faea gaming: November '25
Hello, again. It’s been another slow month for me, with me spending basically the whole month with my physical health very very mildly all over the place. I spent a lot of time haphazardly bouncing between a lot of different (mostly arcade) games without putting enough time into any of them to feel like I can say much, so it’s a short one this time. Importantly, though... as of publishing, it's the 1-year anniversary of DOGSITR! I wanted to do something cool for the anniversary, but the aforementioned health weirdness didn't leave me with enough time or energy to do so :( but it's a game that's still very close to my heart. So everyone needs to say 'heck yeah' in the comments, and then play it, and then say 'heck yeah' in the comments. Anyway, video games.
Games I Played This Month
MOTHER
Wowwwwwww. Very, very, very sweet little game. With any classic RPG experience it’s fairly obvious that, in spite of its kind of baffling reputation, this game is quite easy! It never really lets go of your hand, not in the common Video Game colloquialism sense, but in how it’s always handing you juust enough niceties to make the journey generally very smooth, even when it isn’t – enemies aren’t that hard outside of specific identifiable lategame encounters, only held money is dropped on wipe which is realistically never going to happen, and you’re always able to teleport to a magical fantasyland where you can heal for free and have access to all the game’s conveniences. Everything feels like it’s expressing that it’s just, like, a bunch of kids playing outside – being all very believable to them, but also never putting them in the way of genuine harm. Particularly love how the lategame is about deciding which encounters are worth it or not, and which aren’t – and just running from the latter; the difficulty of the game being deeply tied into running away from danger feels very apt. Game feels like an expression of love towards childhood and play, and some other things too. Lovely game :)
Baroque Shooting
Got excited when the remaster got announced then remembered this is a video game I can just play already ANYWAY this is like the most okay shmup ever probably. Stages are like whatever except for stage 4 which is genuinely very cool. Bosses are also like whatever just throughout but there’s one boss with a gimmick and I thought that gimmick was cute. Extends come from scoring which is always fun, but scoring scales on a multiplier that increases for… not getting hit, so the way to recover from getting hit is to not get hit for a very extended period of time. Which is kinda funny. I think it’d work better if the game was much more difficult and longer, because getting the long survival and getting tons of extend % at once is really fun – though I’m not gonna complain about the length, because a ~13 minute runtime makes this thing soooo easy to play, and I think a game like this can still fit a million different ideas into ten minutes – in contrast, I've been chipping away at Streets of Rage 2 for a bit, and it's such a fun game but being 1hr+ for a single run of an arcade game makes it soo hard to commit to playing in comparison. Game floods you with infinite bombs and also a lot of extends near the end and the patterns aren’t ever that hard so it’s a very very easy gane I 1cced this in probably less than 10 plays and I am not thaaaat good at these
Look Outside
Not the most robust Survival Horror nor Turn-Based Role-Playing Game, but its weaker points in both (extremely generous resources, low punishment for failure, very simple and ‘solvable’ combat/encounters) turn it more into a neat little optimisation game: wake up, figure out the missable events for the day, plan around those, run around the place, maybe die once or twice, and figure out the best, easiest way to approach each session – It’s Neat and Fun, if a little bit smooth and easy. The most interesting bit to me is how its aesthetic approach to cosmic horror grounds itself in normality, very clearly pulling from COVID lockdown fears – being forced to stay inside as those who don’t cause irreparable harm to themselves and others, having to manage basic needs like hygiene, mood and pastimes, feeling like the outside world’s coming apart as you can only interface with it through scrolling the internet. In both aspects – the gameplay and theming – it’s not really landed quiiiite as much as initial impressions had me hoping, but I liked it well enough.
Armored Core
The trouble with Armored Core on a replay is that some of the most interesting bits about the game are not so pronounced after you’ve played like seven of the later games that play identically; the harsh economy and the timetable system for missions don’t come through quite as well when you’re hopping around like a weirdo clearing everything on the first go. Rather, what I’m appreciating more this time is the tone. The brutal end-of-the-world capitalist PMC apocalyptic setting is as clear as opening the game and being met with “ELIMINATE SQUATTERS” and “ELIMINATE STRIKERS”, and my first time through I tried very hard to take the least unethical-feeling missions, despite the constant reminders you’re given that every party is probably irredeemably dreadful. But there’s no real point to that, is there; after all, all roads lead to Destroy Floating Mines. There’s no way to be the GOOD Mercenary With A Multi-Storey Death Machine, so… embrace the fun of it. And it is proudly, openly fun – the overwhelming and yet incredibly fast and zippy controls, the intense focus on letting you play around and customise as much as possible (it’s even the first thing in the opening cutscene! they know how much fun playing around with your toys is!!) the music blasting over life-or-death mech duels or, like, killing three guys in a car park. I feel like the game’s outward insistence on being really really Cool and Fun despite the incredibly harsh setting is a fun contrast against the idea that you could try to pick the ‘best’, least-immoral route through the game: limit yourself by picking only ‘good’ missions, slam into situations where you have to do something awful anyway, and ultimately end up in the exact same situation by the end; or leave any pretense of morality at the door, pick the highest-rewarding missions, and enjoy blowing up faceless mechs without thinking about the people inside – this PMC-run hellscape won’t turn out different any other way.
~*ʚїɞ*~
Thank you for reading, as always. Once again, I don't have much of an outro, so I'll keep it short this time... but don't forget to say 'heck yeah' in the comments, and then play DOGSITR, and then say 'heck yeah' in the comments. See you next month ~♡