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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 29, 2023 1:02:25 GMT
I don't mean to be harsh or antagonistic, though, so apologies for that.
I'm glad you like Jackie - no, really! - and I don't want to urinate on your fireworks. (Or piss on your chips, or shit on your Toblerone, or... well, you get the picture, I'm sure.)
Anyway, sorry.
No, no, no - I meant antagonistic towards Jackie/the game. I don't mind if you didn't buy into him, I just don't agree and think it's a shame
You're a very nice person!
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Lizard
Junior Member
I love ploughmans
Posts: 4,379
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Post by Lizard on Dec 29, 2023 1:44:39 GMT
If I remember correctly the Corpo storyline suggests V and Jackie have known each other for a while. Obviously doesn't help the other storylines though.
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Post by Samildanach on Dec 29, 2023 16:23:39 GMT
Shmups again and we have some from '92 and a few earlier ones that have been in recent sales. Here we go:
Zing Zing Zip (Arcade) Sept '92 Allumer developed this Raiden clone after the blatant R-Type clone Rezon and once again it is a trashy yet oddly fun shmup. Perhaps a fair bit of that is due to the cheesy voice samples throughout, but the actual gameplay is not bad. It does reach stratospheric levels of difficulty by the final boss, but if you are hankering for a quick blast of an old school vertical arcade shooter then there are far worse choices than this game. 2.5/5
Axelay (Snes) Sept '92 Absolutely one of the SNES's premium shooters due to its fantastic presentation and music. It consists of alternating vertical and horizontal levels, with the vertical ones being slanted to give a sense of 3D. It looks fancy but gameplay suffers a little, especially due to an annoying drag effect on your ship's movement; so the more traditional horizontal levels are better to play. You can switch freely between three weapons and as the game progresses you can start to select new weapons to replace the old. Would be a 5 if I didn't find the vertical levels a bit of a chore, so a 4/5 it gets.
Biohazard Battle (MD) Oct '92 Another Megadrive shooter that gets a little lost in the crowd of the more flashy alternatives due to its rather muted colours and decent, but nothing-special gameplay. What it does succeed in is it's creepy feel as the giant worms and other horrific space bugs assault your ship from all sides. You can choose from a set of four ships which each have a different selection of powerups to collect. This does mean, due to the variety there will be some shot types you would much prefer while others are a bit lame, but each ship does have at least one decent attack. Enjoyable but not amazing. 3/5
Task Force Harrier (Arcade) Oct '89 Bit of a hum drum looking vertical shooter. I guess they were trying to go for a realistic looking military shooter and they succeed in that, but my preference is space age or fantastical. The gameplay is solid and well balanced so no real complaints there, the music is unfortunately forgettable, ultimately there is absolutely nothing that makes this game stand out of the crowd, despite it not having any glaring flaws. 2/5
XX Mission (Arcade) Sept '86 Now this is a bad shmup, very much my least enjoyed shooter in the Arcade Archives line. To be fair it predates most of the good ones, but the likes of Toaplan's Slap Fight, Konami's Salamander and Taito's underrated Halley's Comet all blow it out the water and they were all released prior. It is bare bones, repetitive, musically poor and irritating in its gameplay. A definite dud. 1/5
Hyperdyne Side Arms (Arcade) Dec '86 Arguably the best looking shooter of '86 showing Capcom were really ahead of curve in the graphics department. You play a little space guy who can shoot forwards or backwards depending on the button pressed. Different shot types can be collected then selected depending on the situation a la Thunder Force. The levels are all connected with one another but are all quite distinctive. On the downsides the music is utterly bland, there are too few boss types and the difficulty gets too high too quickly. Despite that it is very impressive for its age. 3/5
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 29, 2023 17:08:25 GMT
Pilgrims is done. Another (very) small game by Amanita (Machinarium, Chuchel etc.). It feels a lot like a point-and-click, but the interaction is done via cards and different characters do at times have different interactions with the environment. There are a lot of achievements I missed. The artstyle and "voicework" - if you can call it that, are as charming as always, but of course it does not look as impressive as Samorost 3 or something like that. So it doesn't compare that well, but I didn't have high expectations and so still liked it.
