Video games log 014 (Quite a bunch of different genres)
I played...
Regency Solitaire
Casual game with some solitaire mechanics
I find the regency era to be one of the least interesting periods of history, so this game didn't win me over the art/context, but the gameplay was pretty fun. It's solitaire so cards are set on a board and you have to empty it progressively by drawing a card and adding available cards of higher or lower ranks to it. There's a fair amount of randomness but nothing too bad, especially as you unlock some skills and can get some wildcards.
Anyway, played it for a few evenings after long days at work, which was the perfect mood for me to enjoy it.
XF Extreme Formula (Tournaments only)
Anti-gravity racing game (or F-Zero like, if you will)
The game is still in early access, its story mode has only 4/22 chapters out at the time of this review, but I 100% will get back to it once it's all done. Except for maybe some races on the moon where a boring gray is quite dominant (but understandably so), most of the races are gorgeous so far! I also loved reading some of the flavor texts and world building.
Gameplay wise, the controls are tight and the boost system is pretty good, with a nice speed bonus if you manage to avoid collision. I can say I do recommend it getting already if you like anti-gravity racing, and early access games don't bother you.
Yakuza 4 Remastered
This game was kiiiiind of a slog with the 4 character parts but it was alright. I started ignoring substories around the second half of Seajima's part and never went back, which made the last fight a bore to me because I didn't level up the main characters enough and it was loooooong.
The story was okay, lots of twists that end up making the whole thing kinda meh, like the amount of times where you hear a gunshot off camera, "actually I was X" moments, etc, it's just. Too much. AND!!! There's one plot point with Saejima which kinda kickstart the whole story of the game and we don't get to see it?
So yeah, I enjoyed the first part and a half of the game (it's still a Yakuza game and I like the franchise), but having to play different characters got repetitive really quickly, in both gameplay and story senses.
Berry Bury Berry
Incremental game ; put fruits in a hole!
Really cute, really fun (a bit slow at the start of the game), the story is a bit basic but serviceable for what it is. As someone who's loving the return of the 3D debut era in games, I loved the visuals as well. Nice game!
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma
Visual novel/escape game, third one of the Zero Escape trilogy
I've been meaning to get back to this game for a while (almost 5 years, to be precise) and now it's done! I didn't remember much of the whole story with the first two games, which made me read some articles on the wiki more than once, but that's on me. It was cool seeing some of those characters again!
This being said, the pacing of this game is a slog; as far as I remember, the Nonary Games (which is the name of the bundle of the first two games) were pretty quick because it was mostly text, but in this one, there are long ass cutscenes and no way to read what they are saying, unless you skip a bit of dialogue and look up the logs, but that's not ideal at all. And the quality of the dialogues is pretty bad; having every character repeats themselves when something weird happens can only go so far until it's getting really annoying.
Still had a pretty good time with the whole enigma/escape room sections tho! And it was nice to see the end of this trilogy, as sluggish as it was.
Easy Delivery Co.
Deliver parcels from (weird) shopkeepers to their destination, in a region covered in snow.
Wanted to play it before the end of winter, that's done! Chill game, both in ambiance and weather! I loved the retro 3D looking visuals and texture of the snow/fog, and the driving around was fun, be it on the roads or on the snow, where it was a tad trickier to maneuver. The story was simple with kind of a (non-)twist to it but it was good for what it was.
I gave up trying to 100% it though, it would have made this game too long for me, especially for the last achievements where you have to find snowcats. But it was lovely to learn the lay of the land and make those deliveries!
Passpartout: The Starving Artist
Painter simulation!
This was extremely repetitive, especially once you start to understand what you have to paint to please your buyers. Not gonna lie, I played it because I had it in my backlog and I don't like to jump to a sequel if I have the first game (which is why I still haven't touched The Witcher 2 and 3). It's still well done for what it is, but I know I will enjoy the second game a lot more.