What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

In the past, I purchased Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Unfortunately, to my dismay, I soon found that this game was being sold by the publisher bundled with malware! Certainly it must have been an unintentional mistake, innocently made. Twirling its villainous figurative mustache, this malware refused to let me run the game I had purchased. Evil cackle! You shall never play this game! said the malware. Shrug, said I, refunding and moving on with my life.

But recently I found out, through a certain wavy punctuation website, that there had been new and exciting advances in videogame malware unbundling technology. OwO! Could it be? So I sought out a certain Girl, who is in Good Shape, or possibly the Right Shape, or maybe she just makes things Fit, so to speak, and who had kindly and competently (just a couple days earlier) repackaged the game in a way that, if not free of said malware, at least neutralized it. Hurray! Another victory for non-paying-customers!

TLC is a classic sidescrolling metroidvania (2.5D) featuring zero or more Princes of Persia. It took me just shy of 40 hours to beat it to a point that was reported in the loading menu as being beyond 100% (so I think you can assume I did "everything", except for the optional platforming busywork challenges, I did absolutely none of that). I played in Hero difficulty (harder, but not hardest) with no assists. Despite some jank and some minor design snafus, I'd call it a Good Game.

You control Sargon, youngest of the Immortals, who in this story are a small, elite strike team of overpowered agents of Queen Thomyris of Persia. During the celebration of a victory, Ghassan, the purported Prince of Persia, is kidnapped by one of the queen's generals and our unit is sent to get him back. They follow the kidnappers to Mount Qaf, where a huge city built by former and much greater King Darius has been cursed and pulled out of the normal flow of time. All who enter are trapped, and that is where the rest of the game takes place.

The visuals were fantastic. For as much as I enjoy a good indie game, it's always nice to experience a triple-A budget production once in a while. They really nailed the balance between epic scale, with beautiful background vistas of the vast abandoned city, huge temples and palaces, and the closeness of smaller, more intricate details (you can find bits of architecture here and there that don't stand up to scrutiny, but not a lot). A particularly impressive section takes place in a stormy sea that has been frozen in time. A fleet of invading ships is in the process of being torn apart amidst strikes of lightning. As you traverse it, the flow of time eventually resumes.

The story is... OK. It soon becomes obvious that, while there's plenty of optional flavor (mainly conveyed through all kinds of "lore" items that you can find all over the place, including many written tablets, papyrus, etc.) the plot is there only in service of the gameplay. So while there are intense cutscenes throughout, the pacing seems very uneven as some things go either unexplained or overexplained for what amounts to an "everything wants to kill you, just kill them back" plot. All the characters are pretty cliche and no dialogue is possible or desired. Why are they acting like that? Who cares! Just murder all the bosses, one after the other!

Which is fine, I guess, because the gameplay is excellent. Basic metroidvania traversal Wall Jump and Dash abilities are given pretty much immediately, but then the game focuses on the acquisition of some fairly interesting space manipulation abilities, like teleportation or a dimensional pocket (they can all be used in combat too!) You do get a double jump eventually, but fairly late in the game; fling is only acquired at the end and criminally underutilized. There is plenty of platforming to be had in the (huge) main map, which includes little challenges for collecting helpful power-ups or just "crystals" (money) and area-specific mechanics, including but not limited to the ol' reliable and traditional Spikes With Unfair Hitbox That Kill You From The Side For Some Reason.

TLC has a really complex fighting system for a metroidvania. Sargon is capable of all kinds of combos, including ground combos, aerial combos, smashes, dodges, parries, charged attacks, surges (kind of a limit break), archery, chakram throws and other mechanics combining these things and your cool space manipulation mechanics (which are required by boss fights). There is a trainer NPC where you can learn each mechanic one by one, something you are encouraged to do by small monetary rewards. The citadel is full of grunt enemies, including corrupted soldiers, mutated animals and insects, ninjas... err, probably Assassins? Let's call them Assassins - and more. There are many minibosses and several bosses. All the bosses, which are part of the game's main progression, are big and epic and have at least three phases, but if you die you can retry them immediately. Fantastic! The same is not true of minibosses, however, which can make them (amusingly) more annoying than the actual bosses, as you have to walk all the way back from the checkpoint after dying.