The Rage-replay is also finished after 17 hours. At first I really wasn't interested and almost broke it off, but I warmed up to it again and I especially enjoyed the second half. More options just make things more interesting. Even if the amount of ammo types and gadgets make things very clunky and slow. For some reason gadgets have to be equipped four at a time and have to be switched out via inventory and between those four, one can only switch with F1 through F4, whereas ammo types at least have a dedicated button for simply switching. There are still too many ammo types to do it quickly though.
I did also play through The Scorchers DLC for the first time, but I'd say it's just more of the same with very few additions. The Nailgun is the only thing that I'd call significant as two of the firemodes manage to stand out. Still, overall not a necessary addition. It just bloats the game a bit.
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Post by stixxuk on Dec 30, 2023 11:32:48 GMT
Sort of completed the Witcher 3 in that I've done the main story but still have both expansions to go.
Strong ending, happy to have more stuff to do even after 8 years of playing on and off!
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Duffman5
Junior Member
big cook, little cook welcome to our cafe
Posts: 1,332
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Post by Duffman5 on Dec 30, 2023 12:15:19 GMT
Re Witcher, dlc you say...same boat mate lol. and I completed the game upon release!
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Post by stixxuk on Dec 30, 2023 12:45:45 GMT
Haha I've had this conversation with quite a few people (minus the "completed on release" most have been playing on and off forever but never finished the damn thing)!
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apollo
Junior Member
Posts: 1,498
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Post by apollo on Dec 31, 2023 11:15:38 GMT
Miasma Chronicles
The game was released without any hype or marketing really but the game is really good. One of the best xcom type games I've played in years. Same studio as Mutant road zero and more evolution of the game, lot more choices in difficulty (I felt MRZ had some difficulty spikes near the end). What I like over xcom games is you can set up ambushes and if you use slient weapons you can pick off enemies, so you can whittle down a larger gang of them. Also its great when you take down large group using skills like overwatch and other skills like the Robot gets rugby tackle and jump jets if you spec on the skill tree. Much like MRZ, I liked finding what happened to the world and it takes shots at this tech companies and billionaires (makes fun out of Metaverse and lots of cybertrucks look a likes wrecked on the roads)
Thankfully less of the "xcom BS" of missing 3 90% shots, although the enemy does get some lucky shots near the end of the game
Downsides: the game has long loading times for series X game, some frame rates issues when loading in at times. Annoying thing is when you cancel ambush and instead of crouching, you stand up and then you have to press crouch button twice to crouch again and you can get spotted
9/10
I hope the studio is making another game like this. xcom games seem to be dead and the xcom team needs to evolve the xcom game series
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Post by kilters on Dec 31, 2023 11:50:56 GMT
Starfield 4/10
About 70ish hours on total. Ultimately it's hugely disappointing. Aside from a couple of decent faction missions, there is no depth or innovation. It's like playing a remaster as the mechanics are so dated.
I played on hard difficulty and still breezed through everything. The only hard parts were some spaceship battles. Indeed the whole space aspect was magnificently underdone. No epic battles, very little zero G spacesuit combat, no sense of scale, passengers babbling away saying the same nonsense to each other repeatedly and interrupting over other more important dialogue.
Fast travel was a blessing in the end in order to finish the main story quickly. The temple quests were so cookie cutter and boring it's amazing someone signed off on them. All of the above delivered in a frequently ugly, dated looking unoptimised mess. This won't be fixed by mods.
