James Cunningham
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Ruling Hell is a grueling job and the transition can be rough when a new successor takes the reigns. Hell isn't just where the worst of humanity goes, but is also home to countless powerful demons, and they're not the type to sit back content in their positions. When Enma rose to being Hell's new ruler, it didn't take long for them to be deposed, with Gouma stealing the throne for himself. With the last of their power, Enma summons a champion from the mortal plane to engage in battle on their behalf, who in turn commands a small army of heroes to carve a path through the souls of the dead on the way to depose the usurper.
Death is an event horizon. On one side there's life, and everyone alive knows how that goes, and inevitably there's death but it's only seen through life's perspective. The body stops and becomes fertilizer for the next generation, and unless someone is lucky with immediate medical care, it's a one-way transition with no coming back. If there's anything after death that information isn't coming back to the world of the living, so maybe there's pearly gates, maybe a river with a ferryman needing a couple pennies for the fare or maybe it's every bit as strange as Everhood 2.
There's a lot of polish needed in many different places in Techtonica, such as the way most -- but not all -- items and components tell you which specific crafting machine can build it or how on the PC version every item uses the V key to switch modes except for the mole, which wants Z, and "you get used to it" sounds like a terrible excuse. That doesn't change that I've got 100 hours on my save game and have stayed up until 3-4AM several nights not because I had to, but due to the way Techtonica encourages having a million projects all running at once, whether that be a major construction to produce a new complicated part or tweaking layouts on existing factories to optimize their efficiency.
Enotria: The Last Song is a little rough around the edges, but still nicely playable in spite of this. The standard-level difficulty feels hard-but-fair, providing a good challenge once you get the various systems sorted out while filled with a strong variety of enemies and bosses with plenty of attacks to learn. The parry move isn't all that generous with the timing, but highly effective once you get the hang of it, and feels great when you successfully fend off a multi-hit strike. Customizing a character gives a lot of room for experimentation, and while the best method is to pick a class and build towards it, there's still plenty of leeway in how that class can play thanks to the large number of weapons with different handling and elemental affinities. Most strikingly, while Enotria is hard it's not dark, with the different qualities of sunlight feeling like a stronger theme even than the aspect of the world being a play that runs through the story. Enotria: The Last Song is a solid soulslike with a unique, appealing identity, which is plenty to paper over the rough spots on the quest to free the world from a script nobody asked...
And it just keeps growing from there. Newer, faster machines mean tearing out and rebuilding the current setup, while new resources such as quartz and oil open up a host of options like enhanced computing, different types of fuels and plastics. Transportation items like trucks and trains or eventually the aerial drones allow moving large amounts of resources across the map, and each new upgrade requires rethinking the current setup to see how it can be made better. There's a story with an end-point, although not at all intrusive, but climbing through the tech tiers to complete it can easily take a hundred hours or more. That sounds like a lot, but in a game with the scope and polish of Satisfactory, that can be just the beginning of retooling a planet to be the industrial powerhouse of your dreams.
Trapped in a cave with no way out, the only real option is to convert the monster-infested depths into a comfy home. Build a house, garden, fish, scavenge, and mine to get better tools, and beat on monsters to maybe eventually escape the sprawling subterranean map.
There's a lot to say about Animal Well, but the nature of the game is that most of it beyond basic mechanics is best left unsaid. The level design is excellent, the platforming controls perfectly after a short time to get a feel for it, and the moody art is far more detailed with fancy effects than its pixely nature shows in screenshots. The heart of the game is its mysteries, though, whether that be something as basic as scanning the map for breaks in the wall that indicate a missed secret passage, or realizing that one of the tools has a less-obvious ability that completely changes how useful it is. Even beating the game is just another step towards solving it, because the credit roll means a whole new set of more intricate puzzles has opened up. Animal Well is a stunner of a metroidvania, usually charming but frequently creepy, mysterious but by no means unapproachable, and filled from top to bottom with secrets that are always satisfying to uncover.
Outcast - A New Beginning is an excellent sequel with a lot of great gameplay elements that go a long way to make up for its need for further polish. Bugs are common, from an outpost with the robots stuck in the floor to breakable helidium crystals floating several feet above the ground they should be poking out of, and the conversation trees are in desperate need of re-ordering. Despite this, though, it's almost impossible to resist seeing what the next villager is up to and their relation to the rest of the world, following the dialogue and fishing out quests as an excuse to see and do more. The world is also beautifully designed, with each village having its own architecture and style while the world map is covered in points of interest and different biomes, providing gorgeous views from just about any spot in the landscape. Combat is also great fun, especially when stumbling on a particularly effective gun combination or figuring out how the latest upgrade fits into the flow of the next hostile encounter. It took over twenty-four years for Cutter Slade to return to Adelpha, but the wait has paid off with an epic adventure...
Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game has a lot of tidying up to do to become what it should be, but there's a wonderfully-rewarding game in there once you've learned its quirks. I had no idea the map checkpointing system was so useful until I noticed one of the screenshots highlighting it, and then a major point of friction simply disappeared. It also took a bit to get used to the idea that the smaller trucks are better, but it only takes so much wrangling over rocky outcrops or between trees to figure out that Expeditions needs a different approach than earlier games in the series when it comes to tackling the wilderness. Once you learn the way around its awkward menu system, figure out the unexplained gameplay elements and know what bugs to avoid, the game Expeditions wants to be shines through and it's a great one. The huge, expansive maps feel like they've got endless points of interest, and the challenge in finding each one and carrying out its related tasks rarely ever feels overwhelming. The beautiful landscapes are one of the stars of the show, and there's a satisfying balance between the open areas that let you explore them...
A Highland Song is a wonderful adventure through mountains that were old before people arrived and will be there long after their ruins have eroded away. Moira's journey is as much about the Scottish Highlands as it is about her life so far, with history and myth being equally important to both. It can sometimes take some thinking and experimentation to find the way through a new area, clambering back and forth over rocks and cliffs to find a clue that points to the path forward, but the information is there for an attentive explorer to uncover. It all comes together to make for an engaging, unforgettable and frequently musical trek you'll want to make several times over to learn the histories and hidden paths of Moira's mountain home.