The way combat scales from regular grunts to major bosses is good at teaching you how you're supposed to be conquering fights in TLC: By learning enemy attack patterns and strategizing how to conquer each of them. As you progress through the game you acquire a variety of new surges, of which you can equip two at a time, and a crapton of different amulets, all with distinct benefits, which you can equip in a limited amount of slots. It really pays to choose the best tools to fight each boss and to invest on either upgrades (purchaseable) or looking around for additional health bar upgrades or potions (a traditional staple of the Prince of Persia franchise). It's also very important to make proper use of the parry; enemies' eyes will helpfully flash yellow for attacks that can be counterattacked after a parry and red for attacks that cannot be parried at all (must be dodged). It might seem safer to dodge most of the time, but some equipable amulets will provide rewards for each parry, and these are vital in difficult fights. Amusingly, as the amount of tools at your disposal increases, I found that fights became easier; earlier bosses were harder to beat.

And that's essentially it. I have very little to criticize. Play TLC if you want a solid, satisfying metroidvania experience (with combat). You may at times fall through a wall, hit an invisible ceiling or be confused about how to progress, but it's rare. Tools are given near the end that help you find some (not all) of the collectibles you missed. Grinding common enemies is pretty much never needed. As the game ends, the game's weakest aspect, its story, is brought to the forefront. You never really learn what happens to the most intriguing characters - there is no closure at all. Maybe there is an element of Zoroastrian mythos I'm ignorant of that would have helped? Some other conclusions I found unsatisfying, but I don't want to spoil why. Just part of the general shallowness aspect of the characters, I suppose.

DLC Note: The DLC features an independent zone with pretty difficult platforming. Your build in the main game does not cross over to the DLC area; there is little health available, "no" amulets or special attacks beyond two that are provided for you. All the strategizing and options you have in the main game are therefore not available here, greatly limiting potential solutions (and, consequently, my enjoyment). Since no amount of progress in the main game will help your DLC build, main game progress will actively hinder you here as it will get you used to moves you will not have access to every time you switch over to the DLC. So if you want to play it, I recommend doing so as early as possible (ie just after it unlocks). Checkpointing is also worse for some reason! As you can probably tell, I didn't love the DLC. I played it up to the final boss but did not bother with beating her.

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I played another couple of hours of Vampire Crawlers and it's still satisfying! I like the pick up and play nature and I don't have to think too hard about it. I just haven't been spending as much time with video games lately, so it's nice.

That said, I am picking up Forza Horizon 6 and will start playing that when it unlocks tonight. I've been waiting for a Horizon game in Japan since the first one, so you could say that I'm fairly excited. I'm a sucker for 90's JDM, especially.

I've mostly been playing tabletop games. I played a game of Twilight Imperium yesterday, which is always a treat. I played as The Nomad and enjoyed them. I had a strong start, but didn't do as well in the middle game and was a bit too defensive and just couldn't pull together a winning strategy. I still had fun, though!

I also recently learned to play both Star Wars Unlimited (the CCG) and Age of Sigmar: Spearhead. Both are excellent. I'm not sure how much $ I want to put into a CCG, I mostly started on it because I have a ton of friends that play it competitively and I find that it's a nice change of pace from Kill Team, my usual game these days. I'm still loving KT, but it's just such a heavy mental load to play, not to mention all the materials needed. It's sometimes nice to have a simpler card game where I can just bring my deck box to a game night and call it good.

Spearhead was also a good contrast to Kill Team. KT is all about intense tactical decisions, line of sight, dice modification, etc. Spearhead feels like just throwing dudes at objectives and rolling lots of dice. It was pretty easy to learn and I definitely want to get a spearhead painted up so I can play more.

Overall, I really missed in person gaming and I'm glad that I'm finding some more games to play. I still enjoy video games, but for the most part, I'm just preferring tabletop games at the moment.