What am I playing? (Oct. 10, 2024)
What am I playing? (Oct. 10, 2024)
This week: Returning to a problematic classic and a pink guy that murders his foes switfly
Every week (or so) I plan to let readers in on what games I am actually playing every week. I try to at least touch most new releases, but most of the time I’m playing games I haven’t played from years ago or games I haven’t stopped playing since they were released. These are quick thoughts on what I’m currently playing, not necessarily what’s new and what’s hot. This segment is inspired by an old Game Informer column, dedicated to seeing what the staffers were playing on their own time. Enjoy!
Don’t forget to play the videos included - some of them are gameplay clips I recorded. Enjoy!
Overcooked: All You Can Eat
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were sitting on the couch after work watching Love After Lockup when she looked up from our current favorite brain-rotting television program to ask a simple question: Do you want to play a game?
Now, don’t get it twisted: my wife is a gamer and was before I met her. She reminisces all of the time about how her dad would yell at her for messing up in a co-op similar to how my brother would do the same to me. We played Heavy Rain and Until Dawn together and pumped at least several dozen hours into Borderlands 3. Vampire Survivors has kept us up way longer than it should have on work nights and we did everything there is to do in Nobody Saves the World.
Recently though, we’ve both been more into non-local multiplayer games and solo journeys. She put more time into the recent Zelda game (not that one) than I did by a country mile. Now, though, she wanted to return to our co-op roots and chose Overcooked over Guacamelee after we turned on the PS5. The food-based game requires players to prep, cook and deliver orders for customers with a variety of obstacles from moving platforms and rats grabbing ingredients to lava and delivery drivers blocking routes to the kitchen. It’s chaotic, it’s fun and we are lucky to be the only couple who seemingly has never fought over a game of Overcooked.
We had already dominated the first Overcooked years ago and the second game soon after. This time, though, we were playing the remastered version, Overcooked: All You Can Eat. Buyer beware: this version kind of sucks. It’s full of bugs and has a huge flaw baked into it: it’s impossible to get the highest score on most stages since the game was last updated. No, seriously, it’s actually impossible because a feature was removed, the times for each level remained the same along with the score requirements. Although we managed to get the top score on many of the stages by the skin of our teeth, we felt so relieved when we realized most of the top scores were legitimately unreachable without turning on Assist Mode. Besides that, we also randomly fly off of the stage, some of our orders are fulfilled out of order and at times the game just crashes.
Our playthrough of AYCE has been going swimmingly otherwise, with my brain only failing me when we play late at night, causing me to either freeze or deliver the wrong order. Luckily my wife resists her urge to emulate the male role models in our lives and only lets out a disappointed sigh when I mess up. We’re great at collaborating instructions and workflows for each level, even without speaking out loud, and it’s fun to see us somehow be better at the game than we were years ago. We were blowing some of our old scores out of the water before we turned on Assist Mode. I wish this game was less buggy, as its collection of characters and every single piece of Overcooked content is a really great package. We’ll definitely be playing this one until we chop every steak, cook all of the pasta and kick every rat that tries to steal our pizza dough before we throw it in the oven.
God, I’m glad I don’t have to eat any of the food, though.
Persona 4: Golden
An oldie but a goodie.
Actually, it’s better than that. I consider Persona 4: Golden one of the best RPGs of all time despite its dated dialogue, odd story pacing for the introductory dungeons and insane difficulty curve for every dungeon. For those not familiar, this turn-based RPG casts you as a Japanese high school student sent to the country town of Inaba while his parents leave the country for work obligations for the year. Soon after, a series murders begin in Inaba, the protagonist meets a group of friends, unlocks his power to use personas, or alternate egos resembling demons that can be used similar to Pokemon, and tasks himself with solving the murder himself despite being a 16-year-old high schooler. You conquer each obstacle through using the power of friendship (I’m not joking) through the social link system, which requires spending time with other main and side characters for more character development and improved stats.
This time, as I’ve beat Persona 4: Golden four times before, I’m playing the game from a fresh save on the Nintendo Switch. This port is as close as I can get to my old PlayStation Vita playthrough without actually booting up my Vita, keeping the mobility but improving the performance and screen size. I mainly play this version in portable mode, as playing it in docked mode brings out the dated graphics of the game that haven’t been improved at all for this version. It’s admittedly more comfortable to play than it was on the Vita, but besides that it’s the same game for the most part.
