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Hugh Likes Video Games: Marvel Snap

April 14, 2023

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Marvel Snap
Developed By Second Dinner
Published By Nuverse
Played on Android OS

The Skinny: Marvel – The Gathering
Marvel Snap is a mobile collectable card game based on the Marvel comics, movies, and TV shows. Players build decks of twelve cards of heroes and villains from across the Marvel Universe, and attempt to hold up to three locations, much like the table-top card game Smash Up. Players use either their cards raw strength or tricky abilities to gain the upper hand at each location. There is a surprising amount of strategy and depth involved.
Over six rounds, players gain energy points to play cards, increasing from a base of one. One cost cards are weaker but often more versatile than expensive cards that can only be played later. Cards also have other various abilities, and these are clever and tie into the powers of each of the cards. For example, Colossus, being tough and invulnerable, can’t have his power reduced by enemy cards or from location effects. The assassin Electra can remove a one-cost card from the same location.
There is a nice big pool of cards to draw from, each with different kinds of effects. The combat took some time to grow on me, but now that I have gotten the hang of it, matches are fast and addictive. Its the sort of game you can easily stay up too late playing just one more round.
 Marvel Snap also maintains good card balance and combats ‘rich kid syndrome.’ Because the cards are in sets released as the player upgrade their decks, new players are encouraged to try out different combinations, and receive their rewards randomly. While there is a ‘Premium tier’ that grants certain exclusive cards and does feel a bit heavy-handed, players do not buy cards, just variant illustrations and other cosmetic rewards. And part of the fun is chasing that next card you need to make your deck stronger.
 And the art is the star of the show. Since this is a online only game, the art is upgraded in ways that only a video game can produce, breaking their card boarders and animating. There’s even a nice 3D effect. Every card has unique animations when played as well. Ant-Man shrinks when you place him on the board and Cyclops is laid down with an accompanying optic blast. As cards are ‘upgraded,’ which is the heart of the advancement mechanic, the central illustrations break the borders of their cards, get small animations, and even upgraded logos. A variety of variant cards exist as well for each character. Some recreate iconic designs or character moments, while others are more whimsical, such as pixelated or ‘chili’ variants.
 Marvel Snap is an intuitive and addictive battling card game available now on IOS and Android app stores.

Hugh Likes Video Games: The Cult of the Lamb

November 25, 2022

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Cult of the Lamb
Developed by Massive Monster
Published by Devolver Digital
Played on Nintendo Swtich


The Skinny: This is one animal you don’t want to cross.

With the rise in popularity of roguelikes, horror games, and cute animal life sims, it was only a matter of time before a developer combined all three.
 Much like SNES classic Actraiser, Cult of the Lamb alternates between simulation and action gameplay and does an excellent job of using the two modes to create a satisfying gameplay loop. The player is thrust into the role of The Lamb, sacrificed by The Bishops of the Old Faith, four dark gods who rule over a sinister forest full of adorable cartoon animals, like a theocratic Animal Crossing. But death is only the beginning, as you are chosen by their imprisoned sibling, The One Who Waits, to build a cult, slay the four bishops, and free him.
Gameplay consists of two phases. In roguelike action sequences, players attack the lairs of the four bishops fighting enemies, rescuing prisoners, and gaining supplies. The rewards feed into a management sections, in which you grow your cult in order to use their faith to empower your supernatural abilities in combat. Players can also explore the world, completing side quests and playing mini-games.
 The gameplay loop is challenging and satisfying, as you must balance your follower’ needs and venture out in the dark to find your enemies. If you neglect one, the other will suffer. Players need to go out to gain gold and other supplies, but if you neglect your cult, they will abandon you and you won’t have the required population levels to unlock later areas or the upgrades needed for end-game challenges.
 The game’s art reminds me of ‘Happy Tree Friends,’ Taking a light, cartoonish style and mixing it with some seriously messed up stuff. The cartoony nature sands the edges off of some of the more despicable actions you are able to take as cult leader. The game gives you a lot of options. Will you sacrifice your followers for a quicker boost in power or nurture them in order to gain more resources? It’s all fun and games until you summon that tentacle from the farthest planes of reality to crush their little bones.
Combat is challenging and intuitive and will be familiar to anyone who has played games like Hades or The Binding of Isaac.
While both parts of the game are fun and feed into each other well, both feel a little shallower than if the game were more tightly focused.
Cult of the Lamb is available for Steam along with major console eShops.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Unpacking

