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Post by Wizzard_Ook on Dec 4, 2021 15:55:40 GMT
The Art of Rally
Very good. A pure love letter/passion project to the world of Rallying. Just one of those joyous and enthusiastic games that got under my skin. Looks amazing as well (ps5). Career mode is a bit samey but I just enjoyed trying out the new cars I was unlocking. Looks arcadey but it as some proper weight and handling to its physics.. Easy to pick up and play but it’s not micro machines. A nice challenge and fun to drive.
Not often you come across a game where it’s title accurately reflects its contents. Got some free roam stuff to check out now. Hopefully we see some dlc with new countries soon! 4/5
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Post by suicida on Dec 5, 2021 18:03:56 GMT
Shin Megami Tensei V Switch, 130 hours, hard mode
I'll post my more complete thoughts in the dedicated thread once I have had a bit of time in NG+, but I absolutely loved this game. My favourite turn-based battle system has been hammered to near perfection, with endless build variety and some really good QoL changes. The difficulty was balanced just right for me, I struggled with a few early-to-midgame bosses, but never got frustrated, and by the end I had honed my team to such an extent that I absolutely stomped most encounters first time. There are a few optional superbosses that I'm saving for NG+ though.
Graphically it's great, playing on handheld mode I experienced none of the technical issues that others have reported. Special mention to the outstanding soundtrack, especially some of the boss themes.
Some of the new demons are top-tier additions to the series, Amanozako (hey hey hey!) and Idun especially, along with Aitvaras.
Easily the best game I've played all year, and one of my favourites ever.
9/10
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
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Post by スコットランド on Dec 5, 2021 22:39:46 GMT
Resident Evil 3 - Playstation 5
Really enjoyed this, looked great with the awesome HDR Not quite as good as RE2 but still loads of fun. Pretty short but that's fine by me amongst all the enormous games out there.
8/10
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Post by simple on Dec 7, 2021 0:47:53 GMT
Observation (PS4 Pro)
Bought and completed at launch and on my replay pile ever since. Did not disappoint. Excellent sci-fi mystery, thriller. The claustrophobic, chunky visual style is very Alien, but other influences like 2001, Gravity and Arrival feel relevant too.
Even though you mostly view the action via security cameras its atmosphere and storytelling are very cinematic. The gameplay taking the form of onboard duties keeps things grounded as everything spirals around you. And what a way to build tension and escalate the plot.
A couple of minor minuses could be that while the visuals are pretty much perfect throughout the one letdown is the lip-syncing which is a big shame. Sone people probably won’t like the puzzles either but I think they do exactly whats needed to service story.
Big recommend.
9/10
Edit: forgot to add that it is the best application of film grain I’ve seen in a game. Feels real and dynamic, not just a smear of uniform blur like most others do.
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Post by harrypalmer on Dec 7, 2021 9:57:57 GMT
Unpacking (Switch) 8/10
Completed it in two sittings, a really lovely game. Such a simple concept that manages to be both relaxing and emotional. Although I can safely say I've done enough virtual knicker drawer organising to last a lifetime.
I'd wait for a sale though, £20 for < 4 hrs is not great value.
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Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 3,255
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Post by Tomo on Dec 8, 2021 23:22:48 GMT
Valheim - 10/10
After 130 hours, my friends and I finally finished Valheim. An incredible experience. Absolutely one of my favourite games. Such a laugh with the right group. A perfect blend of progression, difficulty, creativity, exploration and satisfying combat. It's just got the works and basically anyone can play it from long-time gamers to noobs. Highly recommend.
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Post by GiacomoHall on Dec 9, 2021 8:13:44 GMT
Gears of War 4 (PC)
Not got much history with this series, but decided to give this a go on game pass. Decent shooting, although not having grenades on a seperate button feels archaic at this point. Ran well and looks pretty good, except the TAA is really aggressive, making everything look a bit too blurry for my taste. It's clearly designed as a co-op game and is pretty repetitive, but overall I enjoyed it as a singleplayer campaign. The AI teammates are okay, you can rely on them to revive yourself and others, plus they mostly stay in cover when needed. Took me just over 9 hours to finish it on Hardcore difficulty, which meant it didn't outstay it's welcome and there are a couple of vehicle sections to break up the cover shooting. Overall I'd say it was pretty good.
3/5
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Post by Samildanach on Dec 11, 2021 15:14:23 GMT
Once again I delve into my huge backlog, this time to play all the games I own with a release date of 1989!
Capcom Arcade Stadium:
Strider: A remarkably well made and varied platformer that is even more impressive and well designed than its Megadrive port that I enjoyed in the 90s. Unfortunately I don't like platformers anymore, even one of the best like this one. One and done for me.
