Tackling the Backlog Issue 9 - January '25

January has always been my favorite month. I get to celebrate my birthday and ring in the new year with loved ones, and it's a long chunk of the winter season. This year I actually took a jab at having resolutions to uphold throughout the year, and lucky for me this is a part of that! I won't go into a lot of detail, but here's to some good writing for the months to come.

While this month has been incredibly insightful for charting my course for the next few months, I haven't had much time to apply that introspection to games. Towards the end of December, I had planned on approaching my backlog with a more "sophisticated" approach. I would map out the games for each month, play games that made me wonder about life, and carry over that same introspective energy I cultivated in my wrap-up article. Instead, I found myself increasingly overwhelmed throughout the weeks and exhausted throughout the weekends. To solve this, I played for pure fun when I found the time, with my focus being escapism rather than introspection this month. So, let's discuss the fun that was had in January!

"Shock to the System"

Despite my love for winter, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge its under stimulating nature. Seasonal Affective Disorder rears its ugly head closer and closer each year as I try to focus my motivations, and January is a month of delayed decisions hanging over me with the new expectations I've set for myself. Too often on cold weekends I found myself frustrated and paralyzed. I wanted to play something, something specific to fill the craving that I didn't understand, just that I needed to get my brain moving with some sort of purpose when all the assigned reading from evening classes was said and done.

Who knew all I needed was to land a few good pit maneuvers in a Crown Vic?

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is a game that I had absolutely zero familiarity with. I've spent a large portion of my gaming career thinking that racing games were just glorified tech demos so players could see just how pretty the newest graphics card in the newest Xbox was (that free copy of Forza that came with my 360 is still sitting there, only touched once). Hopping online with a friend who was familiar with the series was a game-changing experience. This game is a pure adrenaline injection, shooting through your veins without the side effect of coming down from a good high.

Online lobbies are full of other not-so-free-to-play gamers who grabbed this from the PS+ catalog, others are racing veterans who've learned all the fastest routes and drift timings to swerve in and out of traffic with a surgeon's precision. Despite the minimal destruction allowed to the cars, each crash feels weighty and satisfying in a way that you should never experience in the real world. I've always been a fan of doing nonsensical things in games that place themselves in more realistic settings, so this served as the perfect opportunity to let loose on the road. Want to hit 120 mph in a car you'll never own? Here ya go! Hate cops but always wanted to be hit somebody with a mean pit maneuver with no regard for public safety? The road is your shrapnel-riddled oyster! I found myself intoxicated with the level of speed and destruction the game provided, pulling me back into juvenile memories of mom having to come into my room and breaking me from my trance to come move my laundry.

It's all made even better by the fact that the game offers internal leaderboards for you and your friends that you've connected with on an EA account, and beating their scores lets you brag about it through posts exclusive to the platform. It's a lot of back and forth, gameplay loop built on asserting yourself as the fastest to hit the road.

I felt refreshed playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. While I only spent eight hours behind the wheel, I enjoy knowing I've got a comfortable energy boost I can come back to in the future.

"Nothing is Bigger Than Freedom"

Can we talk about how beautiful this game is? I mean, seriously, this is a visual masterpiece!

I played Helldivers II again for a short stint while a buddy and I tried to find something to hold us over. Getting back into the swing of things, I can't help but tell you that this game breeds cinematic experiences so naturally. Let me paint a picture for you.

Fueled by the sheer force of trillions of taxpayer dollars and a righteous strength imbued by democracy, you're jettisoned in a pod from a spaceship right outside of the planet's atmosphere. Heat and sand scrape against your armor as soon as you emerge from the cold, steel cocoon. The sunset lingers off in the distance, its light dimmed by the sand and soot that fills the air. As you move rock formations tower above the blood-soaked dirt you've been charging over for what feels like an eternity. A flamethrower bounces against the back of your armor while you run, playing the role of a militarized exterminator.

This world used to be something. It's clear that water aggressively tore its way through the mountains, it shaped what they are today; it's clear that this planet went through some kind of warming, some sort of consequence of its environment; it's clear that the climate is arid, enough so that fire tornadoes can spring up as often as dust devils, but these spiral down from the planet's atmosphere and touch ground to burn up anything it dances over. And yet you find yourself here with the sole intent of burning bugs that bury themselves deep in the ground with the intent of destroying your very way of life. So, you charge over the burning sands. You carry a supply pack on your back for your fellow soldiers to provide what little you can for them in a war that spans across the galaxy. You lay waste to legions of insect-like creatures that pounce on you, claw at you, spray you with venom so potent it melts the steel you wear. Despite all of this, you still march forward for your home, your way of life, for everything that you've been taught. After a successful extermination of the alien menace plaguing this corner of the planet, it all ends when your ally accidentally calls down a barrage of missiles on your exact coordinates. Ain't that something?