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Post by docrob on Dec 31, 2023 21:59:47 GMT
Cyberpunk 2077 (incl. Phantom Liberty). It almost seems hard to believe now, but when Cyberpunk 2077 launched three years ago, CD Projekt Red could do no wrong. They'd already released many people's game of the generation in the shape of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and common consensus held that they were about to do it all over again; moreover, with both Bethesda and BioWare having faltered significantly during the PS4/Xbox One era, the title of 'Best WRPG Developer' was theirs for the taking. As far as Cyberpunk itself was concerned, the hype was off the charts: an extended E3 2018 gameplay trailer looked nothing short of amazing, while the company's oft-repeated mantra, "Coming when it's ready", had instilled further trust in the Polish wunderkinds among the general gaming populace. Even the breathtaking international treasure nonpareil, Keanu Reeves, was on board; meanwhile, industry shills like Geoff Keighley and Yong Yea proved themselves willing to suckle on CDPR's veiny dingaling in exchange for continued access and/or free stuff, driving anticipation levels to dangerous new heights. In hindsight, the warning signs were there - the devs' refusal to let reviewers capture their own B-roll footage, for instance, and the near-total silence regarding the console versions of the game - but at the time, these seemed like trifling concerns. How wrong we were. A detailed rehashing of the ensuing shitshow seems pointless. After all, the whole debacle - the bugs! The glitches! The crashes! The epileptic seizures! The refunds! The removal from the PlayStation store! The lawsuits! The apologies! The other things! - is nothing short of legendary, like an egomaniacal Night City rockerboy with a couple of nukes and a score to settle. Three years, umpteen patches, and a paid DLC expansion later, here we are... ... So how does Cyberpunk 2077 fare in 2023? Strap yourselves in, my Font Geek chooms, as your old pal Uly is about to lay it on ya. For me, Act 1 was pretty weak from a storytelling perspective. Playing as the Nomad class, we meet Jackie Welles at the same time as V, our virtual avatar, and the duo's journey from uneasy allies to hardcore BFFs takes place entirely within a 60-second time-lapse montage; as a result, I never bought into their relationship, so when a big story beat took place, it fell well and truly flat. The game aimed to hit me in the feels, but punched itself in the dick instead. Fortunately, Act 2 and beyond were FAR better. Enter one Johnny Silverhand: a selfish, arrogant, spoiled brat with a Peter Pan complex; a man who believes himself to be the epicentre of the cosmos; and someone who loves the sound of his own voice more than Donald J. Trump. Silverhand embodies all these negative traits and more besides, but he also makes for one of the most compelling characters I've ever seen in a video game. Like V, I gradually warmed to him until I reached the point of actively missing his presence when he wasn't around, even though he remained a cocksure know-it-all throughout. Yes, he's an asshole, but he's MY asshole! (Wait - that came out wrong.) Casting Keanu Reeves was a stroke of genius on CDPR's part - not only is he one of the few celebrities about whom hardly anyone has a bad word to say, but the guy can act, too. Between them, Reeves and the writers manage to keep Johnny on the right side of the line between antihero and douchenozzle. On the acting front, Cherami Leigh deserves a shout-out for her stellar performance as female V. She's able to convey vulnerability and badassery in equal measure, often within a single scene, and she even manages to sell lines in the script that would come off as 'edgy' or 'tryhard' in the hands of a less-skilled thespian; for proof, look no further than her male counterpart, whose own work pales in comparison. From a technical standpoint, the game ran well on PS5. Yes, there were still some bugs and glitches here and there - one quest with Kerry was marred by the guitar he'd somehow superglued to his fingertips, while a mid-game conversation with an Aldecaldos member was difficult to take seriously as he was standing inside the engine block of a vehicle at the time - but that's to be expected from any open-world title, and Cyberpunk has come a long way from where it started in this regard. Gameplay-wise, this is a very impressive affair indeed (aside from the driving, which is from the Watch Dogs/Wildlands school of floaty and unresponsive vehicles - in other words, it sucks). Stealth is both fun and viable; gunplay feels great; melee combat seems to work well, even though I couldn't handle first-person fisticuffs; hacking is a lot of fun; and so on, and so forth. While I loved many things about The Witcher 3, its minute-to-minute gameplay wasn't among them. Cyberpunk 2077 is head and shoulders above its predecessor on this front, which bodes very well indeed for The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. I don't want to make this spiel any longer than it already is, so I shan't go into specifics regarding the Phantom Liberty expansion. Let's just say that it's absolutely excellent (and if you have any doubts, feel free to do the maths yourself: Keanu Reeves + Idris Elba = fuck yeah). Cutting to the chase at last, this is probably an 8.5 in real terms. It has its share of flaws - the folks at CD Projekt Red still can't design a functional UI to save their lives, while the skill tree remains a damn mess even after being overhauled from the ground up - so a score of 8.5, putting it midway between 'very good' and 'great', seems fair. Given the scale, spectacle, and panache on display, though, I can't bring myself to give it anything less than 9/10. I know it’s not the accepted wisdom, but I loved Cyberpunk right from the off. Really enjoyed my playthrough and only encountered one game-breaking bug, fixed by a reload. Planning to do a fresh playthrough now they have released the DLC and done all of the updates.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2023 22:09:39 GMT
I liked it at launch too. I encountered one game-breaking (or progress-stopping, morelike) bug too, but it wasn’t fixed till they patched it a few months later. Mine was during one of the sidequests where you’re trying to reunite Samurai. First time you meet [insert character name here], you’re supposed to talk to one of the Maelstrom people at the club door, but they never showed up. It was a widely spread bug so they did eventually patch it, but I had to just complete the game with that questline unfinished until then.
