Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on May 26, 2023 16:36:56 GMT
Dark Souls III.
A superb conclusion to the Dark Souls trilogy - I can't say much more than that.
Some may dismiss it as "fan service", but I loved the various references to DS1, especially the return of a particular archer-heavy area and the second phase of a certain boss encounter.
Also the hardest game in the series, for my money, in terms of both bosses (Nameless King, Soul of Cinder, Twin Princes) and locations (Irithyll Dungeon, Lothric Castle).
On par with the original game in my book, which is to say
9/10.
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Post by Aunt Alison on May 26, 2023 16:40:24 GMT
Saving the 10 for the good one in the series. I like it
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Ulythium
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Post by Ulythium on May 26, 2023 20:05:29 GMT
I'd put Dark Souls II on the same level as Demon's Souls - 8.5/10 - but I do like it a lot. Fume Knight was one of my favourite boss fights in the entire series.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on May 29, 2023 18:38:57 GMT
Homefront: The Revolution (20 hours): I'm going to cheat a little as I'm getting a reproduceable crash on entering an area near the end. The few things I have tried didn't help and I haven't found any specific advice on this particular crash or at least this type of crash. Perhaps I'll reinstall it tomorrow and see if that helps, but I wouldn't mind too much just moving on. The story doesn't interest me that much anyway.
In any case, while I had some issues with the game I did quite like it overall. It certainly looks surprisingly good and is quite atmospheric. Weather and physics are decent as well and the AI mostly made a good impression on me. Well, when they weren't trying to run through walls, which was the main bug for me.
The FPS-mechanics kind of remind me of the Metro games. It goes for realism and that leads to fairly clunky gunplay. Stealth works reliably when using silent weapons and pretty much everbody - with the exception of heavy infantry and vehicles - dies in a few body shots. It took me a while to adjust to being this fragile, but once I was acclimatized to it and I had some more weaponry, it worked quite well most of the time. It's a tactical open world shooter with stealth essentially.
The game mostly consists of Red Zones and Yellow Zones. Red Zones are just all-out warfare, whereas Yellow Zones are about stealthily sabotaging the rule of the occupation force to make things deteriorate until the zone can be taken over. I felt that the variety of gameplay approach helped keep things interesting.
The story was less successful in keeping my attention though. It's not that the writing is bad, in fact the dialogue seemed decently well written and the voice acting was good, but it's pretty cliched and the way things develop just wasn't suprising or interesting: The resistance is winning, the resistance is betrayed by the obvious candidate, the resistance is losing (people sad), the remaining plot-armored characters get their act together etc. etc.
The basic setup of North Koreans invading the USA is stupid and unnecessary. Even if the original idea of using the Chinese instead of the "Norks" had been implemented, it would still have been stupid. And unncessary as they could have simply used a repressive american government instead. It makes almost no difference, except that it would have been way more believable.
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Post by kilters on May 29, 2023 20:06:20 GMT
Factorio 10/10
Launched the rocket after a 55 hour play through. Impeccably designed, and incredibly addictive. Loved the threat of the Biters and enjoyed setting up an impregnable fortress whilst growing the factory. In the end my factory was a horrible ugly mess but it got the job done.
Highly recommended.
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Post by drhickman1983 on May 29, 2023 22:09:41 GMT
(Kind of ) finished Red Dead Redemption 2. (kind of) There is what I understand to be a fairly substantial epilogue where Marston takes over as the PC But this has been pretty damn good. Mechanically it's okay - The 3rd person cover shooter mechanics are good, though aiming whilst on horseback seems to be a bit shit as it's easy to veer the horse off course, and with the animation heavy movement positioning Arthur can be fiddly at times. But on the whole it plays well enough. Where the game shines is first of all the environment and sense of space. The vistas encountered are frequently spectacular and the atmosphere is just great.
