5 thoughts on “Saturday Morning Gaming: Returning to the House of Hell

  1. I succumbed to the temptations of the Steam Summer Sale (after you waved temptation right in my face) and picked up Celeste, a decade-old game that was highly-rated and on sale for two bucks and in the “metroidvania” category, my favorite. So far it’s enjoyable enough, but someone put it on the wrong shelf — it’s a platformer but not a Metroidvania in any way I can tell.

    Also returned to Return to Monkey Island yesterday after a several-month break and am now close to the end (I think).Report

    1. I need to get back to Return to Monkey Island. I got to the point where the world opens up, visited a few islands, then got sidetracked. Hopefully I can figure out what I am doing whenever I return.

      I have been playing a lot of Elden Ring. I am glad I gave it another shot. I have beaten the Grafted guy and the Library Witch with the weird singing kids. Now I’m at the place with the weird ten-fingered hands. I have done a lot more exploring this time. It is the most rewarding open world in that regard. In a lot of open world games, you just find a bunch of collectibles. If you get enough, you might get a reward. In Elden Ring, the exploration itself is usually pretty satisfying, but you also get more tangible rewards, more often than not. I guess I prefer finding actual items to finding collectible 34/500 or whatever.

      I also got Riven Remastered, which is playable in VR. I finally sat down with it yesterday. One of the issues I had when I played it before was navigation. On the original version, I had trouble figuring out how things connected, since it was just moving from a static screen to another static screen. Since the new version has seamless movement, things are much more cohesive for me. Even if I don’t actually finish the game, just experiencing the world in VR is worth the price for me.Report

      1. The weird hands are my least favorite monsters in the game.

        Even some of the bosses that I fought several dozen times are able to get me to grudgingly say that maybe they’re okay… but those hands manage to balance being uncanny with being annoying.

        (And the Library Witch with the weird singing kids? That is my favorite boss in the game.)Report

      2. Re RtMI, sounds like you hit the pause button about the same place I did. It was a little investment of time to catch back up (and it had been a long enough time that i didn’t get a couple of later references to the first part of the game), but as is often the case with these things, what at first seemed like a huge map with too many possibilities ended up being quite manageable.

        Just finished the game (I didn’t totally solve a couple of the last bits, just experimented enough and lucked out). It was a fun trip down memory lane.Report

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *