"Only Games I Give a Crap About" or OGIGACA is a thing I have done for the past few years on this blog. I have an OGIGACA 2020 draft saved here but I am not going to release it. Wasting time on it is usually something I enjoy. I also love sharing the games that I think are interesting with other people. While searching for games to talk about for OGIGACA, I end up finding games that I had not heard of otherwise. Showing those games to others is a cool thing I think about too. This year, I was going to talk about the following:
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Final Fantasy VII Remake
The Last of Us Part II
Cyberpunk 2077
Digimon Survive
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
In the initial post of each OGIGACA, I give my excitement for each game on a scale of 1 (cautiously optimistic) to 5 (I am most likely going to buy the game and talk about it unless something really stupid happens in development or I'm too broke to buy too many new games). Most of the games on this list had a 1, so what was even the point of doing the whole thing? Also, I forgot that I just left it in draft mode to be perfectly honest. So by now, there is already a playable demo of Mystery Dungeon DX. The FFVII remake is out. On top of that, the One-Punch Man game is already out and I am actively playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
However, New Horizons was one on the list with a 1/5 excitement rating. The only two that didn't have a 1/5 were Persona 5 Scramble and the FFVII Remake. So at the end of the year, I might post an "OGIGACA 2020 Revisited" like I did with OGIGACA 2018 and OGIGACA 2019. This time, instead of going off of a contrived list of games I didn't play, I will just talk about the games that came out in 2020 that I did play in either December of 2020 or early 2021 before Spring.
Even if the list only ends up being The Master Chief Collection edition of Halo 1 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I am still going to post about them damn it! If there is other interesting stuff I found, I will talk about why I didn't play them if there is a specific enough reason.
That's pretty much it but if you want to know my current impressions of the games I did list in typical OGIGACA fashion, I will rant about them a little below:
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
I love Persona 5. It is a lengthy-as-hell JRPG that I was really wary of grabbing at all. I have now essentially played through it twice and I have only had it for about 11 months. It takes roughly 150 hours to complete the main campaign if you don't skip the dialogue but the way the game is organized makes the lengthy run time entertaining throughout. But anyway, I already ranted about that game in a previous post.
Persona 5 Scramble is the Dynasty Warriors treatment of Persona 5. Once I found out it is just a Dynasty Warriors game set in the Perona 5 universe, I became less and less excited. Dynasty Warriors is not a bad franchise or anything but once you have played one, you have kind of played them all. When they make their way into different franchises like Gundam, Fire Emblem, and Zelda, things get a little more interesting but it is still a fairly braindead hack 'n slash for the most part. Post-game content and multiplayer are what make these games engaging, or so it seems. I don't really want to sink that much time into a Dynasty Warriors game even if it is a sequel to one of my new favorite games. Persona 5 Scramble doesn't seem to do much differently from other modern Dynasty Warriors titles or even other franchise tie-ins with Dynasty Warriors. On top of that, the game is set mere months after the end scene of Persona 5 and they made some pretty... noticeable tiddy physics. These characters are definitely not 18. If that doesn't bother you, Atlus has released a gracious amount of footage of the game on YouTube and maybe that's worth checking out. For me, the Dynasty Warriors lowers my excitement and expectations and the pointless sexualization of teenagers makes me uncomfortable. Two big no-nos already for me.
One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows
Without Googling it, I'm honestly not even sure if this game came out yet. I think it did. This is another Shonen Jump anime cash grab fighting game. The only reasons I am talking about it are that I really like the first season of the One-Punch Man anime and there is a gimmick that sets this game apart. For those unfamiliar, One-Punch Man is about Saitama, who lives in a world of superheroes and otherworldly villains for them to fight. Saitama is nearly indestructible and can basically decimate any opponent with just one punch. Instead of being this sexy Superman-esque poster child for the community of heroes and for the general public, no one really knows or cares who Saitama is. Most of his acts of heroism go unnoticed or are pegged onto someone else. A lot of his heroics are also on accident. So how do you make a fighting game with a bunch of powerful superheroes and supervillains wherein the protagonist is nearly immortal?
The game utilizes a tag team system similar to that of Marvel vs Capcom 2. Both players each have a team of characters and either or both of the players can choose Saitama. If Saitama is chosen, a timer starts to count with a little screen of Saitama trying to make his way to the fight. The player who chose Saitama is stuck with the other character(s) they chose. If they manage to survive the opponent's attacks long enough, the timer will run out and they can play as Saitama, who basically takes no damage and, as the series name implies, can KO opponents with one punch.
