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Post by bichii on Jan 24, 2022 11:38:29 GMT
Carrion
Yet another brilliant game I've completed on game pass I probably wouldn't have touched.
So much evil fun to be had and made by about four people. Great audio and soundtrack and such a joy to play through with solid controls and nice simple ish puzzles along the way.
9/10.
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Post by suicida on Jan 24, 2022 13:43:50 GMT
Neo: The World Ends with You - 8/10 Overall pretty great, but it was really let down by a few annoyances with a mostly solid combat system. Targeting individual enemies and maneuvering behind certain ones to do damage just doesn't work well. The bosses are pretty much universally awful, and the last one was just absolutely tedious. Even with a fully maxed out attack stat on each character the enemy HP pools just get plain ridiculous towards the end and fights take way too long, so I ended up dropping it down to easy to avoid the risk of frustrating repeats of battles. Aside from that it was fantastic though. Fun story with some great little side stories going on. Nice mechanics, with new stuff getting drip fed even towards the end. Ridiculously catchy music that'll stick in your head for days. The graphics are serviceable I guess. Story boards are lovely, but combat/traversal looks OK at best. Just shy of 60 hours and there are a couple of bits still to do. No fucking way am I going for the plat, though... I'd probably need to at least double my playtime for that. I might as well just copy and paste this for my review of the first game on DS as my opinion of it is exactly the same. I'm very near the end and absolutely loving it, apart from the bosses. Love the soundtrack so much I ordered the CD from Japan via eBay. I've pretty much given up with the dual screen combat system though. I just can't do it. Luckily you can set the top screen to auto and just concentrate on fighting on the bottom screen. This might not work in harder difficulties but I'm only playing on Normal (Easy for the more annoying bosses) so I can get away with it. Hopefully finish it tonight so I can crack on with the sequel later in the week
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chug666
New Member
Eurogamer Nomad
Posts: 207
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Post by chug666 on Jan 24, 2022 21:04:45 GMT
Returnal done at last.
Holy crap that was tough. I have no idea how anyone would play through without scum saving- thank fuck for the suspend point workaround.
It's clearly really very good but I need something easy now, this very nearly broke me.
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Post by RadicalRex on Jan 24, 2022 22:02:04 GMT
Nobody Saves the World (Steam) - 7/10
Indie ARPG from the makers of Guacamelee, with the defining feature that you can not only switch between about 20 classes on the fly, but also combine the passive and active abilities of them freely, some base stats and the exclusive primary attack aside. This makes for some really interesting builds in virtually infinite combinations, which is great--and sometimes necessary, because some dungeons have their enemies immunity-shielded with wards that can only be broken with one of four damage types.
It's also pretty accessible, at least on the movement/combat side it's very intuitive.
On the downside, it felt a little too lightweight for its own good to me. Quite unlike, say, Binding of Isaac, your concern isn't managing a bunch of individual enemies, but rather finding a good build that quickly disposes of one enemy mob after another with mostly little concern what sort of enemies they are. Repeat ad infinitum, even most "boss battles" are just closed rooms with waves of mobs spawning one after another and it feels the same throughout the entire game.
The ward mechanic forces you to mix up your classes/abilities a little (and in some cases, having to choose classes capable of swimming) but it's not exactly deep, it feels just like that--brute forcing different builds since basic enemy design does very little to encourage that.
Another issue is dungeon design, which is mostly procedurally generated and that backfires. I mean, the point of procedural generation is to make each playthrough feel different, right? What's happening here is that everything feels the same, with dungeons varying in theme but hardly ever in layout or enemy encounters. That makes even a single playthrough feel extremely repetitive.
Overall there's fun to be had here, I really like the core mechanic, but sadly it's let down by many small issues. It has a sort of browser/mobile game feel to it, its lightweightness and repetition making it feel more like something designed to waste some time rather than be truly engaged. And for that, I also find it too long.
