Inside (Xbox One via Xbox Series X) - Golly gosh, this is much better than Limbo! Much improved, less spiteful gameplay and a narrative that’s actually interesting and prompts genuine discussion about its meaning instead of just ‘Ooh, I wonder who that girl we see for two seconds is???’ nonsense. Loved the ending sequence, really great stuff.

I had a dilemma about whether to give this [8] or [9]. I don’t think the mechanics warrant a [9]. There’s still some fairly trial-and-error sections - there’s nothing as ‘fuck you, player!’ as certain sections of Limbo but there are definitely bits where you get the sense the devs were quite happy for you to die a few times. I had a quick look at the Inside thread and at least one person said there was sometimes a disconnect between knowing the solution to a puzzle and how to use the mechanics to implement it and I felt that at times.

Really good - a Playdead game that is actually worth the hype. [8]

Sign me up for the loved the ending brigade. Not sure what I wanted but I'm glad they took it out of my hands.

Tempy wrote:

Cocoon

It's good fun, impeccably polished, but rarely actually taxes your brain. You can tell it's from the gameplay designer behind Limbo and Inside because it's all about interacting with an interesting world in limited ways, but gosh are those interactions fun and tactile. Lots of artistry and detailing, but it's very much a pop-up book where the tabs are very evident, you just need to pull them the right way to make the enjoyable stuff happen. 

There is one specific event you repeat a few times that I wasn't a huge fan of, which is in stark contrast to the bosses who are very enjoyable to fight - I especially liked how the beat you, which is a lovely non-violent and fitting way to get punted back to the start of each fight.

Art direction and general inventiveness of each biome you travel through definitely keep it interesting, and there are a few sets of puzzles right before the end that each make use of a unique idea without properly exploring it, but the gist of that idea made me feel a little giddy. I think there was scope to make something really knotty and involved, but I respect the decision to making a game that empowers you to enjoy this alien technology.

I missed three of the optional secrets, so not sure if there is anything slightly more special right at the end as due to the nature of the game you can't go backwards to find them.

Overall it's a Strong 7/weak 8.

I'm a bit cooler on it. It's nice, good graphics, music etc but it never really made me think too hard or get stuck, the way they've designed the areas to lock you in position with everything you need kind of makes it feel a little linear. I felt like I was solving variations of how to get the fox, chicken and corn across the river the whole time.

Agree that the bosses were good, again nothing taxing but a fun little face off with a new mechanic. I know exactly what but you didn't like, it involves the white orb doesn't it? Genuinely shite those bits. Dunno how many secret thingies I missed and I don't care either.

It's left me pining for a proper eureka moment, or being stuck trying something complicated because there's something obvious that I'd missed. Instead I spent most of the game plodding through the locations not really feeling I've achieved anything and becoming a bit bored of having to run through the motions of it. Pretty much just wanted it to be over before the end, despite the fact it's a short game

Re: difficulty, I’d happily play a Cocoon: The Lost Levels style follow-up for hardcore players but it’s a puzzle adventure not a pure-blood puzzler so I thought what we got was pretty appropriate tbh.

EvilRedEye wrote:

Thus the game is actually about two German pilots friendly firing at each other in anachronistic planes.

I'm in.

I play an hour or two every few weeks at the moment!  Just can't get the dedicated sit down time I want to get my teeth into it.

I just drifted away from it, might go back, but no major draw tbh

The credits are still going and it’s been over 20 minutes!

Finally got there and a nice little post credits scene. But NG+ ain’t gonna happen. Far too many games.

A button press during the credits for Gunbrella speeds up the text and the tune playing.

Interactive credits was a noughties fad I quite enjoyed.

Planet of Lana (Xbox Series X) - It’s perfectly fine. It’s a perfectly cromulent one of these. The premise is basically ‘what if Limbo/Inside was nice?’. You’ve got your 2D puzzler-platformer gameplay and often quite lush Ghibli-inspired graphics.

It feels like one big giant amalgam of influences, which it wears on its sleeve. On the one hand, it can come across as a bit derivative, on the other, I think there’s probably genuinely a gap in the market for ‘Limbo/Inside but not nasty and bleak’.

