I finished The Séance of Blake Manor, which I’ve been playing on weekends with my sister and brother-in-law for the past few months. On the whole I must say I was disappointed, especially given the hugely impressive reviews it has garnered.
We can start with what the game does well: it’s a very well-researched game about mythology, particularly Irish mythology but also some 19th century occultism and mysticism. This is by far the most interesting part of the game. If you view it as a glorified few hours of stumbling through Wikipedia pages about Irish folklore and mythology then maybe you’ll enjoy it.
Unfortunately it’s an absolutely lousy deduction/detective game. Actually maybe that’s too weak a word. I found it to be complete garbage. I’ll go into more detail, but the short version is this: at every single step of the way the game fundamentally fails at the central principle of a deduction style game - making the player feel smart.
Now, I do concede that constructing a detective game is very difficult. A central challenge is the interface with and verification of knowledge: how does the game know you’ve figured something out? Obra Dinn had an elegant way of solving this, Blake Manor does not. You will constantly be frustrated, shouting expletives at the moronic protagonist as you’re clicking on every interactible object you can find in the hopes of the game finally accepting that you know the thing you as a player figured out three hours ago. The “hypothesis” mechanic is terrible. 90% of the time you already know the hypothesis long before you’re allowed to actually input it by the game, and the rest of the time there is usually only one word in each slot that makes grammatical sense. Again, never making you feel smart. Also the protagonist farcically exclaims ‘Wait! I know what happened here!’ every time, which is less euphoric when you’ve known what happened for hours as a player.
And this poorly implemented mechanic of what “clues” unlock the state of something being known leads to further problems, too. You have a myriad of discussion topics available to you, but there is no real throughline or logic about which topic leads to actually unlocking new “clues” or “evidence”. If there was a sound logic here, this would be an opportunity to make the player feel smart: “Wait… I need to talk with this person about that subject!”. That would be good design. Unfortunately Blake Manor does not have good design. Sometimes a completely random person-topic combination gives you the clue, sometimes a very clearly important person-topic combination gives you nothing. The end result is that you’re just kind of talking about everything with everyone, exhausting every available topic until you finally talk about the one random thing with the one random person that the game decides will give you the next piece of “evidence”. It doesn’t make you feel like a detective. And that is the central defining trait of Blake Manor mechanically: it fundamentally fails at the raison d’être of the genre. You’re never really investigating or deducing, you’re just walking around clicking on things until the game gives you the next thing to click on, which gives you the next thing to click on, etc etc.
The only actual deduction in the whole game is related to who the central “culprit” is, and that is so laughably easy I hesitate to call it a puzzle even.
I also had a lot of issues with the writing. Especially the “character arcs” of each NPC are bizarrely written, with almost all of them doing a complete 180 after you simply confront them with their own plan. Like imagine you have someone plotting to consume the soul of another person to obtain magic powers, which they’ve desired their whole life. This would be actual dialogue in game:
Protagonist: You plan on murdering Johanna and consuming her soul to obtain her magic powers! Previously magic-obsessed woman: Oh no! I see the error of my ways! How horrible! I must give up on this, and never again pursue the allure of magic!
Also the voice acting wasn’t great either, or at least very uneven. Especially one climactic moment in the endgame was let down by poor delivery. And it felt like most of the cast struggled with the Irish accents?
Anyway, I could go on but I’ve probably ranted enough.
Still playing FO4. I’m pretty busy lately and just jumping it, raid a base, horde some mats, maybe do a quest fits in perfectly in my schedule. Still think it’s the worst FO mainline entry by a large margin
Got my first win in Noita recently by stopping attempts to do more interesting variations and just going to the ending boss. Now to figure out New Game +, the metaprogression of the orbs, the suns, parallel worlds, and the myriad ‘lesser’ bosses.
I have about 40 hours in Noita and I still don’t think I’m close to making it through a single run xD
Great game, just unforgiving as fuck!
Finally got Blue Prince up and going. Didn’t really like it at first, but after the fourth in-game day or so, I started enjoying it.
Also, playing the new next-gen remaster of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North with a friend. It’s pretty mindless hack-and-slash, but it’s fun.
Blue Prince definitely takes a while to hook you. I can think of a couple of somewhat early “wow” moments that tend to do it for people. Are you taking physical notes? Note taking was like half the fun for me, haha.
What an amazing game it is, duking it out with Disco Elysium for my favourite of all time.
Big Disco fan myself. Currently taking screenshots and jotting on them if needed. Whipping out the ol moleskine and drafting pencil certainly seems thematic, so maybe I should start doing that.
I did both, and definitely recommend doing so. It’s a very rewarding game for note taking, and also writing things down with pen and paper helps you remember better. And it’s just kind of pleasant to write physical notes, as well as flipping through notebook pages to check something. It definitely enhanced the experience for me.
I’ll take your advice and dig out the notebook. Thanks for making the obvious move more apparent.
Do you know if the LotR game has couch coop?
Haven’t played it couch co-op, but according to the description it does.
That lotr game looks kind of fun. I’m always looking for good co-op games.
It’s a nice little co-op game. Not really deep in rpg elements and the skill trees are basic, but it’s not grindy and there’s quite a bit of loot to be found.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
I have no attachment or personal feelings towards the Castlevania series. I appreciate these games from a historical perspective but I never really spent much time with them outside of playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for a few hours as a kid (it was a pretty random purchase at the time).
