Originally, I got the Series S as a console-ation prize in the middle of my PS5 purchasing pursuits. Right after my first almost-success, I hopped onto a bundle after hearing about GamePass. The XsS hasn't exactly sat there gathering dust, as my wife plays Final Fantasy games on it daily. Until this summer, however, I rarely played the thing, preferring to focus on the PS5 exclusives and all their glory. There's a nice lull in Sony's releases, and this July has been a great time to check out some games from smaller developers via GamePass.
Carto is this really cute adventure puzzle game where you play as a quiet girl who can manipulate the land around you. The plot is that little Carto discovered she had this power while she was in an airship with her grandmother, matching a picture of a storm to a picture of the ship, which knocked her out of it to an island below. On the way back to meet her grandmother, Carto passes through a series of islands whose tribes need help. You do this by collecting pieces of a map and rotating them to make your own pathways and divert water sources and such.
You can see from the screens how amazing the art is, and it all comes together with the themes and setting of the game. I finished the game in just under 8 hours and only needed to look up a few of the puzzles where I was truly stumped. This game comes from a Taiwanese developer named Sunhead Games and it's a low-stakes, relaxing pretty game for just about anyone.
Donut County. The setting of this weird-ass game is that a cheeky raccoon is able to control a hole in the ground to swallow objects, ranging in size from a pencil to chicken eggs to mountain-sized rock formations. The hole swallows the whole town, including a dozen citizens or so. The plot revolves around each character's lead-up to when they were swallowed, and the mechanics are simple: swallow smaller items, grow the hole, swallow larger items.
I'm not huge on 'random' comedy and too many non sequitur jokes, but this game went right up to that border and I chuckled a bunch. It's like 2 hours long, memorable, fun and simple. Respect to developer Ben Esposito for all the versions of this game he went through before he produced the final Donut County.
Do you ever have those games that are draining to play, even though you like them? Empire of Sin is one of those for me. It's one of those turn-based tactical shooter games where you also manage a city. Except it's all themed after gangsters during the Prohibition. It's great: you start out of a speakeasy and do some violent favors for police, investigators and more mature gang bosses that you want to ally with or simply keep the peace. You get money from your operations and can invest it in better quality booze, protection, or managing buildings. Part of that is when you clear a building of squatters, you can turn it into a bank, brothel, bar, hotel or casino...all the choice *does the OK gesture with fingers* kinds of business to turn a respectful dollar.
The voice actors are really into sounding like cartoon gangsters (LOLlers tutorial guy) and the music wears its own floppy hat and carries a tommy gun...err it's jazz and it works. The draining part? The development and management part of the game is really detailed and there are so many controls that if you don't play the game in long sessions, you will forget how to play. I was really into Empire of Sin for three or so days, but after a day break, I came back and it was too much to try to pick back up.
ScourgeBringer is a rogue-lite, or a game with lots of dying and each time, you're revived to a new, randomly-generated map. Over the deaths, you collect permanent currency of some type, and unlock new skills. ScourgeBringer stands out for its black-centered palette art style, and that a lot of combat happens without touching the ground. It makes for an addicting gameplay loop with the slashing, dashing, bouncing, charging and dying horribly only to do it 6 more times in an hour sitting.
Undermine was another explore-die-improve-explore Roguelike I played for a week or so. This genre is becoming pretty crowded, and this game doesn't stand out among its contemporaries for me. When you die, you lose 70% of your gold, though your upgrade phase between deaths allows you to reduce the penalty along with the usual genre options of permanent gear improvements. As for the gold itself, there are these critters that appear every time there's gold on screen and will take it if you're too slow to collect it. Down in the mine, you rescue people who in turn offer more options between deaths. There's an element of callousness that each death is a different person and there's just a line of willing miners at the title screen, implying a vicious cycle of exploitation for wealth. *Shrug*
Game Pass still remains the best deal in town for gamers of all types. The curation is damn decent and I've never seen less than 120 titles ready to download and go questing. Recently, Microsoft has put a ton of work into X Cloud, which lets you play games in your Xbox library (including Game Pass) through a web browser on your PC, phone or tablet. This is especially awesome for earning Microsoft Rewards. Most of these points are earned through Bing and can be spent on gift cards, Xbox software or hardware, and other gadgets. However, there are weekly and monthly Game Pass challenges, like killing 5 enemies in a game, or winning a Halo match online. At least 20% of these challenges are simply to boot up the game, so instead of downloading some 5-10GB game you'll never play, you can pop on over to a web browser and boot that game on the cloud almost instantly. XCloud's still in beta, but it's pretty damn neat.
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