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Post by starchildhypocrethes on Dec 31, 2023 22:23:59 GMT
Yeah, I played it through from start to finish at launch with no real issues. Amazing game.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jan 2, 2024 14:52:37 GMT
Gris: Visually striking. Really a very stylish game with changing color scheme and architecture/flora/fauna, which makes for nice progression and keeps things interesting. The gameplay mechanics also kept being shaken up with each transition and there were some really nice ideas. A few creatures that are sometimes relevant for gameplay did show up occasionally as well. Didn't overstay it's welcome and I was mostly happy with the pacing, even though I really didn't like some of the platforming.
I just wish the music hadn't been so bland. I honestly did prefer the various sound cues, but a lot of the actual music is violins and piano and it seemed so uninspired that it would almost fit an elevator better. It felt like some kind of mainstream cliche.
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mrpon
Junior Member
Posts: 3,544
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Post by mrpon on Jan 2, 2024 16:26:12 GMT
Power Wash Simulator (PS4/PS+)
As mentioned, I feel dirty playing this, no pun intended. I dunno, it feels completely lazy as a concept, but I lapped it up like a potential OCD victim. There is no music and just the ASMR white noise of the hose striking the object and the occasional kerching when you clean an object. The environments are sparse and non-interactive, save for the odd bucket or gnome and I feel they've missed a trick here. DLC could be endless, they've already covered Spongebob and BttF. Trainspotting toilet anyone?!
Now just rinsing the trophies I missed, balls to the "clean this last" ones. I really should've paid more attention before I started!
7/10
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Post by dfunked on Jan 4, 2024 9:30:18 GMT
Super Mario RPG (Switch) - 7/10
Went through a phase of not really enjoying this, but it started to win me back towards the end. It's definitely not a hard game, but it has some absolute bullshit enemies who OHK if you're not properly prepared. Also has an extremely tedious section towards the end that you have to repeat if you fast travel away to sort out some better gear. Then you end up steamrolling through everything because you're over levelled due to repeating it. My main gripe with the game was the absolute bullshit timing of defensive actions. Feels like you have a millisecond to press the button and if you miss it you're fucked. I lost so many 20+ chains due to it. I probably should've just sucked it up and put it on easy, which has much more generous timings for actions I believe.
The graphics are lovely (with a few performance issues), story is amusing enough and the soundtrack is absolute perfection. If the ending/credits don't put a massive smile on your face, you're dead inside. Can't really be bothered going back to it for the endgame content.
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Duffman5
Junior Member
big cook, little cook welcome to our cafe
Posts: 1,332
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Post by Duffman5 on Jan 4, 2024 9:41:59 GMT
Power Wash Simulator (PS4/PS+) As mentioned, I feel dirty playing this, no pun intended. I dunno, it feels completely lazy as a concept, but I lapped it up like a potential OCD victim. There is no music and just the ASMR white noise of the hose striking the object and the occasional kerching when you clean an object. The environments are sparse and non-interactive, save for the odd bucket or gnome and I feel they've missed a trick here. DLC could be endless, they've already covered Spongebob and BttF. Trainspotting toilet anyone?! Now just rinsing the trophies I missed, balls to the "clean this last" ones. I really should've paid more attention before I started! 7/10 I think this is the game that made me wake up and smell the coffee (actually I am a tea drinker) I was playing for the daily cheveo to pop, got to maybe the 3rd thing you wash ? and realised what a total feckin waste of my time it was. I could have been playing something I actually enjoy and not for a cheveo/trophy. Fair play if you enjoy it but just not for me, see also Lawn mower game, the mayo jar one et al. I will play the occasional walking sim but that is about it. One game I think you might enjoy is Lake, very easy going but with a story and more gameplay.