I’ve been eyeing a bunch of various older (mostly 2D) games recently and decided to buy Castlevania Advance Collection to finally give the series a proper try - it was on sale and fit the criteria so why not?I was a bit worried about getting into Castlevania as many of the games (especially the early ones) look like they wouldn’t really be up my alley in terms of gameplay and controls. That may as well be true, as I said, I never really played the series, but going with the Advance Collection turned out to be a good choice - even if I needed a moment to get used to how to play “properly”.
While I’m still in the middle of my playthrough, I can safely say that Circle of the Moon is pretty great. It plays amazingly well, looks and sounds fantastic - it’s a genuinely fun title and that’s not always a given when going back to old classics.It might be one of my favourite “new” titles I’ve tried this year. I can’t wait to get back to it.
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
This is my… second attempt at playing this, I think? This time with a more “no pressure” attitude though it didn’t help much to be honest.
Game runs and looks beautifully on the Deck - stable performance, no technical issues (except for a single crash), great image quality. Can’t say I’m a fan of the art style (stylised LEGO blocks mixed with more “realistic” environments) but I don’t hate it enough to make it a problem.
Gameplay and story presentation on the other hand… I’m not gonna lie, this title puts me to sleep (literally). Both elements are well made but they also feel extremely flavourless and plain. “Inoffensive”, maybe? I somehow managed to finish year 1 and have zero desire to go back for now - I might have to try playing it in chunks instead of normally.It’s not a bad game but it’s sooooo boring - enough so to make me wish I was playing the old Harry Potter and The Sorcerers Stone instead.
Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc
Ah Rayman… it’s a series I like even though, if I think about it, I didn’t really play much of it. I played Rayman 2 as a kid but only finished it a few years ago, tried (but never finished) 3 a bunch of times, spent some time with Jungle Run and dabbed a tiny bit with Origins - suffice to say, my attachment is more emotional or memory based rather than having to do with my actual experience with this franchise. It’s weird.
For years, Rayman 3 has become something of a “cool game I want to go back to and finally complete”. Well, I did just that.
I initially tried to play with the “Better Rayman 3” mod but something about its widescreen fix broke both the pre-rendered cutscenes and UI so I opted into using Ray3Fix and playing in 4:3 instead. It worked well enough though I can’t say it was worth it.
R3 is a pure downgrade from the second game. Camera control is more finicky, constantly shifting between full control, static placement and a weird in-between with partial control. It’s also physically constrained by the level geometry which makes it feel even more stiff and constricting, especially in smaller environments (which there are quite a few of). I’m genuinely not sure there’s another game where I fought the camera this much, even though I’m pretty sure R2 had a very similar system (it’s been a while since I played that one but I know it wasn’t this painful).
Gameplay feels worse than R2, with enemy lock-on often aiming at a completely different enemy (or even direction) than you intend to, unimaginative level design and pretty boring enemies (including bosses). It’s not all bad (there are some decent sections here and there) but it’s not enough to elevate the experience into something enjoyable. Finally, there’s writing. Oh boy, the writing. It leans way bit too much into the snarky and edgy “attitude” era as if it was afraid to commit to itself and play things straight. This makes it feel very dated and, in my case, difficult to sit through. After finishing the whole thing I can’t say it was worth it.It’s a mediocre title and a bad sequel, I’m glad I can scratch it off my backlog but I won’t be coming back.
My only exposure to Rayman was Rayman Legends and that was absolutely dope, especially the musical levels.
Shadow of Mordor - Got a steam controller recently, still very satisfying and fun to play even if I prefer the sequel.
Quake - The first instalment got a remaster for the 30th anniversary. I’ve always been a Q2 guy personally and have many fond memories playing it at a mates place in primary school. Very much appreciating 1 again with the remaster though.
Factorio - Every so often I still get a craving for this even if the space age release really took a lot of the shine off it for me personally. Still enjoy it but doubt I’ll even make it to rocket launch this run.
Vintage story - Not really a patient game. Very much enjoyed it, very comfy, managed to get a good farm going, some chicken/boars and to Bronze Age. Will probably scape through winter but having recently started the search for iron will probably drop it until further updates.
Factorio - Every so often I still get a craving for this even if the space age release really took a lot of the shine off it for me personally.
I played it about six months ago and sometimes get the craving too. Does Satisfactory scratch that itch or is it too different? (Haven’t played it but was thinking of picking it up next time it’s on sale – or the itch gets itchy enough…)
It did in good part for me but full disclosure I’ve only played a few hours on a free weekend but still intend to pick it up. I’d say it definitely will but there’s something to be said for the transition from top down to first person. There’s a specific feeling to setting up an entire block in factorio to be a nuclear power plant and block clearing artillery trains that I’m not sure exist in satisfactory. That said I largely haven’t picked up satisfactory yet because I strongly suspect it will consume a month of my life at least when I do.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I keep playing super-long JRPGs back to back and I wanted a nice fun palate cleanser before starting the next one. And there was a sale to go along with the release of Brand New Day.
It’s fun. Web-slinging feels good. Miles’s unique powers are great quality of life improvements over the first game.
I would have waited a couple more months if I knew it was set around Christmas time. I’m the Christmas champion!
Started playing Getting over It with Bennett Foddy with my partner - I completed the game a few years ago but it’s fun reliving the first time playing in watching (and helping sometimes!) my partner play. Their reactions when seeing stuff for the first time, trying to problem solve how to approach the next area, its awesome. Oh, and they do rock climbing IRL so their commentary is also very interesting too.
Still going through Hitman achievements. Got the rest of Hitman 1 except Colorado, which I’m really putting off. I’m now doing Hitman 2. I’ll get to Colorado eventually.