And the story telling is pretty good. There are a few issues and inconsistencies - some dialogue suggests I shouldn't have been to this *new area* just yet, and occasionally side quests seem odd amidst the main quests. There's also a few oddities that seem to arise from the honour system and choices
But on the whole, the storytelling and writing is good. I can't think of many games quite so melancholic as RDR2. There's a moment where things seem to be going well, but in the final third things just collapse and break apart in a fairly realistic manner. Seeing the camp get quieter, as people leave, and those who remain become more sullen, and seeing the atmosphere change is quite affecting, and actually just *sad*.
Then the ending to Arthur Morgan's story itself is incredibly bittersweet, as it's known that RDR 1 sees Marston dragged back into this life (and in turn his son Jack also get's drawn into this lifestyle), so his desire to see Marston escape is futile. Just an inescapable cycle.
So it's very melancholic, but I found it genuinely emotional. Anyway, still need to do the epilogue stuff but it's a very solid 8/10 - only dragged down by some slightly fudgy controls.
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Post by grandpaulrira on May 29, 2023 23:35:24 GMT
Zelda Breath of the Wild. It weren't half bad, I'll be interested to see what that team do next.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on May 30, 2023 6:29:40 GMT
And the story telling is pretty good. There are a few issues and inconsistencies - some dialogue suggests I shouldn't have been to this *new area* just yet, and occasionally side quests seem odd amidst the main quests. There's also a few oddities that seem to arise from the honour system and choices
I vaguely remember that having come up in some recent RPGs I have played. Holes in the reactivity essentially. It's a bit disappointing, but I think even Disco had some of those.
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Post by Rubicon on May 31, 2023 9:02:15 GMT
16. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 & 17. Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (Both PC)
I was aware that the criticism of the series is the suppression/flanking mechanic and there always being a side route making it somewhat redundant but I am a fan of shooters with a bit more depth to them. The challenge then becomes getting your squad out intact.
Which isn't easy as the AI is decent but not perfect: they will get in each others way, run across enemy fire to get to cover, crouch out in the open thinking they're behind something or in front of cover when they should be behind it. Occasionally you get to command tanks which require extra micromanagement as they refuse to move over long distances, turn on the spot rather than reverse (like an actual tank) and miss a lot though I suspect this is for balance. Generally tank combat is weak overall.
There is no manual save so my biggest frustration was having to do sections all over again when the AI decided it wanted to get itself mowed down by machinegun fire or stand in the open and have it's health picked off. So patience is a must.
Saying all that I don't think there has been anything like it since and the elation you get in the moments where it all does click together is quite something. I would say the sequel does a better job plot wise of conveying the responsibility of being in charge of a group of people in a warzone which might be overlooked. If nothing else it's about as close to Band of Brothers you can get.
BiA: 6/10 EiB: 7/10
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Post by kilters on Jun 1, 2023 15:14:30 GMT
Outer Wilds 7/10
This is most likely used in game design courses as an example of incredible game design and cramming in as many ideas as possible. It's very impressive and deserves all its plaudits.
For me, whilst i enjoyed it and was hooked on some of the puzzles, it doesn't really nail any mechanics and still has an amount of jankiness. Some ideas are probably games in themselves and with the right production values could be incredible. I think this was the problem for me, so much imagination and cool ideas but executed in a far too twee narrative and art style. Imagine Dark Bramble in the Dead space engine! The loop kind of neuters any sense of peril and also is frustrating when progress is being made.
That said, I can appreciate my personal view won't be another's so I would still highly recommend a play through as some ideas and moments are top class.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2023 15:18:00 GMT
All your criticisms are what made the game so good for me. Easy 10/10
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Post by bichii2 on Jun 1, 2023 17:49:21 GMT
Lost me at 7/10. It's one of the best games I've ever played and I'm old and played loads. . Easy 10 for me. It's so good I've never played it again, I don't want to ever spoil that incredible feeling discovering everything first time.
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Frog
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Post by Frog on Jun 1, 2023 18:10:05 GMT
I didn't like it at all but I can see why other people do.
