Ben Droste

Yeah, it was originally being developed by Bandai Namco but was restarted at Retro in 2019.

Look at what we have lost

Anyway time to go watch the fireworks, happy new year everyone 😄 🎆 🎉

Final thought: indies have taken ownership of the metroidvania genre in recent years and are pushing it forward in all kinds of new and exciting ways. Recent Metroid games meanwhile feel like they haven't moved in 20 years, and in many ways have gone backwards.

So, play more indie games I guess 🤔

Ok this is all sounding really negative. It's not a bad game overall, it's just uninspiring and forgettable. (Again apart from the art and music, which is stellar).

After so long in development it's just so disappointing this was the result 😟

The bike is fun to drive, but very little is done with it beyond traversing the overworld. It feels like both the bike and the overworld exist to justify each other and I'm not sure much would be lost if both were removed. Again, where did all the development time go?

The flavour text from most scans is mostly pointless fluff and just clutters the screen and breaks the flow of the game. The scanner also has an annoying habit of locking on to large environment props that you have already scanned rather than the new enemy you're trying to collect.

The scanning mechanic is vastly overused, to the point where a large number of objects cannot be interacted with until you scan them. See that grapple point? You have to scan it first. That terminal? Scan it to make the button appear, only then you can press it.

Combat was uninspiring. Most enemies are just recolours of the same few types, and I didn't find any of them particularly interesting to fight.
The bosses were particularly bad. Most are instantly forgettable and those I actually remember are because I found them frustrating.

Though there is very little encouragement or incentive to explore anyway, as a significant portion of pickups are locked behind late-game abilities.

Want to spend some time exploring the overworld? He'll soon radio in again to remind you you can contact him if you're stuck. Because if you're not moving towards your next objective WTF are you even doing? Exploring? a Metroid game? Outrageous!

The game goes out of its way to eliminate any possibility you might get lost or have to discover the way forward on your own. Every time you complete an area a NPC immediately radios in to tell you where to go next and marks your map.

Level design and game progression is very linear. Very little revisiting of previous areas and the overworld eliminates any possibility for the interconnectedness the series is known for.

Clocking out the end of 2025 by rolling credits on Metroid Prime 4. Beautiful music and art design, but ultimately disappointing in just about every other respect. So long in development yet it's hard to understand where all the time went.

An attempt was made but I quickly discovered that I didn't have the patience for it 😄

Should I:

A) cut this knot and risk losing my grip on the teabags and dropping them in the cup, or

B) accept my fate and make one really strong pot of tea.

The game rolling credits after act two is misleading in my opinion. There is substantial content and story in act three such that it is much more than just an epilogue.

"I noticed you from across the room... for the past 12 months... and I've been taking detailed notes."

A male rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) in winter plumage.

Ptarmigan is from Gaelic 'tarmachan' meaning "croaker". The p- was added when people mistakenly assumed it was a Greek word.

A bird forever warning people: "A werewolf!" (just in case of werewolves).

Big fan of the Prime games, keen to finally jump into a new entry in the series 😄

These trials highlight how pure random is almost never very fun. Having the stark contrast between managed randomness and 100% random demonstrated within a single game is really interesting. Almost makes me think Supergiant included it deliberately to show off how well they balanced the main game 😜

The importance of this control becomes really apparent doing the "Great Chaos" trials, which completely randomise everything, from your loadout to the 20 points of "fear" debuffs applied. The outcome can often feel determined by the luck of the RNG as much as anything. I hated them.

It's clear that a lot of work has gone into balancing the the character power progression and boon interaction. I found the difficulty to be far more consistent between attempts than Hades 1, which can vary wildly depending on what boons spawn. Hades II gives a greater sense of control over the RNG.

Finished with Hades II last night. 100% completed and really enjoyed it. While it is essentially the same game as the original, it improves and expands on the gameplay in many fundamental ways while offering more variety with the addition of a whole second route.

YouTube video by 100 Stones Interactive New puzzles and mechanics added in new demo update!

Big new demo update! Check out a preview of Sector 03, featuring new puzzles and mechanics - but only for a limited time!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c9F...

#metroidvania #indiegames #puzzlegame #scifi

It does ensure I do a lesson every day though, which was really good for building a habit early on.
Though I've mostly moved onto a new app now anyway so perhaps it is time to dump this one.

The energy system is truly terrible.

Duolingo has begun showing me some extremely suspect ads. Between these and the ad based micro games with fake skip buttons that load into the game rather than closing it, is some real hellish dark pattern BS and I'm questioning why I still continue to use this app.

Gamers appalled to learn that the launch title for Steam's new console, the "Gabe Cube", will not be half life 3, and instead will be a spinoff title "Barney's Mansion"

Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud

Back in my day, AI used to stand for Adobe Illustrator! And we hated that, too!