Playthrough time: 21 hours
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Post by dfunked on Jan 25, 2022 0:27:50 GMT
RadicalRex I've been playing that for the past few days thanks to game pass. I can definitely see what you mean. At the start when it's throwing new forms at you it feels like it could be a solid 9/10, but then the sameyness of the dungeon tilesets starts to grate and you stop experimenting with builds so much. It still managed to keep me gripped until I got a few different characters to S rank and unlocked the final form though. Probably helps that I was focussing on getting all characters to B rank before the map opens up, so was pretty much constantly experimenting with different builds. It's slipping towards a 7 or a generous 8 for me at the moment.
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Post by killerbee on Jan 25, 2022 10:22:07 GMT
Horizon Frozen Wilds DLC
Decided I needed to get this done before Forbidden West arrives, and I’m glad I did. My appetite is thoroughly whetted for the new game.
On the face of it, the DLC was more of the same as the main game, just in a (very nicely realised, it must be said) snowy environment. There were a few new abilities, including a “dismount strike” but none were really that game changing.
The main DLC story was good and introduced a new set of characters and some lore (which I think was improved if you know how the main game ends) and collectibles to mop up.
New gear and weapons were ok - I didn’t actually use them much as they never really outperformed the gear from the main game. Still, it’s something to collect and spend resources on.
The handful of new robots were good - Fireclaws (a sort of giant flaming bear with a vicious melee attack) were genuinely tough and the whole DLC was much harder than the main game. It made combat more tense and strategic again. In the main game it’s possible to level up enough and get a certain armour set that means the battles become quite routine, but even at the new level cap I never felt this was a walk in the park.
The new set of Hunters challenges were the toughest bit and I was quite pleased to get a gold rating on all of them without lowering the difficulty!
Overall, definitely worth the asking price if you’d like more Horizon, and fancy a 10-15 hour appetiser before Forbidden West.
8/10
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Post by uiruki on Jan 27, 2022 22:31:45 GMT
6. Nobody Saves the World - PC - 3/5
Decent little action RPG. When it's working well, it's constantly giving you new things to try, unlocking new forms and upgrading them. The story's presented in a fun way and the soundtrack's a good one.
There are a few issues; movement's a bit too slow for the distance between quick travel points, wards (enemies which are invulnerable until you use a specific type of attack) are a bit too plentiful in areas, raising stress levels, the difficulty level wavers a bit and I would have liked analogue directional movement (especially on the dash skill), but it's not far off being very good. Hopefully they do another game in this style.
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Post by dfunked on Jan 27, 2022 23:27:44 GMT
Like I said above probably a 7/10 for me for Nobody Saves the world. It really got its hooks into me early on (think I managed 8 hours of it on Sunday), but it starts to lift its grip as you get towards the midway point and beyond. Some of the earlier difficulty spikes seem laughable in hindsight when you unlock the later game forms and upgrade their skills. The monk, robot and zombie passives were pretty ludicrous together and I just stopped experimenting soon after trying those. A fun enough little game, but definitely not fun enough for me to come back to clean up the last few achievements after the end credits rolled (especially seeing as the last Knights guild quest consistently crashes the game for me)
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Post by RadicalRex on Jan 27, 2022 23:50:51 GMT
Yeah, Zombie's self-healing passive and the zombie horde active pretty much sorted the rest of the game for me. There were other useful abilities but those covered most of it.
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Post by dfunked on Jan 27, 2022 23:58:29 GMT
Yeah, that active was pretty nuts too. Quite funny seeing a boss health bar just disappear as your army of familiars go to town on it.
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Wizzard_Ook
Junior Member
Posts: 1,129
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Post by Wizzard_Ook on Jan 28, 2022 18:08:31 GMT
Killzone Shadowfall.
Not bad. Has some neat ideas, still looks pretty spectacular, and is pretty solid throughout. Does suffer a bit from FPS syndrome towards its end - a lot of enemies, and a sense of grinding your way through a couple of scenes, but I was pretty drawn in by it story and liked the tools at your disposal - zip line and and your drone. Script and acting is a bit a level though.
3/5
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
Posts: 3,934
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Post by スコットランド on Jan 29, 2022 20:31:10 GMT
Kena : Bridge of Spirits + Gorgeous visuals + Mega cute rod creatures + Enjoyable if unsophisticated story + Fun combat
- Camera issues, e.g. lock on screwing up in arenas and stopping you from getting health - Stupidly hard boss battles - Repetitive + Very derivative
A very enjoyable and really good but not great game, looks the part but doesn't play quite as well, combat can be quite tedious and some puzzles are boring as fuck.