Dynasty Wars: Golden Axe on horseback. Silly fun, albeit a bit repetitive after awhile. Still worth making it to the end as the final boss is so large he has to ride two horses at once.
Final Fight: A classic of course. For my money I prefer Streets of Rage, but the massive sprites are still impressive to this day.
Forgotten Worlds: Well this is from 1988 actually, but since you can now buy the games individually I went for it without having to buy the rest of Pack 1. Very impressive for its time but ball-crunching hard, especially with your large hit box. The game is totally transformed by mapping fire to a shoulder button then you can use one analogue stick for movement and the other for player rotation. The arcade cabinet had a dial to direct the line of fire and it is pleasing to replicate that versatility here.
As a side note, you can by these Capcom Arcade Stadium games for something like £1.69 each. Yep, Cave's awesome hori shooter Progear for less than the price of a really shite coffee. Anyway, onwards:
PC Engine Mini:
Blazing Lazers A launch game for the US release and what a corker. Its fast and adrenaline filled, basically like any other Compile shooter. It also has the typical flaw of Compile shooters in that the levels are too damn long. With 9 stages, a single run takes almost an hour, and I just couldn't be arsed to learn a route for the 1cc given the time investment it would need...well probably also because it rips me a new one from stage 3 onwards! Half the level length and it would be perfect, but the original owners of the game at the time wouldn't have had a hundred other games to play, so perhaps would have disagreed with that statement.
R-Type The age old classic and fantastic port of the earlier arcade original. Revisiting it after so many years was a baptism of fire as I had forgotten so much. I think I actually enjoy R-Type Final 2 more now, as it is more forgiving and just more fun to play, but there is no denying what a landmark game this was. The Dark Souls of shmups ha ha.
Arcade Archives PS4:
Saint Dragon This is an odd one. Stage 1 makes you think you are in for a treat; the art work, the music, the clever mechanics of using your tail as a shield, a great inventive boss... well it goes downhill from there. It has some good moments like the boss of stage 3 and the impressive stage 5, and the rest isn't BAD, it's just so average (apart from some of the later music which is atrocious). Also there are too many sudden death moments without warning. I guess one can gradually learn to prepare for them, but why bother when the devs/publisher didn't put in the effort/budget? The final boss has to be the shittest, most low budget final boss in all of shmupdom (just re-used assets from a part of boss 2 with godawful music).
Plus Alpha This feels a little like Twinbee without the bells (thank God). Fun and silly but absolutely not easy. Stage 1 - 2 lulls you into a false sense of security but it properly gets going from stage 3 onwards, indeed the second loop misses the first two stages entirely. By the last stage you are being brutalised by multiple mini bosses at a time, among with all the popcorn enemies too. Pretty decent little game all in all though.
X-Multiply Irem again and I really liked this one of theirs. The arms on your ship add interesting gameplay, the music is good, the levels are wonderfully revolting and inventive. It becomes a bit of a menorizer like all Irem shooters, but more forgiving than R-Type and Image Fight. Probably my favourite out of these 1989 games.
Truxton (Megadrive) A Toaplan classic that many regard highly and I can see why, especially in the context of games of the day. Fast gameplay, good music, GIGANTIC bosses, and tidy & bold sprites. It also has the vastly irritating sniper tanks of early Toaplan (and Raiden games later on), as well as sudden enemies from behind so I did get annoyed rather often when I die from something off scree; but once I got into the swing of things I could see the appeal. Learning how to reliably dodge the final bosses' seemingly undodgeable spreads of shots was an awesome moment (and made me look like a pro ha ha). It does have quite a lot of flying over empty space (stage 4 biggest culprit) so could have been a bit shorter and sweeter, but otherwise a decent game to play even today.
As before, there will be plenty of shmups from 1989 that are not here, Gradius II for one, but that one is being saved for its enhanced PC Engine version that was released a few years later. So on average a decent, if imperfect set. I had fun with them but didn't decide to put in the hard time to learn to 1cc any of them. I have too many more to try before one day arthritis riddles my hands and ruins any last miserable skills I have.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2021 15:15:32 GMT
Blazing Lasers! Fantastic game. Compile shooters were the best IMO.
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malek86
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Pomegranate Deseeder
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Post by malek86 on Dec 11, 2021 20:53:11 GMT
Halo Infinite (Series S)
I don't think this is the grand return to greatness for the series that people hoped from 343. The open world is repetitive and you never really feel like you are progressing, because things never change. Even the enemies are pretty much always the same. What's more, this extends to the story too: gone are the setpieces from the previous games. Now you are always in the same Forerunner structures or Halo biome, always getting the same power cells to activate some elevator.
