Kay
New Member
Posts: 766
|
Post by Kay on Oct 17, 2021 15:09:02 GMT
It's pretty short and sweet and probably could've done without the pointers on where to go next as they just pushed me to move on instead of exploring for more items. Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of this too - it defeats the point of Metroidvanias a bit when you're told where to go next. It's a lot better than Fusion in this respect (even though Fusion was still a great game in its own right), but I'd have liked an option to turn it off at least. Also the music is a bit disappointing too imo, not helped by the poor sound chip of the GBA.
|
|
|
Post by Phattso on Oct 17, 2021 15:30:44 GMT
Metroid Dread 9/10
It's Metroid, but more linear. The worst bosses were still better than most, and the best were a lot of fun. Mini-bosses can do one. Fully upgraded traversal was amazing, and the upgrade mop-up turns into a precision puzzle game. Excellent.
If you're a fan of the genre in any way, it's a must-play. 14hrs on the game clock, maybe twice that in real terms.
|
|
malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 2,854
|
Post by malek86 on Oct 18, 2021 17:56:12 GMT
Soldier of Fortune Platinum (PC)
Ok, so everybody knows this as that one violent game. Which is true, the fact that you can dismember enemies with slugs must have been pretty impressive for the time, and it's still kinda satisfying today. But the shocking part now feels more silly than anything. It hits basically all the common movie tropes: enemies do a weird little dance when you riddle them with bullets, blowing off a head with a single magnum bullet is just too ridiculous, and eveb the story is basically pulled straight from a parody book of American movies of the late 90's. The game even keeps count of how many enemies you have killed with groin shots. Feels very much intentional.
Game itself is a bit strange. The shooting feels more like Doom than Call of Duty (though perhaps I should say that it's closer to Shogo), but the very short levels and extreme linearity seem to me like kinda a bridge game between old school FPS and modern military shooter. It doesn't help that the overall difficulty is very low. On normal mode, bullets barely dent your armor, and you can tank several rockets to the face before biting it. Enemies have pretty bad aim too, which lets you rip through entire rooms full of mooks with abandon. The graphics are pretty bad too, Half-Life was older and yet looked a lot better, without being restricted to ridiculously small maps with Turok-style fog.
Anyway, any shooter that feels like Shogo and manages to stay fun is a win in my book, but it's not easy to overlook the flaws either.
7/10
|
|
|
Post by bichii on Oct 18, 2021 19:12:31 GMT
Gears tactics
Very good. Liked almost every thing about it except the boring af bosses as each one was just an over long chore to beat. The game also went on far too long which seems to be a regular thing these days.
Otherwise though it was a nice fast paced action strategy with some pretty good variety in mission types and maps to fight in.
Solid 8/10
|
|
|
Post by erekose on Oct 18, 2021 19:53:04 GMT
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze (Switch) Everything about it is first rate. Gameplay, visuals, sound, all outstanding. Every level feels unique and memorable. Even the collectables are well done - puzzle pieces and KONG letters - either being tricky to get or just well hidden and actually fun to find. The solution to getting one of the jigsaw pieces on Busted Bayou is so nifty. Speaking of The soundtrack is also excellent. Some tracks only appear once and must have been specifically made for those levels. The production values are amazing. There's so many little details to notice in the presentation, at no point did I feel like I'd seen everything and was always looking forward to seeing what they were going to do next. The minecart stages are still great and are a treat, along with the new rocket levels. Sometimes you get to have a go on a rhino too. They play around with perspective at times and it's just stunning to see I'm not really a completionist so I was planning to move onto something else after beating the final boss and then come back for the collectables but I'm going to carry on to find them and any secret stages I've missed - I want to see what they've done with them and the collectables are fun to find and actually add extra challenge and a good excuse to replay stages The game is pretty hard which might put some people off, but lives are so easy to come by, it's not a problem. Even though I died really quite a lot, I still finished with 75 lives. There are even some secret secret stages that are nails hard and have to be completed without any checkpoints. Only managed to complete one so far - makes me laugh just how mean they are. I think there is an easy mode which tones down the challenge considerably but I haven't tried it myself (weirdly it's selected by default). So still worth playing if difficulty is something that puts you off I'd liken Tropical Freeze to Super Mario World. It looks, sounds and plays amazingly and is the best game it can be. Retro did a bang up job with this. I'd say it's the best platformer on the Switch and maybe one of my favourite games, full stop. Really can't praise it enough (and I am trying) With tracks this good it’s almost a shame some of them only get used once!