7.5/10
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Post by deekyfun on Jan 30, 2022 1:01:37 GMT
I just finished Horizon Zero Dawn. Had a blast with this one, its like someone remembered the toyline Dino-riders and someone remembered the toyline Zoids and someone remembered the cartoon Bravestar and made a video game out of all of that.
So plusses for the robo-dino design, really cool to look at, interesting to fight and hunt, and made for pretty epic/tense battles. Also, my word the story got its prickly hooks into me. It was less the originality of it all (this is not my first robopocalpse-rodeo), but more the density of it all, how much detail there is in the telling of it. Its really good, interesting stuff, and wandering around those dusty yet futuristic areas with nowt but the the accumulation of knowledge to look forward to soon became my favourite moments of the game. The story very much was the driving force of my playthrough.
There are some downsides. Like a lot of open-world games, the icon hunt is heavy. Too heavy. And as fun as the combat can be, it also won't shut up when you want to get on with something else, and is not so interesting that it doesn't wear out its welcome before the conclusion. I dont think it's as bad as Odyssey was in the content:engagement stretching stakes, but boy, at say 30-35 hours and maybe some space between combat zones, this may have been faultless.
I'm going to numberwang this as a solid 8 out of the traditional 10, which is like say, Father of the Bride good.
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Post by Sarfrin on Jan 30, 2022 10:34:34 GMT
And as fun as the combat can be, it also won't shut up when you want to get on with something else That's why I ended up drifting away from it. I'd rather only the predators attack you on sight and the grazers leave you alone unless you hassle them.
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Post by deekyfun on Jan 30, 2022 11:06:47 GMT
And as fun as the combat can be, it also won't shut up when you want to get on with something else That's why I ended up drifting away from it. I'd rather only the predators attack you on sight and the grazers leave you alone unless you hassle them. Yeah, I agree, that would have been a better choice. Or in general the aggro level reduced as your own level increased against the dinosaurs levels. It just turns the journey to and from the cool interesting plot points into a slogfest. It's like knowing you have to make a trip into town to grab a delicious iceland brand prawn ring, but you know you're going to be stopped every 2 minutes by a group of unrelenting angry road-cones. It really puts you off.
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Post by Sarfrin on Jan 30, 2022 14:00:18 GMT
😂 Analogies don't get much better than that.
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Post by Abarth71 on Jan 30, 2022 14:37:53 GMT
Kena : Bridge of Spirits- Camera issues, e.g. lock on screwing up in arenas and stopping you from getting health - Stupidly hard boss battles You can turn off camera lock-on, made it much better for me. Did you get the plat? I'm two thirds of the way through Master difficulty and that's bloody hard.
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
Posts: 3,934
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Post by スコットランド on Jan 30, 2022 14:41:34 GMT
Kena : Bridge of Spirits- Camera issues, e.g. lock on screwing up in arenas and stopping you from getting health - Stupidly hard boss battles You can turn off camera lock-on, made it much better for me. Did you get the plat? I'm two thirds of the way through Master difficulty and that's bloody hard. Ah, didn’t realise that, ah well. No, I’m not into going for platinums or things like that, happy just to complete games I like.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jan 30, 2022 15:27:30 GMT
Swallow the sea, though I'm cheating a little bit since it took me only about 20 minutes. The player steers some kind of egg-thing that grows by absorbing other organisms and there are dangers to avoid. It's quite strange, but you can try it for free on steam.
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Post by Blackmarsh63 on Jan 30, 2022 15:38:07 GMT
You can turn off camera lock-on, made it much better for me. Did you get the plat? I'm two thirds of the way through Master difficulty and that's bloody hard. Ah, didn’t realise that, ah well. No, I’m not into going for platinums or things like that, happy just to complete games I like. Decent game but the last boss 🤬
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
Posts: 3,934
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Post by スコットランド on Jan 30, 2022 16:24:10 GMT
Ah, didn’t realise that, ah well. No, I’m not into going for platinums or things like that, happy just to complete games I like. Decent game but the last boss 🤬 Definitely glad I stopped to easy mode for that one
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Post by uiruki on Jan 30, 2022 16:28:44 GMT
7. Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster - PC - 1/5
A messy game with an imperfect port. The new sprites and music tracks are nice but that's about where it ends.
