Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I feel like I should make it really clear right away that this article isn't an advert for Xbox Game Pass. It'd be nice to have the money, but it's not. Plus all the games here are available to buy elsewhere, many of them on systems other than Xbox One and PC. But last November I signed up for their three months for £1 Ultimate Game Pass deal and I played a lot of games, so I figured I might as well write a little about them.

Actually I signed up just a little too early to get the three month subscription, so I only had 30 days to play games. But they did give me a free subscription to Discord Nitro as a gift and that gave me three months of Game Pass! Or at least it should've done, but I tried to claim it just a day or so too late so I missed out on that as well. I'm so bad at video games that I only managed to get the one month when they were basically giving away six.

Oh, if you're wondering what happened to part 1, I published that last December. It was supposed to be the only part, but I had a few games left over so I figured I'd make a part 2 for you. Then I realised I still had too many games, and... to cut to the chase this is now a four part article, and you'll get the next two parts over the next two days.

Like I mentioned back in part 1, I only barely played some of these games and have no business reviewing them, but that's not going to stop me from showing off some screenshots and writing a few words underneath, same as ever. Except different.

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CrossCode

Developer: Radical Fish | Release Date: 2018 | Played on: Windows You only have to glance at a screenshot to see that CrossCode looks a bit like an RPG Maker game but it really doesn't play like one. It's more of a twin-stick shooter hack and slash puzzle RPG all about getting your shots lined up under pressure, while evading or blocking everything sent your way. You play as a Spheromancer, which basically means you solve all your problems using balls, either by shooting enemies or hitting switches. To complicate things there's often something between you and the target, so you have to bank your shots off the walls or make your way up to the correct height first. It's all about elevation and aiming, timing and dodging. This gets kinds kind of tricky when you're being shot at by a bloody gun turret boss. This thing even knows how to shoot the switches himself, so he kept turning off the pillars I was using for cover! Anyway, this is the furthest I got in the game, because he kicked my ass. I've found that I can judge my interest in a game by how eager I am to jump back in after getting a game over, and here I was happy enough to just let the turret have its win. I feel bad though that this the best shot I got of the gameplay, as I like the art style and I want to show it off properly. It's like a GBA game except with twice the resolution. Speaking of resolution, I have to give the developers credit for letting me set the screen size as an exact multiple of the pixel resolution instead of messing me around like a lot of these games did. I also like how it comes with difficulty sliders to adjust damage received, enemy attack frequency and puzzle speed, even if I was too prideful to touch them. Here's a screenshot with some characters on it so you can see what it's like when you're not shooting balls. There's a lot of story in the game, about an MMO that may or may not be real in some way. You're a player who's lost her voice and memory, and you have to start the game again as a newbie to discover your identity and solve a mystery. It's an interesting enough premise I thought. In fact I would've probably given the game another shot at some point, but I had a long list of other games to try and only a month to play them all.

Headlander

Developer: Double Fine | Release Date: 2016 | Played on: Xbox One Oh no, they took this one off Game Pass so I can't write about it anymore! Still gonna though. If you'd asked me what I was expecting from this, I would've said 'puzzle game made by people who loved the Atari 2600'. But what it actually is, is like a sci-fi mix of Metroid's exploration, Space Station Silicon Valley's bodyswapping, and CrossCode's bouncing shots off walls. Also one of those 'Lander' arcade games from the 70s, seeing as you hover around a lot (though it doesn't really control the same). You're a head in a helmet equipped with jets, and you don't have much to say about this situation as you've got no lungs. Doesn't seem like your character has much clue what's going on either, but that's fine as there's a helpful voice in your ear guiding you step by step as you escape your spaceship and discover what's become of future civilisation. This involves a lot of flying through vents, ripping robot heads off with a tractor beam to steal their bodies (and security access), shooting other robots with laser-guided bank shots from behind cover, then running into a dead end and taking way too long to notice that there's another vent you can fly through. I didn't come across any platforming exactly, but it's got the backtracking and character upgrades of a Metroidvania. There were also a lot more regular people around than I was expecting, and you can knock their head off and bodyjack any of them (they're robots now and their minds are automatically uploaded somewhere else, it's fine). In fact there's even side quests, and it turns out I'm an idiot because it didn't even occur to me that when I went to find a woman's lost robot dog, I'd be returning as the dog. I've heard that the shine wears off it as you get further in, but this one definitely made it onto my 'would've gone back to it if I had the time' list.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