I remember when this game came out and the buzz about it was unavoidable. People were making TikToks themed after news reports to update players on the liberation efforts on various star systems. Amidst the allusions to Starship Troopers, players online would roleplay as soldiers of Super Earth, enhancing the experience and adding to the jovial nature of it all. Helldivers II created a culture around itself for a time that left a pretty sizeable impact on the gaming community. I can't help but think of this as one of the most visually stunning games to grace screens within the past few years. I dread the day that the PS5 becomes obsolete, because what does that mean for Helldivers II? Will it still be the artistic, cinematic experience that I believe it to be now? Or will it become another piece of remembrance for a bygone era, an article that prides itself on the unique experience that it delivered, but not one that can keep up with "modern" standards?

"Heed My Words"

Going into Cassette Beasts, I didn't have many expectations. I knew the game was well-received, and I knew that it was another indie monster-catcher with turn-based combat, but my knowledge ended there. Truly engaging with this game turned everything I knew on its head.

Cassette Beasts is a heavy narrative filled with nuance and detail around every corner. After washing up on the shores of New Wirral I was greeted with the ability to transform into a strange creature with the powers of a cassette player. I can't help but fall in love with the amount of thought that was put into this game. There's so much thematic work at play, leaning heavily into the idea that this land resting between realities creates monsters based off of human cognition. This is further emphasized by the fact that most people on New Wirral are from parallel universes, meaning that the common points between each version of Earth have come together to create these beasts. Take Sanzatime for example. This creature is a broken hourglass and sand brought to life. Obviously enough the name is a pun of "sands of time", literally referencing the sand in an hourglass and the idea that time is fleeting and falls through our hands. Its design speaks to this idea by having it be an ominous creature, with one large hand and a broken body that's constantly picking up sand to grow in size according to its Bestiary entry. This brings the idea that hourglasses are present in most of the origin worlds of people on New Wirral, but also the fear of time passing, as it's now manifested into a creature with the potential to grow and inflict physical harm onto others. You can play into this idea further by looking into Sanzatime's base stats as it's very defensively bulky, representing the immortal strength of time. Fortiwinx represents the Sandman, but takes on a bulky, monster-like form with the power to punch with the weight of a sandstorm. I'd argue that this plays into both the fear of time that birthed Sanzatime, but also the mythology around the Sandman as some sort of mystical being that puts sand in your eyes while you sleep. The monster design of this game fascinates me to no end as there are plenty of examples of things like this, and I can't help but want to know more.

Beyond this, the game literally tells you that this island's creatures are most likely an amalgamation of human thought after you become a Ranger Captain (this game's version of Gym Leaders, but with a very different delivery and place in the narrative than their Pokémon counterparts). The whole idea behind using cassette tapes to record everything is the idea that this is how humans capture art - mainly music, but there isn't a real way to contain art that isn't music, is there? Each creature has its data recorded, but the actual creature goes on to continue its life on New Wirral. All you get is the data and ability to turn into said creature for combat.

My first playthrough of this game was admittedly exhausting. Partially because I burned through it while I was sick, but also because of how much content there is. Even before rolling credits, the game offers a seemingly endless dungeon of battles, an extra boss fight, new characters to meet, and there's still a DLC pack that I haven't bought yet. With all that said, I implore you to play Cassette Beasts if you're craving a new take on the monster-catching turn-based RPG. It's a genre with plenty of inspiration, but Cassette Beasts takes it further by innovating heavily on the genre.

And now, for my favorite memories from each of these games:

• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is adrenaline distilled. One Saturday morning I sat and immersed myself completely in the game, headphones cranked to the max, playing my own playlist and zipping through the course to beat my friend's record. There's something about the vibe this game creates that's incredible. I understand how that one guy became a pro driver after playing Gran Turismo.
• Like I mentioned earlier, Helldivers II is one of the most cinematic multiplayer games out there. My movie moment this time around was climbing up a hill during a firestorm to recover some alien samples. Terminid monsters scuttled behind me as I trudged through the sand, only for my teammate to call in an airstrike on my exact location on accident. We didn't get the samples, but it was a hell of a scene to witness firsthand.
• Cassette Beasts is the first game that I've taken a new approach with the reviewing process. After receiving a recommendation from my Game Narrative Design professor on how she studies games, I decided that my structure would be taking voice notes whenever something interests me, then listening to them and transcribing them afterwards to see what stuck out, then repeating the process one more time on a second playthrough. I've yet to start my replay of Cassette Beasts, but I'm curious to see how beneficial this new format is.

The rest of the winter looks pretty stacked with new games to add to the pile. Monster Hunter: Wilds released at the perfect time, Civilization VII came out of nowhere and I feel like I'm already missing out on the experience. While February was a slow month, here's to keeping up the momentum throughout the year!