The game has three major issues which I cannot get past: the extremely weak dungeon design (featuring large numbers of rooms which just exist to waste your time and move you into an inevitable encounter due to the extremely high encounter rate), badly programmed menus where neither cursor memory setting feels right and a bug that's been introduced which means that enemies have a 100% chance to inflict status ailments which means that the only actual threat in the game is being surprised by a large group of enemies who 100% stun you and then just stunlock you to death.
I love dungeon crawler type RPGs but the design and interface issues completely ruin the game. Since they haven't even made the scrolling smooth I wouldn't expect this to be fixed, either.
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Post by maxpowers on Jan 30, 2022 18:40:43 GMT
Metroid Dread: 6.5/10
Quite disappointed in this as I’m a Metroid fan. But this I found a slog most of the time. Wanted to give up 2/3rds in. No sense of empowerment (enemies just scale with each new power you unlock). Useless upgrades with maybe one or two uses and that’s it (like running). And way too many too. Fiddly controls and very limited exploration. I just found it boring most of the time.
Hollow Knight was a far better Metroidvania.
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,170
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Post by malek86 on Jan 30, 2022 19:14:43 GMT
and a bug that's been introduced which means that enemies have a 100% chance to inflict status ailments which means that the only actual threat in the game is being surprised by a large group of enemies who 100% stun you and then just stunlock you to death. Squenix taking cues from SMT, I see. Who doesn't love being Mamudoon'ed to death by a random mob?
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Post by harrypalmer on Jan 30, 2022 20:08:01 GMT
Death's Door - 6/10
If I was rating purely based on enjoyment it'd be lower, but it's technically very good. The art style and animation are wonderful, as is the music. There are some nice ideas, but largely I found it intensely annoying to play. The combat is mostly easy and boring, which makes the encounters and boss fights boring, which in turn makes it infuriating when you die because you have to repeat the boring encounters. Exploration is dull, and the lack of a map makes it more annoying to find anything than it should be. Wouldnt recommend paying more than 10 quid for it.
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Post by theguy on Jan 30, 2022 20:59:42 GMT
Creaks
If you like puzzle platformers at all, play this. It's very good and clever and you can feel like a cleverclogs too as you go through it. My main criticism is simply that I wanted more of it.
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Post by uiruki on Jan 30, 2022 21:02:13 GMT
and a bug that's been introduced which means that enemies have a 100% chance to inflict status ailments which means that the only actual threat in the game is being surprised by a large group of enemies who 100% stun you and then just stunlock you to death. Squenix taking cues from SMT, I see. Who doesn't love being Mamudoon'ed to death by a random mob? At least in that there's something you can do about it in that - in FF2 there are very limited items which resist any status ailments and I don't think anything at all can resist instant death! Your only chance is to stack evasion and hope they don't hit you at all.
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Post by Danno on Jan 30, 2022 22:54:32 GMT
God of War - second playthrough (not NG+)
Still 9ish/10
I went in intending to smash through the story, mop up the side quests, farm Nifl/Muspelheim and then whack the Valkyries.
Just cant get into the last two parts enough to ease it into the 10/10 it deserves. I'm normally big into post game stuff but not with this one for some reason. And the Valks are too much of a departure from the main game. It's so disjointed.
Still brilliant and I am pretty excited about Ragnorok
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Post by rawshark on Jan 30, 2022 23:38:54 GMT
Erica (PS5)
Must have got this through PS Plus at some point. FMV adventure not too dissimilar in execution to the interactive Black Mirror episode.
It filled an evening but that’s about the most I can say about it. Was nicer particularly compelled by the story and didn’t particularly feel I was forging my own path - more like watching things unfold while swiping the pad every now and then to keep things moving.
Played through with my non-gamer girlfriend, who by the end said “hope you didn’t spend too much on that”. Pretty decent review right there.
5/10
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LTK
New Member
Posts: 276
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Post by LTK on Jan 31, 2022 0:15:04 GMT
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