Developer: Bombservice | Release Date: 2016 | Played on: Windows Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth game in the Momodora series of indie Metrovania platformers, and I found it to be a bit of an indie-looking Metroidvania platformer. You run and jump around, hitting enemies with your deadly leaf (or shooting them with your equally deadly arrows), and doing typical Metroidvania business. But then I got my ass kicked by regular enemies a couple of screens in and I was left sitting there with a 'What just happened?' expression on my face. The game provided me with a handy double jump and a roll ability from the start, so I figured I'd use this mobility to get behind the enemies holding shields to swipe them from behind. Not that easy unfortunately, especially when they've got a sidekick throwing poison grenades from above or something. You can lose a lot of life very quickly to enemies or spikes and I found myself repeatedly kicked back to the last save bell. I don't know how the difficulty shifts later on, but it doesn't go easy on new players. In fact I don't know anything about what the game's like later, because I hit the boss in this screenshot like a brick wall. Over and over and over again. Me having trouble with a boss isn't anything unusual, I got my ass whooped recently in CrossCode, Bloodstained and Hollow Knight, but this thing's on another level. It can trap you in a corner with poison gas and annihilate you in two hits! I'm sure if I watched a walkthrough on YouTube there'll be an obvious trick to it, but at the time I just wanted to move on to the next game. You might be wondering why I even bothered writing about the game if I quit on the first boss and know nothing about it. Well, it's pretty isn't it? I wanted to show off the pixel art.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Developer: Moon | Release Date: 2015 | Played on: Windows Man, this game... Usually I'll complain about having to sit through a semi-interactive, unskippable (and pretty depressing) prologue before being permitted to play, but this game's so beautifully animated all I could do is sit back and be impressed. I mean aside from the times it wanted me to press something. Sad stories aren't my thing, but right from the start it was obvious that this game has incredible visuals, and music to match. The actual gameplay's pretty good as well, as it's another one of those Metroidvania platformers where you go around exploring a huge interconnected level and gaining abilities to open new paths. Its combat is a little different to most platformers though, as you play as a cute little glowing animal that used to be a leaf (or something) and they have the power to fire energy bolts that automatically home in on any enemy nearby.  Hitting the enemies isn't the problem, you just tap the button. It's dodging all the attacks they're sending your way while you're tapping the button that's the challenge. Especially as it didn't seem like they've given me the standard 2 moments of post-hit invulnerability that I'm used to. The game's also got platforming challenges, with big spinning spiky blades to dodge, and... stuff. Actually that's all I saw as I haven't played it all that long, but I'm sure there's other stuff later! Anyway this was pretty great.

Remnant: From the Ashes

Developer: Gunfire | Release Date: 2019 | Played on: Xbox One It's a cliché to compare games to Dark Souls, but for the first few minutes when you're jogging around with a sword this could be mistaken for its twin brother. It's merely a cunning trick however, as you're soon handed a rifle and it turns into a third person shooter. A third person shooter with upgradable weapons, and bonfires, and an estus flask, and bosses behind fog walls mind you, but the shift to firearms does give it a different feel. Especially as they don't use stamina. There's a few other differences I noticed as well, like how boss fights are all about running around from the infinite respawning minions and trying to get a moment's peace so you can take a shot at the boss or activate your extremely limited healing item. At least the monsters drop ammo, which is something you really need in this. They don't drop souls though it seems, which means you don't have any souls to drop when you die either. The penalty for death is just having to go back and try it all again (with whatever consumables you haven't already consumed) and honestly to me that seems like punishment enough. It can be pretty sometimes, in its own miserable brown kind of way, and you're not trapped on post-apocalyptic Earth the whole time, so it's not always rusty cars and ruined streets. Though the game doesn't pause, so I ended up getting mauled to death whenever I went to the Xbox menu to take a screenshot. So that was funny. But the game's not for me. It gets pretty exhausting dealing with the relentless onslaught of minions and I don't even like proper Dark Souls much. But maybe it's fun in co-op if you're into this kind of thing.