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Post by RadicalRex on Jun 1, 2023 20:41:09 GMT
One of my favourite games of all time, 10/10. "You destroyed spacetime!" ...whoops.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jun 3, 2023 11:27:50 GMT
Bad Dream: Coma It's a small point-and-click game with the player not being an entity in the game. The screens are mostly minimalistic stills with some animations thrown in and occasional bits of colour. There is fitting and relatively varied music throughout the levels and some well-chosen sound effects to support the horror aspects.
I wasn't that interested at first, but the atmosphere is relatively effective and it's possible to solve puzzles in different ways if you don't care about getting the good ending. Which will also lead to some changes and some different outcomes, character reactions and so on. I had to start over after I realized that, but knowing that the option was there, did actually motivate me.
A straight playthrough should last maybe 4-5 hours.
Edit: I forgot to say that the gameplay comes with the usual caveats, but there is no way to indicate interactable spots in the world and required actions don't always make sense. Some levels were worse than others in that respect.
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Post by azurelas on Jun 3, 2023 13:58:17 GMT
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence PS2 (PCSX2). I finished it several times since it's release but never "properly" because I always killed The End at the first opportunity : I could never do his boss fight until very recently. Sure, the game mechanics are clunky but you get used to them surprisingly quickly and I still feel it's the best story in the whole series. 10/10
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jun 5, 2023 16:04:45 GMT
Dishonored playthrough number three is done. Surprisingly - even though I went with the sneaky, non-lethal route - it only took about 15 hours.
I wasn't too thorough and left behind a lot of gold. Not that I needed it. I was only using the non-lethal options after all. I never really figured out how to use the Time Slow/Stopp effectively, but a combination of Blink and Possession together with liberally applied Sleep Darts was more than enough. Some missions were still a bit messy with way too many reloads, but Dunwall Tower and Kingsparrow Island went much more smoothly than expected.
I still quite like the story, especially towards the end. That goes for both High Chaos and Low Chaos.
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Post by Chopper on Jun 7, 2023 13:20:08 GMT
Not been feeling it with gaming this last month or two - mostly been dabbling in a few different sims - but I won the World Series in Out of the Park Baseball 24 which is usually my yardstick for completing the game (though I carry on playing year-round).
I feel the game has suffered since they introduced the collectible card game a few years ago, with a lot of focus on that, where the money is. Also, the team I play (Padres) have taken a bizarre approach to roster building in real life, so it's becoming appreciably more of a headache to unfuck that every year Might be my last one this year (though I'm still playing previous years' versions too so that doesn't mean a lot).
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2023 2:47:10 GMT
Completed Infinite Warfare. Really enjoyed that. Felt like a space captain. The addition of sidequests added a bit of variety without ruining the pacing of the main story. Every mission felt like it made sense in the context of the overall goal, and there were some cool objectives. Some were dogfights, some were manhunts, some where stealth infiltration missions. And thankfully, there weren’t too many of them, so they, and the game as a whole, never wore out their welcome. I think it was much more successful at adding meaningful side content than Gears 5 or Halo Infinite were.
👍🏽👍🏽
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Tuffty
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Post by Tuffty on Jun 10, 2023 12:33:08 GMT
Trek to Yomi - 6/10
I was sold on this game from the first 2 chapters alone. A hard 2D side scroller around a samurai from feudal Japan, the entire game colour coded black and white like a Kurosawa film. Then they started to add enemies that ruined the flow for me. Took way too many hits and are able to power through and attack you mid combo . And that's what I was dealing with for most of the game. The other strange aspect was that the game would give you these combos to use on enemies that took all these hits and prolonged each fight, but there was one square, square, triangle, r1 combo that guaranteed killed enemies every time. The idea is to use a finisher move when they're stunned, but it even got to a point where I could use back+triangle and r1 and it was instant killing enemies. One combat scenario that would take a min or so to get through enemies with moves the game wants you to use suddenly became 10 secs by spamming the same move, giving you little reason to do anything else.
The ranged weapons were all terrible, collectibles didn't amount to much, bosses were frustrating and checkpoints could be bad. No desire to play the 4 hrs or so again to see the other endings.
