In 8.6 hours I've just finished the
pool
-
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52 games. 1 Year. 2016.
- Thread starter VisceralBowl
- Start date
- Status
Benzychenz
Member
Lol yeah it took me 18 hours all up.In 8.6 hours I've just finished thescene. I must be playing it a lot more methodically than you didpool
In 8.6 hours I've just finished thescene. I must be playing it a lot more methodically than you didpool
You are, I missed and skipped a lot of the optional content (e.g. Only got about 1 optional photo per Episode and missed/skipped several optional interactions)
EDIT: I will double check the time played on my XB1 as I looked at it on the hub back on the 1st maybe my memory is off. But I know it couldn't have been much more than 8 hours. I would say 10 at the most.
EDIT2: Turns out I was off - My playtime was 11hours 12 minutes per the XB1 game hub.
Jack Videogames
Member
61:58h. Completed game in Normal difficulty with the Persona 4 MC, did lots of Requests and tried to explore everything, no post-game.
Since I first played Persona 4 Golden as my first Vita game, I've become a fast Persona fan. I heard that Persona Q was "hollow", "fan-servicey" and "just a crossover with no real substance". I wholeheartedly disagree. The dynamics between P3 and P4 characters were fantastic, the Strolls, even when uneventful, felt like authentic Persona material, and some of the characters actually got real development during the game as a result of their interactions.
Pity they forget everything after they go back to their worlds - it was to be expected, though.
Gameplay-wise, I've played Etrian games before but I never got too far, so I got surprised by the difficulty of some fights. Once I found the "permanent" versions of the Goho-M and the Goba-K, though, everything started going more smoothly. I'm definitely picking up the 3DS Etrian games after this.
Updated OP
Latelatelate.
Game 23: | Paws: A Shelter 2 Game | - | March 25 | - | 10 hours |
Game 24: | Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened | - | March 27 | - | 8 hours |
Game 25: | S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl | - | March 29 | - | 45 hours |
Game 26: | Beneath a Steel Sky | - | April 1 | - | 7 hours |
Game 27: | Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis | - | April 7 | - | 10 hours |
Game 28: | Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper | - | April 9 | - | 11 hours |
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Master post
Game 23: | Paws: A Shelter 2 Game | - | March 25 | - | 10 hours |
Game 24: | Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened | - | March 27 | - | 8 hours |
Game 25: | S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl | - | March 29 | - | 45 hours |
Game 26: | Beneath a Steel Sky | - | April 1 | - | 7 hours |
Game 27: | Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis | - | April 7 | - | 10 hours |
Game 28: | Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper | - | April 9 | - | 11 hours |
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Master post
chrominance
Member
Original post
28. Quantum Break (XB1, 2016) - 12:37
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty (junctions:
).
Elsewhere on NeoGAF, people have described Quantum Break as the most polished mediocre game they've ever played. To me, Quantum Break is the opposite: an ambitious game with very serious issues. "Mediocre" implies a game that never moves the player emotionally, a game that's just there. Quantum Break is equal parts frustrating and revelatory, a game whose problems run deeper than just a lack of polish but a game that accomplishes things few other games manage.
We'll start with the best part of Quantum Break:Time Knife the story. There are fundamental issues, and they mostly have to do with pacing. The first two acts are mostly setup, which is understandable, but the dialogue is occasionally groan-worthy. Worse, at least one character is an insufferable caricature more than an actual person. Other characters feel mostly throwaway, there to fill whatever role is required of them at the time rather than someone with an actual agenda. But the biggest issue is in how the story is delivered, and here we run into what may be an unsolvable problem.
Much of Quantum Break's story is told through emails and documents found in the game world. Most of these documents are rather long, often requiring two or three minutes to read. We already live in an era where the audio-log style of delivering story elements feels long in the tooth (also see: Bioshock Infinite), but Quantum Break goes one further and asks you to do a whole lot of reading. In a game where every hour or two of gameplay is punctuated by a full half-hour television episode, to also have the gameplay split up by long portions of text-reading does a great deal to kill the game's momentum. And yet, much of the text feels nearly essential to getting the most out of the story. Major character motivations are often revealed well in advance through the text, and much more plainly stated than in the game's cutscenes (and sometimes even the TV show). Those documents are an important part of giving the world of Quantum Break much-needed weight, and they help lift the story's complexity above most games. But at the end of the day, they're still info-dumps, and I wish there was a better way to incorporate them into the game naturally.
There are other issues with the specifics of the story that pull you out of the game frequently, at least in the first half of the game. Oppressive product placement, the previously mentioned bad characterization, and the occasional plothole here and there do the story no favours. But for all of that, by the end Quantum Break felt like a well-realized, compelling story unlike the stories told in most video games. It's a time-travel story that doesn't immediately fall on its face or drown you in technobabble, and offers a villain that is actually sympathetic, and not just the kind of villain games resort to when they're playing the "everything's shades of gray" card. On top of that, there's a branching component that seems to offer genuine differences in how the story unfolds, though it seems all roads eventually lead back to the same conclusion. By the end, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed what I initially thought to be a third-rate TV show wrapped around a video game.
As for the gameplay, it occasionally feels like Singularity and Max Payne had a love child: there are bullet-time shenanigans, though not as overt as the ones in Max Payne, and there are time-manipulation shenanigans, though not as overt as the ones in Singularity. As the game introduces you to your powers, you gradually learn to give up the notion of using cover and taking advantage of the mobility your powers give you instead; when Quantum Break lets you treat an encounter like your chronon-powered playground, it's a revelation. But even here there are issues.
First, you have several powers you need to juggle, and the cooldown meters for each one are displayed way off to the right side of the screen. This makes it harder to know when you can activate a power, meaning you'll often find yourself trying to activate a power you don't have access to yet. In a game like Mass Effect 2, where the pace of combat is slower and you have the ability to pause the action, the cooldown setup for powers is manageable; I found that to be far less the case in Quantum Break. The bullet-time mechanics don't feel powerful enough at times, either. For example, if you initiate a time dodge and then aim down sights, the game will try to choose a target for you. If it chooses wrong, or if you happen to be aiming the camera somewhere inconvenient and the game can't snap to a target, you then get to spent the majority of your bullet time trying to aim at your intended target rather than actually shooting them.
In general, the feedback I got from my powers left something to be desired. Time shields would pop for no apparent reason, leaving me on the verge of death rather suddenly. Time dodges wouldn't fire, or would feel like they fired late. Often I'd aim a time dodge poorly and ram into some level geometry by mistake, leaving me exposed and vulnerable. In the final boss battle, I tried using a time blast to hit a group of enemies rushing into the room, but as far as I can tell the blast never landed the three or four times I tried it. I still don't know what I did wrong: did I not charge it enough? Was there an aspect of the level preventing me from firing the blast? Are the enemies somehow immune, and the game doesn't let me fire the blast at all because it knows this? I am clueless.
I find myself torn on whether to appreciate Quantum Break on its merits or scorn it because it's not the game I wish it could be, even though I don't know how Remedy could turn Quantum Break into that imaginary utopian ideal. The first few hours I had with the game felt mostly joyless, and then somewhere in act 3 the story really pulled me in. At times I wished for more combat encounters; at other times I wanted far fewer of them, or ones that were less annoying. I disliked how I felt compelled to stop every minute or two and sweep every room for chronon elements and story collectables, and yet both of those things are important enough (and in the latter case interesting enough) that I couldn't not do it. Quantum Break sometimes feels like a mess, a game that can't decide if it wants to be a TV show or a shooter or a Final Fantasy XIII-esque exercise in datalog mythology. And yet it's precisely that mass of contradictions that makes Quantum Break interesting. If nothing else, it's worth playing once, just to see this magnificent insane thing Microsoft and Remedy tried to pull off.
28. Quantum Break (XB1, 2016) - 12:37
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty (junctions:
PR, Business, Amaral, Control
Elsewhere on NeoGAF, people have described Quantum Break as the most polished mediocre game they've ever played. To me, Quantum Break is the opposite: an ambitious game with very serious issues. "Mediocre" implies a game that never moves the player emotionally, a game that's just there. Quantum Break is equal parts frustrating and revelatory, a game whose problems run deeper than just a lack of polish but a game that accomplishes things few other games manage.
We'll start with the best part of Quantum Break:
Much of Quantum Break's story is told through emails and documents found in the game world. Most of these documents are rather long, often requiring two or three minutes to read. We already live in an era where the audio-log style of delivering story elements feels long in the tooth (also see: Bioshock Infinite), but Quantum Break goes one further and asks you to do a whole lot of reading. In a game where every hour or two of gameplay is punctuated by a full half-hour television episode, to also have the gameplay split up by long portions of text-reading does a great deal to kill the game's momentum. And yet, much of the text feels nearly essential to getting the most out of the story. Major character motivations are often revealed well in advance through the text, and much more plainly stated than in the game's cutscenes (and sometimes even the TV show). Those documents are an important part of giving the world of Quantum Break much-needed weight, and they help lift the story's complexity above most games. But at the end of the day, they're still info-dumps, and I wish there was a better way to incorporate them into the game naturally.
There are other issues with the specifics of the story that pull you out of the game frequently, at least in the first half of the game. Oppressive product placement, the previously mentioned bad characterization, and the occasional plothole here and there do the story no favours. But for all of that, by the end Quantum Break felt like a well-realized, compelling story unlike the stories told in most video games. It's a time-travel story that doesn't immediately fall on its face or drown you in technobabble, and offers a villain that is actually sympathetic, and not just the kind of villain games resort to when they're playing the "everything's shades of gray" card. On top of that, there's a branching component that seems to offer genuine differences in how the story unfolds, though it seems all roads eventually lead back to the same conclusion. By the end, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed what I initially thought to be a third-rate TV show wrapped around a video game.
As for the gameplay, it occasionally feels like Singularity and Max Payne had a love child: there are bullet-time shenanigans, though not as overt as the ones in Max Payne, and there are time-manipulation shenanigans, though not as overt as the ones in Singularity. As the game introduces you to your powers, you gradually learn to give up the notion of using cover and taking advantage of the mobility your powers give you instead; when Quantum Break lets you treat an encounter like your chronon-powered playground, it's a revelation. But even here there are issues.
First, you have several powers you need to juggle, and the cooldown meters for each one are displayed way off to the right side of the screen. This makes it harder to know when you can activate a power, meaning you'll often find yourself trying to activate a power you don't have access to yet. In a game like Mass Effect 2, where the pace of combat is slower and you have the ability to pause the action, the cooldown setup for powers is manageable; I found that to be far less the case in Quantum Break. The bullet-time mechanics don't feel powerful enough at times, either. For example, if you initiate a time dodge and then aim down sights, the game will try to choose a target for you. If it chooses wrong, or if you happen to be aiming the camera somewhere inconvenient and the game can't snap to a target, you then get to spent the majority of your bullet time trying to aim at your intended target rather than actually shooting them.
In general, the feedback I got from my powers left something to be desired. Time shields would pop for no apparent reason, leaving me on the verge of death rather suddenly. Time dodges wouldn't fire, or would feel like they fired late. Often I'd aim a time dodge poorly and ram into some level geometry by mistake, leaving me exposed and vulnerable. In the final boss battle, I tried using a time blast to hit a group of enemies rushing into the room, but as far as I can tell the blast never landed the three or four times I tried it. I still don't know what I did wrong: did I not charge it enough? Was there an aspect of the level preventing me from firing the blast? Are the enemies somehow immune, and the game doesn't let me fire the blast at all because it knows this? I am clueless.
I find myself torn on whether to appreciate Quantum Break on its merits or scorn it because it's not the game I wish it could be, even though I don't know how Remedy could turn Quantum Break into that imaginary utopian ideal. The first few hours I had with the game felt mostly joyless, and then somewhere in act 3 the story really pulled me in. At times I wished for more combat encounters; at other times I wanted far fewer of them, or ones that were less annoying. I disliked how I felt compelled to stop every minute or two and sweep every room for chronon elements and story collectables, and yet both of those things are important enough (and in the latter case interesting enough) that I couldn't not do it. Quantum Break sometimes feels like a mess, a game that can't decide if it wants to be a TV show or a shooter or a Final Fantasy XIII-esque exercise in datalog mythology. And yet it's precisely that mass of contradictions that makes Quantum Break interesting. If nothing else, it's worth playing once, just to see this magnificent insane thing Microsoft and Remedy tried to pull off.
Original Post
Great interactive story from Telltale with a lot of humor and throwback to the Borderlands. Really took the theme and made it work. 4/5
For a Pokemon game, this one was really boring. Way too story driven with a lot of hand holding and NPC's blocking your way from moving freely. It felt more like a corridor than a world. 2/5
Game 10 : Tales From the Borderlands - 12 hours - 04/12/16
Great interactive story from Telltale with a lot of humor and throwback to the Borderlands. Really took the theme and made it work. 4/5
Game 11 - Pokemon Black 2 - 41 hours - 04/14/16
For a Pokemon game, this one was really boring. Way too story driven with a lot of hand holding and NPC's blocking your way from moving freely. It felt more like a corridor than a world. 2/5
I've been putting off starting the list, but I need to get my thoughts out before it's too late. Besides these I've been putting time into Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (pc) off and on, slowly working towards level 200 and getting all the achievements like I did on 360 and PS3. Currently at 12 games finished, so behind the curve but I should be fine since the next month or so has a bunch of shorter games releasing.
January - 5 games
1. Tales from the Borderlands - 13.7 hours
I never gave a fuck about the story in Borderlands 1 or 2 and the world seemed bland, but I liked the humor and typically like the Telltale games. TftB is a really good one of those, and it nails the world and what kinds of people would live in it. Moreover, it just feels fun. Where Walking Dead is a depressing (but good) affair and Wolf Among Us is a cool detective/mystery story, TftB is a fun romp on Pandora.
2. A Bird Story - 1.3 hours
Short and sweet. I loved To The Moon so I was glad to finally experience this. Fucking fantastic music and a touching story, though not quite as good as TTM. Really looking forward to their next game.
3. Hatoful Boyfriend - 9 hours
I kinda started this for the laugh, not taking it seriously, but I got into it after a few playthroughs and seeing the various aspects of the characters. I was rather liking it by the end of that when I stumbled upon the secret story and got sucked into that insanity. Going from a charming but at-times weird birding school story to
was a hell of a tonal shift that came out of nowhere (it fits in context, but it started midway through an otherwise innocuous playthrough I wasn't expecting anything of the sort). This also severely increased my time with the game since the side story is way longer than anything else, which I didn't mind since I was totally into it.
It's a super weird game.
4. Rainbow Six: Siege - 10 hours
I wasn't a huge fan of Siege. I really liked the Vegas games so I wanted to like this, but I didn't like the controls, the feel of the game, it felt sluggish to even control, and I never really got into the online aspect of it like I had hoped. I can see the appeal if you're playing with a friend, but it wasn't for me.
5. Rise of the Tomb Raider - 33 hours
This was really good. I loved the first one and this was a fantastic sequel, expanding the gameplay mechanics in logical ways and adding stuff like crafting. It was a blast, and I'd love to see what they do with another one.