April 15, 2022

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Unpacking
Developed by Witchbeam
Published by Humble Games
Played on PC as a part of Xbox Game Pass

The Skinny – A relaxing game about stressful life events.

Unpacking is a relaxing, low-stress pixel art game about a stressful real-world activity: Moving. Each level consists of a number of boxes to unpack in increasingly large spaces. You start in a child’s bedroom and eventually have to unpack a whole house’s worth of possessions. Almost Tetris-like, the challenge is in finding the right place for every object, and making them fit in a limited space.Each object is a detailed isometric pixel sprite, which lends the game a bright and charming air. But the sound design is where the game really shines. There are unique, realistic sound effects for every individual item in the game. Placing a mug on a counter and opening a drawer sounds incredible in high-def. Which feels odd to say in a game review, but here we are. Sure, you don’t punch aliens or soar through the air on an airship, but did you hear the way that towel sounds when you fold it and put it on a shelf? The sound effect for when you fold up an empty cardboard box is the best dopamine hit I’ve gotten in a while from a game.I guess it’s a sign that I’m growing up. Which is fitting, as this is very much a game about transitioning through life. You follow a woman through multiple moves, from her first bedroom to her first college dorm, and beyond. Each level is framed as a page in a photo album, and completing the level gives you a line of text from the unnamed character as she thinks about that day.The objects are all suitably varied based on the rooms, and while it is a challenge to make them all fit, there isn’t really a score or a timer to beat. Certain combinations or placement of objects reward you with stickers which double as achievements, but there’s not much else other than that. There are some lovely hints of storytelling through the objects themselves, though. We get hints of who this person is, and what their life is like what her hobbies are, and how her life changes from move to move over the years. Crayons give way to fancy pens and to a drawing tablet as she grows up and pursues an art career. A cane and a wrist brace appear among the objects as time goes by. A photograph of two people has a pin placed through the one figure’s face following a breakup.Unpacking is a delightful and relaxing puzzle experience. It is available for PC and major consoles.

Hugh Likes Video Games: The Solitaire Conspiracy

March 18, 2022

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The Solitaire Conspiracy: A Mike Bithell Short
Developed by Bithell Games
Published by Ant Workshop
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny: A tense, techno-espionage thrill built from a deck of cards.
Mike Bithell has some brilliant thoughts on game design and post/transhumanism. He’s also known for his tight, compact game design, compressing his point-of-view into tiny games. He made his mark with indie storytelling platformer Thomas Was Alone and cemented it with the robot detective game Subsurface Circular. His recent project The Solitaire Conspiracy mixes intense spy thriller action with an unlikely gameplay mechanic: a game of solitaire.
 Players fill the shoes of Spymaster, an analyst candidate tapped to save a shadowy spy network when a supervillain locks them out of their coordination software, C.A.R.D.S. Working with the last remaining analyst, it’s your job to coordinate scattered spy crews and get everything up and running, but in the world of spycraft, nobody can be trusted. 
 As you play through missions and rank up, you gain access to colorful crews of operatives, each with their own suit and special abilities. Face cards represent not only the faction but individual members of the team, and placing active cards uses their team power. This can be things like shuffling a stack or redistributing a suit or moving a card of a specific value or suit around. They are powerful twists on the game, but in fitting the theme, they can hinder you as much as help.
 The UX is where the game really shines, with the board appearing as a virtual space lit in the slick blacks and scintillating neon of a cyberpunk wonderland. The design made it a bit difficult to read at times, especially playing in handheld mode on the Switch. Fortunately, there is a zoom feature that makes everything a bit bigger and easier to see. The cool sci-fi colors, along with the pounding, synth-filled soundtrack, lends a tension to the game that traditional solitaire lacks. Missions add both flavor and drama to the gameplay. I frequently found myself playing just one more mission to reach the next rank and advance the story, or get the report on a thrilling mission.
 The Solitaire Conspiracy is a masterclass in design and proves that engaging storytelling and slick aesthetics can spice up even the most mundane gameplay mechanics. Like most Bithell games, there are only a few hours of the main story here, but they’re a thrill ride. The Solitaire Conspiracy is available for download from Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and the Xbox game store.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Eastward

