I just got done killing literally everything in Valfaris. It was a pretty awesome ride. One you can’t normally take on macOS but I have been streaming it through Amazon Luna. Valfaris was one of the October games included with Prime and I finally found time to properly play an action game I was interested in using streaming. All the while being side eyed by my backlog.
Luna worked better than I expected for a game that relies heavily on reaction times. Over the 15 hours or so I only experienced a couple of problems. At a particular time of day there was some seriously low frame rates and blurry images coming and going for about 15 minutes. That happened twice. Other than that, no problems. I expect being a Prime user puts me at the bottom of the bandwidth priority queue at busy times. Although I never had to wait more than 30 seconds to start a game. So, it’s not perfect but when it works it works well.
Valfaris is a run and gun platformer coded from the DNA of 16 bit classics. It had me cursing under my breath while simultaneously delighting at learning to crack these tough sections of bloody mayhem. The bosses come thick and fast. Many of which are memorable and challenging. There were three bosses where I said, ‘that’s it, I’m not getting any further.’ Then with some perseverance I continued and finally beat the game. While difficulty is on the harder side, there are loads of checkpoints, with infinite lives, and ways to power up weapons. So it’s not as hard as it could be. No doubt the new game plus will be something else.
The block and parry moves were very important for certain enemies. I especially liked the moments of swordplay against some terrifying looking baddies. Gets a little old school Prince of Persia vibe briefly. Another really fun area was the worm tunnels which had some of the best platforming. Including plenty of traversing by hanging onto moving objects.
The whole aesthetic, music and art, plays right into my tastes. Heavy metal sci-fi bio horror. Love it. One of my favourite bosses was plant based. Spewing out flying jelly fish, of course. It gave me a tonne of trouble because colliding with a spawning ghost like creature drugged me and caused the screen effects to go super wobbly. Three hits like that and I’m dead, but luckily that count and the woozy effects reset after a short time.
Valfaris is full of big moments, changing environments, and hordes of new enemies. I would love to see an expert speed running this.
On the other end of the gaming spectrum I’ve been enjoying some very relaxed word games. Leading me to discover all kinds of useless words. I found that in Disney Spellstruck ‘TWERK’ is an accepted word. That is far from the most unusual one in their dictionary. I got a lot of big multipliers using obscure two letter words. Felt more like I was gaming the system than improving my vocabulary.
I’ve dunked on hidden object games before and yet when it’s presented well I can’t resist whiling away some hours on one from time to time. I did a 100% run of Hidden Folks to appease my backlog. This still looks like one of the best games in the genre. Simple flawless execution. These mini living landscapes are full of joy and idiosyncratic details. I’ve noted that there are quite a few good looking imitators on the market now, so maybe there’s something else out there worth a try.
Sticking with the chill cozy games theme I made more use of Apple Arcade to play Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. It’s a cute collect ’em up. Taking photos of wildlife. Is there really much more to say about it? In game photo taking has been one of my favourite modern game mechanics even though I feel it’s something that can be further exploited in interesting ways. Hopefully some innovative devs will prove me right. Now I’m curious when it first arrived as part of actual gameplay. Feels like it would have been 2010s. Alba uses it simply but effectively. It’s the essence of an exploration game and that normally appeals to me.
Back to more intense games. I’ve been flitting through my backlog, trying things out for a few hours then moving on. The game that stood out was a puzzle platformer called Slime-san: Superslime Edition. Which can be extremely cheap on sale. The main mechanic is green objects can be toggled as either solid or able to pass through. Red objects are deadly. Reach the end of each level. Then they pile in a load of complications. It’s face paced, lots of wall jumping and sliding and diving down. The controls are tight. There were many deaths. I had a lot of fun with it.
Slime-san has over a hundred levels, different game modes, multiplayer, and a level editor. The only reason I’m not going for completion now is because I just don’t have time for everything and desperately want to kill my backlog. I may come back to it one day.
Last up, some time ago I decided to find out for myself what the deal with Honkai is. I don’t really do mobile games. Mostly because of the small screen and it’s not a habit I’ve got into. I’d only play time killers without sound anyway. Honkai Impact 3rd became available on macOS back in May and I thought ‘why not’. It’s free and it ain’t my first gacha.
Prepare for some disjointed thoughts as I try to keep this concise. First impressions were that Honkai Impact 3rd has the best combat I’ve seen in this type of game. I’m using a Dualsense controller with lots of buttons assigned to moves and specials. Almost feels like something I would buy. Almost. Graphics look good. The gameplay is high resolution but the older cut scenes at the start of the game are much lower quality. A shame but not a dealbreaker. This is after all a mobile game from 2016 that has spiralled out of control.
That spiral can be seen on the main hub. It is incredibly cluttered. I thought Marvel Snap looked bad, this is a bombardment of currencies, resources, items, bargains, trinkets, bonuses, side games, and the rest. Many menus deep. I like collecting stuff but this is overwhelming. I know I’m being lured into a whale trap. Honkai is eyeing up my wallet.
I ignore it all and play the damn game. There’s a load of hot women, and girls with oversized weapons. The combat is pretty satisfying but it’s too easy. Maybe it’s harder with mobile controls. I played for a very long time without upgrading or changing anything. The game kept warning me that my battlesuit had too low stats. My self chosen challenge became how long could I survive on the starter load out without dying. Anything to avoid looking at he menus. I finally died on chapter 4 or 5. And only because a boss caught me by surprise. The issue seemed to be that later enemies got more health. It simply took longer to beat them. Once I did a full upgrade I button mashed everything to dust with speed.
The story is pure stereotypical anime. Big bads. Big organisations. Big fighting. Big egos. Bad jokes. Endless dialogue about who cares. I click through most of it and still get the gist. I wonder if these games are more about selling artwork and reaching cut scenes than anything else. The character screen has an ‘appreciation mode’ where you can check out all the outfits. Zoom in. Enjoy the light jiggles. Gotta admire the use of the word ‘appreciation’. And I’ll hand it to them, the art is good and a lot of the outfits have intricate designs.
If it wasn’t obvious, I don’t rate it. Not my bag. Would rather it was an anime. There’s a bunch of superficial social stuff too and plenty to buy. I didn’t. In the end I had the most fun playing a match 3 side game that was some sort of special activity for the month. It was also a little too easy but the gameplay was decent. I kinda feel the devs and game designers are a bit wasted here. They could be making something more engaging that asks for money up front.
Enough of that. I don’t enjoy talking down games. I also don’t like to end on a sour note but that’s all I got for now.
mishmash 