HappyNebula

“Before I Forget” is a touching game which presents people who suffers from dementia in a very unique way. The game is short, you can finish in a single session in less than an hour, but every minute worthy the experience. This game expanded my little understanding on the subject (of mental illness) and gave me a better vision on how these people experience their lives. Also, made me think and enriched my empath about those people who take care and live with them. The game has a sweet narrative starred by a brilliant character which is brough to life by good voice acting. The visuals and gameplay mechanics are simple, but well done and fits the game’s purpose. I encounter some performance issues, but that is ok, nothing that compromises the gameplay experience. I just enjoyed the brief experience with “Before I Forget” and is that kind of game that made me thoughtful after I finished.

Tetris Effect Connected take the classic game and elevate your experience to an incredible audio-visual journey. It really reminds me of “Lumines”, but with Tetris instead. Not surprised, Tetris Effect was developed by the same producers of Lumines. The gameplay feels like you are a DJ mastering the music by playing Tetris, it’s a very satisfying feeling manipulating and putting together blocks with the rhythm of the music and an insane visual background reacting to it. The game challenges you, sometimes make you restart and try over and over again. But also have moments of calm that you can relax and just enjoy the game. It’s kind ****. But be aware, you will be seeing these block falling off every time you close your eyes by the rest of your day. I loved “Lumines”, and Tetris effect bring me back that same good vibe but now with Tetris.

Maquette is a simple and enjoyable puzzle game driven by a love story between two people. The narrative is simple and presented by great voice acting. There are some cliches, but is well written overall. The recursive scenery is beautifully crafted which serves as a visual metaphor for constructing the narrative and gives you a fun sense of scale. Placing objects in the small “maquette” and seeing it recursively generated outside is a cool effect and reminds me of that “infinite mirror effect”. The game plays with that to construct puzzles in a simple manner, there is not much variation on how you manipulate objects or place them, but is effective. I like how the game gives you no hint on what to do and encourage you to explore the scenery and try things out. It’s something that you’ll probably won’t be spending dozens of minutes to figure out what to do. And if you find yourself in that situation, you’ll feel lonely with the silence of the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game has a good well-suited soundtrack, but it’s played just in the beginning of each chapter, and then you will be hearing just the silent ambient noise. I thing they could have worked better on sound design. Overall, it’s a nice puzzle game that will not stress you out. A good game to play in a weekend and chill out. If you are a complectionist, you can easily platinum this game within four hours.

Maquette is a simple and enjoyable puzzle game driven by a love story between two people. The narrative is simple and presented by great voice acting. There are some cliches, but is well written overall. The recursive scenery is beautifully crafted which serves as a visual metaphor for constructing the narrative and gives you a fun sense of scale. Placing objects in the small “maquette” and seeing it recursively generated outside is a cool effect and reminds me of that “infinite mirror effect”. The game plays with that to construct puzzles in a simple manner, there is not much variation on how you manipulate objects or place them, but is effective. I like how the game gives you no hint on what to do and encourage you to explore the scenery and try things out. It’s something that you’ll probably won’t be spending dozens of minutes to figure out what to do. And if you find yourself in that situation, you’ll feel lonely with the silence of the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game has a good well-suited soundtrack, but it’s played just in the beginning of each chapter, and then you will be hearing just the silent ambient noise. I thing they could have worked better on sound design. Overall, it’s a nice puzzle game that will not stress you out. A good game to play in a weekend and chill out. If you are a complectionist, you can easily do 100% at this game within four hours.

Maquette is a simple and enjoyable puzzle game driven by a love story between two people. The narrative is simple and presented by great voice acting. There are some cliches, but is well written overall. The recursive scenery is beautifully crafted which serves as a visual metaphor for constructing the narrative and gives you a fun sense of scale. Placing objects in the small “maquette” and seeing it recursively generated outside is a cool effect and reminds me of that “infinite mirror effect”. The game plays with that to construct puzzles in a simple manner, there is not much variation on how you manipulate objects or place them, but is effective. I like how the game gives you no hint on what to do and encourage you to explore the scenery and try things out. It’s something that you’ll probably won’t be spending dozens of minutes to figure out what to do. And if you find yourself in that situation, you’ll feel lonely with the silence of the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game has a good well-suited soundtrack, but it’s played just in the beginning of each chapter, and then you will be hearing just the silent ambient noise. I thing they could have worked better on sound design. Overall, it’s a nice puzzle game that will not stress you out. A good game to play in a weekend and chill out. If you are a complectionist, you can easily platinum this game within four hours.