March 4, 2022

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Eastward
Developed by Pixpil
Published by Chucklefish
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny: An on-rails sci-fi story presented with a gorgeous pixelated aesthetic
Eastward is a beautifully rendered action RPG in pixelated graphics that doesn’t quite follow through on what it promises but is still a lot of fun. The game follows John and Sam, two refugees from a post-apocalyptic underground village as they travel by train on a quest to save the world and uncover the secrets of Sam’s burgeoning psychic powers. As they steam along, they fight their way through a series of linear, puzzle-filled dungeons and meet a huge cast of charming and wacky characters, but the chapter-based structure and frantic pace made the game feel a bit cramped and rushed.
 The game is broken into chapters, with the duo arriving in a new town, meeting the locals, and solving some dungeons before the plot pushes them back aboard their train to a new locale. The towns are probably the game’s best feature, with creatively designed and gorgeously rendered locations like a city built into the side of a dam and a film studio on rails filled with uplifted apes. Each is depicted with HD pixels in loving detail. The world is filled with faded advertisements and overgrown ruins. It is a testament to environmental design. I just wish I got to spend more time in each area before being pushed ahead. Towns are crammed full of mini-games, sidequests, and unique NPCs to talk to, and I always felt like I didn’t get enough time before being pushed ahead.
 The one mini-game that is always available is Earthborn, an in-world game that is a mix of turn-based RPG and rogue-like presented in a Gameboy aesthetic. It’s charming, and intersects with the story in interesting ways, but is ridiculously difficult.
 Dungeons are more linear than the sprawling towns and feature a mix of puzzle and combat. John has a variety of weapons that he gains over the adventure, starting with his trusty melee frying pan. Sam wields psychic energy to stun enemies or heal, but she can’t attack directly. Combat involves constantly switching between the two to keep hordes of enemies back in order to stay alive. Combat, which uses a Zelda-like formula, is clever, but fighting doesn’t feel as good as the puzzles.
 Eastward is a joy to look at and listen to, even if the gameplay isn’t quite as fun as the production. Still, it is well worth your time. You can pick up a digital copy via Steam or the Nintendo Switch eShop.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Wordle

February 4, 2022

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Wordle
 Created by Josh Wardle
 https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

The Skinny: You probably already played it today.