This is a fun idea. Not one I plan on spending $60 on but a fun idea nonetheless. The rest of the game seems to fall into the line of more Shonen Jump tie-in fighting games with nothing really special to note, which is why I'm not getting it anytime soon. Back when I was a kid, this was not such a big deal because these games would most likely end up being $20 full-price the next year and in a dollar bin within the year afterward. Now it's 2020 and these games get truckloads of DLC so the game can be jacked up closer to $100 after all is said and done. The game already has DLC characters. If you couldn't tell, I'm not really on board for this. If you're a die-hard fan of the One-Punch Man franchise, you're probably going to pick this one up anyway. For me, I'm just going to sit back disappointed unless it gets super-discounted some time this year.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a remake of the GBA cult(?) classic, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team. Instead of making fans and newcomers pay for the same game twice like a certain other creature collecting game that came out last year, someone made the decision to just make this remake into one game. I played the demo of it and it looks pretty good. I am not a fan of the originals, I never played them. I was too busy playing way too much Pokemon Ruby and forgetting about society.
Rescue Team has lovely new graphics that I am sure someone is still going to bitch about like they did with Link's Awakening. The gameplay has you going through a dungeon as a Pokemon with a party of other Pokemon. The button layouts seemed pretty sensible and most of the game mechanics were taught pretty well or easy enough to figure out before the tutorial blocks tell you. I don't know how much of the game has a foundational improvement over the original. Having no frame of reference, I can only softly recommend the game from afar. If I had a copy of myself that I could take shifts playing video games and enjoying some semblance of actual life, I would pick up this game in a heartbeat. Maybe one day, I will play it but I wouldn't expect to hear about my opinions on the full game at the end of the year. Maybe one day, I will get an exact copy of myself and not do anything terribly inhumane to him but I wouldn't expect that at the end of the year either. Even if I had that done, I probably wouldn't tell you because I would be guilty of doing at least a handful of inhumane things to him.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I am actually actively playing this one! I am assuming most people reading this don't need an introduction to what Animal Crossing or its new installment Animal Crossing: New Horizons is. Not only are you all a bunch of nerds but New Horizons happened to come out in the midst of a crippling pandemic that rendered a bunch of people rightfully cowering indoors. If any of this sounds like I'm knocking the fans of this game, I assure you, I'm not and even if I was, let me be the millionth person to say "what perfect timing to release a life sim in one of the biggest life sim series of all time". Point being: this is probably going to continue to be one of the most talked-about games of the year and unlike most modern games like that, this one isn't shit!
New Horizons has continued to surprise me with how much it does differently from previous installments (I have played the Gamecube one, a fuckload of Wild World, and several fuckloads of New Leaf). Better is debatable. From what I have played so far there are some things I find kind of stupid, a lot of things I find sort of tedious even by Animal Crossing standards, and one thing I find to be an obnoxious bunny-ass bitch who probably had to move nest in lieu of an angry mob. I have considered joining said angry mob. On paper, the only thing New Horizons does is start you off on a deserted island with Tom Nook, his nephews, and a couple of randomly-selected animals that want to tell you about all of the absurd ways they exercise. Trailing off from that basic idea leads you into the logic circle of crafting. Resources are necessary to do most things in this game. The progress of the game would be a flu-ridden snail's pace without the crafting mechanics. The game is still slow, as all of the Animal Crossing games are but the game shows you non-cheating ways to speed up that progress. If you get lucky (the measurement of fortune, not Lucky, the dog villager), you can go to randomly assorted islands that will give you even more stuff that your home island will consider exotic and give you a buttload of money though. There are more exciting things than the crafting system but I feel like, beyond that, the rest of the game can be simply explained as "the new Animal Crossing". There's nothing wrong with that. New Horizons just streamlines a lot of things and gives a much wider and immediate sense of growth than previous titles and for that, I can see a lot of people calling this the best one. Do I say that? Eh. I might talk about that more after 2020 ends or I know no more games I care about are going to come out. New Horizons isn't for everyone just as Animal Crossing is not for everyone. It's still a molasses-slow game teaching kids about supply and demand and teaching adults that a life where they have a fulfilling income and guaranteed home is an escapist fantasy. If that escapist fantasy sounds mildly interesting, maybe look up some footage or something before dismissing it or taking the plunge. I find the game pretty relaxing but for some people, "relaxing" games are simply "boring". That's me most of the time. I still really like New Horizons though so read into that how you will.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
I was actually debating playing this a week or two after it came out but my current job kind of did some virus-related fuckery even though I wasn't sick. Long story short, I don't want to swing a bunch of money around on games right now. In any case, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is a huge, show-off remake of what is considered one of the best Final Fantasy games ever. For me, it looks exactly like what I expected when I heard a lot of people who worked on Kingdom Hearts were making a big-budget remake of FFVII. If that's all you need to hear, stop reading this and go buy the damn thing. It's already out.