February - 2 games
6. Binary Domain - 12 hours
The gameplay was a mediocre version of Gears of War, competent but it never felt quite right, but I really liked the world, the characters, and the story. Definitely worth checking out.
7. XCOM: Enemy Within - 34 hours
I loved Enemy Unknown last year but wanted a break before playing Enemy Within, and I'm glad I got around to it since EW is fucking fantastic. Since I had already finished EU I figured to cheat a bit with resources which made things interesting (and kinda broke the balance of the game, but that was fun).
March - 3 games
8. Far Cry Primal - 20 hours
I've finished FC1 and liked it, played a bit of 2 and disliked it, haven't got around to 3 or 4 yet, so this was neat. The story isn't worth a shit, and the crafting and hunting for materials is a bit overbearing, but the gameplay is really satisfying.
9. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified - 15.5 hours
Taking care of this in close proximity to Enemy Within, this was interesting to contrast the tone and the world between the two. The gameplay was solid and very Mass Effect-like which I loved, but I never really cared for the characters. The way it integrated core XCOM stuff like the mission board was also neat. Seeing the difference in the aliens was also a cool experience. I would be very interested in another XCOM shooter like this but polished up.
10. Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - 10 hours
I was hoping to like this more than I did. Playing with people online was neat, but there wasn't teamwork in the way that I was hoping for and I never really got a sense of what anything really did. It mostly just made me miss Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and make the wait for Andromeda's even worse.
April - 2 games (in progress)
11. The Division - 44 hours
This game is pretty split. The gameplay is really fucking good and grew on me after the first few hours, and mixing and matching your abilities and your teammates can make a bunch of options available in the heat of combat. The enemies are fun to play against, and constantly try to flank you, but aside from "are these the fire dudes or not" they mostly blended together. The story isn't worth paying attention to, but it does bring you to a bunch of cool locations. The area of New York in the game is really well done and fun to mess around in, but in typical Ubisoft fashion is littered with shit you don't care about. As an rpg it's solid, with loads of numbers and items and crafting and abilities. I played almost everything in a group and it was a blast, but after hitting 30 and finishing all the missions I don't care to do the loot grind. I'm curious to see where they go with the game and am totally open to what they do next.
12. Star Fox 64 - 5 hours
Fun to play this in anticipation of the new game hitting this month. I went through this twice, the first time blind, the second using a guide to figure out how to go to planets I hadn't been. Pretty fun game but also super short.
January - 5 games
1. Tales from the Borderlands - 13.7 hours
I never gave a fuck about the story in Borderlands 1 or 2 and the world seemed bland, but I liked the humor and typically like the Telltale games. TftB is a really good one of those, and it nails the world and what kinds of people would live in it. Moreover, it just feels fun. Where Walking Dead is a depressing (but good) affair and Wolf Among Us is a cool detective/mystery story, TftB is a fun romp on Pandora.
2. A Bird Story - 1.3 hours
Short and sweet. I loved To The Moon so I was glad to finally experience this. Fucking fantastic music and a touching story, though not quite as good as TTM. Really looking forward to their next game.
3. Hatoful Boyfriend - 9 hours
I kinda started this for the laugh, not taking it seriously, but I got into it after a few playthroughs and seeing the various aspects of the characters. I was rather liking it by the end of that when I stumbled upon the secret story and got sucked into that insanity. Going from a charming but at-times weird birding school story to
the main character being killed, everyone trapped under a dome, a murderous fucker stomping the school, and everything going to chaos
It's a super weird game.
4. Rainbow Six: Siege - 10 hours
I wasn't a huge fan of Siege. I really liked the Vegas games so I wanted to like this, but I didn't like the controls, the feel of the game, it felt sluggish to even control, and I never really got into the online aspect of it like I had hoped. I can see the appeal if you're playing with a friend, but it wasn't for me.
5. Rise of the Tomb Raider - 33 hours
This was really good. I loved the first one and this was a fantastic sequel, expanding the gameplay mechanics in logical ways and adding stuff like crafting. It was a blast, and I'd love to see what they do with another one.
February - 2 games
6. Binary Domain - 12 hours
The gameplay was a mediocre version of Gears of War, competent but it never felt quite right, but I really liked the world, the characters, and the story. Definitely worth checking out.
7. XCOM: Enemy Within - 34 hours
I loved Enemy Unknown last year but wanted a break before playing Enemy Within, and I'm glad I got around to it since EW is fucking fantastic. Since I had already finished EU I figured to cheat a bit with resources which made things interesting (and kinda broke the balance of the game, but that was fun).
March - 3 games
8. Far Cry Primal - 20 hours
I've finished FC1 and liked it, played a bit of 2 and disliked it, haven't got around to 3 or 4 yet, so this was neat. The story isn't worth a shit, and the crafting and hunting for materials is a bit overbearing, but the gameplay is really satisfying.
9. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified - 15.5 hours
Taking care of this in close proximity to Enemy Within, this was interesting to contrast the tone and the world between the two. The gameplay was solid and very Mass Effect-like which I loved, but I never really cared for the characters. The way it integrated core XCOM stuff like the mission board was also neat. Seeing the difference in the aliens was also a cool experience. I would be very interested in another XCOM shooter like this but polished up.
10. Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - 10 hours
I was hoping to like this more than I did. Playing with people online was neat, but there wasn't teamwork in the way that I was hoping for and I never really got a sense of what anything really did. It mostly just made me miss Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and make the wait for Andromeda's even worse.
April - 2 games (in progress)
11. The Division - 44 hours
This game is pretty split. The gameplay is really fucking good and grew on me after the first few hours, and mixing and matching your abilities and your teammates can make a bunch of options available in the heat of combat. The enemies are fun to play against, and constantly try to flank you, but aside from "are these the fire dudes or not" they mostly blended together. The story isn't worth paying attention to, but it does bring you to a bunch of cool locations. The area of New York in the game is really well done and fun to mess around in, but in typical Ubisoft fashion is littered with shit you don't care about. As an rpg it's solid, with loads of numbers and items and crafting and abilities. I played almost everything in a group and it was a blast, but after hitting 30 and finishing all the missions I don't care to do the loot grind. I'm curious to see where they go with the game and am totally open to what they do next.
12. Star Fox 64 - 5 hours
Fun to play this in anticipation of the new game hitting this month. I went through this twice, the first time blind, the second using a guide to figure out how to go to planets I hadn't been. Pretty fun game but also super short.
Game 12: Picross e3 - April 15th
This is the first one I haven't completed 100% - I am not a fan of Mega Picross at all. It wasn't explained well and just seemed like it added an annoyance to normal Picross. Completed everything else, though.
Original post
Yep, I'm glad for the e series as well, though I'd love another full fledged edition (without Picrites!). I will definitely take a break before e4 now, though.
This is the first one I haven't completed 100% - I am not a fan of Mega Picross at all. It wasn't explained well and just seemed like it added an annoyance to normal Picross. Completed everything else, though.
Original post
Micross just felt like it was about 80% pointlessly easy puzzles with a few decent ones between. It was neat seeing the pictures, but just didn't really seem worthwhile. As you'll see above, really did not like Mega Picross. Not happy to hear there's quite a bit more coming!
Yep, I'm glad for the e series as well, though I'd love another full fledged edition (without Picrites!). I will definitely take a break before e4 now, though.
Finally finished two games that I've started a long time ago.
Master post
Metro: Last Light | Steam | 9 h | ★★☆☆
The Wolf Among Us | Steam | 8 h | ★★★★
Far Cry 2 | Steam | 18 h | ★★★★
Far Cry 2 is indeed the best in the series. Please tell me MGSV is its spiritual successor... Because I have it next in my queue.
Master post
Metro: Last Light | Steam | 9 h | ★★☆☆
The Wolf Among Us | Steam | 8 h | ★★★★
Far Cry 2 | Steam | 18 h | ★★★★
Far Cry 2 is indeed the best in the series. Please tell me MGSV is its spiritual successor... Because I have it next in my queue.
Though I'm aware of the backlash
Master Post
The Potatoman game is that you are a Potatoman and you must reach the end to find the Troof. The Troof is the game is meh. Just another 5 dollar sub 1 hour 2d pixel art platforming game on the Steams. RNG Boulder obstacles can go to heck in a handbasket.
Absolutely loved this game. As someone who started the series with Tools of Destruction and would only discover how much they liked the franchise until later when the HD Collection came out, it hits all the right notes with me. Insane bolt counts, crazy weapon upgrading and oh so satisfying gunplay are all I need from this series.
Couple that with fantastic visuals and art direction, good humour and fun characters and it sits well with A Crack In Time and Up Your Arsenal as one of the franchise greats. If they had added an arena planet to the game, it'd be a 5/5, but beyond that it's practically perfect and I can't wait for the movie.
---------------
Limb removal as not a instant death but a on-the-fly new moveset is a concept I'm oddly interested in. Asura's Wrath kind of touched upon this, with certain story beats necessitating that Asura has anywhere from 0 to 8 arms. Or something like the Deadpool game, where early interviews talked about having a feature like this, but the launched game had no such mechanic.
Then this game comes out, and sure enough, it does the concept and does it rather well. Run into a saw? There goes your legs. Brush shoulders with a lazer? There goes your arm. You can even be reduced to a head and still continue. Besides that, it's an alright 3D platformer. Lacks a ton of polish (removing all limbs but keeping torso causes Ben to spasm uncontrollably) and is generally janky as shit while being difficult to boot, but I still enjoyed it for what it was and it scratched a nice itch I had.
Game 21: Potatoman Seeks the Troof (PC) | 43 Minutes | 04/11/2016 | 2/5
The Potatoman game is that you are a Potatoman and you must reach the end to find the Troof. The Troof is the game is meh. Just another 5 dollar sub 1 hour 2d pixel art platforming game on the Steams. RNG Boulder obstacles can go to heck in a handbasket.
Game 22: Ratchet and Clank (PS4) | ~18 Hours | 04/14/2016 | 4.5/5
Absolutely loved this game. As someone who started the series with Tools of Destruction and would only discover how much they liked the franchise until later when the HD Collection came out, it hits all the right notes with me. Insane bolt counts, crazy weapon upgrading and oh so satisfying gunplay are all I need from this series.
Couple that with fantastic visuals and art direction, good humour and fun characters and it sits well with A Crack In Time and Up Your Arsenal as one of the franchise greats. If they had added an arena planet to the game, it'd be a 5/5, but beyond that it's practically perfect and I can't wait for the movie.
---------------
Game 3: Ben and Ed (PC) | 6 Hours | 01/04/16 | 3/5
Limb removal as not a instant death but a on-the-fly new moveset is a concept I'm oddly interested in. Asura's Wrath kind of touched upon this, with certain story beats necessitating that Asura has anywhere from 0 to 8 arms. Or something like the Deadpool game, where early interviews talked about having a feature like this, but the launched game had no such mechanic.
Then this game comes out, and sure enough, it does the concept and does it rather well. Run into a saw? There goes your legs. Brush shoulders with a lazer? There goes your arm. You can even be reduced to a head and still continue. Besides that, it's an alright 3D platformer. Lacks a ton of polish (removing all limbs but keeping torso causes Ben to spasm uncontrollably) and is generally janky as shit while being difficult to boot, but I still enjoyed it for what it was and it scratched a nice itch I had.
Game #16 - Dark Souls III
Time: 45 hours
Amazing conclusion to the trilogy and my favorite Souls game probably. Cant wait to play more of this in NG+ and especially the DLC, but for now I need a well deserved break. Killed all the bosses and did all the zones, and used a lot less summons than previous games surprisingly (only 3 times). Most likely my GOTY for 2016
Game #17 - Enter The Gungeon
Time: 24 hours
Awesome little rogue-like twin joystick shooter with a meta progression system very similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer. Awesome art, great soundtrack, great gameplay. I finally finished a full run, but these games are never truly over. Still, I got end credits so it counts. Will probably go back to it regulary now and then.
OP
Ceallach
Smells like fresh rosebuds
15. Fire Emblem Fates Conquest
3DS, 20ish hours
Grabbed the whole trilogy. I started with Conquest because I thought I would be able to play as an uber-bitch princess and wreck shit, but no, I had to be nice and world saving. I hate some of the changes, I hate there is no overworld or side things to do, little upgrading. But I love the character designs. I'll take a bit of a break before going on to the other two.
16. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows
3DS
No idea how long this has been sitting on my 3DS but I dug into and I like plague knight more than shovel knight! Where's my plague knight amiibo?
17. Wario Land II
GBC,
I have no idea how long my save at World 2 has been sitting there, but for some reason(it was in my GBC), I decided to plug through it. Great, underrated gem.
18. Find Mii II
3DS
I made it through Find Mii II for a second time, so I'm taking credit, lol.
3DS, 20ish hours
Grabbed the whole trilogy. I started with Conquest because I thought I would be able to play as an uber-bitch princess and wreck shit, but no, I had to be nice and world saving. I hate some of the changes, I hate there is no overworld or side things to do, little upgrading. But I love the character designs. I'll take a bit of a break before going on to the other two.
16. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows
3DS
No idea how long this has been sitting on my 3DS but I dug into and I like plague knight more than shovel knight! Where's my plague knight amiibo?
17. Wario Land II
GBC,
I have no idea how long my save at World 2 has been sitting there, but for some reason(it was in my GBC), I decided to plug through it. Great, underrated gem.
18. Find Mii II
3DS
I made it through Find Mii II for a second time, so I'm taking credit, lol.
Original Post
Game 11 - Infamous: Second Son - 20 hours
As a sequel, I think this one has just about everything that I could ask for. Some of the pacing of the powers clashes a bit with the open world- by the time I had Video, I had already cleared most of the side missions. And that you only get to use concrete for that last boss battle is kind of a letdown and cleaning up whatever you had left (in my case, nothing), especially since it gives some fun options for mobility. My other complaint concerns the mid-game difficulty spike- I found the bridge battle against Augustine's minion more difficult than any other boss battle in the game, especially as the arena limits your effectiveness with neon. That said, the power switching was handled better than I expected. Being the PS4's de facto lead exclusive for a while also seems to have benefited the game, as I made more use of the PS4's gimmicks than in any other game. I enjoyed how the controller speaker was implemented
I also enjoyed the graffiti, and hell, the photo mode really does make me wanna hit the "share" button. Finally, as a comment on the narrative, I think that going with the sibling dynamic served well. I was much more interested in the brothers Rowe than in Cole and Zeke from the first two games.
Game 11 - Infamous: Second Son - 20 hours
As a sequel, I think this one has just about everything that I could ask for. Some of the pacing of the powers clashes a bit with the open world- by the time I had Video, I had already cleared most of the side missions. And that you only get to use concrete for that last boss battle is kind of a letdown and cleaning up whatever you had left (in my case, nothing), especially since it gives some fun options for mobility. My other complaint concerns the mid-game difficulty spike- I found the bridge battle against Augustine's minion more difficult than any other boss battle in the game, especially as the arena limits your effectiveness with neon. That said, the power switching was handled better than I expected. Being the PS4's de facto lead exclusive for a while also seems to have benefited the game, as I made more use of the PS4's gimmicks than in any other game. I enjoyed how the controller speaker was implemented
particularly the moment when you're chasing Hank and pick up a helmet with a radio.
