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Post by pierrepressure on Dec 5, 2022 10:25:52 GMT
Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX - 3/10
Have some history with this game, I can remember going to Tandy and picking up the Master System with the original game built in.
Spent hours trying to beat it back then but my skills were never up to the task.
The new version does that thing where you can change from the new engine to the old on the fly and I did check back from time to time. New graphics are pretty but simplistic.
Found the game really difficult and I think most of the blame must go to the controls, Alex is one over sensitive little bastard.
I had to switch on unlimited lives as restarting levels was too frustrating. Oh and right at the end of the game there is a tiny section underwater where you have to swim between some spikes, I must have died at least 60 times,a collision detection option let me get through that but I was very close to rage quitting.
In conclusion, glad I've finally completed it after all these years of failure even if I did have to cheat in the process.
Glad I'll never have to play this or any of the sequels ever again.
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Post by drhickman1983 on Dec 5, 2022 10:34:28 GMT
I bought that Alex Kidd game too.
I actually rather like the updated graphics.
But yeah, the game is really not very good. That spike swimming section is horrific.
I did reach that point in the original Master System release, but can recall the only way I could get past it was by making sure I had an invincibility pot on my inventory.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 5, 2022 11:25:29 GMT
If it's the same in the remake as the original - you actually let go of the directional input (up or down) during the spike swimming sections Alex will swim directly on top (or underneath) the spikes and not take any damage.
I know this game and Shinobi World inside out. Must've completed them 20+ times each in my youth.
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Post by pierrepressure on Dec 5, 2022 12:13:33 GMT
Yeah I only noticed that during my successfull run that he kind of glides across the spikes.
I've no idea how I would have found that out all those years ago if I ever got that far. Think I got to the 3rd boss and always died.
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,443
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Post by wunty on Dec 7, 2022 9:17:03 GMT
The Callisto Protocol
Didn't put much of a step wrong for me personally. Few niggles stop it getting full marks but I genuinely loved it.
9/10
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Post by Chopper on Dec 7, 2022 10:35:01 GMT
Little Hope (from the Until Dawn, Man of Medan guys).
Supermassive Games have definitely lost a bit of their mojo from the Until Dawn days; this was a very uneven experience, with dodgy editing and continuity being the biggest issues. The scenes seemed to cut in a few seconds early or late, with the characters standing around for a beat, or reacting strangely. Sometimes I thought that the conversation I was having was slightly out of order or referenced an earlier scene I didn't see. So it was rather stilted and disjointed, at least for the first half or so.
Ultimately that didn't really matter as it was a good yarn with a neat central concept/mystery which I won't spoil here. I think horror games do need a good shake up - mannequins! creepy dolls! etc! - but was happy with this one overall. Five hours or so, saved everyone but didn't get the best ending, I believe.
I have Man of Medan somewhere (glances at cobwebbed PS4 three feet away) but I think that game has real issues so I probably won't be breaking it out.
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Post by harrypalmer on Dec 8, 2022 9:38:46 GMT
God of War: Thundercock - 8/10
It's good, but honestly a bit underwhelming.
It looks incredible, even though you can see the limitations of being a cross-gen game. The combat is great fun, although you can beat the game by pressing one attack button and blocking, so it's not as deep as it seems, and is very reaction based.
The main problem for me, is that although the story is decent, the pacing is off - it takes too long to get going, and even well it does you are constantly pulled away from the fun stuff in favour of slow walking and talking sections. There aren't enough big set-pieces, which is weird for a GoW game. It's not on the same level as Naughty Dog, but what is?
Ultimately it's an extremely competently made, fun game, but it's never as good as it's trying to be.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2022 15:06:07 GMT
Superliminal on series x gamepass
Golly this was good, and the reason I am really rating gamepass. One of the "play one of these 10 games to get 100 gamerpoints" things for this month. So I usually jump into them, get the points and delete. But every now and again you get a gem that makes it worth the hassle.
Short, brilliant puzzle game that has a perfect difficulty, lots of charm and doesn't outstay its welcome. Most puzzle games start off great, but then I always either get bored as they are repetitive, give up as they get too hard (Baba is you) or are just too padded and I lose track. (That island one with line puzzles etc.)
This was like portal, perfect length, always felt tricky but never needed a guide, a few times I even muttered out loud "fuck that was clever" at some new gimmick.
I wish it was longer, but if it had been I would probably have complained it overstayed its welcome. So better this way.