Like I said before, though, the game has not impressed me as much as it did when I was 17. Kanji’s storyline is very hamfisted even though they could have taken his repressed sexuality storyline and treated it with more care. Yosuke’s dialogue where he basically call’s you his boyfriend clashes with his blatant homophobia and crass personality. I still adore how dumb Yukiko is and how close the friends become as the story progresses, but Persona 4 is still full of little moments that make me grimace a bit like the camping trip (that turns into a fat joke) and Yosuke’s failed attempts to pick up girls (which turns into another fat joke). There are some things I can take as being appopriate for the high school setting or for harmless gags like the swimsuit gag on the beach or the crossdressing contest, but other scenes last too long and overstay their welcome with pervy lines from the teenage boys.
The gameplay is still solid as far as the dungeon crawling loop, the social link system, side gigs and using all of those to find the true ending. I like this game at it’s core but almost every time I play it I find something I don’t like that either didn’t bother me before or that slipped my mind. Some character’s arcs are still fun to watch, like Naoto and Yukiko, but others are annoying beyond belief like Yosuke and Teddy. The pervy teacher with Ms. Kashiwagi bit is always creepy even though they attempt to make her look sexy so it can be perceived as not as creepy.
For some reason the last three mainline Persona games have had a hebephilic older person in a position of power over the protagonist. The weirdly sexual Ms. Kashiwagi in Persona 4 and the catfishing teacher Ms. Toriumi in Persona 3, which you can romance for some reason, were already bad enough. But, Persona 5 has like three of them. One of them sexually assaults a female main character within the first arc of the main plot and you can romance the two grown women who are also perverts attracted to a high school kid. I really hope the next entry drops this trend, as the older I get the worse this gross trope is to play around. It already feels weird playing as a high school student and romancing other high school students, which is barely optional as it improves combat for the player. The predatory aspect of these characters are wholly uneccesary.
Still, the art style of the series is great, the combat is simple but hard to master (especially when the difficulty spikes) and it all meshes well with the life simulator portions. It’s one of the best games in its genre, combining visual novel gameplay elements and presentation with preparation for long dungeon crawls. Hopefully the series grows up, and the recently released Metaphore: Refantazio (from the same team at Atlus) shows promise with adult characters, a deeper political plot and even better dungeon crawling with a Final Fantasy-like job system.
Maybe I might change my opinion on Persona 4 after two more playthroughs. For now, though, I can tolerate and avoid the weirder aspects of the series.
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe
I’ve been diving more and more into Kirby games over the past few years, as I realized I never really played any of them. Personally, my first introduction to the little pink dude was Super Smash Bros. Melee where I abused his moves where he turns into something really heavy or swung his gigantic mallet. Little did I know that Smash Bros. aesthetic, menus and presentation originated from past Kirby games and he might as well be the main protagonist for the series too. It makes sense, considering HAL Laboratory is heavily involved in both series.
Kirby’s own games, though, are very easy and non-competitive, a stark contrast to Super Smash Bros. I blasted through Kirby’s Dream Land, Adventure and Dream Land 2 pretty easily, which isn’t a bad thing. These games provide the lightest challenge possible while still being fun, letting the player test out new abilities in later entries and abuse them to skate right through most levels. Return to Dream Land, a remake of an entry from the Wii for the Nintendo Switch, isn’t much different. The only times I die in this game are because I was not paying attention or I fell off of the stage. It’s easygoing, it’s fun, but if anything it scratches the need to complete and finish tasks within its huge world of minigames, ability challenges, amusement park distractions and collectibles.
This game is meant to be replayed and combed through over and over to get every gear (or stars) and unlock more games to play. This is a theme for most Kirby games but this remake takes it to another level with an additional mode where you play as Magolor in his own adventure. As a remake, it hits all of the right notes and as a full game it provides plenty to do, more than an afternoon playthrough like past Kirby games. I have taken small breaks from this one because sometimes the lack of difficulty can make it a bore. I’m sure this one would be more fun with a friend or two. Sometimes playing Return to Dream Land feels like playing a fake video game from a 90s sitcom - enemies die easily, big projectiles fly across the screen and the player just can’t seem to die easily.
Pick this one up if you want to turn your brain off and don’t mind not being challenged for some hours.