Spieler Eins
Member
original post
Game 26: Super Metroid (WiiU replay) - 5 hours
It was time for a replay of the GOAT. And after years I finally had a relevation, which I should have had much earlier. I always thought the sprint button could only be mapped uncomfortably. Yet, I now removed it from the face buttons and put it on R. And then moved item switch from fucking Select to the face buttons. Man, that made things quite a bit better. I ultimately lost a button for auto-aim downwards, but who needs that anyway?
This might have been also the first time I was somewhat successful with a playthrough goal of finding as much as possible. I guess 86% item completion is as far as I can go without a guide. Playtime being 3:44, but I've lost an hour through my single death and being too lazy to save.
Game 26: Super Metroid (WiiU replay) - 5 hours
It was time for a replay of the GOAT. And after years I finally had a relevation, which I should have had much earlier. I always thought the sprint button could only be mapped uncomfortably. Yet, I now removed it from the face buttons and put it on R. And then moved item switch from fucking Select to the face buttons. Man, that made things quite a bit better. I ultimately lost a button for auto-aim downwards, but who needs that anyway?
This might have been also the first time I was somewhat successful with a playthrough goal of finding as much as possible. I guess 86% item completion is as far as I can go without a guide. Playtime being 3:44, but I've lost an hour through my single death and being too lazy to save.
6. Hacknet - 2 hours
I got like 2 hours into this but wasn't feeling it. I use Linux and of course the Unix terminal quite a bit, it is my main OS on my computer and I dual-boot Windows for games. Idk just seemed really boring I thought it would be right up my ally. I don't want to rate it because I didn't really get far to says its good or bad. I got it on sale because Vinny kept saying how much he liked in during the Giant Bomb GOTY.
Prob the last game I play for some time again, summer is almost here finals are in two weeks!
Firewatch still the best game I've played this year.
OP
Game 22: Hyper Light Drifter (PC) 02/04/16 - 05/04/16 20 Hours
I've got this as one of top 5 games for GOTY so far. Really had a good time playing this besides spending countless hours exploring each area to unlock or discover secrets and find collectables. It plays like a classic Zelda game with the top view and exploring with the difficulty of a Dark Souls game with tough enemies, precise combat mechanics, and challenging bosses. Such an awesome game with only some flaws like the useless map which didn't help with my task of finding collectables at all and probably the issue of the game being locked to 30 FPS.
Game 23: Enter the Gungeon (PC) 06/04/16 - 18/04/16 25 Hours
I finally did it, I reached
and killed
, I gonna mark this as a complete because
. But I know I ain't done with this game at all, there's still so many things to unlock and it is such a fun game that I might just play from time to time whenever I'm bored. Out of all the rogue-lite games I've played, I have this one as my favourite one so far and also have this in my top 5 for GOTY.
Currently playing:
Darkest Dungeon (PC) 25/01/16
Downwell (Android) 28/01/16
Rusty Lake Hotel (Android) 17/04/16
Game 22: Hyper Light Drifter (PC) 02/04/16 - 05/04/16 20 Hours
I've got this as one of top 5 games for GOTY so far. Really had a good time playing this besides spending countless hours exploring each area to unlock or discover secrets and find collectables. It plays like a classic Zelda game with the top view and exploring with the difficulty of a Dark Souls game with tough enemies, precise combat mechanics, and challenging bosses. Such an awesome game with only some flaws like the useless map which didn't help with my task of finding collectables at all and probably the issue of the game being locked to 30 FPS.
Game 23: Enter the Gungeon (PC) 06/04/16 - 18/04/16 25 Hours
I finally did it, I reached
Chamber 6
the Lich
he is the true end boss of the game
Currently playing:
Darkest Dungeon (PC) 25/01/16
Downwell (Android) 28/01/16
Rusty Lake Hotel (Android) 17/04/16
chrominance
Member
Original post
29. Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault (PS4, 2016) - 30:01
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty. Platinum trophy.
The premise behind Aegis of Earth is simple. You control the last remaining cities of humanity, which have all been reconfigured into concentric circles of land. When all is quiet, these cities are towering skyscrapers housing tens of thousands. If attacked, however, each city can transform into a bristling porcupine of weaponry designed to protect each city's command center. Your enemies, called the protonovus, approach a city from all sides; it's your job to rotate each circle's set of weapons into the right positions to fend them off.
It's tower defense in the most literal sense: you're using weapons towers to defend a central tower. Its approach to the genre, though, is unorthodox. There's no maze for critters to crawl through, and your tower placement is very limited, especially at the beginning. Thus the game tends to play almost like an action game in the early going, when you don't have enough resources to fully defend your cities and must make the best of your limited arsenal. This is the best part of Aegis of Earth, and occasionally the most terrifying: sometimes you'll be attacked from multiple vectors and you'll know you don't have the weapons in the right positions to deal with all your enemies.
The difficulty curve on the game, though, could use some tweaking. Difficulty peaks just after the middle of the campaign, as the game asks you to face enemies on multiple fronts under difficult circumstances. Waves of healers, for example, must all be destroyed at the same time, or they'll resurrect each other. Sometimes, you just don't have the weapons to execute a proper counterattack, and will scramble to find the right alignment of cannons and missiles to maybe hit everyone at roughly the same time. This is exacerbated by the layout of the cities themselves. Only certain segments of the cities can be built upon, with the rest being quarantined due to damage. Weapons become more powerful when merged together in a straight line across circles, but there are only so many alignments where this works, and later cities do their best to ensure poor alignments.
That would be an intriguing, if occasionally difficult, restriction on the gameplay, except that later in the game (as events in the story take a desperate turn) all the quarantines are lifted. At that point, the game largely becomes a cakewalk, with your weapon placement now limited solely by how much money and how many crystals you have to spend. All the action of frantically rotating weapons into place disappears in favour of mostly static setups that cover all angles of approach. The game keeps going like this for ten hours or so, which is well beyond the limit of most people's patience. And even the first two-thirds of the game don't do much to evolve the basic gameplay of rotating the circles to aim weapons at the right places. The result is a game with a fun concept that grinds itself into oblivion.
Given its discount price, it's hard not to wonder if the game would be better off at half the running time. This is especially true on Vita, where Aegis of Earth's relatively short sorties would work well for bite-sized sessions, but might feel overwhelming when taken as a whole because of the long stretches of repetitive gameplay. Some variety would've gone a long way as well. For example, one of the hallmarks of tower defense is having to manage enemies that approach at different speeds. Another is requiring different types of weapons to deal effectively with certain enemies. Aegis of Earth flirts with these ideas but doesn't really do much with them. There's one type of swarm enemy that moves fast and is best suited for a gatling cannon, but nearly everything else is easily destroyed by missile barrages.
There is a story to Aegis of Earth, as well as a large cast of characters (with a surprising amount of voice acting!), but at best it's something to fast forward through. Full of anime tropes and one-dimensional characters, the cast of Aegis of Earth feels like comic relief window dressing most of the time. There's also a bunch of upgrade mechanics, only some of which have genuine impact. Over the course of the game, you can upgrade your weapons to new classes with more power, requiring new types of crystals to build. But you can also upgrade weapons more incrementally using a different resource, a feature that feels superfluous given that upgrading to the next class up wipes out all your upgrades and resets you to baseline. Your defense operators also level up over the course of the game, and you have the ability to favour someone who did an especially good job with extra experience points. I have no real idea what the point of leveling up my cast of characters was, even after finishing the game and getting the platinum trophy.
Obviously, I liked Aegis of Earth enough to play through the whole game in about a week or two. There's definitely an interesting concept in there, and enough mechanics to keep you playing. But at the same time, I don't know if I would recommend the game as is to most people. It's very repetitive, requires a great deal of crystal grinding in the late game, and once you get powerful enough the game kind of plays itself. Aegis of Earth is the kind of game I'm irrationally fond of despite its many, many shortcomings. I'd love to see another game like this that fixes all of the issues, though the chance of that happening is practically nil.
29. Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault (PS4, 2016) - 30:01
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty. Platinum trophy.
The premise behind Aegis of Earth is simple. You control the last remaining cities of humanity, which have all been reconfigured into concentric circles of land. When all is quiet, these cities are towering skyscrapers housing tens of thousands. If attacked, however, each city can transform into a bristling porcupine of weaponry designed to protect each city's command center. Your enemies, called the protonovus, approach a city from all sides; it's your job to rotate each circle's set of weapons into the right positions to fend them off.
It's tower defense in the most literal sense: you're using weapons towers to defend a central tower. Its approach to the genre, though, is unorthodox. There's no maze for critters to crawl through, and your tower placement is very limited, especially at the beginning. Thus the game tends to play almost like an action game in the early going, when you don't have enough resources to fully defend your cities and must make the best of your limited arsenal. This is the best part of Aegis of Earth, and occasionally the most terrifying: sometimes you'll be attacked from multiple vectors and you'll know you don't have the weapons in the right positions to deal with all your enemies.
The difficulty curve on the game, though, could use some tweaking. Difficulty peaks just after the middle of the campaign, as the game asks you to face enemies on multiple fronts under difficult circumstances. Waves of healers, for example, must all be destroyed at the same time, or they'll resurrect each other. Sometimes, you just don't have the weapons to execute a proper counterattack, and will scramble to find the right alignment of cannons and missiles to maybe hit everyone at roughly the same time. This is exacerbated by the layout of the cities themselves. Only certain segments of the cities can be built upon, with the rest being quarantined due to damage. Weapons become more powerful when merged together in a straight line across circles, but there are only so many alignments where this works, and later cities do their best to ensure poor alignments.
That would be an intriguing, if occasionally difficult, restriction on the gameplay, except that later in the game (as events in the story take a desperate turn) all the quarantines are lifted. At that point, the game largely becomes a cakewalk, with your weapon placement now limited solely by how much money and how many crystals you have to spend. All the action of frantically rotating weapons into place disappears in favour of mostly static setups that cover all angles of approach. The game keeps going like this for ten hours or so, which is well beyond the limit of most people's patience. And even the first two-thirds of the game don't do much to evolve the basic gameplay of rotating the circles to aim weapons at the right places. The result is a game with a fun concept that grinds itself into oblivion.
Given its discount price, it's hard not to wonder if the game would be better off at half the running time. This is especially true on Vita, where Aegis of Earth's relatively short sorties would work well for bite-sized sessions, but might feel overwhelming when taken as a whole because of the long stretches of repetitive gameplay. Some variety would've gone a long way as well. For example, one of the hallmarks of tower defense is having to manage enemies that approach at different speeds. Another is requiring different types of weapons to deal effectively with certain enemies. Aegis of Earth flirts with these ideas but doesn't really do much with them. There's one type of swarm enemy that moves fast and is best suited for a gatling cannon, but nearly everything else is easily destroyed by missile barrages.
There is a story to Aegis of Earth, as well as a large cast of characters (with a surprising amount of voice acting!), but at best it's something to fast forward through. Full of anime tropes and one-dimensional characters, the cast of Aegis of Earth feels like comic relief window dressing most of the time. There's also a bunch of upgrade mechanics, only some of which have genuine impact. Over the course of the game, you can upgrade your weapons to new classes with more power, requiring new types of crystals to build. But you can also upgrade weapons more incrementally using a different resource, a feature that feels superfluous given that upgrading to the next class up wipes out all your upgrades and resets you to baseline. Your defense operators also level up over the course of the game, and you have the ability to favour someone who did an especially good job with extra experience points. I have no real idea what the point of leveling up my cast of characters was, even after finishing the game and getting the platinum trophy.
Obviously, I liked Aegis of Earth enough to play through the whole game in about a week or two. There's definitely an interesting concept in there, and enough mechanics to keep you playing. But at the same time, I don't know if I would recommend the game as is to most people. It's very repetitive, requires a great deal of crystal grinding in the late game, and once you get powerful enough the game kind of plays itself. Aegis of Earth is the kind of game I'm irrationally fond of despite its many, many shortcomings. I'd love to see another game like this that fixes all of the issues, though the chance of that happening is practically nil.
It has been awhile since I last got round to updating but here goes! I've played some amazing games recently. It was a hell of a lot of fun to go back to Minecraft and just have a laugh with some friends on a server building stuff and adventuring, I forgot how enjoyable it can be. Hyper Light drifter was good but disappointingly it hasn't left a lasting impression on me, I'm not sure why, maybe the long wait from backing all those years back? QB surpassed my expectations, I'm sure it isn't for everyone but I recommend it!
GAME 29: Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition - 9 hours - 01/04/2016 - Xbox One
GAME 30: Minecraft - 30 hours+ multi - 03/04/2016 - PC
GAME 31: Hyper Light Drifter - 9.5 hours - 15/04/2016 - PC
GAME 32: Quantum Break - 11 hours - 17/04/2016 - Xbox One
GAME 29: Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition - 9 hours - 01/04/2016 - Xbox One
GAME 30: Minecraft - 30 hours+ multi - 03/04/2016 - PC
GAME 31: Hyper Light Drifter - 9.5 hours - 15/04/2016 - PC
GAME 32: Quantum Break - 11 hours - 17/04/2016 - Xbox One
chrominance
Member
Original post
30. Battlestations: Midway (PC, 2007) - 7:54
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty except for two missions on Rookie (Java Sea and Midway endgame).
A real-time strategy wargame where you can command entire navies and then jump into a single boat and direct artillery fire or hunt submarines yourself sounds like a holy grail of gaming, the RTS equivalent of Will Wright's Spore. But like Spore, Battlestations: Midway is one of those games that maybe sounds better in theory than it plays out in practice. Caught between two modes of play, Battlestations never feels entirely comfortable to play no matter what you're doing or what control scheme you're using.
Set during the opening stages of the Pacific theater in World War II, Midway takes you from Pearl Harbour to the titular battle that changed the course of the war and put Japanese forces on the defensive for the first time. The single campaign takes the American viewpoint, offering a surprisingly cinematic take on the rapid Japanese advance on American positions, followed by a slow and painful defense and finally a monumental effort to turn the tide. There's even a protagonist, a young up-and-coming Navy officer who's practically bloodthirsty for battle. It's a little jarring to see your character arguing for all-out aggression instead of the caution his superiors advise, given what we know of the horrors of the Pacific War (and what American sailors would see first-hand at the hands of kamikaze attacks later on), but thankfully the story is easy to ignore and mostly sticks to "war man goes to war and tells boats and planes what to do, eventually realizing war is hell, sort of."
The gameplay is a mix of real-time strategy and vehicle simulation. At any time, you can jump into the driver's seat of almost any unit on the battlefield. One mission in particular practically requires you to drive a destroyer through a gauntlet of dangers in one of the most memorable and harrowing sequences of the whole game. You can direct AA fire, launch torpedoes, and drive your ship straight into the rocky shore if you so desire. You can also fly various types of aircraft, from the lowliest F2A Buffalo fighter to the gleaming silver B-17 Flying Fortress, and eventually even a submarine. All of these different craft must be controlled using the same basic set of controls, though if you wish you can at least hook up a flight stick and try to map controls yourself. A controller feels like the "best" way to handle the vehicles in the game, though for flight it's still far from ideal.