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Post by pierrepressure on Jan 4, 2024 12:04:05 GMT
Super Mario Bros. Wonder - 9/10
Nothing much to add other than Nintendo have done it again, found it generally easier than the last few Mario games save 1 or 2 levels.
Loved the badge idea but unfortunately I never really used them, I would have preferred more levels that forced you to try different badges rather than leaving it up to me.
Despite this negative it's still one of the best 2d platformers to date.
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jan 4, 2024 16:08:14 GMT
Boltgun (13+ hours): Took a bit longer than it will for most people. On Grand Elevator during the third chapter I got hopelessly confused multiple times to a point where that level alone took me about an hour. And that's just the worst iteration of something that happened to me in multiple levels.
Overall it's certainly a rather fun FPS with an interesting roster and a good variety of enemies. There is no context for the latter though and various Chaos Marines, Cultists and Demons just get mixed and thrown at the player somewhat willy-nilly with lots of spawning during arena battles. I know a lot of people won't care about that, but I felt that the enemies and places I did visit, did mostly lack any narrative context.
The story is looking for some kind of fragment which is just the McGuffin that is always out of reach until the end, similar to how Fettel was handled in FEAR.
Balancing was fine though it did at times feel that damage per shot and second did matter more than the Strength rating of any give weapon.
Level aesthetics weren't as impressive as in some other games, but there was still a good variety and scale and there was one map with a gravity-defying network of teleporters.
In the end this is a good FPS when going in with the right expectations. It's somewhat simple and repetitive and perhaps it overstays its welcome somewhat, but for the most part it all works well enough and offers enough interesting variety that it mostly was fun until the end.
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Post by Hanimalle on Jan 6, 2024 17:54:34 GMT
Deliver Us Mars had me quite invested. Indeed, I've played nothing but this game during the whole afternoon which is a testament to how much I wanted to see the end of it. It definitely delivered when it came to the story though, like its predecessor, it can be quite depressing in its portrayal of humanity.
However, while its storytelling remained strong throughout the whole game, I did get tired of some of the puzzles, not due to their complexity but just because they were a bit repetitive. The same goes for the climbing mechanic which, while fun at the beginning, did give rise to frustrations later on. Last but not least in terms of flaws, it did not run nearly as smoothly as I wish it had with frequent and severe drops in framerate, though thankfully that happened mostly during loading.
Still, despite these problems, I enjoyed my time with Deliver Us Mars and I'm hoping that they will make another game in this franchise that will hopefully bring it all to a satisfying conclusion.
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apollo
Junior Member
Posts: 1,498
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Post by apollo on Jan 6, 2024 17:57:48 GMT
Close to the sun
On gamepass and I'm glad I waited till its on gamepass as its not even worth the sale price of £5. I like the art deco style (and few more things in common with bioshock than just art deco style of levels) But it tries to be outlast at points with loud noises as jump scares. The outlast chases are 1 wrong move and you die and very clunky. Thankfully the devs left in console commands to skip the really bad sections like chapter 7 onwards
3/10
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Post by Trowel 🏴 on Jan 6, 2024 18:46:44 GMT
Cocoon - 6/10
It's very pretty and has some novel ideas, but falls down with some of the 'boss fights', and toward the end of the game there's an awful lot of confusing backtracking. I did like how the puzzles are very self-contained, so although in places it seems ridiculously complicated on the surface, it's usually laid out pretty clearly so you're never stuck for long. Easy platinum too.
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Post by Trowel 🏴 on Jan 6, 2024 18:50:41 GMT
Reminds me...
Talos Principle 2 - 8/10
I absolutely loved this in places - there are some great new toys to play with, and some of the environments are absolutely spectacular. But the puzzles are across the board much easier than the original (a straight 10/10 in my eyes), and the introspective philosophical bollocks is absolutely unavoidable - I spent ages trying to skip conversations that I absolutely did not give a flying toss about. At least in the original there were ways to skip all of that and just treat it as a pure brain-busting puzzler. A missed opportunity.
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,170
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Post by malek86 on Jan 6, 2024 19:28:31 GMT
American Arcadia
The Truman Show: The Game. Or well, not really. The premise is similar, but only on the surface level. It starts out a bit slow and apparently predictable, but throws many surprises along the way and has quite a few things to say.