|
|
|
Post by ryanclayton on Oct 18, 2021 19:56:04 GMT
Assassins creed Valhalla.
I bought this on release with a ps5, it’s taken a year to get through playing on and off, I’m glad to see the back of it in all honesty, far far too long, only a couple of the story arcs were interesting and I probably only remember 4 of them by this point. 6/10
|
|
|
Post by RadicalRex on Oct 18, 2021 21:17:05 GMT
the fact that you can dismember enemies with slugs must have been pretty impressive for the time, and it's still kinda satisfying today. But the shocking part now feels more silly than anything. Oh yeah it was impressive, but iirc it felt totally silly and over the top even back then. I think I "borrowed" it on a LAN party and I recall it made me laugh hard. It was stupid but novel.
|
|
Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 2,504
|
Post by Tomo on Oct 18, 2021 22:41:23 GMT
Resident Evil Village - 8/10
What a Frankenstein game this is. It feels both enormously dated and shiny triple-A. I really enjoyed playing through a decent 12-hour, big budget, single-player narrative game - that kind of experience feels increasingly rare. And yet it also feels like a 20-year old game in many ways, which is also part of the charm. The enemies still run at you and then walk once they get within 5 metres and you still collect green herbs, albeit in a fan service way now. The village itself is really cool, as are various supporting baddies. The last act is definitely weaker and the story goes proper Japanese dev weird. Reminded me of Bayonetta. I preferred 7, but this was a lot of fun.
What the fuck was with the mental CGI movie though. Totally bizarre and total waste of time.
|
|
|
Post by bichii on Oct 18, 2021 22:56:10 GMT
Back 4 blood
One of the best co op games I've played and I've played quote a lot the last couple of years.
So so good. It's basically left 4 dead but with lots of little improvements.
Looking forward to trying the next difficulty.
The whole of act 3 is so much fun with great level variety and once I had the duel primary card in play I had a sweet combo of auto shotgun with the m1a sniper.
9/10
|
|
|
Post by Jambowayoh on Oct 18, 2021 23:10:52 GMT
the fact that you can dismember enemies with slugs must have been pretty impressive for the time, and it's still kinda satisfying today. But the shocking part now feels more silly than anything. Oh yeah it was impressive, but iirc it felt totally silly and over the top even back then. I think I "borrowed" it on a LAN party and I recall it made me laugh hard. It was stupid but novel. I always viewed it as a VERY guilty pleasure, the sequel seemed to have forgotten the silliness and was overly serious and less fun IMO. I also find it sad that Raven are just a CoD support studio now and will never make a game themselves anymore.
|
|
|
Post by Chopper on Oct 19, 2021 9:51:14 GMT
Finished Arid (PC).
This was the free, student-made survival game, in the vein of The Long Dark, except you're stranded in the Atacama desert. Really incredibly well done - I would have been happy to pay a tenner* for it.
It turned into a bit of a slog right at the end - it took me 2.5 hours (in an eight-hour game)** just to gather the ingredients and craft the final doodad to effect my escape - but was really impressive overall. And if you like crafting....well.