By this point, Wordle is a game that needs no introduction. But I am still coming across friends and relations puzzled by the towers of green and yellow blocks on their feeds. So I will make a brief introduction. Wordle began in 2019 as a sort of gift by Josh Wardle for his partner. Wardle, the designer of The Button and Place for Reddit, is known for his parasocial games. But Wordle is almost paradoxically enticing in its simplicity. There are no loot boxes to grind for. Nothing to subscribe to, no gatcha mechanic. Just a new five-letter word every day, and six guesses. The game didn’t even allow sharing until the feature was implemented towards the end of last year.
 But perhaps it is its simplicity that draws attention in 2022. It’s an echo of a simpler electronic age when the idea of meeting people in faraway places through a screen seemed like magic. In its way, Wordle is punk rock. It doesn’t need to be downloaded from an app store (although certainly, clones have popped up on all of them in the past few weeks.) It doesn’t have microtransactions and ads for the game don’t play 24/7 on YouTube. It’s just a quick little word game you can play every day and share your results.
 Wordle is a shared experience, and I think that’s key to its success. Having only one word a day, and knowing that everybody else posting their score had the same word, creates a feeling of connection, communication, and competition. That word took you six tries? You had that many correct letters on the first guess? The content is sharable and gets people talking. I like to look at people’s posted patterns and try and guess what words they use. Other users place a great value in getting the word in as few guesses as possible. Wordle is as much a game of deduction as wordplay. 
 With the New York Times’ Announcement that they have purchased Wordle in a seven-figure deal, the future of this little-game-that-could is uncertain. For now, the game is still hosted at the same site and is still free to play. But only time will tell if the paper’s acquisition will mark an end to the fad or elevate Wordle to the same level of cultural cachet as the crossword.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Toem

December 20, 2021

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Toem
Developed by Something We Made
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny: A delightful little adventure about photography and community
Toem is a little gem of an indie adventure game about photography and perspective. This comforting little puzzle box is full of puzzles to solve, characters to help, and tiny locations to visit.
 Created by Swedish indie studio Something We Made, Toem only takes a few hours to play but is all about relaxation and comfort. Designed to be played in short bursts, it is the perfect game to wind down with at the end of the day or de-stress to over a coffee break as you take missions tracking down singing goats and finding the perfect spot to photograph a forest hotel.
 The game sets you in the shoes of a young photographer on an adventure to find the Toem, with no further explanation given. The tools at your disposal are your trusty camera and a very unusual public transit system that rewards public service with free rides. The game is divided into five zones, and at the start of each one, you’re given a public service card. As you explore a forest, a city, a seaside resort, and a mountain, you are given puzzles to solve in the form of requests of each area’s inhabitants. These can range from the simple, such as taking a photo of a requested subject, to the obtuse, such as recovering lost items or even restoring a power plant. After each puzzle, you are rewarded with a stamp on your card. Collect the requisite number of stamps, and you’re free to move along to the next area. But completionists will still have plenty of challenges to complete, animals to photograph, and hidden secrets to uncover beyond the game’s forgiving requirements.
 With one notable exception, Toem is presented in a charming black and white art style, and the small, isometric levels have a diorama-like quality. The characters are quirky, and a few of the puzzles are fiendishly clever, but I never felt stuck.
 Toem is a short and cozy experience that is perfect for unwinding by a roaring fire or relaxing with a hot cup of cocoa. If you’re looking for something to chill with at the end of the year, give this game a shot. Toem is available on PC from Steam and Epic, Nintendo Switch, and PS5.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Metroid Dread

November 26, 2021

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Metroid Dread
Developed by Mercury Steam
Published by Nintendo
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny: Samus Aran is back, baby!