The strategy component, on the other hand, involves both in-vehicle menus and giving orders from the map screen. The unit menus allow you to give orders to your squadmates, direct repair teams on ships, and launch aircraft on carriers and airfields. The map, on the other hand, gives you a birds-eye view of the whole battlefield and allows you to command all the ships and airplanes in your arsenal. Eventually, you spend much more time in the map view than in any other view, simply because there's too much going on for you to play flyboy and try to dive bomb a Japanese cruiser. Switching between giving orders from the map and driving a vehicle is also somewhat difficult because unlike vehicles, the map screen is really best suited to mouse and keyboard.
Trying to fly a plane using the mouse and keyboard is not far off from the experience of playing QWOP, so you're stuck with three options. The first is to use a controller for everything, which is what I did for the first few missions. It works, but it doesn't work that well, and as your cognitive workload increases, the controls don't feel like they can keep up. The second is to swap between the controller and mouse/keyboard as necessary. For obvious reasons, that's pretty awkward. So your final option is just to abandon the pretense of trying to fly planes and steer boats, and spend all your time in the map. The time I mistakenly dropped a torpedo instead of aiming down the bombsights in my TBD Avenger was the last time I tried flying a plane in Battlestations Midway.
So: a unique blend of gameplay styles, but ultimately kind of awkward to play. I've played a bit of the followup, Battlestations: Pacific, and it seems like Eidos tried to take a more action-oriented approach in the sequel. We'll see if it works in the franchise's favour or not.
30. Battlestations: Midway (PC, 2007) - 7:54
Campaign completed on Normal difficulty except for two missions on Rookie (Java Sea and Midway endgame).
A real-time strategy wargame where you can command entire navies and then jump into a single boat and direct artillery fire or hunt submarines yourself sounds like a holy grail of gaming, the RTS equivalent of Will Wright's Spore. But like Spore, Battlestations: Midway is one of those games that maybe sounds better in theory than it plays out in practice. Caught between two modes of play, Battlestations never feels entirely comfortable to play no matter what you're doing or what control scheme you're using.
Set during the opening stages of the Pacific theater in World War II, Midway takes you from Pearl Harbour to the titular battle that changed the course of the war and put Japanese forces on the defensive for the first time. The single campaign takes the American viewpoint, offering a surprisingly cinematic take on the rapid Japanese advance on American positions, followed by a slow and painful defense and finally a monumental effort to turn the tide. There's even a protagonist, a young up-and-coming Navy officer who's practically bloodthirsty for battle. It's a little jarring to see your character arguing for all-out aggression instead of the caution his superiors advise, given what we know of the horrors of the Pacific War (and what American sailors would see first-hand at the hands of kamikaze attacks later on), but thankfully the story is easy to ignore and mostly sticks to "war man goes to war and tells boats and planes what to do, eventually realizing war is hell, sort of."
The gameplay is a mix of real-time strategy and vehicle simulation. At any time, you can jump into the driver's seat of almost any unit on the battlefield. One mission in particular practically requires you to drive a destroyer through a gauntlet of dangers in one of the most memorable and harrowing sequences of the whole game. You can direct AA fire, launch torpedoes, and drive your ship straight into the rocky shore if you so desire. You can also fly various types of aircraft, from the lowliest F2A Buffalo fighter to the gleaming silver B-17 Flying Fortress, and eventually even a submarine. All of these different craft must be controlled using the same basic set of controls, though if you wish you can at least hook up a flight stick and try to map controls yourself. A controller feels like the "best" way to handle the vehicles in the game, though for flight it's still far from ideal.
The strategy component, on the other hand, involves both in-vehicle menus and giving orders from the map screen. The unit menus allow you to give orders to your squadmates, direct repair teams on ships, and launch aircraft on carriers and airfields. The map, on the other hand, gives you a birds-eye view of the whole battlefield and allows you to command all the ships and airplanes in your arsenal. Eventually, you spend much more time in the map view than in any other view, simply because there's too much going on for you to play flyboy and try to dive bomb a Japanese cruiser. Switching between giving orders from the map and driving a vehicle is also somewhat difficult because unlike vehicles, the map screen is really best suited to mouse and keyboard.
Trying to fly a plane using the mouse and keyboard is not far off from the experience of playing QWOP, so you're stuck with three options. The first is to use a controller for everything, which is what I did for the first few missions. It works, but it doesn't work that well, and as your cognitive workload increases, the controls don't feel like they can keep up. The second is to swap between the controller and mouse/keyboard as necessary. For obvious reasons, that's pretty awkward. So your final option is just to abandon the pretense of trying to fly planes and steer boats, and spend all your time in the map. The time I mistakenly dropped a torpedo instead of aiming down the bombsights in my TBD Avenger was the last time I tried flying a plane in Battlestations Midway.
So: a unique blend of gameplay styles, but ultimately kind of awkward to play. I've played a bit of the followup, Battlestations: Pacific, and it seems like Eidos tried to take a more action-oriented approach in the sequel. We'll see if it works in the franchise's favour or not.
Getting through this! =) OP Post
8: Nights of Azure (PS4 / 4/11/16 // ~15hrs Normal End / ~22hrs True End)
(I'll edit the pic later :3)
-Action RPG
-The main story was kind of nice. Without spoiling, its a complicated love story between two girls as one of them is ordered to sacrifice herself to delay the end of the world. One of the main characters, Arnice, tries to do everything in her power to stop that from happening. There are multiple endings depending on how you answer questions throughout the game but you really want to go for the true ending. The character development of everyone beside Arnice leaves something to be desired. Even the other main character, Lily, is kind of boring the more you play the game.
-The gameplay itself is pretty simple, Action-RPG fare. Square for light attack, Triangle for Strong, Theres block, dodge, and special attacks in this game too. The main appeal is the servans. If you played Ni no Kuni, this game feels like a action version of that game. You get four of these helpers that help you in you battles. There are about 20ish different Servan and each one has a different ability and Burst attack (a special move specific to the Servan). Though, it feels like you dont even need them until late game. ---The game is pretty easy overall and the challenge doesnt really come until later. Thats not to say that it isnt satisfying to play, it flows well and stays smooth even when the screen is cluttered.
-I love this game. Nights of Azure is one of those games that isnt that great overall but its something that just makes me feel good while playing it. The graphics are really pretty and the OST to the game is amazing, really fitting to the game. For Gusts first attempt at a title like this, it was interesting. I would like to try a more difficult game by them if they ever decided to make another Action-RPG like this.
7/10
9: Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed (4/13/16 // ~9hrs // PSVita)
-Hack and slash / Dynasty Warriors-like
-Became a Neptunia fan over the past year or so, starting with the rebirth games by Idea Factory. Was curious about the game despite the less than favorable reviews. It was only $10 when I picked up it so there's wasn't much to be lost.
-This game is pretty wack though from many points of view. You don't really play Neptunia for the story but for the jabs and jokes at the gaming/anime industry. But the setup for this game is pretty much two journalists (from Famitsu and Dengeki :3) need the CPUs to do quests so they can write a story. Done. Dropped right into the game. Although there are a few scenes that are more in tune with the Neptunia series, it kinda just dragged on after a couple minutes.
-The gameplay is really generic, like REALLY generic. It's your standard 2-button hack and slash, one for jump and one for evade. There is no incentive for you to do other string except to entertain yourself, the enemies just die to whatever you throw at them. There is a transform mechanic as well, and this is where most of the fun is because the game becomes a little more fluid. In normal mode, outside of a couple characters, generic enemies feel really tanky and don't die after until many hits later. Outside of that, the difficulty in this game is almost non existant, just really time consuming due to how many enemies you have to defeat for a boss monster to show or to just to finish the quest.
-This game is ok though, for a Neptunia fan, they'll be able to squeeze a few hours of fun out of this game using their favorite CPU and the few Neptunia-esque scenes that don't drag out too long. It's a short game that has a few fun aspects to it.
5/10
10: Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (4/17/16 // ~35hrs // 3DS // Hard/Classic)
-SRPG
-Bought the special edition and was debating on which version to start off first. It was stated that Birthright was the easier of the two + for story reasons I decided to start this version first.
-If you like Awakening, it'll feel more at home. There are a lot of Challenge missions that pop up after a story mission and you can scout more of those if you want to grind exp and money. The story missions this time around are a little harder than Awakening, which was all I could ask for. Compiled with the fact that I opted out of grinding during the later half of the game, Birthright became a lot more fun for me. I do also like that there isn't that much focus on child units this time around. I wasn't a fan of the marriage system in Awakening but most of your stronger units came out of marrying your units. It feels like they toned it down a bit for Birthright so you don't have to marry off units if you don't want to but I'd recommend playing a couple of those missions as they do bring something different to the table.
-Bond system was w/e to me, it was funny to see all the Live2D reactions and might've been funnier if you could pet them but that's something for another day.
-Going to start Conquest after finishing up a few other games in the backlog but this is definitely a solid FE entry.
-8/10
8: Nights of Azure (PS4 / 4/11/16 // ~15hrs Normal End / ~22hrs True End)
(I'll edit the pic later :3)
-Action RPG
-The main story was kind of nice. Without spoiling, its a complicated love story between two girls as one of them is ordered to sacrifice herself to delay the end of the world. One of the main characters, Arnice, tries to do everything in her power to stop that from happening. There are multiple endings depending on how you answer questions throughout the game but you really want to go for the true ending. The character development of everyone beside Arnice leaves something to be desired. Even the other main character, Lily, is kind of boring the more you play the game.
-The gameplay itself is pretty simple, Action-RPG fare. Square for light attack, Triangle for Strong, Theres block, dodge, and special attacks in this game too. The main appeal is the servans. If you played Ni no Kuni, this game feels like a action version of that game. You get four of these helpers that help you in you battles. There are about 20ish different Servan and each one has a different ability and Burst attack (a special move specific to the Servan). Though, it feels like you dont even need them until late game. ---The game is pretty easy overall and the challenge doesnt really come until later. Thats not to say that it isnt satisfying to play, it flows well and stays smooth even when the screen is cluttered.
-I love this game. Nights of Azure is one of those games that isnt that great overall but its something that just makes me feel good while playing it. The graphics are really pretty and the OST to the game is amazing, really fitting to the game. For Gusts first attempt at a title like this, it was interesting. I would like to try a more difficult game by them if they ever decided to make another Action-RPG like this.
7/10
9: Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed (4/13/16 // ~9hrs // PSVita)
-Hack and slash / Dynasty Warriors-like
-Became a Neptunia fan over the past year or so, starting with the rebirth games by Idea Factory. Was curious about the game despite the less than favorable reviews. It was only $10 when I picked up it so there's wasn't much to be lost.
-This game is pretty wack though from many points of view. You don't really play Neptunia for the story but for the jabs and jokes at the gaming/anime industry. But the setup for this game is pretty much two journalists (from Famitsu and Dengeki :3) need the CPUs to do quests so they can write a story. Done. Dropped right into the game. Although there are a few scenes that are more in tune with the Neptunia series, it kinda just dragged on after a couple minutes.
-The gameplay is really generic, like REALLY generic. It's your standard 2-button hack and slash, one for jump and one for evade. There is no incentive for you to do other string except to entertain yourself, the enemies just die to whatever you throw at them. There is a transform mechanic as well, and this is where most of the fun is because the game becomes a little more fluid. In normal mode, outside of a couple characters, generic enemies feel really tanky and don't die after until many hits later. Outside of that, the difficulty in this game is almost non existant, just really time consuming due to how many enemies you have to defeat for a boss monster to show or to just to finish the quest.
-This game is ok though, for a Neptunia fan, they'll be able to squeeze a few hours of fun out of this game using their favorite CPU and the few Neptunia-esque scenes that don't drag out too long. It's a short game that has a few fun aspects to it.
5/10
10: Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (4/17/16 // ~35hrs // 3DS // Hard/Classic)
-SRPG
-Bought the special edition and was debating on which version to start off first. It was stated that Birthright was the easier of the two + for story reasons I decided to start this version first.
-If you like Awakening, it'll feel more at home. There are a lot of Challenge missions that pop up after a story mission and you can scout more of those if you want to grind exp and money. The story missions this time around are a little harder than Awakening, which was all I could ask for. Compiled with the fact that I opted out of grinding during the later half of the game, Birthright became a lot more fun for me. I do also like that there isn't that much focus on child units this time around. I wasn't a fan of the marriage system in Awakening but most of your stronger units came out of marrying your units. It feels like they toned it down a bit for Birthright so you don't have to marry off units if you don't want to but I'd recommend playing a couple of those missions as they do bring something different to the table.
-Bond system was w/e to me, it was funny to see all the Live2D reactions and might've been funnier if you could pet them but that's something for another day.
-Going to start Conquest after finishing up a few other games in the backlog but this is definitely a solid FE entry.
-8/10
A Link to the Past
Banned
Main post
Getting banned means that you have a bigger post to do
Game #66: Academy: Chess Puzzles (DS) - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
A decent chess puzzle game, though flawed in a lot of ways. I would say that one of its objective flaws is that it feels a bit cheap, both in its visual design and in its controls (moving the chess pieces feels a touch stiff). Beyond that however, and this might just be me commenting on the very nature of the idea as it relates to my tastes and playstyle, it comes off as too trial-and-errory. The very hardest puzzle in the game was solvable by experimenting a bit, so I never felt like the game was pushing me.
Game #67: Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale (3DS) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
Just to quickly get this out of the way, the game has a monster card battle component that's not the best. It's definitely serviceable, and there is some skill, but it definitely feels like an afterthought. But all that is fine because the rest of the game is excellent, it's all just very cute and neat and original. I don't want to give too much away about this game, so I won't go into specifics, but it's definitely got a child-like cuteness to it.
Game #68: Westerado: Double Barreled (PC) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Westerado is pretty fun, both as a detective game and as a shooter game. Your goal is to find the person that murdered your wife and burnt down your ranch, and you do so by talking to people, making deals, and sometimes threatening them, which will give you clues as to the identity of the killer, such as that they are fat, or that they wear a tall hat (these vary from game to game). I was initially going to give this a nine - the game had me fairly excited to uncover the mysteries and get the killer - but after beating it and trying it out again, I felt that the second playthrough was not dissimilar enough. I wouldn't say that it was too similar, but it definitely left me wanting.
Game #69: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★★
What an excellent game! I'd played it off-and-on before, but I never had the knack to really get any momentum. I'd either wind up losing troops or wind up losing countries too soon. I think that the furthest I ever got before was to the Elite Mutons (and a little bit beyond). After doing a little reading to get some early game tips, I started to do a lot better, and I was more able to optimize my progress. I really enjoy the strategy components, and the game made me want to do better at protecting my units (thanks in some part to the nicknames!). I would definitely recommend this to people who enjoy strategy games. I'm presently working on Enemy Within, and I think I'm doing a bad job because my countries fall behind very quickly, haha. I think it's because I rush to the gene and cybernetics stuff way too quickly instead of creating satellite coverage.
