The other day I was thinking about my List of Shame, when I realized that I didn't have all the games I have through Twitch Prime on the list. That expanded my list by nearly 20 games.
First one down: Stranger Things 3: The Game
Overall this is a solid action-adventure game that takes some of the best parts of SNES era games and adds in just enough modern sensibility to improve things. I definitely recommend it. Took me about 10 hours to go slowly and be a completionist on Normal difficulty. Might be several hours shorter for someone who moves faster.
Pros:
- Most good pixel art. The characters are recognizable, enemy types have clear distinctions, and most of the game looks pretty good.
- Controls feel good, and combat is mostly enjoyable, though it can be a little repetitive and stilted. Fitting iwth the SNES inspiration.
- The crafting system feels rewarding, rather than arcane. All the recipes unlock automatically, all you have to do is find the ingredients and choose what to craft. Only one-of-a-kind ingredients are truly rare (other ingredients slowly increase in availability as the game goes on), and you never have to make a permanent choice between two different items.
- Side quests are quirky and add some nice flavor beyond the main plot.
- Puzzles are challenging, and mostly fun, with only a few feeling needlessly obtuse.
- The world is divided into different locations, and you can travel between them relatively freely, once they open up in the plot. Once you leave an area, you go to a map screen and choose any other area. No walking through multiple other areas to get where you need to.
Neutral:
- Follows the plot of the third season. I think game review magazines would have praised this back in the day, since the gameplay doesn't suffer because of it, but modern reviews complained because it wasn't something new. I did like that the previous mobile game was it's own story, but I can appreciate both.
- 2 player drop-in/drop-out co-op. It's always split screen, even when you're right next to each other (I think), and there's no built-in online (though Steam Play Together might work, in theory.) I have no one to test this with, so I'm not sure how well it works in practice, but if it works it should be fun.
Cons:
- The final boss is a letdown. I don't know why they didn't end with the big showpiece battle against the monster. (Spoiler, Stranger Things has monsters in that people fight, and since it follows the plot of season 3, they fight the same monster in the game.) Instead the final boss is a human villain, and the gimmick is that he's invulnerable unless you use the counterattack mechanic. And you have to do like a dozen or more counters. While lots of other bullshit is going on.
- I was playing on normal difficulty, and holy crap some of the end sections got bonkers for difficulty. Just huge floods of enemies while defending a location on a timer. With enemies that throw AoE grenades. I failed until I really min-maxed my loadout and used only the most OP characters for crowd control.
- Some of the gear doesn't seem very well thought out. Mainly becuase some characters are OP for combat, so why would you ever use items that buff a single character up to "not terrible", when you could make strong characters more useful?
- Robin isn't a playable a character. ( 0/10 an unplayable buggy mess. Do not buy.)