Miles Morales is another great hit by Insomniac team, they nailed the narrative, characters, visuals and gameplay. It’s a game about social/cultural diversity and representativity brought to a universe of a beloved super hero in a videogame. It’s a game about living in community and respect for each other. It’s a game about self-learning and understanding how to self-accept. An approach that is important nowadays and something that we need to see more often in videogames. All of the aforementioned characteristics of this game are expressed by the many great characters and how the narrative unfolds between them, either by doing the main quest or side quests. Alongside the well written narrative, the performance of actors/voice actors are top notch with a well-done animation too. Yes, it is not a long game, you can complete the main quest within a few hours, but you’ll probably want to do all the other things like side quests, challenges or just explore the gorgeous New York city in winter. This will take a few dozen hours more. And it’s definitively worth it. This game is visually impressive on PS5. Seeing the ray traced reflections of the buildings while you swing around the streets of New York with a buttery smooth 60 fps is simply amazing. The ray tracing reflection is just not about visuals, but also helps with awareness of the environment and enemies. And talking about awareness, this game also does a great use of the 3d audio (tempest engine), it adds depth and precise placement of the sounds, making it one of the most immersive city that I ever heard in a game. Don’t forget to turn this option on in your PS5. Another technically impressive achievement is the absence of loadings time. It’s so good to jump into the game with almost no waiting time or to fast travel in a blink of an eye. Regarding gameplay, Mile Morales uses the same great mechanics found in 2018 Marvel’s Spider-Man. Miles performs swings with more acrobatics and have his own set of abilities. The combats still fun and traversing through the city is always very pleasant. I just think they could use the adaptative triggers and haptics of DualSense in a more profound way. It’s an OK application. In summary, this is an excellent spin-off to the Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise. All that you loved in the 2018 game is also in Miles Morales. It’s a PS5 must have. And I hope that Insomniac Studios keep up with their great work.

Destruction AllStars was a pleasant surprise for me, a fun and simple multiplayer to play for a couple of minutes. It takes inspiration from classic games like Twisted Metal and Destruction Derby with a more modern approach. The combination of on foot and on car adds more dynamism to the game, but the mechanics of the former could be better, sometimes jumping to a wall or platform is a little annoying. And the melee combat is quite imprecise. Otherwise, the cars feel good, each type is dynamic different, mainly the specials cars which are unique of each character. Crashing into other vehicles is a joy, although you probably will have a lot of miss shots. There are plenty of characters to choose, each one with their own unique abilities. Playing for a couple of hours, you start to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each one of the characters, and how to use their unique abilities into the four game modes. There isn’t a lot of strategy to make, but you can improve your gameplay as you know your characters better. It’s easy to stick with just a few characters that you like the most, but the game makes a little effort for you to play with others characters by introducing little challenges over the week. The only problem is that the rewards for completing the daily/weekly challenges are just some experience points or the in-game coin. The leveling is just there to show how “expert” you are in the game, not offering any advantages to the character or gameplay. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing as your game performance depends only on you. And the in-game coin is just to buy some customization, and this is a weak part of this game, at least for now. The customization for the character, for example, is kind boring. I wish they added more variety for the skins to the cars and not only for the special cars, for example. The game runs great on PS5 with little performance issues, sometimes you will see a frame drop here and there, but nothing that compromises the gameplay. The game loads fast, from cold boot the game to loading the maps, it is almost instantaneous. But the long-time search for the online matches makes it less impressive. I think it would be nice if they added a warm up session while you wait for match. And sometimes there is a problem with the connection that you can’t cancel the search for the match, the solution that I found is to restart the game or enter in an offline match. About the visuals, it’s a beautiful game, with a lot colors and light effects. The cars and characters are very detailed. Also, the animation is well made and adds more depth to the characters together with the good voice acting. There isn’t a whole lot of variety, but they did a nice work on that department. The use of the DualSense is quite nice. One feedback that a really found useful is when your car is heavy damage, the triggers start to rumble as if there is something wrong with your car. One thing that I really dislike is that there is an offline mode called “challenge” and there is a paywall to access each challenge. The first is free, but the others you will have to buy another coin in the game. It’s not possible to use the coins that you earned in the game. In resume, I really enjoyed Destruction AllStars. It’s fun and perfect for short session multiplayer. This game has great potential with the right updates and I really hope the dev team keeps adding content for this already great game.