PixlBit

Let’s spring into Spring with more game reviews that I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com.  Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even please post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

GRIS (Switch)

This is probably the best game in this batch.  You know, I’m not sure I’ll be able to describe the story of GRIS very well.  Heck, I don’t even know why it has that title.  GRIS is a very artistic game and probably has lots of deeper meanings, but I guess I don’t catch onto those very well.  I mean, when I played Journey, I just thought it was a game about a ketchup bottle walking in the desert.  GRIS is a bit like Journey except that it’s a LOT better, as it has more actual gameplay behind it.  Anyway, in the game you are a young woman who wakes up on a broken statue of a hand, and apparently you have lost your voice.  So now you must explore beautiful hand drawn ruins, deep forests, and underwater caves because…well it beats just standing there.  GRIS is a 2-D platformer with light puzzle elements with graphics that look like an international animation festival.  It’s very artsy fartsy and a bit short, but that also means that it held my interest all the way through, and games just don’t do that much for me anymore. 

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG (Switch)

The late 90’s was a pretty memorable time for me.  I had just graduated college and was at the peak of my game writing for The Dallas Morning News.  So playing YIIK: A Postmodern RPG really hit home for me.  It’s an RPG set in the late 90’s, and the main character even just finished graduating college, too!  Heck, even the title feels like the 90’s, as ‘postmodernism’ was a big buzz word when I was in college.  This game always caught my eye at trade shows I’ve been to in the past, mainly because of its bright and colorful N64/PSOne era graphics, and the return to classic style RPG battles.  Reminds me of a mix of EarthBound and Undertale.  It’s not a bad game, but unfortunately it didn’t grab my interest for very long because it focuses more on story and text and not actual gameplay, like battles.  And the battles themselves are more long and drawn out than they need be.  It does have some neat references, though.  They mention Chrono Trigger, Lufia 2, and Secret of Mana in the text, and the developers told me the main character’s house was designed to be a replica of the home from Full House!

Pikuniku (Switch)

For some reason, this game reminded me of GRIS with Loco Roco style graphics.  It’s another indie 2-D platformer with light puzzle elements, but the cute and colorful graphics is what sold me on it.  It’s a bit short and the controls are purposefully wonky, but that’s the only problems I had with it.  And like GRIS, it held my interest all the way through, and has a bit more replay value, too.  The PR folks said this game may look cute, but it has a dark and dystopian storyline.  But yeah, it doesn’t really.

Glass Masquerade (PS4)

The PR rep asked if I wanted to review a game about stained glass and puzzles, and I like puzzle games so I said, “Sure!”  Turns out it’s a puzzle game in the purest sense of the word, as you piece together parts of stained glass windows.  So yeah, it’s a jigsaw puzzle game!  While it has a few problems, it really wasn’t that bad and I enjoyed it for a good while.  Sometimes, simple, casual games have their place, too.

Bombfest (PS4)

Bombfest is a couch multiplayer game for up to four players.  You play as little Fisher-Price looking block figures and throw bombs at each other to try and knock them off the arena.  But since you are little block people, the 3-D isometric arenas are locations around a house.  So you’ll fight on a dinner table, tree stump, kitchen sink, bedroom nightstand, and more!  It’s a fun game for a group of friends, but feels more like it should’ve been a mini-game on the N64 and is a bit pricey at 20 bucks.

Coffee Crisis (Switch)

Aliens are invading Earth and stealing heavy metal music, coffee, and WiFi!  It’s up to two coffee baristas, Nick and Ashley, to stop them in this 2-D classic styled side-scrolling beat ‘em up.  Unfortunately, the game isn’t very good, and it doesn’t help that to continue your progress, you have to enter in passwords.  I’m all for keeping classic game staples alive, but in this day and age, passwords should just go away, for the most part.  I guess you could use passwords online to progress, so that’s kind of a good thing.  Anyway, I think I know why this game uses passwords.  Originally, this was one of those indie reproduction Genesis kickstarter cartridges, and they made it into a downloadable game for consoles later.  I’d be pretty disappointed if I kickstarted this.  That’s why I don’t do Kickstarters.

The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human (Switch)

I’m about to show with these last two games that just because a game claims to be a “Metroidvania,” it doesn’t always mean it’s going to be good.  I try not to use the term Metroidvania too much because I think it’s been overused and not everybody knows what it means, especially the audience I write for. Anyway, in the WAY distant future, a spaceship leaves Earth and enters a wormhole, only to return centuries upon centuries later.  Your spaceship crashes on Earth, which is now an ice and water covered planet.  There are no humans around anymore, just water everywhere.  Luckily your spaceship can double as a submarine, so it’s up to you to explore this watery landscape, figure out what happened to all the humans, and just try to survive amongst the hostile sea creatures.  Aside from the annoyingly hard bosses, this game has no enemies, so it’s WAY unbalanced.  It’s a shame, too, because the 2-D pixel underwater graphics and sound are beautiful.

JackQuest: The Tale of the Sword (PS4)

One day, Jack and his girlfriend are sitting under a tree when all of a sudden, a giant green hand comes out from the earth, grabs Jack’s lady, and takes her underground.  Jack hops into the hole to rescue her and discovers a maze of caves and monsters.  But luckily he also finds a giant sword that can talk, so now he must explore the caverns and dispatch monsters to save his sweetheart.  This game is all one big cave, with little to no variation in backgrounds.  Plus the map screen is horrible, so getting around in this game is not fun.  Probably the worst game in this batch.

And that’s all for now.  Thanks for reading and posting ‘likes’ and comments.  I really appreciate it.  In other recent news, I’m a bit bummed because I registered for E3 2019, and I was just denied a press pass for it.  I don’t understand why they let me in last year and not this year.  Sucks!  --Cary