I would have had more games, but XCOM took a lot of my time, as did Paper Mario: Sticker Star (still in progress).
Getting banned means that you have a bigger post to do
Game #66: Academy: Chess Puzzles (DS) - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
A decent chess puzzle game, though flawed in a lot of ways. I would say that one of its objective flaws is that it feels a bit cheap, both in its visual design and in its controls (moving the chess pieces feels a touch stiff). Beyond that however, and this might just be me commenting on the very nature of the idea as it relates to my tastes and playstyle, it comes off as too trial-and-errory. The very hardest puzzle in the game was solvable by experimenting a bit, so I never felt like the game was pushing me.
Game #67: Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale (3DS) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
Just to quickly get this out of the way, the game has a monster card battle component that's not the best. It's definitely serviceable, and there is some skill, but it definitely feels like an afterthought. But all that is fine because the rest of the game is excellent, it's all just very cute and neat and original. I don't want to give too much away about this game, so I won't go into specifics, but it's definitely got a child-like cuteness to it.
Game #68: Westerado: Double Barreled (PC) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Westerado is pretty fun, both as a detective game and as a shooter game. Your goal is to find the person that murdered your wife and burnt down your ranch, and you do so by talking to people, making deals, and sometimes threatening them, which will give you clues as to the identity of the killer, such as that they are fat, or that they wear a tall hat (these vary from game to game). I was initially going to give this a nine - the game had me fairly excited to uncover the mysteries and get the killer - but after beating it and trying it out again, I felt that the second playthrough was not dissimilar enough. I wouldn't say that it was too similar, but it definitely left me wanting.
Game #69: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★★
What an excellent game! I'd played it off-and-on before, but I never had the knack to really get any momentum. I'd either wind up losing troops or wind up losing countries too soon. I think that the furthest I ever got before was to the Elite Mutons (and a little bit beyond). After doing a little reading to get some early game tips, I started to do a lot better, and I was more able to optimize my progress. I really enjoy the strategy components, and the game made me want to do better at protecting my units (thanks in some part to the nicknames!). I would definitely recommend this to people who enjoy strategy games. I'm presently working on Enemy Within, and I think I'm doing a bad job because my countries fall behind very quickly, haha. I think it's because I rush to the gene and cybernetics stuff way too quickly instead of creating satellite coverage.
I would have had more games, but XCOM took a lot of my time, as did Paper Mario: Sticker Star (still in progress).
[post=190933583]Main[/post]
18. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [PS4] - 7.5 hours.
I like this game because it has a couple of really great qualities. First, it features really nice writing and voice acting. The characters each have a relatability to them that made the cutscenes quite enjoyable, and the plot effectively establishes a world that feels detailed and exciting but not overly explained. The game starts and ends with the characters in focus, and I never felt like I was doing "video game levels" - every chapter seemed like the next step in a larger journey. It was like Indiana Jones meets Die Hard, I thought it was well done. The problem with this game, for me, is that the actual act of playing it wasn't incredibly fun. Maybe I am spoiled, but the combat system felt very superficial and quite wonky. Most of the guns felt cheap, and the endless firefights seemed to grant very little satisfaction. The level design did not grant many opportunities for flanking and outsmarting enemies, so I spent the vast majority of the game popping in and out from behind cover to rack up headshots with the pistol. Fortunately the game keeps up a brisk pace and varies up the action with vehicle chases and simple (albeit needed) platforming puzzles. I wish that Naughty Dog considered inserting some stealth elements into Drake's skillset, as he seems like it would've fit into his crafty persona. In spite of its weaknesses I can definitely say Uncharted is worth the brief time commitment it requires from the player, and I hope these characters get a more enticing game to support them in the sequel that I plan on playing soon.
18. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [PS4] - 7.5 hours.
I like this game because it has a couple of really great qualities. First, it features really nice writing and voice acting. The characters each have a relatability to them that made the cutscenes quite enjoyable, and the plot effectively establishes a world that feels detailed and exciting but not overly explained. The game starts and ends with the characters in focus, and I never felt like I was doing "video game levels" - every chapter seemed like the next step in a larger journey. It was like Indiana Jones meets Die Hard, I thought it was well done. The problem with this game, for me, is that the actual act of playing it wasn't incredibly fun. Maybe I am spoiled, but the combat system felt very superficial and quite wonky. Most of the guns felt cheap, and the endless firefights seemed to grant very little satisfaction. The level design did not grant many opportunities for flanking and outsmarting enemies, so I spent the vast majority of the game popping in and out from behind cover to rack up headshots with the pistol. Fortunately the game keeps up a brisk pace and varies up the action with vehicle chases and simple (albeit needed) platforming puzzles. I wish that Naughty Dog considered inserting some stealth elements into Drake's skillset, as he seems like it would've fit into his crafty persona. In spite of its weaknesses I can definitely say Uncharted is worth the brief time commitment it requires from the player, and I hope these characters get a more enticing game to support them in the sequel that I plan on playing soon.
Master Post
This is some really good shit. Too bad it ended just as it started to get really good. It ended on a cliffhanger at that. God damnit SWERY I need to know the things. SO MUCH INTRIGUE I'M SO PISS.
Really cute top down Zelda-esque game. Art direction is adorable and the game is rather funny. Most of the core game is based around its puzzles which can be challenging and sometimes vaguely execution intensive. Oh and hey when looking up the picture I found out they're making a second one and that looks like it's gonna be good, too.
---------------
Undertale is Undertale. Y'all know what it is at this point. I certainly didn't get as much out of it as others but I'd say it's worth a go through if you're still on the fence at this point.
Game 23: D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (PC) | 4 Hours | 04/17/2016 | 4/5
This is some really good shit. Too bad it ended just as it started to get really good. It ended on a cliffhanger at that. God damnit SWERY I need to know the things. SO MUCH INTRIGUE I'M SO PISS.
Game 24: Ittle Dew (PC) | 6 Hours | 04/19/2016 | 3.5/5
Really cute top down Zelda-esque game. Art direction is adorable and the game is rather funny. Most of the core game is based around its puzzles which can be challenging and sometimes vaguely execution intensive. Oh and hey when looking up the picture I found out they're making a second one and that looks like it's gonna be good, too.
---------------
Game 4: Undertale (PC) | 6 Hours | 01/05/16 | 3/5
Undertale is Undertale. Y'all know what it is at this point. I certainly didn't get as much out of it as others but I'd say it's worth a go through if you're still on the fence at this point.
chrominance
Member
Original post
31. LOUD on Planet X (PC, 2016) - 2:24
All songs completed on Normal difficulty.
Harmonix released a remake of the cult favourite Amplitude earlier this year, resurrecting a storied rhythm game franchise with modern graphics and a soundtrack culled from indie video game luminaries and a bunch of Harmonix originals. And while it's not necessarily fair to compare the two, it's still worth noting that Harmonix, the kings of video game music licensing, couldn't get Anamanaguchi to contribute a song to the game. Meanwhile, a Toronto startup game dev managed to get not one, but TWO songs off the latest Chvrches album.
Somehow, Pop Sandbox have secured one of the best setlists in a modern rhythm game. Besides Chvrches, there's tracks from HEALTH and Tegan & Sara, as well as Canadian indie stars like Purity Ring, Cadence Weapon and Fucked Up. Apparently, being a part of the Toronto indie game dev scene allows you to score connections to the music scene as well, because LOUD on Planet X even has contributions from Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene.
It's a shame, then, that the gameplay doesn't quite hold up its end of the bargain, especially on PC. LOUD on Planet X is a rhythm shooter that reminds me of Retro/Grade on the one hand, and Crypt of the Necrodancer on the other. Crypt of the Necrodancer isn't a shooter, but its emphasis on keeping the beat at all costs is the best comparison to make, rather than the mechanics of a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game. LOUD on Planet X wants you to be a perfect metronome, rather than learning a specific song and hitting all the notes in a sweet guitar solo or synth line. The difficulty, then, is not in timing, but in knowing which lanes to shoot on the beat. On the one hand, this lends the game a hypnotic quality when it clicks. On the other hand, it also means there's not much variation. Different tracks only change the tempo of the basic 4/4 beat, and otherwise play the same mechanically. Depending on what part of the setlist you're in, you'll encounter different enemy types with unique behaviors, but for the most part the strategy is the same: shoot them on the beat to kill them. If you want a shooter that maps to the songs in a more complex fashion, Retro/Grade is an easy recommendation that was criminally overlooked on release.
That's pretty much all there is to the game's mechanics, but it's also worth briefly mentioning how the game feels to play: not amazing. I constantly grappled with timing, unsure if the game's calibration was off or if I really wasn't hitting the beat properly despite everything I know telling me that I was. I'm not new to rhythm games, either, so I feel like I know how to keep a 4/4 beat. Even some basic audio feedback for when you fire a weapon could have helped diagnose this issue. It also would've made the game feel weightier. As it is, the act of blasting aliens to bits doesn't feel particularly satisfying or visceral. Perhaps this was done to put the focus on the songs themselves, rather than clutter the soundscape with laser blasts and explosions, but surely there's a happy medium between the two extremes. This isn't it.
Without playing the game on the other platforms it's hard to know for sure, but the PC version of LOUD on Planet X seems very much like an afterthought. The default control scheme is to use the mouse, but it feels like Pop Sandbox took a game suited for touch controls and find/replaced every mention of "tap" with "click." You click on a lane to fire its weapon, hold on a lane to repair weapons, click and drag on a lane to use a special item, and click the LOUD button to clear the board with a bomb (complete with stylish artist cut-in). Using the mouse never quite feels comfortable, and it's easy to imagine the Android and iOS versions playing better. The click-drag action in particular screams "I was originally designed for a touchscreen" and is awkward to execute in practice.
There's also a PS4 version (and a Vita version in the works, apparently held back by a Unity bug), so you'd think the controller would be an option as well. It is, but the PC version has no official support. That means there's no tutorial explaining the controls and no screen in game to see what the buttons do. The game launcher has a baffling input configuration screen that I'm not even sure does anything, and I don't recommend you touch it. Through trial and error, I did eventually figure out how all the controls mapped to the controller, and the game is much more fun that way. It's still incredibly unfortunate that there's no official support, and if you have a PS4 I would strongly recommend you consider that version instead.
At the end of the day, the game is eight bucks, which is pretty cheap considering the setlist. The gameplay could use work, but it's competent enough. I'm happy to have LOUD on Planet X just for the novelty of owning a rhythm game with Chvrches and Purity Ring in it, proving that popular indie artists can and do have a place in video games (looking at you, Rock Band).
31. LOUD on Planet X (PC, 2016) - 2:24
All songs completed on Normal difficulty.
Harmonix released a remake of the cult favourite Amplitude earlier this year, resurrecting a storied rhythm game franchise with modern graphics and a soundtrack culled from indie video game luminaries and a bunch of Harmonix originals. And while it's not necessarily fair to compare the two, it's still worth noting that Harmonix, the kings of video game music licensing, couldn't get Anamanaguchi to contribute a song to the game. Meanwhile, a Toronto startup game dev managed to get not one, but TWO songs off the latest Chvrches album.
Somehow, Pop Sandbox have secured one of the best setlists in a modern rhythm game. Besides Chvrches, there's tracks from HEALTH and Tegan & Sara, as well as Canadian indie stars like Purity Ring, Cadence Weapon and Fucked Up. Apparently, being a part of the Toronto indie game dev scene allows you to score connections to the music scene as well, because LOUD on Planet X even has contributions from Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene.
It's a shame, then, that the gameplay doesn't quite hold up its end of the bargain, especially on PC. LOUD on Planet X is a rhythm shooter that reminds me of Retro/Grade on the one hand, and Crypt of the Necrodancer on the other. Crypt of the Necrodancer isn't a shooter, but its emphasis on keeping the beat at all costs is the best comparison to make, rather than the mechanics of a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game. LOUD on Planet X wants you to be a perfect metronome, rather than learning a specific song and hitting all the notes in a sweet guitar solo or synth line. The difficulty, then, is not in timing, but in knowing which lanes to shoot on the beat. On the one hand, this lends the game a hypnotic quality when it clicks. On the other hand, it also means there's not much variation. Different tracks only change the tempo of the basic 4/4 beat, and otherwise play the same mechanically. Depending on what part of the setlist you're in, you'll encounter different enemy types with unique behaviors, but for the most part the strategy is the same: shoot them on the beat to kill them. If you want a shooter that maps to the songs in a more complex fashion, Retro/Grade is an easy recommendation that was criminally overlooked on release.
That's pretty much all there is to the game's mechanics, but it's also worth briefly mentioning how the game feels to play: not amazing. I constantly grappled with timing, unsure if the game's calibration was off or if I really wasn't hitting the beat properly despite everything I know telling me that I was. I'm not new to rhythm games, either, so I feel like I know how to keep a 4/4 beat. Even some basic audio feedback for when you fire a weapon could have helped diagnose this issue. It also would've made the game feel weightier. As it is, the act of blasting aliens to bits doesn't feel particularly satisfying or visceral. Perhaps this was done to put the focus on the songs themselves, rather than clutter the soundscape with laser blasts and explosions, but surely there's a happy medium between the two extremes. This isn't it.
Without playing the game on the other platforms it's hard to know for sure, but the PC version of LOUD on Planet X seems very much like an afterthought. The default control scheme is to use the mouse, but it feels like Pop Sandbox took a game suited for touch controls and find/replaced every mention of "tap" with "click." You click on a lane to fire its weapon, hold on a lane to repair weapons, click and drag on a lane to use a special item, and click the LOUD button to clear the board with a bomb (complete with stylish artist cut-in). Using the mouse never quite feels comfortable, and it's easy to imagine the Android and iOS versions playing better. The click-drag action in particular screams "I was originally designed for a touchscreen" and is awkward to execute in practice.
There's also a PS4 version (and a Vita version in the works, apparently held back by a Unity bug), so you'd think the controller would be an option as well. It is, but the PC version has no official support. That means there's no tutorial explaining the controls and no screen in game to see what the buttons do. The game launcher has a baffling input configuration screen that I'm not even sure does anything, and I don't recommend you touch it. Through trial and error, I did eventually figure out how all the controls mapped to the controller, and the game is much more fun that way. It's still incredibly unfortunate that there's no official support, and if you have a PS4 I would strongly recommend you consider that version instead.
At the end of the day, the game is eight bucks, which is pretty cheap considering the setlist. The gameplay could use work, but it's competent enough. I'm happy to have LOUD on Planet X just for the novelty of owning a rhythm game with Chvrches and Purity Ring in it, proving that popular indie artists can and do have a place in video games (looking at you, Rock Band).
rottendevice
Member
Main Post
Game 9: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (12 hours)
Well, so much for playing only Steam games. This is either my second or third time beating Circle of the Moon. It is a really good game and I am not tired of it yet. If I have one complaint, it's that I had to do a lot of grinding to beat the game. But the grinding never felt like a chore. This is the sequel to what many consider one of the greatest games ever made. Five stars from me.
