previous day. Since this game is on a clock, depending on if you get knocked out at the end of the day or beginning of the day could be a big difference.

Depending on who you encounter, you might be able to negotiate with them in which case you are in a different battle. In negotiations your aim is to lower their rage to 0. You are using a negotiation deck and only have so many turns to win. Negotiation decks consist mainly of 3 types of cards. One card will reduce the rage meter, but come with a cost of... lets say mana. One type of card adds mana to your total, and the final type of card is a wildcard that could lower the rage, be a dud, or grant mana. On every turn you can redeem your mana to purchase a temporary card to add to your deck, but these only stay in for this negotiation and might bloat your deck. I found that for most low to mid level difficulty negotiations, you can avoid purchasing cards and just play the generic deck and win. Harder challenges might require more strategy of buying cards and hoping that the bonuses are worth the cost. Each negotiation has a turn limit so you will have to weigh how much time you have and how quickly you can lower the rage meter. Should you win a negotiation, you gain xp and whatever you were after, but you also don’t need to take part in a fight. You might enjoy the fighting, but even so that adds a risk to being knocked out and losing a day, so if you can still complete a quest without that risk, do it. If you fail a negotiation, you will probably end up in a fight, and potentially lose out on what you were initially after.

When you have completed your negotiation, you go to send a message to home base, accuse the person of committing the murder and then outline all your evidence. You can technically move to solve the case at any time, but once you commit you can’t back out. As you are presenting evidence you are given a “conviction rate” or a score as to how well you did in your investigation and once complete you will be told if you were right or wrong. If you are right, you will unlock some new things for another playthrough, and if you are wrong, well you lose. In both of my wins, I just unlocked higher difficulties, which is not the draw for me. Yay! Battles are harder.. what a victory reward. I look forward to getting knocked out more often now.

Now I know everyone has been on pins and needles about my flip-flopping at the start of this article as to how this game plays out. When I purchased the game, I knew little of it so I kind of went into it with no expectations. During the first playthrough of the game I was completely won over. This is a bite sized mystery game that you can play through in about 4 hours AND everytime I play it, it is going to be different? I may have stumbled upon a hidden gem. Now I actually failed my first playthrough and accused the wrong person and ended up losing, but that didn’t matter as I was excited to start it over and see what was different, or how a different playstyle would affect the game. However, upon repeat playthroughs, I started to notice how all the strings came together.

In every playthrough I would have to do essentially the same thing just to see a different result. I would have to engage with the gambler and win his dice game so I can get his pivotal clue. I would have to work with the merchant 3 times so I can gain their trust in order to break their alibi. Sure a different playthrough might be some different quests, or perhaps my playstyle now allows me to test for poison in the food without having to send it away to a lab, but ultimately the beats are always going to be the same. Now this probably doesn’t surprise you, and it really didn’t surprise me… no game, especially one of this size and budget would be able to make a truly unique murder mystery every time you load it up. However, what broke the spell this game had on me was that upon a second playthrough (and only my second playthrough) I was getting the same alibis and same clues just said by different people. In game 1, the knight captain might have told me that he stayed home because of the storm and his clue was that the murder was wearing boots. And in game 2, the blacksmith told me the same alibi and that same clue came from the mayor. I started to realize that there are probably only 15 clues (an estimate) that are fed into the hopper and might get assigned out to different people but aren’t truly different.

Now in fairness, the killer in my games were all different (I played 3 total playthroughs), but by the 3^rd playthrough I felt like I was running in mud. I already knew the strategy, I knew how to get people to trust me as quick as possible, and I knew how to perfect my movements around the map. I had even gained enough knowledge about the game, that I knew the preferred skills during level-ups that would make my life easier. This is where the 3^rd flip happened. I went from no expectations, to thinking this was truly a hidden gem I needed to tell people about, to realizing that this is a fun game that doesn't live up to it's promises.