There are platforming sections and first person adventure sections. If you expect something similar to Call of the Sea, don't. The first person sections do have some puzzles, but they are simpler, certainly nowhere challenging enough to scratch that Myst itch like their previous game did. The platforming parts, while serviceable, are also let down by a relatively low difficulty level and some fairly obvious padding for length (and the game is only 7-8 hours long in spite of it). Now, it's not like you won't die, there are even a couple sections that skirt on the trial and error, but you never really feel tested.
Maybe that's fine though, since the characters, dialogue and presentation are clearly the best part of the game, and it would kinda suck if you got stuck for too long on one section, decided to give up, and couldn't get to the end. It's one of those games you play for the story.
Feels like a strong seven, but I'll say that I love the visual style, and the last couple chapters are impressive... and since the price is also lower than I'd expected, I'll be generous.
8/10
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,170
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Post by malek86 on Jan 7, 2024 8:14:17 GMT
And since both were close to completion...
Warhammer 40K: Boltgun
Boomer shooters are a dime a dozen these days, but one focused on the Warhammer franchise, from a developer who mostly made strategy games before, is still a strange thing to see. I enjoyed it throughout, however.
It is pretty formulaic. The game rarely attempts anything different from the usual "find the colored keys and move forward" recipe from the 90s. What's more, while the environments are nice, the maps can and will definitely feel dispersive at times. They are not bad, just... repetitive. The shooting is where the game shines though. Almost all the guns feel good to use, and in a shooter, that's everything. The enemies also fall juuuust on the right side of the difficult/annoying balance, except for a couple (usually bosses, which only appear in arenas). The amount of gore helps keep things interesting too. Blowing soldiers to bits with the shotgun feels great, and chainsawing an Aspiring Champion in half while he attempts to ascend is very satisfying indeed.
There is a gimmick: gun strength and enemy toughness. If you use a gun that is stronger than the enemy's toughness, you will deal more damage, while if the enemy is tougher than your current gun's strength, you will deal less damage. It actually seems somewhat unnecessary (it's not like you have anything else to compare the results), and has the side effect of making the shotgun seem woefully useless for anything but the weaker mobs, since its toughness ratio is very low. I'll say however, that aside from the shotgun, this gimmick barely comes into play on medium level (the game says the effect is more pronounced on higher difficulties but I haven't tried yet). It's possible to occasionally find items that raise your current equipped gun's strength, but they are rare and only last for one level anyway.
With 24 fairly long levels, it will take a while to complete, a good 11 hours for me. I enjoyed most of it though, so I might even attempt a Hard run and see how long I last.
8/10
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Tuffty
Junior Member
Posts: 3,427
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Post by Tuffty on Jan 7, 2024 20:13:16 GMT
Assassins Creed Mirage - 7/10 What was once planned DLC for AC Valhalla has made it's way to become a game in it's own right. Taking place in 9th century Baghdad, it centers around Basim, the brooding assassin from Valhalla and his origin story. Basim must root out 5 key members of the order by travelling to their district, help out some locals in need of help and then ultimately lead to an assassination via various means. If that sounds pretty basic, it's because it is. The DLC nature of this game ultimately leads to a story that can be sped through very quickly if you're solely focusing on it. My completion time was at 35 hrs and that's with collecting every collectible as well. Perhaps in part of this, the game doesn't really give a lot of time to flesh out Basim in any way beyond what we saw in Valhalla, something I was hoping for given the ending of that game and considering he seems to be the main character of the modern day sections to come . It also doesn't give much time for the surrounding characters as well, even the main assassination targets have only the faintest or even zero glimpse into their personality before you have the chance to take them out. It's all generally competently acted, Basim and Roshan are standouts, while others are pretty much forgettable. It's an issue with AC games lately, Origins remains the last AC game I felt like I had an interest in what was happening with the protaganist and cast, the last one being Black Flag before that. I've mentioned it earlier but the first few hours of an AC game always feels a bit magical to me. A new setting, the visuals, the music. As much as it easy to harp on hor formulaic these games are, there simply is no other AAA game that goes to the effort of putting you into a recreation of 9th century Baghdad for example. One of my favourite experiences was playing Syndicate and simply walking on the streets from the top of the map to the bottom. As you went through the streets from the poorest district down to the richest, you got to see the attention to detail of the world. Unique NPC interactions events and dialogue helped bring it to life and it all looked meticulously crafted. There are moments in Mirage that are quite nice to look at and immersive, the buildings are well designed, you can sense the heat of the sun in the