5/5
Game 9: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (12 hours)
Well, so much for playing only Steam games. This is either my second or third time beating Circle of the Moon. It is a really good game and I am not tired of it yet. If I have one complaint, it's that I had to do a lot of grinding to beat the game. But the grinding never felt like a chore. This is the sequel to what many consider one of the greatest games ever made. Five stars from me.
5/5
Got through Final Fantasy VII in about 13:40!
In today's ya never know until ya try it... ya can skip the Shinra Mansion. Dun even gotta go see Sephiroth or do nothin' in Nibeilheim 'cept run straight on through to the mountains! This game keeps on giving!
Games Beaten: 21 / 52
Total Playtime: 447:45:12
01 - ??
Realplumpbox85
Member
OT
Next on the list is Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours. This was a fun game. It has a shit load of stages and alternate paths that give it a lot of replability. Overall it is a weaker one in the series. The enemy type is good but I was not a fan of the boss battles that much. Some seemed good while others....well just meh/ easy. I still think it is worth the asking price due to all the replability but that's just my opinion.
Number 22 was Mario Kart 8. I skipped it on the Wii but since this came free with my Wii U and all the positive talk about it I figured what the hey, I'll try it out. Damn is this one fun. Nintendo did a fantastic job with the track design/ style. Also I really love the graphics. Didn't know that the Wii U was capable of this!! So much multiplayer fun to be had I can not wait!!.
Next on the list is Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours. This was a fun game. It has a shit load of stages and alternate paths that give it a lot of replability. Overall it is a weaker one in the series. The enemy type is good but I was not a fan of the boss battles that much. Some seemed good while others....well just meh/ easy. I still think it is worth the asking price due to all the replability but that's just my opinion.
Number 22 was Mario Kart 8. I skipped it on the Wii but since this came free with my Wii U and all the positive talk about it I figured what the hey, I'll try it out. Damn is this one fun. Nintendo did a fantastic job with the track design/ style. Also I really love the graphics. Didn't know that the Wii U was capable of this!! So much multiplayer fun to be had I can not wait!!.
A Link to the Past
Banned
Main post
Goat/Zombie Double Pack
Game #70: Left 4 Dead 2 (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
I bought Left 4 Dead 2 back around launch, but unfortunately, my laptop was simply not beefy enough for it (though it could handle Left 4 Dead 1 quite well). Thus, I never played it until very recently, and I've been going through the campaigns. Overall, I found the new stuff neat and interesting, I enjoyed the visual improvements, and I liked the new characters a lot. It's about as good a game as the first game (if not better). On the other hand, it falls behind in a few areas for me...
1. First off, time and distance from Left 4 Dead had me feeling less enjoyment from it. Compare it to Left 4 Dead, where it's easily my most-played multi-player game by a HUGE margin. I guess maybe it eventually worn off on me, which is a little sad.
2. While I enjoy the interesting areas - it certainly delves into more unique concepts (ie where L4D1 had a hospital, L4D2 has a carnival) - in terms of playing the levels, I did not have quite the enjoyment as I did in the first game.
3. For me, L4D2 was not quite enough of a substantive improvement for a sequel, and feels like it would have been a much better DLC pack/expansion for L4D1.
Game #00: Goat Simulator (PC) - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
This is gonna be quick. I paid money for this, I played it for exactly as much time before I decided that it lacked value. My total playtime was 7 minutes.
...Okay, to elaborate, I don't think it's bad for what it is, but I simply did not find any enjoyment. I even tried, but I could not do so much as crack a smile. Perhaps it's only fun to show to people who have never heard of it. Thus far, I've only listed four games to which I've not reached the ending:
1. This
2. Please, Don't Touch Anything, which eventually got too tedious to finish
3. Donkey Kong Land, which sucks
4. The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, which eventually proved too painful for my wrist to cope
Game #71: Escape Goat (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
Oh look, an excellent goat-themed game! And VERY excellent, it's really, really good. Super competent puzzle-platformer, and every level seemed to (usually) have a "oh shit, I'm SO SMART" moment, which every puzzle game needs. I don't even get that mad when I fuck up, because I'm looking forward to the discovery. The challenge was never through frustration, only the barrier of "I don't get it" that you eventually obliterate. It could have been a little bit longer, but it's super rad nonetheless.
Game #72: Organ Trail: Director's Cut (PC) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
As the name implies, it's a zombie-themed survival game parodying Oregon Trail (it is VERY much a parody, both in concept and gameplay). Your enjoyment of this game will generally depend on your ability to enjoy Oregon Trail, but you may also enjoy it if you enjoy zombie media. The Director's Cut introduces an easy mode, which is fairly easy if you know what you're doing (also you can be a girl, ooo). Personally, while I enjoyed myself, I'll probably never play this again, just because I'm not super into the gameplay of either Trail. Plus, one time a bandit came and kidnapped one of my people. I figured I would be given the choice of bartering for his life or shooting, but I went into a close-up fight, missed the shot, and he died. Right afterward I made the observation that the designer doesn't really understand what bandits are, haha! Reminds me of how Heavy Rain feels very foreign, and why so many things seem weirdly non-American.
Excellent taste!
Goat/Zombie Double Pack
Game #70: Left 4 Dead 2 (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
I bought Left 4 Dead 2 back around launch, but unfortunately, my laptop was simply not beefy enough for it (though it could handle Left 4 Dead 1 quite well). Thus, I never played it until very recently, and I've been going through the campaigns. Overall, I found the new stuff neat and interesting, I enjoyed the visual improvements, and I liked the new characters a lot. It's about as good a game as the first game (if not better). On the other hand, it falls behind in a few areas for me...
1. First off, time and distance from Left 4 Dead had me feeling less enjoyment from it. Compare it to Left 4 Dead, where it's easily my most-played multi-player game by a HUGE margin. I guess maybe it eventually worn off on me, which is a little sad.
2. While I enjoy the interesting areas - it certainly delves into more unique concepts (ie where L4D1 had a hospital, L4D2 has a carnival) - in terms of playing the levels, I did not have quite the enjoyment as I did in the first game.
3. For me, L4D2 was not quite enough of a substantive improvement for a sequel, and feels like it would have been a much better DLC pack/expansion for L4D1.
Game #00: Goat Simulator (PC) - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
This is gonna be quick. I paid money for this, I played it for exactly as much time before I decided that it lacked value. My total playtime was 7 minutes.
...Okay, to elaborate, I don't think it's bad for what it is, but I simply did not find any enjoyment. I even tried, but I could not do so much as crack a smile. Perhaps it's only fun to show to people who have never heard of it. Thus far, I've only listed four games to which I've not reached the ending:
1. This
2. Please, Don't Touch Anything, which eventually got too tedious to finish
3. Donkey Kong Land, which sucks
4. The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, which eventually proved too painful for my wrist to cope
Game #71: Escape Goat (PC) - ★★★★★★★★★☆
Oh look, an excellent goat-themed game! And VERY excellent, it's really, really good. Super competent puzzle-platformer, and every level seemed to (usually) have a "oh shit, I'm SO SMART" moment, which every puzzle game needs. I don't even get that mad when I fuck up, because I'm looking forward to the discovery. The challenge was never through frustration, only the barrier of "I don't get it" that you eventually obliterate. It could have been a little bit longer, but it's super rad nonetheless.
Game #72: Organ Trail: Director's Cut (PC) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
As the name implies, it's a zombie-themed survival game parodying Oregon Trail (it is VERY much a parody, both in concept and gameplay). Your enjoyment of this game will generally depend on your ability to enjoy Oregon Trail, but you may also enjoy it if you enjoy zombie media. The Director's Cut introduces an easy mode, which is fairly easy if you know what you're doing (also you can be a girl, ooo). Personally, while I enjoyed myself, I'll probably never play this again, just because I'm not super into the gameplay of either Trail. Plus, one time a bandit came and kidnapped one of my people. I figured I would be given the choice of bartering for his life or shooting, but I went into a close-up fight, missed the shot, and he died. Right afterward I made the observation that the designer doesn't really understand what bandits are, haha! Reminds me of how Heavy Rain feels very foreign, and why so many things seem weirdly non-American.
Excellent taste!
Herbshire
Member
Here we go.
Finished
1. Walking Dead - Season One : Xbox One (15 hours)
# I'm a big Walking Dead and to get the chance to play through a new story was cool. At first the story was kind of slow but as you get into the later episodes it really starts getting good. Art style really fits well
2. Walking Dead - Season Two : Xbox One (8.5 hours)
# I immediately started Season Two as I was addicted, story once again was on point, technically there were some issues with Season Two - strange freezes every now and then - lasting for 2 - 5 seconds.
3. Quantum Break : Xbox One (13h)
# Really enjoyed QB, unfortunately I felt like I was just _really_ getting into it when it suddenly finished. Graphics wise it's a beautiful game, if this is what people can do in 720p then it's fine by me!! I was going to start another play through right away but I might hold off now and give it a little chance to breathe. TV show episodes were interesting and I enjoyed the mixture of game / cutscenes / tv shows. Highly recommended.
Currently Playing
1. Yakuza 4 : PS3
2. Deadpool : Xbox One
3. The Witcher 3 : Xbox One
Next
1. Uncharted Collection : PS4
2. FarCry 4 : Xbox One
2. FarCry Primal : Xbox One
3. Batman Arkham Knight : Xbox One
4. Mad Max : Xbox One
5. Star Ocean - The Last Hope : Xbox 360
6. Legend of Legacy : 3DS
7. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky : PS Vita
8. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter : PS Vita
9. The Legend of Heroes: Cold Steel : PS Vita
10. Persona 4 : PS Vita
11. Dark Souls : PC
12. Dark Souls 2 - PC
13. Dragons Dogma : PC
14. Skyrim : PC
15. SteamWorld Heist : 3DS
16. Yakuza Dead Souls : PS3
17. Yakuza 5
... More to come...
Finished
1. Walking Dead - Season One : Xbox One (15 hours)
# I'm a big Walking Dead and to get the chance to play through a new story was cool. At first the story was kind of slow but as you get into the later episodes it really starts getting good. Art style really fits well
2. Walking Dead - Season Two : Xbox One (8.5 hours)
# I immediately started Season Two as I was addicted, story once again was on point, technically there were some issues with Season Two - strange freezes every now and then - lasting for 2 - 5 seconds.
3. Quantum Break : Xbox One (13h)
# Really enjoyed QB, unfortunately I felt like I was just _really_ getting into it when it suddenly finished. Graphics wise it's a beautiful game, if this is what people can do in 720p then it's fine by me!! I was going to start another play through right away but I might hold off now and give it a little chance to breathe. TV show episodes were interesting and I enjoyed the mixture of game / cutscenes / tv shows. Highly recommended.
Currently Playing
1. Yakuza 4 : PS3
2. Deadpool : Xbox One
3. The Witcher 3 : Xbox One
Next
1. Uncharted Collection : PS4
2. FarCry 4 : Xbox One
2. FarCry Primal : Xbox One
3. Batman Arkham Knight : Xbox One
4. Mad Max : Xbox One
5. Star Ocean - The Last Hope : Xbox 360
6. Legend of Legacy : 3DS
7. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky : PS Vita
8. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter : PS Vita
9. The Legend of Heroes: Cold Steel : PS Vita
10. Persona 4 : PS Vita
11. Dark Souls : PC
12. Dark Souls 2 - PC
13. Dragons Dogma : PC
14. Skyrim : PC
15. SteamWorld Heist : 3DS
16. Yakuza Dead Souls : PS3
17. Yakuza 5
... More to come...
The List!
Detailed Impressions 01-12
Detailed Impressions 13-xx
20. NOT A HERO - 4.5 Hours
This indie side-scroller has you traversing all manner of large multi-floor urban buildings with a singular purpose: taking a bite out of crime. You play the hired hand of a giant rabbit running for political office and spend 21 levels blowing up and killing gangs, crime lords, weed growing operations and everything in between to boost the rabbit's favorability rating. The game is fast-paced and mechanically simple, taking inspiration from Hotline Miami. Death is aplenty here, with the game having a large focus on trial-and-error, instant-restart gameplay. The main problem with NOT A HERO arises from an over-reliance on memorizing levels and enemy placement. You see, when reloading, you are forced to cease all movement and leave yourself wide open, often times leading to a sword-carrying enemy closing in and instantly killing you. Not being able to move while reloading feels artificially limiting and leads to playing overly cautious, never sure when you might get unfairly caught with your pants down. Where Hotline Miami rewards improvisation, NOT A HERO almost condemns it, particularly in the later levels where the amount, combination, and speed of enemies will require an almost predetermined plan of attack. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but to me it feels restrictive. Difficulty is kind of all over the place. The game spends the first third of its length being disappointingly easy and the last third being the wrong kind of difficult, and the difference is staggering. There's something for everyone here and conversely, something for everyone to find too hard or too easy. The game incorporates an entirely optional challenge system for each level with 3 sub-goals to complete. Some are easy, some are brutally difficult. What I don't understand is why they couldn't have kept all the really difficult bits gated behind the optional challenges, rather than making the final levels themselves innately frustratingly difficult. I enjoy hard, challenging games, but NOT A HERO's final stretch felt too cheap to be rewarding and leaves a bitter aftertaste on what is otherwise a competent and fun game.
Detailed Impressions 01-12
Detailed Impressions 13-xx
20. NOT A HERO - 4.5 Hours
This indie side-scroller has you traversing all manner of large multi-floor urban buildings with a singular purpose: taking a bite out of crime. You play the hired hand of a giant rabbit running for political office and spend 21 levels blowing up and killing gangs, crime lords, weed growing operations and everything in between to boost the rabbit's favorability rating. The game is fast-paced and mechanically simple, taking inspiration from Hotline Miami. Death is aplenty here, with the game having a large focus on trial-and-error, instant-restart gameplay. The main problem with NOT A HERO arises from an over-reliance on memorizing levels and enemy placement. You see, when reloading, you are forced to cease all movement and leave yourself wide open, often times leading to a sword-carrying enemy closing in and instantly killing you. Not being able to move while reloading feels artificially limiting and leads to playing overly cautious, never sure when you might get unfairly caught with your pants down. Where Hotline Miami rewards improvisation, NOT A HERO almost condemns it, particularly in the later levels where the amount, combination, and speed of enemies will require an almost predetermined plan of attack. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but to me it feels restrictive. Difficulty is kind of all over the place. The game spends the first third of its length being disappointingly easy and the last third being the wrong kind of difficult, and the difference is staggering. There's something for everyone here and conversely, something for everyone to find too hard or too easy. The game incorporates an entirely optional challenge system for each level with 3 sub-goals to complete. Some are easy, some are brutally difficult. What I don't understand is why they couldn't have kept all the really difficult bits gated behind the optional challenges, rather than making the final levels themselves innately frustratingly difficult. I enjoy hard, challenging games, but NOT A HERO's final stretch felt too cheap to be rewarding and leaves a bitter aftertaste on what is otherwise a competent and fun game.
Main Post
GAME #7: Lego Dimensions - Aperture Science - 28/03/2016 - [PS4]
I was not sure whether to include the Lego Dimensions level packs as separate games or not but between the actual level content and the hub worlds, I've probably played stand alone stuff that is shorter, so did. All I can say is that the Portal 2 pack is well worth the money. You get the Chell minifigure and the turret / companion cube builds and it opens up probably the most fun expansion in the game. It really feels like Portal, if that makes sense, and I would love it if they released an entire game around the concept.