So here we are, the game is still fun, and I would dare say that it is still worth the sale price that it is almost always at on the e-shop or steam. My personal opinion with the game just took a big dive because I got caught up in the enjoyment of the game and that is probably 90% my fault. Future playthroughs really aren’t that different, and while you might find a different murder weapon and/or a different killer, the route you take from A – Z is going to be very similar everytime. You can level up away from combat, but you will still need to take part in plenty of fights in this game, and if you put all your points in combat then you are going to miss clues or miss negotiations that make your game easier. I think I was hoping that the characters would be different on other playthroughs, and that perhaps some characters would be replaced with others so that I couldn’t always count on the list of suspects being the same, but I was wrong. What if I didn’t always have to find a special plant for the doctor, or investigate a cult for the church? What if there was an occasion where the Mayor didn’t lie about his alibi to me, even though he wasn’t a part of the murder? I’m just spit balling here, because there was time when I really loved what I thought this game promised me, and I enjoyed playing it so much that I didn’t hesitate to start it over after round 1. However, once you see the strings, I can’t unsee them and the mystery of what I will need to do, how to upgrade my character and where to focus my time makes each subsequent playthrough, for a game built around subsequent playthroughs, less and less engaging.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: no

Where does it rank: Believe it or not, the first playthrough of the Magister is a lot of fun. You don't know what to expect or what random stuff is going to come up, you don't know how to prepare for clues or the best way to navigate the world. It is truly an interesting and anxious playthrough, however repeat playthroughs are where the game really suffers. While that is true of most games (I don't want to start Sparkle 2 over again) this is a game that is designed around mixing up playthroughs to make them all seem unique, and that is where the cracks really start to appear. If I played this once for 2-3 hours and then never again, it would be higher on the list, but that would be against the spirit of things (also I lost my first playthrough). I have "The Magister" ranked as the 79th Greatest Game of All Time. This sits between Goldeneye 64 (78th) and Lonesome Village (80th) out of 163 total games.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Mario Golf (n64) 2) Voice of Cards: Isle of Dragon 3) Hitman: World of Assassination

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

This might be a short one. Have you ever played Zuma back in the PopCap days? Well if yes, then you have played Sparkle 2 for the most part, and you already know if you are going to like this game based almost entirely based on whether or not you like Zuma. Are there some differences? Sure, and we will go into that, but the core is the same game. Of course this is not very professional of me, to start off a review of a game simply by comparing to another game, that is not even on my list, so let’s go back to the basics.

Sparkle 2 is a match three game with a slight twist. In every level, yes this game is level based, there is a collection of marbles (or orbs) that are being pushed down a path towards a hole. If the marbles reach that hole then it is game over and you need to restart that level, but you can destroy the collection by matching any three or more orbs of the same color and they will be destroyed. If you destroy the whole procession before any of them reach the end, then you win and can advance to the next level. In order to make the matches you fire orbs from a hopper that sits at a single point on the map. Any shot that you take that does not destroy an orb will be added to the procession, so if you are firing wily nily that you might cause your downfall quickly.

There are some bonuses. If you manage to shoot 3 shots in a row that end in a match, then a random powerup will drop. You will have to shoot at the powerup to pick it up, but it will grant a temporary advantage that comes in many forms. For instance one powerup might slow the speed at which the procession moves, one powerup might make the line go backwards for a little bit, and others might destroy chunks of the remaining orbs. Assuming you can keep a chain going, you can reliably count on powerups dropping every three shots which will give you plenty of powers to make it through the level. Depending on how the level is set up, there is a possibility that the powerup will appear on the screen in a place where you may not be able to actually get to it because the line of marbles is continuously in the way. Eventually the powerup will disappear if not picked up, and there was no limit as to how many can be on the screen at one time, so even if one is out of reach if you hit 3 more in a row another powerup will appear even though the first has yet to be picked up.