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malek86
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Pomegranate Deseeder
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Post by malek86 on Jun 11, 2023 15:32:43 GMT
Illusion of Gaia
The second of Quintet's loose trilogy. It plays a bit like a more refined Soul Blazer, losing the town building aspect (thankfully), refining the action combat a little bit, and adding a deeper story to the mix. Only, said story plays out too fast, important scenes are rushed out, and nobody other than Will truly matters to the story. It does deal with more mature themes than you'd expect from a Zelda lookalike though. I'll also say that the game tries to paint its world map as being realistically large, and sometimes it does succeed in that.
Switching between characters is cumbersome, but it does add some variety to the repetitive gameplay. Shame about the uneven difficulty and some obscure mechanics. I had to use a guide at times, because the game just kinda glosses over some important bits. The terrible translation doesn't help, I guess. And for some reason, pressing the d-pad can skip text boxes, which is very annoying if they appear at random while you are running.
It looks much better than Soul Blazer too, being on par with other SNES RPGs of the era, but you can tell the production values are actually quite low. The intro alone in FF6 blows everything in this game out of the water.
7/10
It was okay, but I sure hope Terranigma will be worth my time now.
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Frog
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Post by Frog on Jun 11, 2023 15:37:00 GMT
Jedi survivor.
Really enjoy the combat until you get to a boss.
The cutscenes are absolutely stellar.
Quite liked the exploration.
Worst map ever.
Performance was abysmal at launch but it's reasonable now (on my pc).
8/10
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jun 11, 2023 18:35:19 GMT
Cargo! Quest for Gravity: I finished it some days ago and I was so-so on it. The gods/machines talking at the player was mostly well-written and entertaining. I wasn't completely sure what they were going on about, but apparently humans are obsolete now and the Buddies are our replacement. Except that "The Great Makeover" didn't turn out to be a success and now gravity is no more and much of the world is floating in Orbit. The gods did sound a lot like disaster capitalists. They know everything better, but tend to mess up everything and then look to shift the blame.
I wasn't as much of a fan of the Buddies as them singing/talking at the player was borderline annoying. Still, they know how to have fun and when the player needs them to come over to make some of that fun they are fast and reliable to arrive.
Vehicle building also was easy enough. The needed parts can often be found in the environment and are otherwise quite affordable with the shop always being accesible. Physics can be a bit of a problem, but it's easy enough to add or remove some parts and a minimalist helicopter did behave quite differently than something bigger I had been using before. Boats, cars and submarines are available as well. Oh, and for the most part coming up with your own designs isn't required as the game freely hands out quite a few blueprints.
Finishing it took about 6-7 hours, but I didn't engage with Sandbox mode. Narration was enjoyable and the plot progression handled decently as well. Some of what was required for progressing was a bit fiddly though and at times I was close to just uninstalling it. It feels like a fairly innovative game where the developers didn't quite know what to do with those mechanics. The issue wasn't so much frustration, but rather that much of the actual gameplay just isn't that engaging (for me), so that when slight annoyances showed up I didn't have much tolerance for them.
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Post by Trowel 🏴 on Jun 11, 2023 18:48:06 GMT
Bastion - 7/10
I've been giving the Vita some new life recently, and this is one I never really gave a fair chance to at the time. In many ways it's a precursor to Hades, with some nice ideas but a little too easy.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2023 16:45:58 GMT
Been playing through a few CoD campaigns lately. Previously, the only one I played through was WWII. Completed Infinite Warfare last week, as I mentioned above. These past few days, I completed the Modern Warfare Reboot (MWRB) and the Modern Warfare Remaster (MWRM).
Quite liked the reboot. It’s maybe my least favorite of the three last gen CoDs I’ve played, but it told a good story, had great level design and just felt good to play.
The Remaster on the other hand… CoD4 was the game that formed my previous negative view on the franchise. I’ve mostly avoided it apart from some multiplayer with friends back in high school and college. I thought maybe my opinion would have changed or evolved over the years and having played a couple of the campaigns lately, maybe I’d be in the right space to enjoy it.
