Game 26: Broken Age Act 2This was not how I expected them to follow up Act 1. Essentially a retread of the same environments of the first act, but from the other character's perspective, the focus here was more on throwing puzzles at you in an environment full of familiar faces. I liked seeing all the cast again, because they were all great, but the increased focus on puzzling seemed a little reactionary to the criticisms that the first half was too easy. And when I have to walk the whole way back to the beach from Meriloft because I didn't have the right knot diagram with me, I was experiencing two emotions the first act never evoked: frustration and anger. Also, while the first act could be done basically one character at a time, this required you to keep their progress in sync at certain checkpoints, with no indication that you should switch over and get the other person caught up. All the stuff it did great in the first act, it continued to do great here. The dialogue and characterisation are all fantastic and it looks great. It just has some ugly little additions (plus one adorable one in the safety hexa-gal). It's still a sweet game, and the little closure sketches in the credits left me smiling and content, after all the frustrations that came before.
If you like Grim Fandango, you'll like thisGame 27: Ori and the Blind ForestThis was one gorgeous, fun game. The watercolour visuals and twee setup mask what is actually a difficult and often brutal game. The checkpointing system is similar to that seen in They Bleed Pixels, which I thought was great, but having to manually trigger it with a button press rather than simply standing still meant you get the lesson to do it all the time beaten into you by long, repeated sections. The ability levelling system was a nice addition to the regular metroidvania template, and because upgrades become few and far between in the second half, much time was spent contemplating which would help me *more* from the three choices I had. Unfortunately, though, there were some things that let the experience down. No teleport or quick-travel was a glaring omission, and the checkpointing system should really have restored health when you died. On more than one occasion, I was stuck in a dangerous area because of an ill-thought-out checkpoint that I had no way to undo. The framerate dips when things got hectic tarnished the otherwise impeccable presentation, and every single escape sequence ruined the pace when it should have boosted it. It doesn't control as well as something like Guacamelee, but if you've got an Xbox One or a decent PC, you seriously must play this game.
If you like Guacamelee, you'll like this