The main “story” of this game is that there are 5 keys hidden throughout a magical land and that if you can gather all 5 keys you get to open a portal or something. I can’t really say with a straight face that I cared or paid attention to the story, but there supposedly is one. All it really sets up is a world map that at different points allows you to pick which direction you want to do the levels in. Should I head left and go towards a giant hand or should I go right and cross a big bridge? It doesn’t really matter, as you will need to do all the levels if you want to beat the game, but some choice is certainly a plus. There are roughly 100 stages in the story that you will need to play through in order to roll credits, but there isn’t much of a difference in the order you do them.

When I say levels, what I really mean is how things are positioned and how many different colors the marbles might be. Early on a level might have a path that is a lot of straight lines and your shooter is unobstructed so that you can pretty much hit any spot you want without having to wait for marbles to get into just the right place. The end that the marbles are headed towards might also be firmly behind you, giving you plenty of time to match until the level is over without ever catching a whiff of potential defeat. In middle to later levels you might be contending with two or three different lines of marbles that are racing to different locations, forcing you to choose which match is more important at any given moment because focusing too much on one line could cause you to fail from forgetting about another. Later levels will also introduce more colors that you will see marbles in. Gone are just the days of Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green, as you will soon see introductions of White and Black, as well as Pink and Purple. While it should go without saying that the later levels certainly are a step up in difficulty as you are contending with more colors, less forgiving maps, and possibly multiple lines to stop. There was only the rare occasion where I would actually fail a level. This isn’t some sort of humble brag, and I certainly did fail a few times, but it was probably 5 or less fails out of 100 levels.

There is one final aspect that you unlock powerups for your launcher after every 5-7 levels that you can permanently slot in as you see fit. You are only given so many slots to fit your permanent upgrades for and you will have to decide your playstyle as to what is important for you. For instance there is a powerup that after every 20 shots you automatically get a powerup that allows you to shoot a bomb at the marbles, regardless if you have a streak going or not. Or perhaps you want a permanent powerup that makes the marbles go slower for each level but in return makes you have to destroy even more of them to defeat the level. These powers won’t necessarily break the game for you in either direction, but are still fun to unlock.

There are other modes in the game including an endless mode and challenge mode that you can play, but the draw for me and for this series is the campaign mode that has you tackling these levels with an end goal in mind. Upon completion of the game you do unlock a harder mode to play through the campaign, which I only dabbled in, but ultimately it means that the marbles move quicker and that there seem to be more of them which is the biggest change.

Overall there isn’t really a lot to complain about with Sparkle 2 because it can be boiled down to a match 3 style game. The music is fairly decent but you are going to hear it a lot as there isn’t a huge collection of music to get through. The backgrounds and levels themselves vary only in the slightest way possible, outside of a few levels. There were certainly multiple points in the game where I was absolutely convinced that I had played this exact same level (setup and everything) just a few levels before. The game could have certainly used more backgrounds, or music to help with that feeling of déjà vu, but I’m not at all that upset about any of those motions.

Sparkle 2 isn’t going to (didn’t) set the world on fire, and while it is an incredibly well made and capable game that probably feels right at home on the switch or the steam deck (I played on Ps4). It’s also not trying to do something amazing. It is a game that you keep installed and bust out a few levels while waiting on the bus or in a waiting room, or a game that you pass to the kids to placate them at a restaurant to just be quiet. It is inoffensive and easy to pick up and play without needing to understand a lot of rules. Those aren’t attempts from me to diminish the game, but it can be an incredibly well made game and play well, but not really be considered high up on the “Greatest of All Time” list.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: no

Where does it rank: Sparkle 2 is a very competent game, and a very fun game, but it isn't a great game. That doesnt mean it is a bad game, but its a match 3 game and if you play 1 level you have played them all. It's the perfect game to play a level or two while waiting, but this isn't a game that you will necessarily pick to play over anything else when you have the TV for an hour. I have Sparkle 2 ranked as the 104th Greatest Game of all time. It sits between Evoland 2 (103rd) and World of Solitaire (105th).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Mario Golf (n64) 2) The Magister 3) Hitman: World of Assassination