It is absolutely strange to have started Expedition 33 so closely to finishing Blue Prince.
I am absolutely not used to playing two extraordinary games so closely to each other. I mean, I’m used to playing games that I like but it’s easy because I like a lot of games. Hey, what can I say? I’m easy to please. It’s fairly common for me to be pleasantly surprised and move from “good enough” to “pretty good”. Heck, it’s even somewhere between “uncommon” and “rare” for me to jump it up to “really good”.
I suppose if I wanted to quantify each of those, I’d say “good enough” means “buy it when it’s somewhere between 60% and 75% off and you’ll be pleased.” “Pretty good” means “get it for half off and you’ll be pleased”. “Really good” means “25% off”.
But these two games? Blue Prince and Expedition 33? They have achieved something that I feel like I never see: These games are worth full price. Go to Steam, pick them up. It doesn’t matter if they’re on sale. (I mean, it’s always better when they are.)
These games are worth *EVERY* *PENNY*.
Blue Prince is a puzzle game that can be enjoyed as a surface-level puzzler where you’re trying to make a 45-room house… but as you wander through the house and discover this safe combination or that hidden entrance, you have the opportunity to read various documents that give backstory to the world you’re in. A childrens’ book here, an archeological magazine there… and suddenly the game isn’t just a puzzler, it’s a deep and rich narrative. And then you can go back to playing surface level and building as full of a house as you can.
Seriously, when I beat the game the first time, I sat back and sighed and thought “what a perfect experience”. I would love to play it again for the first time.
And right after Blue Prince wrapped up for me, I started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and found myself entranced a second time in a game that couldn’t be more different than Blue Prince. Anyone who has ever played any of the Final Fantasy games will be immediately familiar with Expedition 33 and people who have played Paper Mario will be immediately familiar with the combat mechanics… But everything else about the game feels fresh and new.
The story is compelling, the characters are interesting, the graphics are beautiful, the music is soaring, and the combat is fun. I’m only in Chapter II but I have already gasped multiple times, texted friends asking “where are you in the game?” so I can talk about this or that twist, and breathlessly told Maribou about what just happened.
I can’t wait to see what the game has in store for me. I can’t wait to talk to my buddies about it.
I would recommend Blue Prince to pretty much everybody who has ever enjoyed a puzzle game. Seriously, if you even think that you *MIGHT* enjoy it? I recommend it for you.
Expedition 33 is a game that I will recommend to pretty much everybody who is familiar with a game controller and has somewhere in the ballpark of “decent reflexes” (somewhere around “has beaten a couple of songs playing Guitar Hero”, maybe).
Both of these games are so good that I can recommend them to people who don’t usually like the genre. These are both games that will change peoples’ minds.
These are games that get me to remember the absolute delight that Adventure gave me on the Atari 2600 and Fallout on Windows 98 and Grand Theft Auto III on the PS2 and New Vegas on the 360.
“Oh, yeah… this is why I play these.”
So… what are you playing?
Okay. This one involves a bunch of silly stories involving the French language.
When I was first dating Maribou, I was working at a little French bistro and I amused the owner by referring to potatoes as “pomme de terre” and tomatoes as “pomme d’amour” (he once explained to me that pretty much nobody calls tomatoes that anymore but he still chuckled at it).
And so, when I was talking to Maribou, I came up with this entire etymology in French about how they referred to various things as “apples”. Rain would be “pommes du nuage” and instead of saying “sweet dreams”, they said “bon pommes de sommeil”.
This tickled me to the point where I introduced it to strangers online and one of them asked *HIS* French girlfriend about it and he said that her eyes got really big and she told him that she has never, ever heard that. Someone asked if the French still referred to “le fin de semaine” or if they’ve officially switched to “le weekend” and I jumped in and said “pommes de semaine!” and it started the whole thing all over again.
It was a fun little joke. If you know any French people, I invite you to start using the phrases yourself.
But the point is this: In Expedition 33, there is a cutscene where you and another character are talking while looking up at the night sky. The other character says “I think that stars are the apples of the sky.”
And I immediately laughed out loud and thought that that would sound even better in French.
While at the height of my mania in this, I checked out the real etymology for “pommes de miscellaneous” and it goes back to the Romans. They would refer to various orchard fruits as “pomum”. So it covered cherries, pears, apricots… whatever. All pommes. The goddess of orchards was “Pomona”.
So that’s where the whole “pomme” thing goes back to.
I’ll save these to come back to in a few years when they’re cheap or free (and maybe when I’m retired).
I was leisurely working towards 100% on Shadow of the Tomb Raider but I seem to have gotten trapped in a tomb i had already completed, with no way to go back to a previous savepoint. So I figured i’d give Ogu a try since the price was right. At first it seemed like Zelda for pre-teens and I wasn’t taking it too seriously, zoomed through the first boss, zipped through to the second one — and wow, big step-up in difficulty. Eventually got past it but i guess the game is a little more demanding than i thought.
If you don’t wanna spend money, you don’t wanna spend money. But if you find yourself itching to play a game that’s really good, kinda chill, and will let you get up at a second’s notice to answer an urgent request to come upstairs and deal with a barfing cat?
Get Blue Prince. If you have *ANY* affinity for puzzlers at all, it is alternately a delightful game and the most frustrating exercise in RNG known to man.
At this moment in time, it’s $30.
If you are feeling hesitant, get it when it’s $20. You’ll be thrilled with it. If you have any affinity for puzzlers, that is.
I love puzzle games — too much. It’s not that I can’t afford the game, it’s that overall I’m trying (with limited success, obviously) to avoid playing video games at all. But in my mental hierarchy, extreme cheapness ranks higher than self-discipline.
Oh, yeah. In that case, avoid Blue Prince like the plague.
It’ll take you over.