The gunplay is great, and the difficulty is more finely tuned than usual, but overall the whole game is basically padding. The story is a shambles and feels like they realized that with Halo 5 they had written themselves into a corner, and so wiped the slate clean and took care of the in-betweens with some infodumps. On the plus side, I loved the enemy banter this time around, and the grapple is very nice to use.
Oh, the bosses are really bad. I guess someone at 343 noticed that everyone hated the Wardens in Halo 5 and thought "well, let's double down on the bosses then!".
7/10
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Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 3,255
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Post by Tomo on Dec 12, 2021 2:04:54 GMT
Unto The End - 6/10
2D side scroller about sword fights. It's really hard and frequently unfairly so. There is a great game in here somewhere. It's so atmospheric and the artwork is lovely and there are some nice ideas peppered throughout. But you learn most encounters by dying a lot to unpredictable attack patterns. It's infuriating at times. Thankfully the game is pretty short.
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Post by Wizzard_Ook on Dec 13, 2021 17:12:16 GMT
Kena Bridge of Spirits
Don't know if I'm just jaded but found this to be a bit bland. Looks great, but despite it taking bits of games I generally enjoy, I just found it a bit boring. It wears its influences a bit odd too there a bit of Zelda, uncharted, Pixar and Ghibli, which is fine, but it presents its self and mainly plays like family game, but then it has dark souls style boss battles that, whilst not being as hard they're annoyingly frustrating enough to ruin your flow. Its an odd dichotomy. In the end I just knocked it down to story mode and just enjoyed it that way. I think some people will really like it though, mechanically its fine being Zelda light with bits and bobs in the environment to engage with, whilst looking rather gorgeous. It just that I've seen it all before and it didn't really grab me at this moment in time. Maybe at a different time it will.
3/5
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 13, 2021 17:28:34 GMT
I'm done with my second playthrough of Arcanum (65 hours). I'm pretty sure that my first playthrough took only around 50 hours, but there were some complications this time around.
For one I had two companions with me, both of which could make some technological items, such as weapons or various consumables. So that meant looking for ingredients at traders. My own character was building firearms and also constantly running out of bullets, so that was another reason why I did visit traders quite a lot.
Also, my group was often too weak to deal with a lot of situations, which resulted in quite a bit of reloading as well. Having a lot of companions with me also meant that even if I could avoid getting murdered that wasn't necessarily the case for my companions. Just a high chance that some death would force me to reload. If not for "Worthless Mutt" ( a mere dog) and his terrifying jaws which are clearly made of steel, I probably would have had even more trouble. Having three party members must have slowed down levelling, so that might have been part of my problem.
On my first playthrough I didn't bother with Crafting at all and for most of the time I only had Virgil (the first person the PC meets) with me. My character was melee-focused with some spells for support. Uncomplicated; and there are a lot of magical items in the game, which technological characters (like my dwarf this time around) can't use properly. So I was able to use most loot I found whereas this time around I had to build or buy lots and lots of stuff. I don't remember having any trouble whatsoever with any encounters the last time. Well, at least not after the mid-game.
Aside from all that, it was quite noticeable that the world is simply too big and even some of the important places the player can visit, do feel a bit flimsy. It's not too bad with story-relevant locations, but some of the side areas, even when supposedly of quite some importance, are almost empty. There are also a few annoying grindy areas that I didn't remember at all.
In terms of role-playing: People did sometimes respond to my character being a dwarf, including some specific voiced responses from story-releveant characters. I think Intelligence did also occasionally give more options, but it's hard to tell. My lack of persuasion did prevent me from doing a few quests.
Overall, I still don't feel like I really have a clue what is going on when it comes to dialogue reactivity. I mean, some things like race and tech/magic are obvious enough, but it's often not clear what leads to some dialogue options or lack thereof. Well, I guess that means more playthroughs. I probably shouldn't wait too long before doing another one. It's hard to notice the more subtle differences that way.
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Post by bichii on Dec 14, 2021 13:17:17 GMT
Halo infinite
17 hours on heroic. Think it said I was 60 odd % complete.
Felt like every area looked the same no matter the level like a tiny team had made it so assets were kept to a minimum.
Nothing like other halo games in the way there was are no set pieces, no dramatics however the sandbox combat is ten out of ten stuff, incredible.
Think maybe 8.5
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Post by uiruki on Dec 14, 2021 22:02:45 GMT
55. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - GBA - 4/5
Really solid Igavania. Good map, solid bosses and just nice combat flow. Could have been a little easier to warp around but it didn't feel stretched out particularly. Made me want to play Bloodstained again!