I was not.
I can respect that this game evolved the genre into what it is today, but the story still had that air of xenophobic patriotism I hate, and the game often locked you into tight spaces until you killed everyone. You have more room to maneuver and hide in recent titles.
Deciding which game to tackle next. I have MW2RM and Blops 3 through PS Plus. Also considering Vanguard and Cold War, since those are on sale on Xbox at the moment. Thinking about doing one of those so I can begin and end my journey with sci-fi CoD.
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
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Post by malek86 on Jun 14, 2023 16:53:18 GMT
Cargo! Quest for Gravity: I finished it some days ago and I was so-so on it. The gods/machines talking at the player was mostly well-written and entertaining. I wasn't completely sure what they were going on about, but apparently humans are obsolete now and the Buddies are our replacement. Except that "The Great Makeover" didn't turn out to be a success and now gravity is no more and much of the world is floating in Orbit. The gods did sound a lot like disaster capitalists. They know everything better, but tend to mess up everything and then look to shift the blame.
I wasn't as much of a fan of the Buddies as them singing/talking at the player was borderline annoying. Still, they know how to have fun and when the player needs them to come over to make some of that fun they are fast and reliable to arrive.
Vehicle building also was easy enough. The needed parts can often be found in the environment and are otherwise quite affordable with the shop always being accesible. Physics can be a bit of a problem, but it's easy enough to add or remove some parts and a minimalist helicopter did behave quite differently than something bigger I had been using before. Boats, cars and submarines are available as well. Oh, and for the most part coming up with your own designs isn't required as the game freely hands out quite a few blueprints.
Finishing it took about 6-7 hours, but I didn't engage with Sandbox mode. Narration was enjoyable and the plot progression handled decently as well. Some of what was required for progressing was a bit fiddly though and at times I was close to just uninstalling it. It feels like a fairly innovative game where the developers didn't quite know what to do with those mechanics. The issue wasn't so much frustration, but rather that much of the actual gameplay just isn't that engaging (for me), so that when slight annoyances showed up I didn't have much tolerance for them.
Never played this, but I know it's an Ice-Pick Lodge game, aka the Pathologic guys. Need to try it someday.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jun 14, 2023 17:22:55 GMT
It's certainly interesting. By Icepick's standards it's probably the weirdest, at least in the sense that even Knock-Knock is darker/harsher than this one.
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Post by Rubicon on Jun 16, 2023 8:38:29 GMT
18. Quake 4 (PC)
I remember this not being well received at the time (presumably being so similar/close to Doom 3) but I quite enjoyed it.
Unusually for an id Software game it has not aged well at all but thankfully someone has created a HD mod that improves the graphics and I think it looks great - it has that wow factor Doom 3 had back in the day. There are some minor instances where your flashlight doesn't react to the shadows but these are few and far between and I think what your getting overall is worth it.
One of the issues I have with the game is that it isn't until the midpoint when it decides you don't need to be in a squad anymore that it begins to feel like a proper 90s shooter and you can tear along corridors blasting everything with your grenade launcher (including yourself) is just great fun and maybe what it should have been from the beginning. I'm also not a fan of bodies and blood/particle effects disappearing after a few seconds (which I assume was performance related at the time) but is a bit jarring.
Anyway I loved my time going back to kick some Strogg ass.
8/10
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wunty
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Pastry Forward
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Post by wunty on Jun 16, 2023 8:55:22 GMT
I loved Quake 4. one of my bugbears is the fact they never did anything with it for newer consoles. An updated rerelease a la Doom 3 BFG edition would have been great.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2023 13:17:10 GMT
Hogwarts
Never seen the films outside a bit of the first one so not really the target market. The world building is great and the combat is solid, but the quests are just so bland, they really bring the game down. The side quests are slightly more interesting but it's such a dated approach to it all. Can imagine if you're a HP fan it will be a few points more like the first playdoh face Star Wars games was to fans of SW.
6/10
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