* Which is like 60 GBP in PC gaming terms
** I also had a bit of trouble with the in-game storage chests and didn't trust them and was carrying around every single crafting ingredient, so for all those 2.5 hours I was overburdened and moving verrrryyyy sloowly.
|
|
|
Post by Wizzard_Ook on Oct 19, 2021 11:48:39 GMT
Haven't actually completed it, but done with Skyward Sword. My Joycons have developed Drift, and I don't really really want to shell out for a new pair right now. Might have a go at fixing them later. Near enough the end I think. - Got two of the three part of the final song, and halfway way getting the third. So probably a couple hours short. Will watch a lets play if I can't fix them. But put in 30 hours and feel I seen everything, so not to bothered by it. Might finish it off when I eventually pick up a new pair.
For the most part its a great game, that is strung out a little two long. If it settled up its affairs after the second round of temple visits I would have been really satisfied. Kinda sighed at the prospect of going back a third time, even if the stuff you do in them is fine. (except the tadpoles). For the first 15 hours you got a covential Zelda, then they decide to mess around with it a little bit.
The first 15 hours or so are fantastic though. Its really nice to go back to traditional Zelda, and whilst its a reminder that the series needed to evolve, you can't help be impressed at the dungeon design and how the game engages the player. It is perhaps a little to precise in its design, it feels quite streamlined and you sometimes have the impression that you are playing the game on fast forward. Its a very efficient game. Surprisingly at times it reminds me of a 3D Mario game, it has a certain amount of platforming design in here, not much but just enough to make you think of it. (Tadpoles probably being a decent example actually)
Appreciate that a lot of work as gone into fixing it, but it played a lot better than I expected. Motion controls are quite fun, sometimes a little wonky, but 95% of it becomes second nature and I like some of the little ideas they though off, dropping bombs with the flying beetle being a favourite and soaring through the skies on your bird is so relaxing. Some of the enemies are fun to take down too as you dismember them in certain ways. Story is typical Zelda affair, being quite hands off, but what I played of it, I found quietly affecting. Groose character arc is great, and I found the Link & Zelda stuff surprisingly emotional. Its typical of Nintendo really to extract the most out of what little they show.
But as said above, they pad out, oxymoron coming up, a streamlined game too much. its not paced well after the initial 15-20 hours. Sending you between the temples to pick up stuff is not that fun, and you sort of groan at having to do another task for someone. Enough so to dock a point really.
Still enjoyed this a lot for the most part.
4/5
|
|
|
Post by simple on Oct 19, 2021 18:04:32 GMT
Alan Wake Remastered
Pretty much looks and plays exactly as I remembered, so like a ten year old game with no concessions to any developments which have happened since. Strange to review because of that as everything I liked about the game is still great - the hokey storytelling, stupid characters, spooky uncanny vibe. And of course, everything that I didn’t is still a drag - the clunky combat, repetitive early missions, hold out sections with waves of enemy, the game opting for more enemies in place of changing up the gameplay in the late game and combat heavy dlc.
The good still outweighs the bad for me as I do enjoy Alan being Stephen King by way of Garth Marenghi and a prick to everyone, the atmosphere is great too.
I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t like it already really falling for it and its decade old controls but it was a fun but of recent nostalgia for me.
8/10
|
|
MolarAm🔵
Full Member
Bad at games
Posts: 6,051
|
Post by MolarAm🔵 on Oct 20, 2021 2:39:32 GMT
Deadly Premonition
Technically it's 'abandoned', in that I stopped playing it myself partway through (I think) chapter 3 or 4. But the things I liked about the game, I liked enough to watch the rest of it in a very long 100% Let's Play. So I'm going to say that I completed it, in that I've seen the whole game.
Anyway...