wilderness, even wondering around at night with the sound of the morning prayers echoing along the city streets. It's not quite as meticiulous as Syndicate or Unity I'd say, but it certainly feels more alive than Valhalla does and I may even prefer the setting overall due to it's high buildings which allows for more use of parkour. In a further change from Valhalla, the game does seem more stealth focused and incentivises it. In the last few games, your ability to assassinate targets was handled via a damage stat meaning sometimes it wouldn't be possible, unless you turned it on in the game settings. Now every target bar one, the most difficult, can be assassinated and the game provides a number of familiar tools like knives, mines, blowdarts, smokebombs and noisemakers to help manipulate the enemies. Some of my favourite moments actually comes from playing into the role of only assassinating unless absolutely necessary, which forces you to approach it in some interesting ways. Scoping out an enemy base and monitoring patrols so I can slip in and steal the contents of a chest undetected and without killing anyone was pretty enjoyable to me and I'd encourage anyone to attempt it at least once. I played on Master Assassin mode and found it just the right amount of challenging. The focus seems to be on stealth approaches because the alternative really is no better. I've always had an issue with the combat in recent games. With Origins it was at least novel as it was a shake up for the franchise away from the Arkham type of combat. At this point, I honestly think I'd prefer the older style of combat. There's some flash with how well it flows and your rewards being some pretty slick kill animations at the end. Now it feels so weak, hitting enemies doesn't feel impactful at all, even something as swinging and having an enemy block your attack which causes you to quite literally bounce off it, feels really bad. Mirage also does away with the skills that Odyssey and Valhalla does so you have this very basic combat sytem by the end. At least sparta kicking enemies was fun to do. The devs said their approach was to make combat quick but also played at risk, Basim is meant to be a glass cannon. But combat still felt drawn out longer than needed to be in one on one situations, nevermind if a group gets involved where it becomes a mess. I just opted to throw a smokebomb and escape rather than deal with the combat if I could. Thankfully the game doesn't force it too much upon you. It's been a problem for a while but it can be better. Believe it or not, Fenyx Rising has the same style of combat only much more rewarding to play. But I think it's down to the fact that it can allow to be fantastical where you can air juggle enemies etc whereas AC is grounded in reality which limits what you can do. I really hope it's something they revise going forward, they have to feel better and they're gonna be a real problem when it comes to AC Red, the Japanese setting, when you have a direct comparison in Ghost of Tsushima to compare to which is excellent.
Parkour feels about the same as Valhalla. It's a weird blend sometimes of everything going silky smooth until you reach this post sticking out of a rooftop in which you're forced down immediately to a slow crouch. It can feel very stop start sometimes, still with the occassional shaking of the head as Basim seems to have trouble clambering up onto a knee high platform sometimes. Anyone that's played the past few games knows this, Unity and Syndicate still seem to be some of the best for parkour. Mirage is the best of recent games purely because the setting allows for cityscapes of high buildings that feels familiar to previous AC games. I believe AC1 is mentioned quite frequently by devs to the degree that there's a an AC1 esque blue filter you can apply over the gameplay. Wouldn't surprise me if they use this as a basis for an AC1 Remake at some point.
The number of collectibles has been massively toned down which I honestly preferred. My favourites were the historical sites, which gave you some facts about the setting which I always appreciate from these games. The number of outfit and gear slots is also massively toned down to around 5 each. Ubisoft being Ubisoft, the game has empty spaces for around 12 or so outfits, but only 5 are unlockable in the game, the rest is locked behind some Ubisoft Club nonsense or just outright paid DLC. The game is pretty solid, bug free from my experience, there are some things that I just think maybe could have been given another pass and rethought about. In a game with few rewards, why am I getting two Cthulu related talismans? Why is one of the most expensive skills on the skill tree to make pickpocketing automatic, when it's a feature I can turn on in the gameplay options from the get go? Why would you just waste a skill like that? I've had the same feelings with Valhalla as well, some skills in it just outright break the game, firing two arrows to the heads of final bosses take off like 90% of their health, some of these things don't feel like they've fully thought through. Still, this is a long review for a 7/10 game, but AC is a series that's still enjoyable for all it's faults. I do think it's fairly unique and it definitely can be better. The supposed approach last I heard was that the upcoming games would be released more regularly under this AC Infinite live service thing. That to me seems to hint that future games will be of similar length and depth of Mirage if they hope to keep that up. I certainly wanted a shorter, less dense experience compared to Valhalla and if you felt the same, Mirage might be of interest to you, warts and all. But if you were burnt out by Valhalla there's nothing there that's going to convince you otherwise.