GAME #8: Lego Dimensions - Ghostbusters! - 04/04/2016 - [PS4]
Another fantastic level pack. These guys really know how to use the source IP combined with Lego.
GAME #9: Pokemon Blue Version - 06/04/2016 - [GB via 3DS Virtual Console]
After finishing Yellow and being slightly disappointed with how it did not fit my childhood memory, I went and got Blue for another play through. Despite being black and white, I was a lot more comfortable with the sprites and I blasted through the game. These games are still so well designed and tightly paced that, even with all the flaws, they are an absolute joy to play through.
GAME #10: Hyrule Warriors Legends - 20/04/2016 - [3DS]
I played the original Wii U game to completion and dabbled in the Adventure maps but I did not get hooked like some, though my inner Zelda fan is strong. Despite the lower visual fidelity and the reduced special effects, enemy count etc, I enjoyed my time with Legends more but still not enough to really pull me in. Certain QOL improvements massively benefit the game, though, such as instant character switching and warp points on some of the maps (though I'm not sure if the Wii U game was ever updated with these).
In Rotation
Lego Dimensions [PS4]
GAME #7: Lego Dimensions - Aperture Science - 28/03/2016 - [PS4]
I was not sure whether to include the Lego Dimensions level packs as separate games or not but between the actual level content and the hub worlds, I've probably played stand alone stuff that is shorter, so did. All I can say is that the Portal 2 pack is well worth the money. You get the Chell minifigure and the turret / companion cube builds and it opens up probably the most fun expansion in the game. It really feels like Portal, if that makes sense, and I would love it if they released an entire game around the concept.
GAME #8: Lego Dimensions - Ghostbusters! - 04/04/2016 - [PS4]
Another fantastic level pack. These guys really know how to use the source IP combined with Lego.
GAME #9: Pokemon Blue Version - 06/04/2016 - [GB via 3DS Virtual Console]
After finishing Yellow and being slightly disappointed with how it did not fit my childhood memory, I went and got Blue for another play through. Despite being black and white, I was a lot more comfortable with the sprites and I blasted through the game. These games are still so well designed and tightly paced that, even with all the flaws, they are an absolute joy to play through.
GAME #10: Hyrule Warriors Legends - 20/04/2016 - [3DS]
I played the original Wii U game to completion and dabbled in the Adventure maps but I did not get hooked like some, though my inner Zelda fan is strong. Despite the lower visual fidelity and the reduced special effects, enemy count etc, I enjoyed my time with Legends more but still not enough to really pull me in. Certain QOL improvements massively benefit the game, though, such as instant character switching and warp points on some of the maps (though I'm not sure if the Wii U game was ever updated with these).
In Rotation
Lego Dimensions [PS4]
Game #18 - Mad Max
Time: 43 hours
When I took some time off work I saw myself playing Dark Souls 3 for 50 hours or so (which I did), I did not however see me play Mad MAx of all games for over 40 hours. And you know what? Its great. Its a super well made videogame. Looks beautiful, runs amazing (never dropped from 60 even on those ridiculous storms, except when it autoaved...Dark Souls 3 had the same problem, stupid auto saves. Might be my HDD tho), gameplay is fun and both the driving and the fighting feel great, really impactful. Sound design is amazing (barely any music but alot of music and sound cues very much like a movie), everything sounds super nasty from the engines to the impact sounds (I never got tired of kicking down a door to open it, so satisfying), story is ok-ish with some colorful characters (Chumbucket best new character of 2016) and a great ending (something games usually fail at as we know), just a overall very well made, very satisfying package.
If you are not into the whole side stuff collectathon, you can still get a meaty 8 hours or so I'd imagine for the main story only. One of the easiest recomendations in ages, especially at the prices it usually goes for.
Game #19 - Street Fighter V
Time: 52 hours (for now)
Was going to add this at the end of the year as my 51s game (with Marvel Heroes being the 52nd, both games I play on and off throughout the year and dont really end) but I might aswell do it now because I havent playe dit in a couple of months and I wont be back any time soon probably. Ill play more eventually, probably with the june update, or when all the season pass characters are out, but for now I feel ok about putting it in since ive done most of what you can do atm anyway. Anyway, amazing core game with great graphics and almost perfect gameplay marred by all the launch issues we all know about and that still persist. Its an amazing game wrapped in a awful package. Its really a shame.
OP here
Master Post
2 hours is what it took to complete the story mode, but the main draw here is clearly the multiplayer. The game is a 2D plaformer racing game where the objective is to maintain a lead over other players until they are far enough off-screen to be eliminated. The game plays great and the items, with how they're balanced, adds depth to the game without being a Mario Kart end all be all situation. The games biggest problem is that it doesn't have much content. Beyond the aforementioned two hour story mode, a level editor and online mulitplayer, it has nothing beyond that. Ideally, it'll continue to be supported and new stuff will be added, but until then, it's worth it on a sale.
Weird absurdist RPG. NPC's speak in tongues and the plot and writing has barely any sense of coherency. Art direction is on point, especially with battle animations with its clay-inspired art style. RPG mechanics are pretty good, too. Check it out if you thinks it looks cool.
---------------
Pony Island is a big 4th wall breaking game that does some fun thing with its premise. The puzzle sequences are good and the 2D segments are alright enough. Worth a go for the right price/
Game 25: Speedrunners (PC) | 2+ Hours | 04/20/2016 | 3/5
2 hours is what it took to complete the story mode, but the main draw here is clearly the multiplayer. The game is a 2D plaformer racing game where the objective is to maintain a lead over other players until they are far enough off-screen to be eliminated. The game plays great and the items, with how they're balanced, adds depth to the game without being a Mario Kart end all be all situation. The games biggest problem is that it doesn't have much content. Beyond the aforementioned two hour story mode, a level editor and online mulitplayer, it has nothing beyond that. Ideally, it'll continue to be supported and new stuff will be added, but until then, it's worth it on a sale.
Game 26: Hylics (PC) | 3 Hours | 04/21/2016 | 3.5/5
Weird absurdist RPG. NPC's speak in tongues and the plot and writing has barely any sense of coherency. Art direction is on point, especially with battle animations with its clay-inspired art style. RPG mechanics are pretty good, too. Check it out if you thinks it looks cool.
---------------
Game 6: Pony Island (PC) | 2 Hours | 01/11/16 | 3/5
Pony Island is a big 4th wall breaking game that does some fun thing with its premise. The puzzle sequences are good and the 2D segments are alright enough. Worth a go for the right price/
chrominance
Member
Original post
32. Ratchet & Clank (PS4, 2016) - 12:16
Completed the campaign on Normal difficulty.
The release of a Ratchet & Clank game isn't a big event to me, and I'm usually not so excited that I have to play them day one. This is despite the fact that every Ratchet & Clank game I've ever played has been great (though I've dodged most of the poorly received ones). I still haven't played Into the Nexus or any of the PS2 games (or their HD remakes). And yet, Tools of Destruction was a fantastic introduction to the PS3 for me, and A Crack in Time was so good I wondered why I waited a year before I finally pulled it off my shelf to play it.
After some years off in the wilderness, Ratchet & Clank are back with a new game that's supposed to serve as an introduction of sorts: it's actually a tie-in with a movie re-telling the events of the original Ratchet & Clank from over a decade ago. Aside from some very nice looking (though somewhat disjointed) cutscenes that will likely show up again in the movie, you can't really tell that this is supposed to be a game attached to a movie. Ratchet & Clank easily stands on its own, and good thing too, since the movie isn't even out for another week.
The game is basically a greatest hits package done up in PS4 graphics to great effect. Rail grinding, jetpacks, ship-to-ship combat, and a ridiculous arsenal of upgradable weapons--it's all here, and it all looks amazing. It's perhaps not as big as A Crack in Time or Tools of Destruction were, but the game doesn't suffer for it. There are no tiny planet minigames to distract, or dumb Sixaxis-driven pirate dancing minigames to annoy. Ratchet & Clank 2016 is pretty much all killer, no filler. Definitely recommended.
32. Ratchet & Clank (PS4, 2016) - 12:16
Completed the campaign on Normal difficulty.
The release of a Ratchet & Clank game isn't a big event to me, and I'm usually not so excited that I have to play them day one. This is despite the fact that every Ratchet & Clank game I've ever played has been great (though I've dodged most of the poorly received ones). I still haven't played Into the Nexus or any of the PS2 games (or their HD remakes). And yet, Tools of Destruction was a fantastic introduction to the PS3 for me, and A Crack in Time was so good I wondered why I waited a year before I finally pulled it off my shelf to play it.
After some years off in the wilderness, Ratchet & Clank are back with a new game that's supposed to serve as an introduction of sorts: it's actually a tie-in with a movie re-telling the events of the original Ratchet & Clank from over a decade ago. Aside from some very nice looking (though somewhat disjointed) cutscenes that will likely show up again in the movie, you can't really tell that this is supposed to be a game attached to a movie. Ratchet & Clank easily stands on its own, and good thing too, since the movie isn't even out for another week.
The game is basically a greatest hits package done up in PS4 graphics to great effect. Rail grinding, jetpacks, ship-to-ship combat, and a ridiculous arsenal of upgradable weapons--it's all here, and it all looks amazing. It's perhaps not as big as A Crack in Time or Tools of Destruction were, but the game doesn't suffer for it. There are no tiny planet minigames to distract, or dumb Sixaxis-driven pirate dancing minigames to annoy. Ratchet & Clank 2016 is pretty much all killer, no filler. Definitely recommended.
Main post
10. Dark Souls III
★★★★★ - 26.5 hours - Completed 4/21/2016
Dark Souls III tops the original Dark Souls for me by offering more polished combat, a greater selection of weapons and armor, and my favorite enemy and boss designs in the series. And whereas the later areas and bosses of DS1 disappointed me, DS3 managed to maintain quality throughout. Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, with its amazing art direction (what a breathtaking vista upon entering) and one of the game's best boss fights, is one of the most memorable levels I've experienced in all of video games.
10. Dark Souls III
★★★★★ - 26.5 hours - Completed 4/21/2016
Dark Souls III tops the original Dark Souls for me by offering more polished combat, a greater selection of weapons and armor, and my favorite enemy and boss designs in the series. And whereas the later areas and bosses of DS1 disappointed me, DS3 managed to maintain quality throughout. Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, with its amazing art direction (what a breathtaking vista upon entering) and one of the game's best boss fights, is one of the most memorable levels I've experienced in all of video games.
Original Post
Objectively, the best Dark Souls in my opinion. The least bloated entry in the franchise, probably thanks to the experience on the most streamlined Souls game, Bloodborne. Whilst my favourite game will always be Dark Souls 1, this is an incredible effort.
Pros
Gameplay - Can't really talk about a Souls game without this. Refined to near-perfection.
Art Design - From characters to environments, FROM are the best in the business when it comes to Dark Fantasy worlds.
Difficulty curve - The lack of difficulty spikes allows this game to be the most accessible and least frustrating without losing what makes the Souls games great.
Consistency - Souls games are known for dropping off in the last act but it's a worthy argument to say this game gets better and better as it goes on.
Cons
Performance - Some input lag and some technical hiccups, it's not fair to not mention them.
Lack of build variety - I feel like the game requires you to build a certain character whereas the first Dark Souls excelled in having a wide build variety compatible with the game.
9.5/10
Pros
Music - One of, if not the best part of this game is the music. Varied and exotic.
Gameplay - Fun shooting, excels when you have several drones and power ups.
Art Design - All the worlds are distinctive and the enemies all look great.
Cons
Limited in play-style - I don't feel the need to play as anyone besides Commando except to make the game exceptionally hard unless I'm a co-opping with a friend.
Limited replay value - I might be wrong here but I just don't feel a drive to play through the entire game again when there's no reward or change?
8/10
Ratchet & Clank cement themselves as one of the best PS Mascots ever, illustrating that there is still a need for colourful shooter/platformers in modern gaming.
Pros
Graphics - Beautiful. Not pixar-esque but enjoyable and colourful.
Gameplay - Probably the best playing Ratchet & Clank ever, so much variety in the guns and flipping over lasers and bullets never gets old.
Replay value - There's certainly some here with weapon upgrades, challenge modes and some fun trophies etc.
Cons
Story - It's much weaker than the original Ratchet & Clank and sort of bad overall. Doesn't get me invested in any characters and it feels like there should be more clips of the film to fill in gaps.
Cheap - There's some weird moments that feel sort of cheap. Lack of animation, gaps between story cutscenes or any beats whatsoever.
Length/Depth - A few worlds got the chop in favour for much weaker ones and the planets feel a little bite-size. It feels closer to those DLC Ratchets rather than one of the proper ones.
8.5/10
Objectively, the best Dark Souls in my opinion. The least bloated entry in the franchise, probably thanks to the experience on the most streamlined Souls game, Bloodborne. Whilst my favourite game will always be Dark Souls 1, this is an incredible effort.
Pros
Gameplay - Can't really talk about a Souls game without this. Refined to near-perfection.
Art Design - From characters to environments, FROM are the best in the business when it comes to Dark Fantasy worlds.
Difficulty curve - The lack of difficulty spikes allows this game to be the most accessible and least frustrating without losing what makes the Souls games great.
Consistency - Souls games are known for dropping off in the last act but it's a worthy argument to say this game gets better and better as it goes on.
Cons
Performance - Some input lag and some technical hiccups, it's not fair to not mention them.
Lack of build variety - I feel like the game requires you to build a certain character whereas the first Dark Souls excelled in having a wide build variety compatible with the game.
9.5/10
Pros
Music - One of, if not the best part of this game is the music. Varied and exotic.
Gameplay - Fun shooting, excels when you have several drones and power ups.
Art Design - All the worlds are distinctive and the enemies all look great.
Cons
Limited in play-style - I don't feel the need to play as anyone besides Commando except to make the game exceptionally hard unless I'm a co-opping with a friend.
Limited replay value - I might be wrong here but I just don't feel a drive to play through the entire game again when there's no reward or change?
8/10
Ratchet & Clank cement themselves as one of the best PS Mascots ever, illustrating that there is still a need for colourful shooter/platformers in modern gaming.
Pros
Graphics - Beautiful. Not pixar-esque but enjoyable and colourful.
Gameplay - Probably the best playing Ratchet & Clank ever, so much variety in the guns and flipping over lasers and bullets never gets old.
Replay value - There's certainly some here with weapon upgrades, challenge modes and some fun trophies etc.
Cons
Story - It's much weaker than the original Ratchet & Clank and sort of bad overall. Doesn't get me invested in any characters and it feels like there should be more clips of the film to fill in gaps.
Cheap - There's some weird moments that feel sort of cheap. Lack of animation, gaps between story cutscenes or any beats whatsoever.
Length/Depth - A few worlds got the chop in favour for much weaker ones and the planets feel a little bite-size. It feels closer to those DLC Ratchets rather than one of the proper ones.
