Recently Completed Games

Alright then.

Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time

It's been over 20 years since the last time I finished this. It's a wonderful game, but boy does it not respect your time.

I'll sound like I'm slamming this game, but that's not my intention. It is a wonderful adventure, probably especially if you were playing it as a kid (I was 16 when it came out, so perhaps a little late). As far as transitions from 2D to 3D go, Ocarina is possibly even more astonishing than Super Mario 64.

But I'm reviewing it as someone going back to it today. It loves to stretch out things as long as possible, starting with overly lengthy dialogue and cutscenes, continuing with enemy encounters that are mostly about waiting for them to drop their guard, lengthy boss fights that are mostly about waiting for them to finish their routine before you can finally attack them again. And then of course, if you want all those delicious heart pieces, you'll have to go through the fishing minigame, through several minutes of Ocarina playalong that in the end is just about repeating 8 notes, and perhaps most emblematic of all, the gravedigging minigame. The single one gameplay mechanic here is waiting, OoT is quite literally a waiting game. More than a test of skill, it is a test of patience. I initially intended to 100% it, but among other things that includes capturing all 10 ghosts in Hyrule field--nah thanks, I'm good.

It introduced mapping 3 buttons to different items (instead of only 1), but somehow it manages to make you spend much more time in the menus nonetheless. Wouldn't be such a problem if the menu wasn't that sluggish and unresponsive. It also suffers from early 3D-game-itis, when the action heats up your greatest enemies are camera and controls, which can be frustrating.

Enjoyable today? If you're willing and able to spend a lot of time (my playthrough was a whopping 27 hours--didn't recall it to be that long), then by all means, yes. But be prepared for a lot of tedium along the way.

Which brings me to the comparison to the SNES' Link to the Past. That game runs at a smooth 60fps, it has no camera or control issues whatsoever, and it's just a phenomenal action-adventure game with precise controls that doesn't waste your time. Zelda and Metroid were structurally similar on the SNES, it was after that that Zelda became much more about dialogue and minigames while Metroid essentially remained the same game even in 3D. Personally, I prefer the latter approach.

Playing these games today, I think LttP has aged much better. I can't rate OoT from today's replay perspective because that would mean giving it an 8 or even less. You can't give Ocarina of Time an 8. You just can't.

So again, if you have a lot of time and patience, do play OoT. But otherwise, don't.

Agree that ALttP is the better game though

Axiom Verge - 8.5/10

During my search for modern Metroidvanias I might like, I finally found one. Not sure if it's a "Metroidvania", more accurate would probably be to say it's a "Metroid". In no uncertain terms it shows what it pays homage to, and there's 0% Castlevania here. And yes, it feels very Metroid in the first half, but then extends on it in clever and engaging ways.

I really liked its restraint in using visual effects. One thing I really don't like in many 2D indie games is how they just spam VFX because they can. There's a tendency to fill the screen with VFX all the time, and to apply screen shake as much as possible--in some cases going as far as making the screen shake on every single strike or air dash or whatever. Excessive visual noise is a common problem in modern 2D games, Axiom Verge does nothing of the sort and I highly appreciate it.

Depending on your mileage, you might say it follows Metroid to a fault. But I'm very grateful that in the one thing I don't like about Super Metroid--its awkward movement mechanics--Axiom Verge opts for simple traditional movement and that was a great choice.

On the downside, I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of gear and mechanics. There are so many abilities and every button does something different, and then there's double tap teleportation and whatnot, I sometimes felt myself at a loss of how to use it all and when searching for secrets I sometimes found it hard to even remember the 100 things in my arsenal I might have to try. Also, I think there are too many weapons, it throws so many weapons at you clogging up the select wheel and most of them are pretty useless. Also, in some places it's very hard to tell the difference between foreground and background tiles.

I also thought the action wasn't that engaging, particularly during boss fights. Much of it was mostly button mashing and some boss fights were just brainless wars of attrition, especially the disappointing final boss.

Despite these shortcomings, a great game. If you're hungering for a new Metroid game, look no further.

Agree with all this. I liked the story too and those alien head things and their bodies looked creepy in a really good way. The only thing you missed was the excellent soundtrack.

There is no thumb down option

Dragon Quest XI-S <looong title>

Simply magnificent. I really liked the story and the twist at the end is perfect.
It took (quite) a bit of grinding to get to the proper ending, but it was totally worth it.
75 hours playtime (maybe a tad more).
Played it on the Switch.

9/10

Yakuza 0

I loved it, and am absolutely thrilled that there are a whole bunch more to play through. I don't think I'll play them back to back but I'll most definitely work my way through the series over the coming years. In fact I might hang around in 0 for a bit longer to mop up a few trophies.

10/10

Bioshock 1 (Nintendo Switch)

I knew nothing about this (somehow it passed me by) and had no idea as to the plot aside from it was supposed to be gory. I think I must be hardened to bleeding pixels as I didn't really pick up on that too much... or at least that's what I thought until I quit playing it briefly to play Dragons' Dogma, coming back to Bioshock afterwards I was shocked by how bleak and miserable it all felt. I'd been so sucked into the story that I'd not really noticed. I can now relate to my wife asking me if I was enjoying it with a slightly incredulous look now.

Anyway, it played really well on the Switch (its a well old game so should) and looked great aside from the "flames" which were low res and ruined the look a bit. Really enjoyed the plot line and didn't see it going the way it did. At times I did think "why the hell would I want to do XXX" but I went with it... as I had no choice. The game really sucked me in which was good and I've got the next two to do now. I think I'll have a break and play something cheery with lots of colours first. Maybe Spyro.

