Destructoid Changelog - EDF! EDF! EDF!

It’s been a week, which is surprising. Things have just been a blur for me since… I hit adulthood. I keep my expectations low, so reaching the end of the week remains a surprise to me. Moving on.

I’ve also been busy. I got hands-on with the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster and Two Point Museum, reviewed Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse (which I had to proofread extensively because I kept calling it “The Devil’s Toybox” or “The Devil’s Playground”), and finally finished Earth Defense Force 6’s full review. It’s hard to give everything its required time when you’re still in a half-furnished apartment. I still managed to log 60 hours in EDF 6. It’s a long game.

Let’s look at what else is going on, and if you know anyone who might appreciate the irreverence of Destructoid, consider sending them our way.

In the cartridge slot this week

I’ve mostly been concentrating on getting work-related games finished this week. However, I was visiting my parents over the weekend, and in the quiet moments, I was diving back into Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada. It was originally a smartphone game created by Yoshiro Kimura, a graduate from Love-de-Lic and director of Chulip, and his new studio, Onion Games. It’s about a game designer who decides to shut himself inside and become an indie developer. He then falls in love with his neighbor and decides that if he designs her as a damsel in his game and manages to rescue her, she’ll love him back. That’s what motivates indie devs.

Having been previously a mobile game, it’s full of shallow micro-progression. You pick a dungeon, each of which has a few floors, and then you have to clear each level by drawing a path through it in a way that, ideally, hits every square on its grid. Yamada then traverses it, clearing obstacles and enemies in his way automatically. You can intervene by using items. You then gather loot to reinforce Yamada and make clearing dungeons easier.

I generally hate micro-progression in games since it’s easy to get addicted to the constant feed of endorphins. As enjoyable as they are in the moment, they’re rarely meaningful experiences, and I’d say that’s true of Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada. However, I still love it, and that’s mainly because of my fondness for Kimura and Co’s weird flourishes. It also doesn’t have microtransactions, so at least it isn’t leveraging endorphin-addled minds for profit.

Junk food is all right to consume occasionally, and my favorite flavor is weird.

Elsewhere on Destructoid

Review: Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse

Not playground. Don’t write playground.

I was something of a fan of Telltale’s early adventure games before they became more fixated on cinematic experiences. This is despite the fact they tended to be, as I say in the review, solid but unspectacular games. I had never finished the last season of Sam & Max, however, which is what Skunkape has delivered now in remastered form.

It’s easily the best season of the series. It’s funny, weird, and extremely unpredictable. It doesn’t exactly break the mold of Telltale’s solid but unspectacular framework, but it at least makes good use of it. I love Sam & Max, and while this still doesn’t reach the heights of Hit the Road, it’s the closest they’ve come since.

Just watch out for that last episode. It feels as though it rushes to its conclusion and misses a few dance steps.

Review: Earth Defense Force 6

It usually doesn’t take me this long to get a review out, but, again, still in the midst of moving, and the game is about a bajillion hours long. It’s a really good bajillion hours, though.

EDF 6 is very much a direct continuation of EDF 5, but it goes so far off the rails that you’d need a search crew just to find it. My review covers a lot of spoilers, but I think it’s important to approach it that way, since what EDF 6 does exceedingly well is buried in its narrative. I won’t repeat the spoilers here, but know that while the game is very much the same, the plot takes you through twists and turns that keep you guessing and engaged.

I gave it high marks in my review largely because I’ll probably be talking about this one for a long time. It’s just unfortunate that it’s so hard to do so without spoiling its surprises.

Crow Things is the chaos fueled whirlwind I didn’t know I needed

Just Crow Things has been on my wishlist for a while, and I can’t remember why I put it on there. It seems to be a game about being a crow and pooping on people, and while it looks fine, and maybe I’d like it, it’s not really what I look for in a game. So its presence is a mystery, but the same can be said for many of the games on my Steam wishlist. Most can be explained by one of my recent periods of digging through dating sims.

What’s impressive about Paula Vaynshteyn’s write-up of Just Crow Things is how rarely she mentions poop. She talks about playing it with her 4-year-old and seems to somehow avoid talking about time spent pooping. Certainly, there seems to be a lot that you do in the game that doesn’t involve poop, but every trailer I’ve seen has a heavy focus on pooping. I’ve used the word poop more times in this paragraph than in the entire write-up. That’s some restraint.