Recency Bias Volume 4

Well, well, well… here we are again, my friends. Another month has come and gone and let me start by saying that this was a BIG month for games. So much so that while I did plenty of reading, movie watching, and music listening, the majority of my non-work time was dominated by the incredible gaming experiences I was having. So, for this edition of Recency Bias, we’re goin “Oops! All Games!”

Labyrinth of the Demon King

Hello, it’s me, bandwagon From Software fan who hopped aboard when the majority of us did with 2009’s Demon’s Souls. King’s Field who? Yeah, I missed those. We were a Nintendo console family, after all, and my foray outside of Mario and Zelda really only started with the Xbox, 360, and eventually the PS4. The early days of weird Play Station games were something I regretfully passed by, something that I’ve been looking to remedy in recent years.

And who should come along but J. R. Hudepohl with one of the most fun homages to the early From Soft / survival horror games of yesteryear. I don’t have much nostalgia for the look and feel of this era of games, but something magical happens in this way that Labyrinth so perfectly captures the aesthetic that really pleased me. Not to mention the game is pretty tough in that “well, obviously the jank works in my favor as much as against it” kinda way that I’ve always had sort of a soft spot for.

Could be just me, but I’m not even seeing the game get a ton of attention which is kind of a bummer because it’s inexpensive, not a huge time sink, and is full of genuinely fun puzzles, fights, monsters, and environments. Not to mention the fucked up cat merchant that, in an alternate world, could’ve become one of the 2000’s most meme-d video game characters.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Delta

The first time I played the original Metal Gear Solid 3, I was a depressed college student who was working his way through the series as a desperate measure to fill my time with something enjoyable rather than… you know… my schoolwork I wasn’t doing. The first game was great overall but left me kind of lukewarm, and I gave up on MGS2 after the fight with what felt like twelve-thousand Metal Gears, so I entered the third entry with a degree of hesitancy.

This hesitancy was totally unnecessary because the game kicked so much ass that I couldn’t stop ranting about it to people who had already played it, people who met my praise with knowing smiles and silent nods of “yeah dude, yeah dude, YEAH DUDE”. There’s so much to love about the game, but I’m sure most of you know that already. It’s a certified timeless classic! The little bit of clunkiness in the controls is fairly easy to get used to, and the amount of different ways to play, optional objectives to undertake, and neat little tricks that will surprise and delight you are all so fantastic that the remaster basically changed nothing. The updated visuals work really well for me (come on guys, the original was always a bit washed out looking), and I snagged the platinum trophy within just a few days of playing it, which included only about seven different sessions of play.

If you haven’t checked this out before, you owe it to yourself to play one of the greatest tactical espionage action games of all time.

Elden Ring Nightreign – Deep of Night Update

I have spoken a lot of praise about Nightreign since its release. I love all the characters and the unique ways they play. I love the writing and the story content with the personal objectives for each Nightfarer. I love the Everdark Sovereigns and the brutal challenge they force you to endure, with switched up mechanics to transform them into a whole new fight. I have a few criticisms, of course, but chief among them was the simple fact that once you’ve beaten all of those bosses and finished every character’s personal story, there isn’t much to keep you coming back.

I was a fool to doubt From Software.

With the newest content update, a new mode called “Deep of Night” has been added to the game, one which imposes new challenges such as powerful weapons that have improved buffs as well as dangerous debuffs and drawbacks that’ll make you start weighing your options with a bit more gravity, and new mechanics like hiding the identity of which boss you’re going to face, leaving you scrambling to find a build that’ll work for the boss you think you’ll encounter. The addition of scaling difficulty via the ranking system adds a feeling of progress and achievement that has more or less defined the studio’s games of the last decade, and I’m overjoyed to have more reasons to come back and take another swing at some Nightlords as my favorite character: Duchess.

The official word is also that new Nightlords, new Nightfarers, and more are still in the pipeline. Miyazaki, I am READY.