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thispatternismineMostly a bunch of easy rejections because I found them annoying or frustrating or generally not for me.
Astro's Playroom
I actually got to the 4th & final zone in this before I had enough. I generally have a bad time with platformers because you can die so many frustrating deaths because of wonky cameras & controls that never seem to work the same way twice (you can press jump & forward with the exact same timing & pressure on jumps that seem the same distance & one time will fall short & one will overshoot & there's no rhyme or reason) but not enough to cause more than mild annoyance & I can usually push past with some amount of swearing.
No, what I hate about platformers are boss battles. They're always fiddly as fuck & you have to be doing 5 different things at once & since you usually die in one hit you can't slip up even slightly. I will fight every boss in every Devil May Cry game over fighting a single platformer boss.
There were only a couple in this game & they were more minibosses than anything but still annoying. I got pat one, but the one in the PS4 era zone had me giving up because I just didn't feel it was worth it because I wasn't having fun. You had to dodge waves of projectiles & then during a pause you had to shoot an arrow at a dynamite thing to make it blow up, but the bow is awkward to aim & you only get one shot & there's a limited window so if you miss (or take too long trying to properly line up your shot) you have to dodge the projectiles again. And if you do manage to hit it there's still another one to hit, but even more projectiles coming at you & things are moving faster. And according to the walkthrough I consulted there was at least another phase after that & each one is harder & I was already finding the first phase fiddly & frustrating. (Oh yeah & this took place on a tiny platform & one wrong jump would have to falling to your death.
It was just frustrating me way too much & I didn't feel the reward was worth it.
Nour: Play With Your Food
I thought this sounded interesting. An art piece. More an experience than a game. But it was so frustrating trying to figure out what I could do & how I could do it. I understand the game wants to leave it up to you to do whatever, but it's hard to figure out what you can do when the controls are so poor & the physics so random (for instance I found what seemed to be a colour dropper, but it kept randomly floating across the screen instead of over the bowl where I was trying to place it).
After Us
Speaking of annoying platformers... This one looked gorgeous but fucking hell was it annoying to play. The first level, which was meant as a movement tutorial, had borderline impossible jumps. Like it taught me how to double jump & then immediately put in my path a cliff that was just a shade too high. And when, after many attempts, I somehow made it on top... I immediately fell off because of the floaty controls. Managed to get up again, & moved on, only to be faced with another slightly-too-tall obstacle. Finally got past this, to be taught glide jumps... but with the floaty movements I missed jumps more than I landed. At that point I was done. Like, there's 2 options here, either it's going to get harder from this point (through either more difficult-to-manage jumps or having to do so while worrying about other things, or because the game is poorly balanced, or all the above), or the tutorial is poorly designed, which doesn't bode well for if the game needs to explain anything more complex. I hadn't even gotten to any combat yet but from looking around for guides to see if I was missing anything & that's why I was struggling, it seems nobody had anything good to say about that.
Solar Ash
This one looked so cool & interesting & I'd had this on my wishlist for a while before I bought it. But there was always that worry about whether this would be a game I could get along with. Because it's a flow game where you're zooming around super fast & bounding off stuff to launch yourself to points & hitting markers, & since I don't have the fastest reaction time I can struggle with those. Still, sometimes those game are still fun even if you suck at them, so I thought it was worth a shot. I couldn't even get out of the crater you wake up in though. Definitely filing this one under 'Games I wish I could play, but just aren't for me'.
Maquette
Honestly this was one I wasn't sure I could manage but tried anyway. First person games make me nauseous, but I can manage a few walking simulators & slow paced puzzle games here & there. And it was free on PS+ so whatever. But nopenopenope. Just moving the camera to focus the little reticule on the door handle to open it had me knowing that I would this game would be a problem for me.
Bugsnax
Another game I suspected I wouldn't get on with due to first person perspective, but looked interesting & was on PS+ so I'll give it a- Oh no thanks.
Biomutant
I've not heard great things about this, but the general consensus was that it was 'fine, I guess' & it was free on PS+, so sure why not. But the voiceover on the cutscenes was super annoying & so was combat, so I noped out within the first few minutes.
Kena Bridge of Spirits
This one started out promising. The first level was basically a tutorial level that showed basic movement, a combat encounter was a little on the simple side but honestly as long as the story is interesting & there's things to see & do, I'm fine with 'smash a button a few times & the enemy dies' battles. There was some frustration that I had to consult a walkthrough to figure out where to go, due to some obstacles being things you were meant to jump & clamber up & others of identical height being insurmountable & there as barriers, but that's not the end of the world & why I always like to have a walkthrough handy just in case. Each explanation was nicely spaced out, allowing you to get to grips with each mechanic one by one...
But then I reached the first proper combat encounter & suddenly it's 'oh you can command your little minions to attack stuff with this button but you have to charge up this meter first y being a badass in battle & you can aim your staff like a bow with this button, & then there this' & I'm like whoa whoa whoa wait a minute. Ad I try to do the aiming the staff thing, but there didn't seem to be a button to fire anything? And then I tried to 'deploy minions' command, which didn't work, which eventually figured out was because I'd taken some hits while I was trying to process all this info & figure out what I was supposed to do so they got scared, so I needed to charge that meter again, but I was so confused. And then I did manage to deploy them, & something happened to the main enemy I was fighting... But only briefly & then my minions ran away again & I have no idea if it's because there was a window in which I was supposed to do something or if something else had happened that ended the attack.
If I was invested in the game, I might have been willing to give it the benefit of the doubt & look up what I was meant to be doing, but it just hadn't managed to hook me yet & there are other games out there & I got other shit to do that isn't gaming so nah moving on, thanks.
And then there were games I'd already completed on PS4, but needed to replay to get the trophies on the PS5 versions.
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!
Just as much An Experience as it was on PS4.
Stray
Yep, still amazing. Still ugly-cried at the ending. Got plenty of screenshots of that but enough that they deserve several posts of their own.
Also Toem which was really cute & fun, & will get its own post.
Still to play:
- Destruction All Stars - I got it on PS+, so I might as well. I don't know how well I'll get along with it, since I don't usually play multiplayer stuff, & it seems like there's a lot going on (it's a car combat game but also you can get out of the car & you need to collect stuff but also be in the car &??????). Also apparently there's nobody playing this so I'll bet matchmaking is a struggle. Is this game even still going? I haven't heard anything about it in a while. Yep I was right. Way too much going on & I can't be bothered to try & figure it out
- Sky: Children of the Light - This was sitting o my PS4 for months & now it's been sitting on my PS5 for months. It's supposed to be a chill game, but it seems like there's events & FOMO stuff so it doesn't sound that chill?
- Devil May Cry 5 (Special Edition) - I obviously played DMC5 on PS4, up to Heaven or Hell difficulty, but this is the special edition version that has more stuff in it.
Incidentally I'm curious how long these images will work for. Since I've used the images I already posted on Tumblr for the images in my posts here on DW so far (I mean, if they're already uploaded, why waste space on DW?). So I figured I'd do the same here. But I didn't plan on posting this to Tumblr, & it seemed weird to keep it in my drafts, so I deleted the draft on Tumblr after getting the image links. And they still seem to work? I wonder if they'll get auto-deleted at some point or if Tumblr keeps them up forever? We'll see.