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Post by steifybobbins on Jan 7, 2024 23:48:36 GMT
Pilgrims is done. Another (very) small game by Amanita (Machinarium, Chuchel etc.). It feels a lot like a point-and-click, but the interaction is done via cards and different characters do at times have different interactions with the environment. There are a lot of achievements I missed. The artstyle and "voicework" - if you can call it that, are as charming as always, but of course it does not look as impressive as Samorost 3 or something like that. So it doesn't compare that well, but I didn't have high expectations and so still liked it.
The Rage-replay is also finished after 17 hours. At first I really wasn't interested and almost broke it off, but I warmed up to it again and I especially enjoyed the second half. More options just make things more interesting. Even if the amount of ammo types and gadgets make things very clunky and slow. For some reason gadgets have to be equipped four at a time and have to be switched out via inventory and between those four, one can only switch with F1 through F4, whereas ammo types at least have a dedicated button for simply switching. There are still too many ammo types to do it quickly though.
I did also play through The Scorchers DLC for the first time, but I'd say it's just more of the same with very few additions. The Nailgun is the only thing that I'd call significant as two of the firemodes manage to stand out. Still, overall not a necessary addition. It just bloats the game a bit.
I really enjoyed Pilgrims while it lasted. Good easy going fun
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Jan 8, 2024 17:39:09 GMT
Yes, sometimes is nice playing something short and uncomplicated with a sense of humor.
Aspiring Champions were a problem at times, but one gets used to them. Overall I probably had most trouble with Great Unclean Ones and their incredibly annoying waves of Nurglings.
I'd agree on Gun Strength: It felt like the combination of damage/dps and strength, area-of-effect and so on did often combine into something unexpected. Better or worse than expected basically. At times it felt hard to figure out how to best use the various guns. Except perhaps for the two Bolters and Shotgun.
I'm not really complaining as they are pretty interesting, but in the end just looking at the strength rating wasn't that useful to estimate what to use against what.
If I have a complaint then it's that Machine Spirit upgrades should have been explained and should have just been available to upgrade one gun for each level instead of hoping to stumble across them somewhere. In general power-ups often felt badly placed and I rarely could make good use of them.
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Post by theguy on Jan 8, 2024 22:00:21 GMT
Forgotton Anne
I quite liked it. It's a 2D puzzle platformer though the gameplay is fairly simple. It's more narrative heavy with a nice art style and an interesting world. It's straightforward, no fluff and it's overall a good, short, focused experience.
Alan Wake
Played this back on the 360 but didn't remember much of it so decided to do a fresh playthrough. It's decent. Just decent. The execution of pretty much everything is top notch, except the gameplay itself, which is largely one note and gets quite stale. Combat encounters are so repetitive they often become long, drawn out sighs. Shining your light around just can't stay engaging. It makes the pacing feel worse too because there's a lot of padding. None of this is helped by Alan moving with all the energy of a sleeping sloth. I'd be more positive about the game if DLC Episode 1 wasn't every bad gameplay idea shoved in one chapter. Was utter shite to play through. DLC episode 2 was much better but Ep1 left its mark. On the whole I guess I did like it for the other aspects. Solid ideas, flawed gameplay.
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Post by simple on Jan 9, 2024 1:14:05 GMT
I thought Forgotten Anne was a fun little game too. Almost like a Ghibli story. I did feel a little let down that some of the objects you encountered looked quite Cliparty which took me out of things a bit whenever I noticed one.
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Post by theguy on Jan 9, 2024 11:14:04 GMT
Ha, yeah I guess that's fair. I thought some other aspects like the voice acting were weak too, but given it's an indie game it's easier to overlook and nothing was irredeemably bad.
It's a shame it's delisted on Xbox & PS stores. Luckily I'd bought it before but had to go back in my purchase history to find it.
Their next game is set in the same world. Maybe it can feature clippy himself
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