9/10
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Post by simple on Dec 8, 2022 18:45:55 GMT
Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX - 3/10 Have some history with this game, I can remember going to Tandy and picking up the Master System with the original game built in. Spent hours trying to beat it back then but my skills were never up to the task. The new version does that thing where you can change from the new engine to the old on the fly and I did check back from time to time. New graphics are pretty but simplistic. Found the game really difficult and I think most of the blame must go to the controls, Alex is one over sensitive little bastard. I had to switch on unlimited lives as restarting levels was too frustrating. Oh and right at the end of the game there is a tiny section underwater where you have to swim between some spikes, I must have died at least 60 times,a collision detection option let me get through that but I was very close to rage quitting. In conclusion, glad I've finally completed it after all these years of failure even if I did have to cheat in the process. Glad I'll never have to play this or any of the sequels ever again. I really liked this version of Alex Kidd. Although without the quality of life improvement of infinite lives its exactly the same game as it was on the Master System. I turned the new sound and graphics off pretty quickly. Same as the Wonder Boy 3 remake, because it handles just like it did on the MS the pretty graphics actually make it more difficult because the hit boxes are less clear than they were back when everyone was made up of hard edged squares and rectangles. Either way Miracle World is a) the only good Alex Kidd game and b) possessor of one of the greatest theme tunes in gaming history
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Post by simple on Dec 8, 2022 20:30:33 GMT
Cult of the Lamb
I had a lot of fun with this. The dungeon crawling was satisfying, light and fast-paced, the village management section was pretty soothing once the initial desperate several period ended, and I did get attached to some of my cultists. It was always pretty sad to comeback from the dungeons and find someone had died of old age in your absence.
Its nice that you can sort of tell your own stories despite the mechanics all being pretty basic - it’d be nice if the cultists could be slightly more self-sufficient - and the artwork is cure too.
8/10
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 9, 2022 21:00:42 GMT
Halo CE Anniversary
Pleasantly surprised by this. I was a PC Gamer when Halo came out so it was always just the lame console shooter than ruined the FPS genre. In reality it's really solid, if uneven, game. They could have trimmed down some of the missions (mainly the areas that just repeat over and over) and not really have lost anything. There are some great encounters though. A few frustrating moments but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - a bit of resistance is nice and it was definitely satisfying getting past those bits
Just started Halo 2 Anniversary and wow, what a step up. I enjoyed the story in the first game but the opening of Halo 2 has got me proper excited for the rest of the series (shame about the fucky framerate though)
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Post by Chopper on Dec 10, 2022 17:34:28 GMT
Vampire Survivors (PC)
Completed in the sense of killing the final boss. There are quite a few achievements still to get, and I might dip back in and get some of them from time to time. Assuming I can stop playing - I played so much over the last few days that I went to bed last night with a zillion sprites dancing in front of my eyes.
As someone else here said, each level could stand to be shortened from 30 to 20 minutes, I think. Still, it was super compelling, and I have to give the creator their due for a great job and hope they're enjoying their barrowloads of cash.
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Post by dfunked on Dec 10, 2022 18:34:49 GMT
Chopper - haha, I've gone to bed many a time after a late night VS session and had XP gems flooding my vision. Bloody weird.
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Post by bichii2 on Dec 11, 2022 9:02:39 GMT
I really need to give this vampire game a go. Had it installed since it came out. Looking like the spectrum could run it puts me off. I love retro looking games with nice art styles but this visually doesn't appeal. Everyone seems to love it though.
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Post by RadicalRex on Dec 11, 2022 16:48:06 GMT
It is a modern PC game. It's been some time since a game made my CPU sweat like that.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 11, 2022 17:13:34 GMT
Grim Dawn is done after 65 hours. As said, I played through the base-game some years ago and as I got the expansions recently it was time for a replay. GD itself took about 40 hours, Ashes of Malmouth was about 15 and Forgotten Gods 10. As per usual when it comes to games that are this long, it ends up dragging for me. Titan Quest with expansion was only about 50 even while being pretty thorough, listening to everyone's dialogue and so on. And even that was already a bit much considering how much replay potential these character building systems have.
Anyway, some points:
- Nature environments are beautiful and atmospheric. A few that come to mind are the Blood Grove, the Gloomwald and some of the swampy areas early on. Fog during the nights also sometimes contributes.
- The music is also quite good and usually fits the dark world quite well. It's not quite Matt Uelmen, but a lot of tracks still really help create an enjoyable atmosphere.
- Background story telling - mostly in the form of notes - is overall better world-building than what the story itself has to offer. It's a good way of keeping dialogue to the immediately relevant stuff instead of them ending up rambling on about the lore. It's a mix of smaller stories and learning about how the Grim Dawn came about.