The gameplay is OK but can feel a bit unrefined at times. The control scheme seems quite complicated for one of these and it’s telling that it uses button prompts right to the end of the game. I didn’t really like the QTE sections. I feel like they tried to balance them so you’d fail at least once but, particularly in one case, the whole point of the sequence is to be like ‘whoop, whoop!’ and that gets undermined when you die a few times. There’s an achievement for completing the game without dying once which honestly comes across as the developer being completed deluded about the quality of the gameplay - I died quite a few unfair deaths during this.

The soundtrack deserves a shoutout as it’s genuinely good (apparently by the composer of The Last Guardian!).

Overall, it’s a pretty decent game, albeit a bit too derivative and overtly emotionally manipulative towards the end, with good but not great gameplay. Considering it’s the developer’s debut effort it’s quite impressive and I’ll be interested to see what they do next. [7]

Okami HD (Switch)

Hmm. Not sure how I feel about this one. Overall, I enjoyed it. But... there's a lot of questionable game design in this that makes me want to step back from recommending it. Let's look at some examples. Minor spoilers ahead, but the remake is 6 years old, never mind the original game. Statute of limitations, innit.

The tutorial is incredibly long (like, a third of the game), linear, frustrating, and tedious. It also gives you the bomb power before the wind power, so you end up in the curious situation in which you can blow up rocks, but piles of leaves are invulnerable.

One boss fight involves drawing vines into a boss in order to open up the weak point. But the brush stuff isn't 100% accurate, so you often end up getting the slash power rather than the vines. Which, on it's own, would be frustrating, but given that they also decided that the slash cuts the vines that you've already drawn, it makes it throw-the-controller-out-the-window annoying.

During an escape sequence, if you fall down, you have to use the power that creates fountains that you can climb back up to the platforms that lead to the exit. But during this section, rocks are falling from the ceiling; while climbing the fountain, you can't do anything else. So you just have to sit there while you get the shit beaten out of you.

In one dungeon, there's a room with a symbol that kinda looks like the bomb power on the floor. So that's the first thing I tried, but nothing happened. So I spent a good 20 minutes or so trying to figure out what I was meant to do - I tried drawing the symbol on the floor as-is, but that did nothing either. It's one of two parts of the game where I had to google the solution. Turns out you do have to draw the bomb symbol, it's just that the game didn't recognise it the first time I tried. Why not just make the thing you have to draw the same as the bomb power brush stroke? Why obfuscate it like that? I think this was the closest I came (bar the tutorial) to giving up.

Lastly, the other section I had to crack out the google for: there's a bit where you have to find dog warriors (it makes sense in context) using a tracking device. But it marks where they are on your map, so... why give you the tracking device? Then it asks you to return to character Ms. Whatsherface, and by that point I'd totally forgotten who that was, never mind where they were. This information isn't added to your map. It boggles the mind.

There's definitely a lot to love, but also a lot that's not great. The plot over all fits together quite nicely, but there's many world-saving McGuffins that are introduced then ignored for the rest of the game in quick succession. There's a cast of characters to love, and then a number that are discarded as quickly as the last doohickey you found. The final boss is amazing, but some of the intervening ones were real turd-tier stuff. The dungeons generally look great and play quite well, but are often over far too quickly. There's a cool section where you have to avoid getting eaten by a whale while surfing around on an orca, but then to get to the next section of the game... you get eaten by the whale. 

It kinda feels like discovering the bassist from your favourite band had a side project that you'd never heard of. Interesting, but in places, you wonder what the thought process was. I think the screenshot I took below pretty well sums up the game.



In the end, I'm disappointed that the sequel that's hinted at the end never materialised (Okamiden doesn't count), but I also have no desire to do New Game+ and look for stuff I missed. Secret best Zelda? No. The EDGE [10] that never was? No. An interesting game that you should probably look into? Sure.

[8] I guess? Maybe one point lower if you're not a Zelda fan.

Cocoon didn’t follow my own advice and ended up playing this across three sessions. Overall I loved it all. The style was beautiful, the puzzles taxing enough but not overly difficult, though I did get stuck on a really simple puzzle that I had half-solved but for some reason my brain wouldn’t work. After that it all built very nicely into a nice satisfying game.

Though I was expecting…

Would love a sequel. [8]

I did scare myself with the amount that I remembered; "Oh, there'll be a set of body armour hidden behind this box" and such. I really did play the shit out of it back on the '64.

Oooof