Personally, I still don't know how I feel about it being episodic. It seems like they crossed the idea of "let's make FFVII feel as big and revolutionary as it did in 1997" with the idea of "let's make an episodic game that isn't like Life is Strange". The final result seems to have a lot of bloated shit that just serves to get in the player's way in a shoddy attempt to make the game more "cinematic". That's the best way I know how to describe it. As a former Uncharted fan, I can say with some authority that this never makes the game more fun and doesn't even really make it any more enjoyable. Anyway, as I said before, check it out if you want. I feel like this is another one of those games that recommending it or not is pointless. You already know if you are going to get it or not and if you don't, asking an actual FFVII fan who has played both games is going to give you a much better perspective of what to expect. Or just looking up footage of it like I did or watching a let's play of it like I also did.
The Last of Us Part II
The more I hear about this game, the more I don't give a shit. I heard it got delayed again recently. If it doesn't come out in 2020, I'm not talking about it again in 2021. To clarify, I'm not one of those babies that boycotts a game because it got delayed. I'm pretty patient for the most part. I just don't have much interest in The Last of Us as a game because it is much more movie than game. Also, it's worth noting that I have seen a decent amount of behind-the-scenes features about the development of Uncharted 1-3 and The Last of Us. Most of the time they just think of something that would seem cool and then the chop it into an actual story later. It doesn't invoke much of a thought-out, character study to say the very least. For Uncharted, this worked. Uncharted is an action movie where you are the James Bond. It doesn't need more than it has in regards to narrative. The Last of Us tries to present itself as this intense drama that gets slowed down by a survival stealth game. If you like it or if you're excited, great. I just drifted away from this kind of game. I'm glad it got delayed because it has made me realize how much I don't actually want the game.
Cyberpunk 2077
I personally have not given much of a shit about this game since its announcement and no, Keanu Reeves being in the game has not swayed my opinion. If anything, mo-capping a celebrity to give your game a sturdier mainstream edge makes me less interested, even if it is Keanu Reeves.
Cyberpunk 2077 is supposed to be this open-world, dystopian sandbox deal with RPG elements, shooting mechanics, and a gripping narrative. So far I don't see gripping narrative, I just see nudity for shock value and snarky banter between characters I don't care about. Everything else seems like something I have seen before. People keep telling me that I'm an idiot for not being excited about this game and that the game is based on some tabletop game with online interactive elements. The website and what I have seen about the game so far does not seem to infer anything like that. The only other thing keeping me interested in this game is that they swear your choices will affect the world around you. I've played Mass Effect, thanks. However, unlike Mass Effect, the world in this game is really fucking big. I haven't played Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. People are also pumped because its from the development team that made The Witcher III. I have not played too much of that game myself but everything I've seen of it makes it look pretty competent. I personally don't think it's as mind-blowing and captivating as everyone else seems to be but I guess the theme of this paragraph is that I hate things that people enjoy. That's not what I'm trying to get across, I just feel like I'm digging my opinion's grave here.
Bottom line: this is a vast game that the developers put out a lot of footage on. As much as the game looks pretty damn boring to me, I will give them praise for being so transparent about the development of a triple-A title. In any case, info on Cyberpunk 2077 should not be hard to find if you want to go ahead and order the Super-Epic-Gang-Punk-DLC-My-Son-Died-Please-Cry Edition.
Digimon Survive
A new Digimon game is coming soon and as usual, I'm the only one talking about it. There's not much to say here. At its core, it's Disgaea with Digimon. This is not inherently a good or bad thing. It seems to have a side-dish of plot served up kind of like how it was in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth; the only Digimon game I'm not embarrassed about recommending to people. There's footage up and it seems to function decently. If you think this is an unnecessary statement and is kind of expected of a game from such a long-established franchise, look up uncut footage of Data Squad for the PS2.
I don't even know if I would say I'm "excited" about this one as much as just curious if this being a Digimon game separates it from being a worse Disgaea. We'll see.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
I have not played a Yakuza game but they look pretty good. Like a Dragon pissed off a lot of fans by being significantly different in gameplay to previous titles. It seems to have some kind of 4-party-member, turn-based RPG shit going on while still being a Yakuza game on the surface. Such a drastic change intrigued me because that was a pretty ballsy move and one that seemed to have some kind of creative purpose behind it.
And done.
There you have it. I'll come back at the end of the year to talk about these. If I missed something you think I might like, feel free to let me know. I know games are always releasing left and right so I want to keep track of the ones that particularly impress me as much as possible.