- The Masteries (i.e. Classes) are supported by the lore. Some better than others of course. You can't do that much with a Soldier, Demolitionist or Nightblade which are basically just Archetypes. But the Order of Death's Vigil is the counter-part of the Necromancer and the Inquisitor refers back to the Luminari. The skills of the Occultist refer to the Witch Gods which have some pretty important storylines and while the Arcanist is just your usual mage, the source of their power is connected with one of the two major antagonist groups.
- The early parts of the game have the player solving all kinds of problems of the initial settlment and collecting various survivors, which - together with the notes - keeps things interesting and satisfying.
- Groups of survivors out in the wilds - at least in the base-game - are relatively frequent, which is another good way to break up the action a bit.
- Normal difficulty felt too easy overall. Easier than Titan Quest. And that's even though I did play a glass cannon. Ashes of Malmouth led to the most deaths, but there were also a few bosses in Forgotten Gods which were fairly dangerous. I felt there were too few fast enemies that can also take a beating. I'll definitely go with Veteran difficulty the next time.
- Endless flood of garbage... I mean loot. It's just that most of it is necessarily useless for the current character. I really don't like these randomized loot systems anymore. It's just a waste of time when it comes to these types of games. But you still need to deal with it to not miss the occasional significant upgrade. Just looking at the various systems and the rather extreme amount of loot just goes to show that the loot system itself is the problem. And instead of helping to make things more interesting the additional systems just add to the bloat.
- The factions offer bounties, which would offer more gameplay, but usually it's just more running around areas that the player has already visited and is essentially done with. You will than usually do the same things you have already been doing like collecting something or slaying some boss. They can be used to grind additional reputation with the factions to get access to better gear and some unique crafting recipes. I didn't really bother. But there are some unique quests which are locked behind reputation thresholds. So that's a bit annoying as some of those are relevant to the lore.
- It's grimdark. The background storytelling in that regard is often pretty good and the environments look the part, but I wish they had shown some more restraint. There are massive piles of corpses and skulls upon skulls in many environments to a point where it often becomes clear that's it's just an aesthetic approach. And the possible environmental story-telling gets kind of buried beneath that sometimes.
- The character building is obviously one of the main draws here. And after two playthroughs I have barely scratched the surface. There are many, many different Mastery combinations and they offer enough options that it wouldn't be difficulty to do a number of different builds with each of these. On top of that there are also the Constellations and there is more than enough complexity in just these two systems. Loot and Crafting aren't really necessary in that respect.
- Only GD and AoM have intros and there are no outros, not even Credits, which is a bit odd. There are also no Act transitions, but they aren't really needed in my opinion. It just sometimes feels a bit odd why yet another boss is considered more important than all the bosses before. They don't always stand out that well and while somebody like Krieg early on has a lot of introductory lore, there are others which don't have that kind of support.
I'm probably forgetting about something, but that's enough for now.
Edit: Another thing that the game handles well: There are various nooks and crannies that are well hidden and it's often satisfying to find these. Sometimes they are just destructible walls, but oftentimes it's elegantly integrated like being able to cross a stream (when you usually can't) or being able to walk beyond what the map indicates. Like a hidden dead-end or crossing an abyss on some collapsed structure.
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Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 3,261
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Post by Tomo on Dec 12, 2022 1:21:09 GMT
Signalis - 9/10
Lovely game. Oozes atmosphere and takes everything good about PSX era horror games and wraps it up in a more modern package. Combat was pretty good, puzzles were challenging at times and the story was very intriguing. Impressive for basically 2 developers.
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Dec 12, 2022 11:45:16 GMT
Banner Saga Part 1 - 7/10
It's pretty weird and obtuse and janky, and takes a good while for the plot to get going. But I still liked it, and apparently part 2 smooths out a lot of the rougher edges.
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,443
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Post by wunty on Dec 12, 2022 12:29:15 GMT
Signalis - 9/10 Lovely game. Oozes atmosphere and takes everything good about PSX era horror games and wraps it up in a more modern package. Combat was pretty good, puzzles were challenging at times and the story was very intriguing. Impressive for basically 2 developers. Brilliant, another one that loved it. Such a good game.
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 12, 2022 12:30:58 GMT
Surprised it's not getting more buzz considering the amount of PS1 RE/SH fans (and that it's free on Gamepass).
Really hoping for a NG+ update next year!
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JonFE
Junior Member
Uncomfortably numb...
Posts: 1,844
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Post by JonFE on Dec 12, 2022 13:13:55 GMT
Just played through Somerville, a sci-fi puzzle game, brainchild of Dino Patti, the co-founder of Playdead (the company behind both Limbo and Inside). You experience an alien invasion, through the eyes of a young father trying to reunite with his family.
