Aaru's Awakening (PS4) - Someday, when I decide to no longer pay a yearly fee to Sony for Playstation Plus and am unable to play all the "free" games I've gotten, this will be one of the ones I won't miss. Mind you, it's not a bad game at all. It's a very well made 2D side-scroller with simple mechanics, excellent art style, and innovated design. However, like soooo many games I'm playing this generation, it's too damn hard! I got stuck on basically the sixth "world" (let's call it 2-3, in Mario levels) because I wasn't fast enough to jump, jet (like double jump), shoot a teleport orb, and then keep myself out of lava while watching for the right moment to jump to the orb. A single platform, that's all I would have needed to make it through this level.
*** Insert Rant Here*** : What is it with games these days? Developers seem to relish punishing players and the gaming media fuels the fire by praising their efforts. Or is it an intrinsic machismo of gamers that they need a harder and harder challenge to show off "bigger thumbs" to their rivals? Whatever it is, I'm getting tired of running into games that look intriguing but require a level of skill (or long-term commitment) that I don't have. Please, give me a game that doesn't make me feel like a klutz with a controller!
Monster Bag (PS Vita) - A cute, if somewhat IRRITATING game where you play a little monster (shaped like a bag, I suppose) who is trying to get back to his owner, a little girl. You do this by jumping between people standing in a line, throwing them things they need, but you have to make sure they don't see you move. (Apparently they can't feel you land on them.) It's a unique concept, but I got stuck on the third level when they put in a person with really tiny eyes. Rage quit time.
**Update #1**: I went back to this one and got a little further. It's not as hard as I thought at first, but it still is pretty challenging. I do love the cartoon like quality of the graphics!
**Update #2**: As much as I thought I'd be able to move on from this one, I kept coming back...and I'm so glad I did! It's now another game I finished in 2015 and one that I will look back on with fond memories. The story just got stranger and stranger (as in "...and then the Apocalypse happened!" kind of strange) and by the time I got to the end, I was in tears. I guess I'm just a sucker for a story about a girl and her trusty backpack/monster trying to keep her safe. In some ways, the game reminded me of Limbo, but with a much bigger and better emotional payoff. (I'll always maintain that Limbo did everything great right up until the end.) I also enjoyed that the developer, IguanaBee in Chile, didn't hold back on the cartoon violence, and the difficulty never got too bad. I did have to look up a couple puzzle solutions, but only to speed up the process. Interestingly, I started playing this one because it was a Beyond podcast "book club" selection, and when they talked about it, they were most put off by the death animations taking too long. While I saw a lot of those, I never felt it was something that would make me stop playing.
Catlateral Damage - I not only backed this game on Kickstarter, I chipped in enough money to get a picture of Olivia, one of my kitties, into the game. It's a very simple 3D game where you play a kitty doing naughty things - knocking stuff off shelves and tables, biting plants, and generally making a mess of houses, museums and grocery stores. Items are low-res but the environments are fairly large and it runs smoothly. And, of course, there are the pictures of all the kitties (and a doggy or two) that people (like me) paid to have in the game. When you find a picture and knock it down, it gets added to the game's gallery that you can view from the menu. Needless to say, I'll be playing until I find Livy's pic.
Monster Bag (PS Vita) - A cute, if somewhat IRRITATING game where you play a little monster (shaped like a bag, I suppose) who is trying to get back to his owner, a little girl. You do this by jumping between people standing in a line, throwing them things they need, but you have to make sure they don't see you move. (Apparently they can't feel you land on them.) It's a unique concept, but I got stuck on the third level when they put in a person with really tiny eyes. Rage quit time.**Update #1**: I went back to this one and got a little further. It's not as hard as I thought at first, but it still is pretty challenging. I do love the cartoon like quality of the graphics!
**Update #2**: As much as I thought I'd be able to move on from this one, I kept coming back...and I'm so glad I did! It's now another game I finished in 2015 and one that I will look back on with fond memories. The story just got stranger and stranger (as in "...and then the Apocalypse happened!" kind of strange) and by the time I got to the end, I was in tears. I guess I'm just a sucker for a story about a girl and her trusty backpack/monster trying to keep her safe. In some ways, the game reminded me of Limbo, but with a much bigger and better emotional payoff. (I'll always maintain that Limbo did everything great right up until the end.) I also enjoyed that the developer, IguanaBee in Chile, didn't hold back on the cartoon violence, and the difficulty never got too bad. I did have to look up a couple puzzle solutions, but only to speed up the process. Interestingly, I started playing this one because it was a Beyond podcast "book club" selection, and when they talked about it, they were most put off by the death animations taking too long. While I saw a lot of those, I never felt it was something that would make me stop playing.
Catlateral Damage - I not only backed this game on Kickstarter, I chipped in enough money to get a picture of Olivia, one of my kitties, into the game. It's a very simple 3D game where you play a kitty doing naughty things - knocking stuff off shelves and tables, biting plants, and generally making a mess of houses, museums and grocery stores. Items are low-res but the environments are fairly large and it runs smoothly. And, of course, there are the pictures of all the kitties (and a doggy or two) that people (like me) paid to have in the game. When you find a picture and knock it down, it gets added to the game's gallery that you can view from the menu. Needless to say, I'll be playing until I find Livy's pic.
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