I enjoyed the weapons (aside from the chemical thrower which I thought was naff) and the plasmids were a nice change to "spells", I didn't use many of them though. Mostly I zapped and burnt people. But even more so I shotgunned and machine gunned everything and anything... though at first I was approaching people thinking they were maybe slightly sane sounding. I soon packed that in and anything that moved got blasted. I think I missed an area of the game "Something Heights", but god knows how.

Anyways, recommended if you like shooters with a good story and best gone into blind as it was quite creepy.

I'm amazed a game as big and talked about as Bioshock can pass you by.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - 9.5/10

Skipped this before mostly because the 2.5D put me off. I hate 2.5D. I also wasn't hyped about this "new SotN" thing--I love SotN but I'm not a fanboy, and I thought it unlikely that it could pull it off again. Boy was I wrong.

The music of the first stage started and within 5 seconds I was back as if playing SotN for the first time. Within a minute I had some 100 different items in my inventory, which made me smile. Yeah this is it alright.

I love how it improved on my niggles about SotN. In that game, all the items clogging up your inventory were pointless. Why all those different dishes that all do the same thing? But in Bloodstained, it actually matters because you get permanent stat bonuses for eating a dish for the first time. It's the first time I ever cared about food recipes in a game (looking at you, Bethesda). Also, it chose to ditch Castlevania's stiff jump physics in favour of Capcom-style* physics. I approve.

*

I must commend how it tackles common problems of Metroidvania games--namely that backtracking can be tedious and unrewarding. Often you may be tempted to just get past enemies without engaging them because there's no point in fighting them. You're just trying to find the next gate you unlocked, wandering around forever trying to find them feels like a waste of time. The way Bloodstained has an endless amount of upgrades and craftable items unlocked by loot made me cherish every enemy encounter on the way. No time was ever wasted.

Another thing is the soundtrack. One reason why backtracking worked so well in SotN was because the music was so enjoyable you didn't mind "wasting time". Same here, the soundtrack is fantastic.

Perfect? Hell no. Combat is a little messy and not very deep, and let's not talk about balancing. But I rate games based on how much joy I have playing them, not on how flawless they are.

I love this game.

I also noticed it was released in 2019. That's 5 of my all-time favourite games released in that year now. I saw people saying 2019 was shit for gaming, to me it may be the best year for gaming ever.

Mega Man 11 is another game that I love despite being 2.5D, it is an extremely good game. However, thankfully it uses it with restraint, it feels more like... 2.2D?

The other 4 games are Outer Wilds, Supraland, Dirt Rally 2, Borderlands 3.

Out of interest, did you use the slowdown feature in MM11? i didn't get too far in it because it was really tough and I was too proud to use that feature. I'm definitely going back to it at some point, love MM. Think the series gets worse as it goes on; MMX, Zero, ZX, etc. Just gets more and more complicated with really boring hub/talking sections which just slow everything down

Call of duty Modern warfare (2019) Single player

Its the first CoD SP game I've liked in a while, feels like when you first played the other MW game back on 360/ps3. While its not series x optimised, you have one X improvements and it looks really great. the cgi cutscenes look really good (some  uncanny valley) Shooting is of course really good.

9/10

The only bad thing was installing it, ages to install the forced warzone mode (which is now the base game) creating an account to play then more installs just to play the single player. While I was waiting for it install, I did this in photoshop of the cunt Bobby K that hoovers up all the money and the devs get very little money. Just wanted to share it

In my conversations on the MM Discord I learned that everyone has a different opinion and almost every MM game is considered favourite by some, so consider my take subjective. MM7 (SNES) is very good, but I'm not a fan of how it enlarges sprites and blocks so it feels zoomed in compared to the NES games. Personally I prefer the NES games. One thing worth noting is that the final boss is infamously hard. I like it because it is very satisfying to beat him, but be prepared for dying a lot trying to figure him out.

MM8 (PS1) is messy. it's among the easier games in the franchise, but it feels unfocussed to me. It tries to do a lot of new things, with stage puzzles and whatnot--all the while the core platform shooting isn't as spot on as in the better MM games imo. Personally I find them more tedious than interesting and it deviates from the pure action focus of the other games. It's a polarising game, many love it, many hate it. However, nobody can deny the entertainment from the hilariously bad voice acting in the cinematics.

MM9 is also polarising. Many don't appreciate how it's an NES game again, going as far as even ditching MM3's slide and MM4's charge buster. It's also considered one of the harder games in the series, I understand why many don't approve. To me, it's back to the roots and minimalist--it's a "less is more" game, and that's what I love. The relatively high difficulty means that I can play through it for the 100th time and still be entertained. Also I think the soundtrack is the best of all MM games.

MM10 is in principle very similar to MM9, but what I don't like about it is that most of its stage gimmicks slow you down. I like pushing forward and keeping up momentum, MM9 does that while MM10 feels like it's constantly trying to hold you back. However, on the MM Discord I learned that MM10 has more fans than MM9, so don't take my opinion as fact.

MM11 has a great lot going for it--widescreen, quick weapon select (by just flipping the right stick) etc. I think it has the best boss battles, this is my personal reference for good boss battles in games--especially Torch Man, clearly the hardest robot master in the game but he's so much fun if you git gud against him.


I only really played X1, it's a great game. Tried X2 and X3 and Zero 1 but quickly gave up on them because I just didn't like them. Whenever I played those I felt like I could just go back to classic MM and actually enjoy myself.


I haven't. Not sure if it's what I'm looking for and the price point seems steep, but I've added it to my Steam wishlist so I may try it when it's on sale.