THE GOOD -I love the main character, Francis York Morgan. I think he's one of the greatest videogame protagonists to have ever made it to screen. He's just so weird and dorky, and I love the conversations he has with his imaginary (?) friend Zach -I love the characters in general. Yes they are totally ripped off from Twin Peaks, but everything from their voices, to their weird animations, to their daily schedules (which you can follow!), to their side quests, makes the town feel so lived-in. I'd love to see a TV series with these guys, even though the producers would be sued by the Twin Peaks people -The murder mystery plot is great. Nice and twisty, and there are definite clues to what's going on. Apparently you can figure out who the killer is pretty early on, just through exploration and following people around. I didn't do that myself (again, watched a Let's Play for most of it) but that is really neat
So I loved lots of things in the game! Buuuuuuuut
THE BAD
-It's really buggy. When I attempted to play it on the Switch, the game crashed multiple times, and the framerate was horrible. I don't normally care about frames, but this was noticeably bad even for me -Aside from that, the actual gameplay is rubbish, the driving is bad, just walking around is bad, the QTEs are bad, the in-game map is terrible, the combat is bad. They seem to realise that the combat sucks and give you weapons with unlimited ammo, but this does not make it any less bad -The bad combat and driving might be OK, if there wasn't so much of it to do between the good bits of the game. It takes FOREVER to get anywhere in your car, and the Zach conversations get old fast. And the combat dungeons are interminably long, with basically nothing interesting happening in them. You get one, maybe two varieties of enemy throughout the whole game, and I got absolutely sick of fighting them -Some issues with female and (especially) queer representation that I can't really talk about without spoilers
So would I recommend it? Maybe. I'm glad to have spent time with the characters and the story, but large stretches of the game were so dull that I don't know if it's worth it to play through it all.
|
|
|
Post by Chopper on Oct 20, 2021 8:32:20 GMT
The Shrouded Isle (PC). First game for Halloween!
This is the cult management game, kind of like an interactive Wicker Man. Though that oversells it really; it is essentially a menu system which drives a game of risk management where you try and keep bar charts for each 'commodity' out of the red.
The setup is that you're a priest of Chernobog, an ancient god who is due to make an appearance in 5 years time and end the world. You're working in a small village with 5 influential families, each of whom is in charge of a key area of faith - eg obedience, penitence, ignorance etc. You form a council every season and choose a rep from each family, each of whom has a positive and negative trait. So in order to keep the villagers' ignorance up, you can ask the rep who specialises in book burning to perform an action in that season. But oh no! That rep will also have a negative trait which lowers penitence, so you have to counterbalance that with another rep who raises penitence. If any of the five things falls below a certain threshold, it's an insta-fail. Also, you have to keep the 5 families happy (by boosting their tenets of faith), and if you spend two consecutive seasons (turns) with a family in Rebellious status, you also fail. Added to that, you have to sacrifice a member of one of the families every season (there are 20 seasons in all) to Chernobog, which hits you with a huge negative effect for that family. Phew!
So it's a lot of plate spinning to keep everyone happy and keep the little bar charts out of the red. You're looking at using some guy who gives +10 to Fervour but -30 to Ignorance, which will also tank your ratings with the Ignorance family, but boost you with the Fervour family in order to get them back out of Rebellious status before the next turn. It's maths! And it can get quite sweaty.
It took me two fails lasting 4 turns and 2 turns before I just beat the game by the skin of my teeth. The main problem is that the full 20 turns take about three hours; if I had failed in the last couple of turns before the end (a very real possibility), there is absolutely no way I would play through it again to try and win a game.
I was quite conflicted when playing it too, once I realised it was a plate-spinning simulator. But it got its claws into me eventually and I was happy to have played it.
|
|
|
Post by Dave_McCoy on Oct 20, 2021 12:24:26 GMT
Psychonauts 2 - 8/10 (Series X)
Is very much in the vain of it's predecessor mechanically and sometimes hard to judge the platforming but it has a good heart. One of the few games that is funny at times, I actually caught myself chuckling along. It looks beautiful mostly and some stunning level designs which had me stopping to take in the scenery.
Kind of just plowed through and now I have hit the ending credits I probably won't go back to mop up as other games, but did not regret my time with it.
|
|
|
Post by godwhacker on Oct 21, 2021 8:28:21 GMT
Metroid Dread [8/10]
Overall a lot of fun, but a bit more linear than some others, and some of the items just felt like different keys for locks rather than something that actually helped overall. Also the ending was a bit naff, and there doesn't seem to be any big reward for getting 100% of the items, which made me feel as if I'd wasted two hours going back to get slightly more missiles.
