What I've been playing (09/22/2024)

09/22/2024

Enotria: The Last Song
Playing this for review and it’s been pretty solid so far. Definitely come a long way from when I saw it at PAX West last year. The foundation was there, but it felt a bit clunky at the time. Still a little stiff here and there, but it feels much more fast and responsive now.

Enotria feels a bit more crunchy than most Souls-likes are. Where most of them have been following From Software in learning harder and harder into the action side of things, Enotria has a lot of systems under the hood. There’s a lot of numbers relating to different types of damage and status afflictions (the status’ all having both positive and negative effects as well, meaning you might want to have them sometimes), dozens of perks you can unlock via a skill tree of sorts that you can assign to different loadouts, different masks with unique abilities and roles you can equip to alter your stats dramatically... it’s a lot. I’m several hours in and I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of it.

It’s kind of refreshing, actually. Most of the Souls-likes I’ve played have usually hewed so close to the source material that I really only need to learn the game’s terminology and how it translates to what I’m familiar with from the Souls series. This is the first time in a while that I’ve actually had to look at stats screens and try and figure out what it all means.

Astro Bot
I’m of two minds about Astro Bot so far. On one hand, it’s a great platformer! Sony can still make those when they want to. Roughly half-way through the second world and it’s been fun. Very much more of what Astro’s Playroom was, which is to say, a solid big-budget platformer. Nothing special, but very good at what it does.

But on the other hand, the degree to which Astro Bot leans on “remember this game?” is a bit much. That’s kinda Astro’s entire identity, granted (haven’t played the VR game, but two out of three in a series being about PlayStation as a brand is a clear pattern), but it still feels overbearing. Playroom could get away with it since it was a pack-in for a new console. If you must do that sort of nostalgia-fueled retrospective, that’s probably the best context to get away with it. Here? Not so much.

Hoptix
Been following this on Cohost for a while and it had a surprise launch this last week. It’s so good! Only played a few levels so far, so don’t have too much to say yet, but god it feels great to play. I love games with good movement and this definitely gets what makes that fun. It takes the best parts of momentum platformers and lets you just play with those mechanics. Really eager to play more.

Lorn’s Lure
Playing this and Hoptix side-by-side is like experiencing opposite ends of the platforming spectrum. Hoptix is chill and about the pure joy of movement; it’s play for its own sake rather than in service of a goal. Lorn’s Lure is much more precise and tense; it’s a mix of precision platforming and stamina management when climbing.

Lorn’s Lure is a first-person platformer with an emphasis on climbing almost any surface thanks to the pickaxes the character uses. I’ve only played the first chapter, but it makes a strong first impression. First-person platforming is a tricky thing to get right, but Lorn’s Lure so far is making it work. I do wonder whether the rest of the levels will continue to be as large as the first one. Ran into multiple points I thought was going to be the end, but it just kept going instead. Not a bad thing right now, but I am a little concerned that length may not hold up in the long term.

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