56. Unpacking - PC - 4/5
Another great fit for Game Pass. Really nice little experience in environmental storytelling and judging people you never see. Ending song was a bit twee for my liking but there we go.
57. Surging Aura - Mega Drive - 2/5
A small amount of good artwork by Mutsumi Inomata and a battle system that's interesting on the surface is mangled by trying to fit a 1995 standard game into a 16 megabit cartridge. Battles should be interesting with two pure melee characters supporting a sole mage with up to 36 different spells but in practice it suffers from the worst of ATB's pacing problems where you fumble with an absolutely terrible interface as the game marches on or end up just waiting for fights to conclude far too slowly. It's hard to overstate how sloppy the interface is; everything in both menus and battle with almost no exceptions is cycling through a single visible option on a system with bizarre menu ordering. Even selecting the right spell is infuriating as even once you've worked out what the correct type of spell you want is (1 is an attack, 2 and 4 are buffs, 3's a heal, 5 is 'other' and 6 is counterspell), the numbers are selected backwards!
The memory on the cart is all spent with the pretty title screen and the few full-screen cut-in pictures in the beginning. There's maybe two more of those as you go through the rest of the game and in terms of background you are going from field to town to dungeon to castle over and over. It's short but it felt quite repetitive towards the end as the game ran out of things to show.
As a comparison, '93's Phantasy Star 4 'only' has half as much space again, but it uses that space much more intelligently with less elaborately animated skills in battle and many more but much smaller cut-in pictures. They then used the rest of the memory for an amazing battle system, many more characters, a great soundtrack, multiple planets and an actual plot. I should play through PS4 again.
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Post by docrob on Dec 14, 2021 23:43:47 GMT
Observation (PS4 Pro) Bought and completed at launch and on my replay pile ever since. Did not disappoint. Excellent sci-fi mystery, thriller. The claustrophobic, chunky visual style is very Alien, but other influences like 2001, Gravity and Arrival feel relevant too. Even though you mostly view the action via security cameras its atmosphere and storytelling are very cinematic. The gameplay taking the form of onboard duties keeps things grounded as everything spirals around you. And what a way to build tension and escalate the plot. A couple of minor minuses could be that while the visuals are pretty much perfect throughout the one letdown is the lip-syncing which is a big shame. Sone people probably won’t like the puzzles either but I think they do exactly whats needed to service story. Big recommend. 9/10 Edit: forgot to add that it is the best application of film grain I’ve seen in a game. Feels real and dynamic, not just a smear of uniform blur like most others do. I really enjoyed Observation too, though I’d probably have gone for 7 rather than 9. Some parts of the game are a lot stronger than others, and the end is… odd. But it’s good.
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
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Post by スコットランド on Dec 18, 2021 20:39:52 GMT
A Plague Tale: Innocence - PS5
I thought this was fantastic, gorgeous, atmospheric, interesting yet disturbing. Quite hard at times and a bit repetitive but a real breath of fresh air. More variety like this would be great.
9/10
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Post by bichii on Dec 19, 2021 11:02:50 GMT
Guardians of the galaxy
Really enjoyed this. It went on too long and the combat was very average and not that engaging. However the story, characters, the set pieces, the music was all great and they really nailed the vibe.
8/10
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Post by Abarth71 on Dec 19, 2021 15:17:35 GMT
Just completed Chorvs on PS5, really enjoyed it...20th Platinum of the year.
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Post by Abarth71 on Dec 20, 2021 13:06:51 GMT
Just got the last few trophies for Tales Of Arise - my GOTY. Plat 21 this year.
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Duffman5
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big cook, little cook welcome to our cafe
Posts: 1,332
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Post by Duffman5 on Dec 20, 2021 13:10:43 GMT
Halo Infinite campaign. Lots to like a little to frustrate, but overall a great return to form after the piss poor Halo 5 campaign. Did seem very short though, at least if concentrating on the story. 8/10
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Post by dfunked on Dec 20, 2021 13:20:19 GMT
The Gunk - 7/10
Pretty enjoyable stuff for a hungover Sunday... Doesn't outstay its welcome, and the light difficulty level supports that. Perfect game pass fodder really.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2021 11:26:31 GMT
Yakuza 5.
The 6th Yakuza game i have played this year since discovering the series. Unbelievably every single one had been 10/10 and this is no exception. Loved every character, loved the story. Loved the mini games. Loved the side quests. I even somehow loved the dancing.
It does lose .1 of a point for an impossible final sub story though. Even on easy I could not beat Amon.