My life-long love of the Metroid series began with Metroid II on the clunky, grayscale Game Boy. It was the first video game I bought with my own money, or close enough. I had won a gift card to the mall in a school raffle. I’ve had a soft spot for the taciturn and mysterious bounty hunter ever since. But after the series pivoted into Metroid Prime, I had all but given up hope of seeing a brand-new 2D Metroid. I expected the four games in the series to remain relics of the past, fondly remembered and imitated by indie devs, but a part of history.
I was pleasantly surprised by the announcement of Metroid Dread if a little skeptical. I needn’t have worried, and perhaps should have seen it coming. Created by Mercury Steam, the studio which created the 2017 remake Metroid II: Samus Returns, the fifth game in the series is a return to form.
The gameplay feels much more modern, but still in line with older games. Samus moves with more fluidity and grace than her previous entries, the melee counter returns in a much more satisfying form, and her new slide move is fun to use. She has an agility that feels more akin to her movement in Smash Bros. than Super Metroid. But it works, and it makes exploring this huge new planet a delight. That momentum is also very important for the game’s other new enhancement: Stealth sequences!
Metroid Fusion toyed with the idea of stealth by introducing SA-X, a powerful enemy with all of Samus’s abilities that the player must avoid and hide from in scripted sequences. In Dread, Samus faces off against the E.M.M.I, nigh-indestructible scientific robots out of Boston Dynamics’ worst nightmares. They each have a specific area they patrol, and Samus must avoid and run from them until she can find a way to stop them. Overall, these sequences are a lot of fun but require a level of precision that leads to frustration at times.
This demand for precision also extends to the boss encounters. Bosses are varied and wonderfully gross in their designs. An early encounter has you fighting a big mutant scorpion thing standing on jutting rib bones. Each encounter requires not only precise timing but a keen eye. Each boss has patterns and weaknesses more akin to Zelda’s bosses than Metroid, and each has a melee vulnerability that leads to a sort of quick-time event where they are vulnerable. While these sequences are cool and surprising, the bosses are very tough, and by the time I was facing them over and over again, I was sick of them. It is frustrating when you’re running through a boss for the fifth time because you haven’t fought it in the exact steps the game demands. Earlier game bosses were more tests of the player’s ability to explore and find hidden resources like missiles and energy tanks. Metroid Dread has a much softer focus on exploration.
The game’s zones are wonderfully designed, but the game is filled with one-way doors, drops that Samus can’t go back through without late-game upgrades and hidden pits. I felt a bit herded at times, and discouraged from really exploring at my own pace. While this preserves the game’s momentum and ensures you don’t get too lost, it loses the thrill of exploration for a more guided experience, and this lack of options extends to the game’s controls.
While Metroid Dread gives players a lot of tools to work with, there’s no way to adjust or experiment with your layout. Y shoots, ZL slides, and holding in the left joystick activates the speed boost. When it works, such as with the slide, movement and combat feel fluid and dynamic. When it doesn’t, and with the speed booster in particular, movement becomes a frustrating, emersion-breaking chore. Allowing players to map their buttons, or implementing any sort of accessibility options would have gone a long way to improving the game. The graphics were also gorgeous but occasionally a stumbling block for me. Metroid Dread looks fantastic, but it was designed with the OLED Switch in mind. I played it in handheld mode on my original Switch, and while it still looked great, there were a few sections where I wasn’t quite sure what was a foreground element and what was part of the background. I ran into a few literal walls that way, which is just embarrassing for a bounty hunter of Samus’s caliber. 
 Overall, Metroid Dread is a glorious return to 2D form for the series. It still innovates in all the right ways and brings back enough of the classic feel that it gets my hearty recommendation. While I wish it would get out of its own way at some points, it’s Samus’s biggest 2D adventure yet. While it doesn’t quite replace Super Metroid in my heart, this is still a brilliant entry in a series that doesn’t get enough love from Nintendo. This game is a Switch essential.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Castlevania Advance Collection

October 25, 2021

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Castlevania Advance Collection
Developed by M2
Published by Konami
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny: Dracula Season is back, baby!