The Messenger

Developer: Sabotage Studio | Release Date: 2018 | Played on: PC Hey look, it's yet another Metroidvania platformer! Well, that's what I've heard about it anyway, though to be honest the hour or so I played of it was very linear. More Shovel Knight than an Axiom Verge, but still extremely NES. The obvious point of comparison is Ninja Gaiden, with its sword combat, shuriken special move and the wall climbing claws, and it doesn't take long for the game to pretty much admit it. It's one of those games that loves its fourth-wall breaking references and jokes, but it's actually been pretty restrained with the references so far, once it got the obvious one out of the way. Its sense of humour has mostly been working for me, but your mileage will vary. Either way, the jokes are mostly contained to the dialogue and the rest of the time it's been proper old school platforming. Except slicker. Also way less cruel, compared to Ninja Gaiden anyway, though I've browsed its Metacritic page and it seems the second half's going to get frustrating. Plus there's apparently backtracking, so I'd have that to look forward to as well. The game's set in a post-apocalyptic world where the last human survivors are all ninjas and you're the one that ends up with the job of carrying a scroll through several levels full of enemies, bottomless pits and spiky traps. Most of the enemies I've met have gone down in one hit (of sword or shuriken) and getting a kill in mid-air earns you another chance to jump before you hit the ground. This cloudstep trick isn't all that different from just jumping on enemies' heads to be honest, but ninjas can't do that. Plus it lets you feel smug when you pull it off and successfully avoid dropping into an instant death pit. Though even when I messed it up I wasn't that put off. Out of all the games here, this is the one that did the best job of getting me coming back after each humiliating screw up to give it another try. It helps that you get a bit of a health bar and the checkpoints have been fair. But dying makes a little imp creature appear and eat all the time shards you find for a short while. Which is bad, because you need them! Time shards are currency which can be spent to unlock skills, though I got so close to getting all the skills after just a few stages that I have to wonder if there's a twist there. Anyway the game might become a pain in the ass later, but where I'm at it's still just a nice retro platformer with precise controls, a catchy chiptune soundtrack, and boss fights I don't actually hate. At all. (It's been a bit easy so far is what I'm saying).

CONCLUSION

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There's only six games in this article so you wouldn't think it'd be difficult for me to come up with a top three this time, but I'm having trouble on deciding what the third game should be. It's definitely not Remnant: From the Ashes, that much I'm sure of. That game was not designed for me, at all, though other players seem to be getting on better with its blend of guns and Dark Souls.

Okay, I've decided that my top three is:

1. The Messenger
2. Ori and the Blind Forest
3. Not Remnant: From the Ashes

Though those first two are very close. Ori is the more impressive game visually, it's one of the most charming and pretty platformers I've ever played, but I've been enjoying The Messenger's old school obstacle course gameplay just a little more. I've barely gotten anywhere in either of them though, so they both have the potential to drive me away with difficulty spikes or some other annoyance that's introduced later.

On Metacritic the lowest scoring game here is Headlander (due to it being repetitive and monotonous) and the highest is Ori (because it's a work of art), but they're all in the mid 70s-high 80s range, and they're all very positive or better on Steam. So please don't let me put you off any of them.

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Thanks for reading! I'll get back to my normal posts at some point next week, but tomorrow I'll be posting my third part of this big list of tiny non-reviews.

Consider leaving a comment if you want to say something about any of these games, or if you want to have a go at identifying some of the games coming up in the next batch. No one guessed a single one last time, so 0 is the number to beat.