9.9/10
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Post by Phattso on Dec 26, 2021 11:37:49 GMT
Halo Infinite, Campaign (Series X)
I'm a sucker for open world games, so I enjoyed those parts of the game more than their quality deserved. The main thread of campaign missions were... serviceable, but repetitive. Best in class gunplay is what ultimately saves the package, and arguably is why the multiplayer is going down so well.
If the rumours of two thirds of the game being cut are true, that's scary for all sorts of reasons. Mainly that I wouldn't want something three times the length at this sort of quality. But if the other two thirds were making genuinely good use of the open world, mixing up the biomes a bit, and maybe spicing the combat up with some other factions, I'd be up for that should they ever actually - you know - finish the fucking game.
7/10
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Post by baihu1983 on Dec 26, 2021 12:00:47 GMT
The Gunk - 7/10 Pretty enjoyable stuff for a hungover Sunday... Doesn't outstay its welcome, and the light difficulty level supports that. Perfect game pass fodder really. Lovely little game though I do feel stuff got cut to make it's 2021 release. Looks beautiful at times.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2021 1:23:13 GMT
Yakuza 6
I finished part 5 3 days ago (70 hours) and bought this digitally while the credits were rolling and jumped straight in. At 16 hours this was perfect. I didn't do that many side quests as I was so engrossed in the story I just had to push on. I finished in 2 days I was that caught up.
I laughed. I cried. I gasped. It is melodramatic tosh but it is so fucking brilliant, damn I will miss Kiryu, definitely my favourite game series of all time. All 7 done in 2021 and all 10/10.
This also didn't have any nasty difficulty spikes etc.
A solid 10/10
To rate the series... all 10/10 but in order.
0- possibly the best 6- a perfect send off Kiwami 2 Kiwami 1 5 - I disagree it was bloated. I liked the variety 3 4 - still good, but story was nonsensical.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2021 10:04:29 GMT
Guardians of the galaxy Really enjoyed this. It went on too long and the combat was very average and not that engaging. However the story, characters, the set pieces, the music was all great and they really nailed the vibe. 8/10 Pretty much this apart from I thought the length was spot on. My surprise of the year, I thought it would be some mediocre cash in.
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Post by dfunked on Dec 28, 2021 17:19:29 GMT
Another GotG completion here. Probably 8.5/10 for me and a last minute entry as my GotY.
The combat was the only real weak point, but it was still perfectly adequate and is clearly just there to provide an extra bit of filling in the story sandwich. (similar to Hellblade in that respect I guess) Great story and well delivered. Looked bloody nice in performance mode on SX (I never actually tried the other options) Probably more of a 9 now that I think about it, but a few of the later combat sections got a bit tedious... So yeah, 8.5.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2021 17:22:51 GMT
I'm pleased to see so many people were pleasantly surprised by Guardians. As was I! But I'm a big Marvelhead so I wondered if that had tainted my enjoyment somewhat. Avengers was just so terrible that it made everyone wary of SE's later Marvel output.
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Post by uiruki on Dec 28, 2021 21:23:56 GMT
58. Fate/Grand Order - iOS - 2/5 (Lostbelt 5.5)
Really burning out on this game with this plan to try and push me to the current content. Too much dialogue, too many gimmicks to try and get around the battle system they broke themselves, no skip for the long animations and no summaries when you skip the 5000th pointless story section. Granblue's been doing this for 8 years at this point. I was supposed to have LB6 done for the event that's currently ongoing but after a few hours of forced team compositions, lengthy dialogues and not understanding what's going on because I'm skipping most of it I've just sacked it off for now. Not sure if I'll go back.
59. Halo Infinite - PC/XSX - 4/5
They say that Halo is 30 seconds of action repeated - where this game succeeds is that it lets you pace those 30 seconds out at your own speed, with a grappling hook. The hook is fantastic and makes the other gadgets frankly obsolete, which means that it's even worse how fiddly they are to deploy and swap back.
I'll come back to this once they patch in coop and fix the framerate, I think. Falling through the ground on a botched checkpoint a few times on the last level was also frustrating but not quite enough to knock it down one.
60. Forza Horizon 5 - PC - 4/5
Just what I needed, more Horizon. The driving's great, the scenery's beautiful and they made it worth it (and much easier) to swap around cars for each event - what's not to like? The endless chatty voices still grate and I'd like to see more performance banding in the events, but I'll be back when the expansions start appearing.
61. Human Resource Machine - PC - 4/5 (main missions)
I'm not a programmer so this was a really interesting few hours of getting algorithms to work. They could do a better job of helping you out with some of the things they're after ingame but they do point you in the right direction for stuff to Google. Interesting stuff and it was fun to see it all play out - though the interface could be much better on PC.
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