Just in time for Halloween, M2 has released a new collection of Castlevania titles from the Gameboy Advance, and these 32-bit classics have never looked or played better.
The collection includes Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow, all of which were originally released on the GBA, Super Nintendo’s Dracula X, and a nice horde of extras. Players can choose from the North American, Japanese, and European releases of each game, along with an art gallery, manuals, music players, and encyclopedias. Each game also includes a ‘gadget,’ a special tool added to help manage collectables that can be turned on or off.
The three GBA Castlevanias were all side-scrolling exploratory RPGs in the style of PS1’s Symphony of the Night. While not as beloved as that cult hit, the three games are each a gem, and being able to play them on major consoles or PC in one package is a nice bonus.
Circle of the Moon was a GBA launch title, and while it was impressive, the dark, intricate sprites were hard to see on the unlit screen, and progression relied on random item drops for the game’s card-based magic system. This is the game that benefits the most from this collection. The visuals look great on the Switch handheld screen, and the encyclopedia and added gadget make collecting card and health drops a much less frustrating process. While it’s no longer considered canon in the Castlevania series, CotM is still one of my favorites, and I’m glad it’s included here.
2002’s Harmony of Dissonance is a much more straightforward follow up to Symphony of the Night featuring a castle more reminiscent of the PS1 game, and a nimble, Alucard-like protagonist in Juste Belmont. This game had its visuals tuned for the darker, smaller screen, and the very complicated, labyrinthine double castle is trickier to navigate, but this was still a delight to return to, even if this is the game that gets the least out of the included extras and form factor.
Aria of Sorrow, the last GBA Castlevania game, is probably the star of the show here. Released later in the GBA’s life, Iga and his team at Konami created an incredibly atmospheric castle that doesn’t feel too big or too cramped, while delivering the most interesting story in the series by setting it in the far-off future date of 2035. Soma is a joy to play as, and his ability to collect and absorb the souls and abilities of enemies gives the game a lot of replay value. There’s just so much variety in what he can do that I really went digging to find all the souls I could.
Also included is Castlevania: Dracula X, a Super Nintendo not-quite-port of the Turbo Graphic CD game Rondo of Blood. Infamous for its extreme difficulty and removing most of Rondo’s innovations, cutscenes, and voice work, it’s technically a part of the collection, but mostly exists as an afterthought here. But it is included for completionists who want to butt their heads against quite possibly the most difficult final boos fight in the whole series.
Castlevania Advance Collection brings together three hand-held classics that hold up today. These were some of my favorite games on the GBA, and I’m thrilled to be able to still bring them with me on the Switch twenty years later. If you never tried these sprawling adventures back in the day, or if you’re just in the mood for something thematically appropriate but not too intense this Halloween, pick up for PC through Steam, or your modern console of choice.

Hugh Likes Video Games: Cozy Grove

August 16, 2021

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Cozy Grove
Developed by Spry Fox
Published by Quantum Theory Games
Played on Nintendo Switch

The Skinny – What if Tom Nook was dead the whole time?

Cozy Grove is a chill game in the style of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley that can best be described as a ‘chore simulator’ but that’s hardly a bad thing. Players are put in the boots of a novice Spirit Scout, sent to Cozy Grove to hone her skills and put the many ghosts haunting the island to rest. Also, the ghosts are anthropomorphic bears, because why not.
As you meet each ghost and learn a bit about their story, they will task you with quests, most of which involve gathering either specific items hidden on the island, or resources earned from fishing, mining, and other activities. Players can also commission and place decorations and raise plants and animals.
While this all will sound very familiar to players of the genre, the systems are well executed, and the hand-drawn art is charming. The island is rendered in muted black and white tones, but as ghosts have their daily needs fulfilled, the areas around them fill with color. These areas can be expanded using decoration in the game, making the game easier to see and giving it a real sense of progress.
Cozy Grove does require a great deal of patience, even for a game of this type. Items the characters need to complete the next part of their stories are often locked behind quests for other characters, or require high amounts of limited resources. Characters don’t give story missions every day, either. It can be frustrating to wait for a character to give you what you need for another part of the story. Especially if multiple other characters need something from them.
I played on the Nintendo Switch, but Cozy Grove feels like it was designed with tablets in mind. While the button controls are by no means bad, the game has a bit of trouble with targeting, and often selects the wrong object to interact with when using button controls. There is a ‘swap target’ that occasionally appears if the game is unsure where you are pointing, which somewhat resolves the issue, but it isn’t always there.
These are minor quibbles in what is an excellent, heartfelt, and charming little chill-out game. Cozy Grove is a perfect game to wake up with over coffee or unwind to after a long day The game is available on mobile, PC, and major consoles. If you have the time and inclination, it is a cozy goth delight.

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