Quar Games 3
I got addicted to VALORANT after this, so this is the last post in the series.
Hyper Light Drifter
A top-down hack-and-slash action game. First of all, the pixel art is absolutely beautiful. This is one of the best-looking games I’ve seen. Like many of the games I enjoy, this one has a pretty hard to understand story. To push this concept further, Hyper Light Drifter has no words outside of tooltips. NPCs talk in pictograms. There is some kind of code language (maybe?) that I was too lazy to try to figure out. Anyways, doesn’t matter that much. There was some kind of apocalypse and you cough up blood a lot. The highlight for me was the boss battles. It was really satisfying to learn how to dodge attacks and whittle down the bosses’ big health pools. Really gave me Dark Souls vibes. The combat in this game is mostly good. The sword, the gun, and the dash all felt good on their own, but I sometimes felt some sluggishness when I tried to chain things together. Overall, the game hits the difficulty sweet spot that only a few games hit (Celeste and Hollow Knight come to mind), and I enjoyed the 8 or so hours I got out of it.
Demon’s Souls
The first mainstream FROMSOFTWARE game. It has a lot of the hallmarks that make Dark Souls one of the best games of all time. It also has a lot of dumb stuff, mostly difficulty for difficulty’s sake. Let me start with the good things. There is a good selection of interesting weapons. Your build is not as important in this game, since magic- and fire-infused weapons are strong, so you have more freedom to choose a fighting style you like. I wish I knew this going in, because I wasted like 20 levels on strength and dexterity. Most of the areas in the game are difficult, but fair. Even the poison swamp only took me a few runs before I was able to reliably make it to the boss. The boss battles were really good for the most part. The Maneaters gave me the most trouble. There are two of them and the arena is too narrow. I fell out of the arena so many times. Onto the bad (well, less good). The non-replenishing healing items that annoyed me in Bloodborne are back. In the second half of the game, I had a pretty good farming spot figured out, so that helped. But before that, I had to spend a good fifteen minutes farming before every boss. Also, a lot of the runs to bosses were annoying for no reason, especially the ones accompanied by dragonfire or those dang Mind Flayers. I’d rather have an easier run to a harder boss. I’m going to watch a lore video, then watch someone absolutely demolish the game in a speed run. With Demon’s Souls done, I have beaten all of the “Soulsbornekiro” games. Here is my off-the-cuff ranking of the games:
Dark Souls > Sekiro > Dark Souls III > Bloodborne > Demon’s Souls > Dark Souls II
A Short Hike
A Short Hike is an hour of pure exploration. No conflict, no combat. Just a little island to explore, small side quests, and some treasures to find. The art is in a very charming 3D pixelated style. The controls feel really good. I appreciated the Celeste references in this game, like the red/blue shirt and the golden feathers. The side quests were not tedious at all and they usually provided a golden feather to help me explore more. My favorite parts of this game were the motorboat and gliding on the updrafts. The characters were all really nice too! The story is minimal but it’s a coming-of-age story about caring about your parents, going out of your comfort zone, and taking naps. Everyone should play this game. It is a very good use of an hour.