Still, the movement is great, meaning you can bounce around levels quickly, and the bosses are great- really tough challenges, but all very beatable after a few tries.
|
|
|
Post by godwhacker on Oct 21, 2021 8:37:29 GMT
Back 4 Blood [7/10]
Ace zombie blasting let down by wildly untuned difficulty. The easy difficulty is too easy, and everything else is far too hard. If you don't have three other people to play with who all have headsets and who also know exactly what they're supposed to be doing, you'll struggle to complete more than a mission or two. But there's some really great mission variety, the guns are all really bangy, and the characters for the most part aren't completely annoying, which is pretty rare.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2021 9:25:21 GMT
Ghost of Tsushima
So so close to being 10/10. Loved the story, the characters, the setting, it looked stunning. Quests were nicely varied and bite sized.
But fuck me the padding… I was close to the platinum towards the end and thought I would finish it up. And if I ever see another fox I will fucking drop kick the fucker over a cliff. There must have been 100 of the cunts. Take away some of the padding, drop it from the 70 odd hours it took me to 40 and it would be a perfect game.
9/10
|
|
|
Post by dangerousdave on Oct 21, 2021 9:43:14 GMT
Back 4 Blood [7/10]Ace zombie blasting let down by wildly untuned difficulty. The easy difficulty is too easy, and everything else is far too hard. If you don't have three other people to play with who all have headsets and who also know exactly what they're supposed to be doing, you'll struggle to complete more than a mission or two. But there's some really great mission variety, the guns are all really bangy, and the characters for the most part aren't completely annoying, which is pretty rare. To be fair, that's very similar to the originals and thats what made them so special. I was at Uni at the time of the originals and got to play local 4 player across multiple consoles. We'd play the hardest difficulty, get our asses kicked on the weekend, spend the best part of the following week talking about it and have another stab at it that weekend. Some of my favourite gaming memories. Playing solo on any other difficulty just wasn't the same. It wasn't even half as good an experience.
|
|
|
Post by pierrepressure on Oct 21, 2021 11:24:03 GMT
Ghost of Tsushima So so close to being 10/10. Loved the story, the characters, the setting, it looked stunning. Quests were nicely varied and bite sized. But fuck me the padding… I was close to the platinum towards the end and thought I would finish it up. And if I ever see another fox I will fucking drop kick the fucker over a cliff. There must have been 100 of the cunts. Take away some of the padding, drop it from the 70 odd hours it took me to 40 and it would be a perfect game. 9/10 I got the platinum but massively agree about padding, it's one of the reasons I'm put off by sandbox games, I usually just don't have time for busy work that's not even fun. Much rather they cut out that shit and give us smaller side missions with a better focus on story and gameplay.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2021 11:33:43 GMT
Another option is just to not do all of that optional collectable shit. It works great for me.
|
|
Tomo
Junior Member
Posts: 2,504
|
Post by Tomo on Oct 21, 2021 11:48:27 GMT
Superliminal - 7.5/10
Portal/Stanley Parable inspired puzzler. Good fun, intriguing plot. A couple of devilish puzzles, but most were pretty straightforward. Could've done with more actual puzzles as the mechanics are great, but they are disposed of quickly in favour of the next puzzle type.
|
|
Whizzo
Full Member
Wanting to return to square one
Posts: 8,056
Member is Online
|
Post by Whizzo on Oct 21, 2021 19:45:08 GMT
Finally finished Judgment, started playing it at launch on PS4 hit some wall and parked it. Decided to finally polish it off as the sequel approached. 50 hours played about 50% of the content actually done.
As much as I enjoyed the combat and a lot of the side stuff, the main story just seemed to drag as it went on. I'll be glad never to hear of AD9 and the ADDC again. Definitely think I'll leave picking up Lost Judgment until a lot later when it's nice and cheap.