It's no surprise that Somerville resembles Inside a bit, the main difference being that it is not strictly side-scrolling, as it allows the player to move in the 3rd dimension (in or out of the screen). The art direction is really lovely, the music fitting and beautiful, the puzzles not too taxing and the game can be completed in a couple of sittings as it's 4-5 hours long. It can also net you easy 1000 game score, if you are that way inclined, with none of the 11 achievements actually difficult (no "complete the game with less than 5 deaths" or something) or missable (generous chapter selection helps with that).
I'd give it a 7/10, perfect GamePass fodder.
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askew
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Post by askew on Dec 12, 2022 13:45:35 GMT
Finished Case of the Golden Idol last night after doing a case or two for the past few weeks. Fairly straightforward, though always interesting to discover what was going on. The difficulty spikes for the last few cases, and I could have done with perhaps an extra word or two to help fill in the blanks: got tempting to just splat words in to the spaces. Didn't use hints, though I don't think the achievements are bound to their use.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2022 16:14:35 GMT
Surprised it's not getting more buzz considering the amount of PS1 RE/SH fans (and that it's free on Gamepass). Really hoping for a NG+ update next year! I keep trying it but there is something about the graphics that really hurts my eyes. The text is really fuzzy and hard to read and everything seems blurry. I can happily play c64, speccy etc low dpi games so I am not sure what it is unique about this game that jars so much.
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Post by Chopper on Dec 12, 2022 16:37:23 GMT
Reverse Crawl (PC), a cutesy tactics game which didn't outstay its welcome at 4.5 hours. It's from Nerdook Productions, the guy behind Monster Slayers and The Magister.
It's hexy and has an occasional basic manoeuvre like flanking, but doesn't really push back very hard. Basically Baby's First Tactics. I had to repeat a couple of battles but mostly breezed through it without worrying too much about positioning etc. There doesn't seem to be a difficulty setting, though endless mode is unlocked at the end.
(without going into the plot, I am the party on the right above).
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Post by rhaegyr on Dec 12, 2022 16:40:32 GMT
Surprised it's not getting more buzz considering the amount of PS1 RE/SH fans (and that it's free on Gamepass). Really hoping for a NG+ update next year! I keep trying it but there is something about the graphics that really hurts my eyes. The text is really fuzzy and hard to read and everything seems blurry. I can happily play c64, speccy etc low dpi games so I am not sure what it is unique about this game that jars so much. Ah that's a damn shame - bar Elden Ring it's my game of the year. There's a filter you can change in the options that gives it a cleaner look - first thing I did and may help!
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Post by deekyfun on Dec 12, 2022 16:41:54 GMT
But how Hexy, exactly? Too Hexy for my shirt, or so Hexy it hurts?
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Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 3,261
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Post by Tomo on Dec 12, 2022 17:18:06 GMT
The music and sound design in Signalis are also gorgeous. I can hear the Do-Do Dooo-Dooo menu ambience in my sleep I think...
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askew
Full Member
Posts: 6,605
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Post by askew on Dec 12, 2022 22:11:00 GMT
I keep trying it but there is something about the graphics that really hurts my eyes. The text is really fuzzy and hard to read and everything seems blurry. I can happily play c64, speccy etc low dpi games so I am not sure what it is unique about this game that jars so much. Ah that's a damn shame - bar Elden Ring it's my game of the year. There's a filter you can change in the options that gives it a cleaner look - first thing I did and may help! Yeah, try this. I actually went the other way and boshed on the CRT filter
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JonFE
Junior Member
Uncomfortably numb...
Posts: 1,844
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Post by JonFE on Dec 13, 2022 8:52:20 GMT
I keep trying it but there is something about the graphics that really hurts my eyes. The text is really fuzzy and hard to read and everything seems blurry. I can happily play c64, speccy etc low dpi games so I am not sure what it is unique about this game that jars so much. Ah that's a damn shame - bar Elden Ring it's my game of the year. There's a filter you can change in the options that gives it a cleaner look - first thing I did and may help! Same here, I removed the grain filter as soon as I started Signalis and it improved visuals immediately.
Love it so far, I just hope my instinct to shoot first instead of running away won't bite me in the arse ammunition-wise; I usually suck at games with tight resource management...
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
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Post by wunty on Dec 13, 2022 9:30:02 GMT
Ha, I put on the CRT filter as well. And yes, the soundtrack is superb. Tomo Check it out on bandcamp if you've got the inclination. I bought it and play it all the time now, it's one of my favourite game soundtracks ever I reckon!
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