I've got Yakuza 7 unplayed to make a start on at some point but I think it's time I finish Iki Island in Ghost of Tsushima first.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2021 10:35:23 GMT
AI: The Somnium Files
Never fully played one of these visual novels but this one is good. Its funny and the story keeps you guessing. Also different endings depending on choices, I like there is flowchart, so you start at past day and see the other storylines. Never heard of it until it was on gamepass
8.5/10
Last stop
another GP title, its like ps2 era telltale game but none of your choices effect your ending or even the story, until you are given a binary choice right at the end. Awful characters (meena is actually terrible person) The story thinks its deep and clever
4/10
|
|
|
Post by Resident Knievel on Oct 24, 2021 19:28:20 GMT
Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker 7/10
Is it worth £30? - No
Is it worth going to the trouble of buying and flogging it second hand for a few quid loss? - heck yeah
there's some control issues on the (few) action orientated levels, some bonus levels are a bit fiddly and there's not many levels that'll test you mentally if that's what you're hoping for but I still enjoyed it immensely and it gave me that just-one-more-level feeling along with that Nintendo quality that stopped me from putting it down.
|
|
|
Post by 😎 on Oct 25, 2021 1:05:51 GMT
Playing through the Dark Pictures anthology games given there's a new one out and it's halloween. Completed the first two so far. Man of Medan - 7/10 Pretty decent, had some good atmosphere even though it suffered from "working out the plot twist way before the protagonists" which tempered a lot of it. The ending was also really rushed. Not sure I can be bothered to replay it to get different outcomes as I'm pretty sure I ended up with the best one anyway everyone survived and they got away on the boat Little Hope - 2/10 I'll spoiler tag the whole thing just to be on the safe side This was really good up until the end. More atmospheric, more interesting plot, definitely played better with less engine glitches. I know these are played for the story and the consequences rather than the "game" elements but it also seemed way easier than Man of Medan, I don't think I even came close to failing a single QTE. But absolutely fuck that ending into the sun, how absolutely dare they put out a horror story in 2021 that wraps up with "AND IT WAS ALL IN HIS HEAD". It's cheap, it's lazy and it actually made me exclaim "oh for fucks sake" out loud when it was revealed. Fuck this game. I've heard House of Ashes is the best one so far. Only just started but the engine is clearly much improved, and actually giving you difficulty options should make it a little more tense.
|
|
deez
New Member
Posts: 528
|
Post by deez on Oct 25, 2021 6:32:11 GMT
Psychonauts 2 - 8/10 (Series X)Is very much in the vain of it's predecessor mechanically and sometimes hard to judge the platforming but it has a good heart. One of the few games that is funny at times, I actually caught myself chuckling along. It looks beautiful mostly and some stunning level designs which had me stopping to take in the scenery. Kind of just plowed through and now I have hit the ending credits I probably won't go back to mop up as other games, but did not regret my time with it. I finished this at the same time as you more or less. I can't say I found it all funny, and there really was too much talking. They obviously put loads of effort in to the script, but it actually made me long for silent platform characters. Platforming is a bit sketchy but I did enjoy it. 7/10.
|
|
|
Post by rewsan on Oct 25, 2021 10:32:51 GMT
I finally got around to finishing Marvel's Spider-Man on my PS4 yesterday and got my first platinum trophy. I've been playing it on and off for almost three years but for the last couple of weeks I've been systematically clearing out the map and then the final few story missions. I'm not one that often finishes games, I get distracted by the shiney new things, and I've never had the urge to platinum a game before but I really enjoyed this one. It helps that the swinging around the city never gets boring.
|
|
|
Post by simple on Oct 25, 2021 11:12:12 GMT
Spiderman and Miles Morales are two of the only games I think of where clearing up the map isn’t a chore. Swinging about collecting stuff is actually fun.
|
|