8.5/10
Game #20 - Bastion
Time: 7 hours
Ive been putting off playing Bastion for years after back at the releae time not feeling it very much and only playing it for a couple of hours. Decided to finally give it another shot and restart and I loved it. the movement feels incredibly sluggish at first but once you get used to it, the art, amazing soundtrack, the cool narragation and some nice combat all come together for something really cool. I always thought Bastion (and Transistor, which I also stopped after a few hours...whats up with me and Supergiant Games games?) on paper should be something I would enjoy a lot, and it turns out it was, I guess I just wasnt in the mood for the type of game back then.
OP here
chrominance
Member
Original post
33. The Room Two (Android, 2014) - 3:25
All chapters completed.
Basically, take everything I said about The Room and apply it here. The controls feel slightly less fiddly, though that could just be due to experience. The graphics are noticeably better, mostly in the form of depth-of-field effects. It's also a longer game than the original. Otherwise, it's just as good as the first one.
33. The Room Two (Android, 2014) - 3:25
All chapters completed.
Basically, take everything I said about The Room and apply it here. The controls feel slightly less fiddly, though that could just be due to experience. The graphics are noticeably better, mostly in the form of depth-of-field effects. It's also a longer game than the original. Otherwise, it's just as good as the first one.
rottendevice
Member
Thank you, A Link to the Past!
Main Post
Game 10: Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (~10 hours)
Despite being a lifelong gamer, I had never made it to the end of Super Mario World... until now. This is a really great game. The difficulty level feels about perfect. It was never so challenging that I didn't want to play. But it also wasn't so easy that it felt like a cakewalk. The game has a number of secret areas, many of which I didn't discover. It certainly adds to the replay-ability. Now that I beat Mario World, I'm kind of curious to see what Super Mario Maker is all about.
5/5
Game 11: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (3 1/2 hours)
Some people say that music is the universal language. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons attempts to include video games in that description as well. The game has no decipherable spoken language, and the only time there's written language (outside of menus) is at the beginning of the game, when the fairly simple controls are explained to you. This game deserves a lot of credit for being so bold as to do away with language.
The gameplay is good. You control two brothers... one with each analog stick... on a mission to retrieve an antidote for a sick man.... presumably their father. The game is mostly about puzzle-solving. There are some things both brothers can do. There are other things that only one of the brothers can do. Puzzles are built atop this concept.
There was one point where the game restarted me at a checkpoint that was missing a scripting sequence, so I couldn't progress in the game. Also, there is a bit of clipping that occurs with the brothers' hands, going through, for example, a log. These are minor quibbles for what's otherwise an excellent game.
4/5
Main Post
Game 10: Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World (~10 hours)
Despite being a lifelong gamer, I had never made it to the end of Super Mario World... until now. This is a really great game. The difficulty level feels about perfect. It was never so challenging that I didn't want to play. But it also wasn't so easy that it felt like a cakewalk. The game has a number of secret areas, many of which I didn't discover. It certainly adds to the replay-ability. Now that I beat Mario World, I'm kind of curious to see what Super Mario Maker is all about.
5/5
Game 11: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (3 1/2 hours)
Some people say that music is the universal language. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons attempts to include video games in that description as well. The game has no decipherable spoken language, and the only time there's written language (outside of menus) is at the beginning of the game, when the fairly simple controls are explained to you. This game deserves a lot of credit for being so bold as to do away with language.
The gameplay is good. You control two brothers... one with each analog stick... on a mission to retrieve an antidote for a sick man.... presumably their father. The game is mostly about puzzle-solving. There are some things both brothers can do. There are other things that only one of the brothers can do. Puzzles are built atop this concept.
There was one point where the game restarted me at a checkpoint that was missing a scripting sequence, so I couldn't progress in the game. Also, there is a bit of clipping that occurs with the brothers' hands, going through, for example, a log. These are minor quibbles for what's otherwise an excellent game.
4/5
OP
Game #16: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (DS) - 18 Hours
It was little rough playing through this game after going through VLR. Having to go through the same room a couples times, and having to solve the puzzles over and over again was a bit of a chore. Anyways, still had a great time playing through this game again, I still get all these feels whenever I go through the final puzzle.
Game #17: Hard West (PC) - 23 Hours
A fairly decent turn-based strategy game that tries do a lot of things, but doesn't exactly excel at any of them. Instead of having one big campaign, the game is divided into several smaller ones, each with different gameplay mechanics. For example, one campaign has you leading an expedition and you need to manage your resources and workers. Whenever you need to get tasks done, you can send your workers and spend resources, or send out your own party members, but risk having them get injured. Another campaign keeps track of your kills and as you kill more, your bounty goes up. As your bounty goes up, certain things can happen: store prices increases, getting new gear, etc. A lot of these are pretty interesting, but I felt that the campaigns are too short for me to really get into them.
I do recommend playing this game on hard, you can easily breeze through normal. A lot of the skills you learn are overpowered and pretty much kills off any challenge the game has to offer. Sometimes the enemy AI will just run back and forth for their turn without doing anything and just stop in the open. Usually the enemy AI's strategy is to rush you head on and rarely ever tries to flank your units.
Overall, its a really interesting concept and has a lot of neat ideas to keep things interesting, but the execution isn't quite perfect yet This game is definitely worth checking out when its on sale.
Game #18: Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ (Mobile) - 14 Hours
Finished all the story quests and also just estimating my playtime. A pretty solid turn-based f2p mobile game. Gameplay is very simple and easy to pick up and play. Every mission has you going after a certain enemy target with some side objectives you can complete. There's not a wide variety to these missions so expect for it to feel very repetitive. Missions are in nice bite size chunks that makes very easy to play in short bursts. The story is very slow, about 90% is about doing random tasks in the worlds you visit with only the other 10% being related to the main story plot. Another awesome thing about the game is that you can get by harder missions by using lower tier gear (or medals in this case) since any medal can be a high ranking medal. Its a well polished gatcha game, and would recommend to play especially for KH fans. Also, shoutout to GAF Hearts!
Now Playing: Bravely Second
Game #16: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (DS) - 18 Hours
It was little rough playing through this game after going through VLR. Having to go through the same room a couples times, and having to solve the puzzles over and over again was a bit of a chore. Anyways, still had a great time playing through this game again, I still get all these feels whenever I go through the final puzzle.
Game #17: Hard West (PC) - 23 Hours
A fairly decent turn-based strategy game that tries do a lot of things, but doesn't exactly excel at any of them. Instead of having one big campaign, the game is divided into several smaller ones, each with different gameplay mechanics. For example, one campaign has you leading an expedition and you need to manage your resources and workers. Whenever you need to get tasks done, you can send your workers and spend resources, or send out your own party members, but risk having them get injured. Another campaign keeps track of your kills and as you kill more, your bounty goes up. As your bounty goes up, certain things can happen: store prices increases, getting new gear, etc. A lot of these are pretty interesting, but I felt that the campaigns are too short for me to really get into them.
I do recommend playing this game on hard, you can easily breeze through normal. A lot of the skills you learn are overpowered and pretty much kills off any challenge the game has to offer. Sometimes the enemy AI will just run back and forth for their turn without doing anything and just stop in the open. Usually the enemy AI's strategy is to rush you head on and rarely ever tries to flank your units.
Overall, its a really interesting concept and has a lot of neat ideas to keep things interesting, but the execution isn't quite perfect yet This game is definitely worth checking out when its on sale.
Game #18: Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ (Mobile) - 14 Hours
Finished all the story quests and also just estimating my playtime. A pretty solid turn-based f2p mobile game. Gameplay is very simple and easy to pick up and play. Every mission has you going after a certain enemy target with some side objectives you can complete. There's not a wide variety to these missions so expect for it to feel very repetitive. Missions are in nice bite size chunks that makes very easy to play in short bursts. The story is very slow, about 90% is about doing random tasks in the worlds you visit with only the other 10% being related to the main story plot. Another awesome thing about the game is that you can get by harder missions by using lower tier gear (or medals in this case) since any medal can be a high ranking medal. Its a well polished gatcha game, and would recommend to play especially for KH fans. Also, shoutout to GAF Hearts!
Now Playing: Bravely Second
Game #21 - Momodora III
Time: 2 hours
Fantastic little action platformer. Great pixel art, great soundtrack, controls are very responsive, theres items to find / buy and use (some quite OP in fact lol), secret areas and a new game + opens up when you finish the game. Quite a package for what is essencial a very short game. Makes me really interested in the latest Momodora game, which I hear is more of a full fledged game.
Game #22 - Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Time: 10 hours
Super fun casual adventure romp (as all the Lego games re I guess) that makes great use of the license. Lenghty campaign and I didnt even touch the open world part of the game and the million side activities in it, or the ridiculous amount of unlocks. I imagine this is a great game to play co-op, especially for / with kids, and value wise its an amazing package with all the stuff in it. Good graphics, silly but fun story that actually has some really inventive set pieces with some bosses and power usages, jus overall a great game. Easily the best Lego game Ive played.
Game #23 - Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate HD
Time: 7 hours
Both a great "metroidvania" game, and a great sequel thematically to Lords of Shadow, I really enjoyed this. PC version looks good for what it is (a remkae of a 3ds game), gameplay is nice except some of the platforming since the jumps feel very floaty (but the game is very generous with your "magnetic pull" to platforms to be fair), the zones are big and varied, lots of bosse, lots of items and magic to open new pathways, and story wise I really like how they subvert the classic Castlevania lore in a logical way (well logical following the events of Lords of Shadow). I ended up tracking down a lot of items in the first half, no so much near the end. The game said I finished at 87% completion which isnt bad I guess for the genre. Very recomended, and made me want to play Lords of Shadow 2 finally (im actually a big fan of the first one)
OP
rottendevice
Member
Main Post
Mario Kart DS (7 hours)
If you compare this game to Mario Kart 64 or Double Dash, it doesn't hold up. On it's own though, it's a competent kart racer. There's a wide selection of courses as well as karts. The power-ups are decent. Unfortunately, the speed of the game is quite slow. Also, playing at 100cc or 150cc is fairly challenging. All told, I recommend 64 or Double Dash to this.
3/5
Mario Kart DS (7 hours)
If you compare this game to Mario Kart 64 or Double Dash, it doesn't hold up. On it's own though, it's a competent kart racer. There's a wide selection of courses as well as karts. The power-ups are decent. Unfortunately, the speed of the game is quite slow. Also, playing at 100cc or 150cc is fairly challenging. All told, I recommend 64 or Double Dash to this.
3/5
Original Post - Part 1
#7: Life is Strange: 17.3 hours
Originally Chloe and her mannerisms (verbal and physical) annoyed the hell(a) out of me but by the end I did get really attached to her. The game is good at making almost every character believably sympathetic and making a lot of the choices very difficult, which means that it achieved what every game in the genre strives towards.
By the ending of the last episode this game had showed that it had a lot to say about the use of time travel, but I don't want to get into spoilers. I just wanted to say that it really surprised me to see it touching on things that I didn't think it would.
#7: Life is Strange: 17.3 hours
This game grabbed me pretty quickly (after a few tries where I was having bad days that don't count) but by the end it really surprised me. I liked the dynamic of being able to rewind time to cheat in social situations. Though there's a lot of clunky dialogue, mechanics etc there's also a lot of good that I think overpowers any jank in the end. And it's not often you get a game that has this sort of indie high school aesthetic which was part of how the intro grabbed me.
Originally Chloe and her mannerisms (verbal and physical) annoyed the hell(a) out of me but by the end I did get really attached to her. The game is good at making almost every character believably sympathetic and making a lot of the choices very difficult, which means that it achieved what every game in the genre strives towards.
By the ending of the last episode this game had showed that it had a lot to say about the use of time travel, but I don't want to get into spoilers. I just wanted to say that it really surprised me to see it touching on things that I didn't think it would.
marcincz
Member
Game #14: Uncharted 3 (PS3) - 11:43 h - 18/03/2016
Replaying. Last Uncharted game on PS3 and my last favourite in the series. Still very good game, but the weakest part for me. Besides...Elena!? WTF they did to your beauty face?
Game #15: The Wolf Among Us (PS4) - 07:35 h - 26/03/2016
I like adventure games. I like TT adventure games, but I beat Life is Strange, not so long ago and...TWAU is "only" decent title. Nothing more, nothing less.
Game #16: Ryse: Son of Rome (XBO) - 07:33 h - 11/04/2016
This was my unexpected surprise. I've bought XBO last month and decided to start Ryse. Reviews are dramatic (same as The Order:1886), but I liked it. Roman Times. War with Barbarians. Many great missions. Poor battle system, but game is good. For sure 60% on metacritic is a joke.
Original Post
Replaying. Last Uncharted game on PS3 and my last favourite in the series. Still very good game, but the weakest part for me. Besides...Elena!? WTF they did to your beauty face?
Game #15: The Wolf Among Us (PS4) - 07:35 h - 26/03/2016
I like adventure games. I like TT adventure games, but I beat Life is Strange, not so long ago and...TWAU is "only" decent title. Nothing more, nothing less.
Game #16: Ryse: Son of Rome (XBO) - 07:33 h - 11/04/2016
This was my unexpected surprise. I've bought XBO last month and decided to start Ryse. Reviews are dramatic (same as The Order:1886), but I liked it. Roman Times. War with Barbarians. Many great missions. Poor battle system, but game is good. For sure 60% on metacritic is a joke.
Original Post
OP
20. Far Cry 4 (PS4)
Really enjoyed most of my time with this, although I don't think coming to it after The Phantom Pain did it any favours. A lot of what FC4 does really well is done even better in MGSV, and I missed being able to change my loadout on the fly with supply drops and things like that.
Still, the shooting felt good and getting around Kyrat was super fun. Lots of cool options traversal wise. Didn't really care much for the story and probably spent 75% of my time with the game listening to podcasts instead of having the game audio on, but I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism. I enjoyed spending long stretches clearing the map and exploring a lot of the side stuff.
Visuals are also still pretty strong and the co-op is a fantastic feature. Final clock had me at just shy of 27 hours and I got the platinum trophy, so fair to say I got my money's worth.
Next up for me are a couple of games from my PS3 backlog - Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time, Assassin's Creed Rogue and I may also check out Beyond Good and Evil HD and Ducktales Remastered.
Then on to Ratchet and Uncharted 4! My Xbox One is really being neglected right now...
20. Far Cry 4 (PS4)
Really enjoyed most of my time with this, although I don't think coming to it after The Phantom Pain did it any favours. A lot of what FC4 does really well is done even better in MGSV, and I missed being able to change my loadout on the fly with supply drops and things like that.
Still, the shooting felt good and getting around Kyrat was super fun. Lots of cool options traversal wise. Didn't really care much for the story and probably spent 75% of my time with the game listening to podcasts instead of having the game audio on, but I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism. I enjoyed spending long stretches clearing the map and exploring a lot of the side stuff.
Visuals are also still pretty strong and the co-op is a fantastic feature. Final clock had me at just shy of 27 hours and I got the platinum trophy, so fair to say I got my money's worth.
Next up for me are a couple of games from my PS3 backlog - Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time, Assassin's Creed Rogue and I may also check out Beyond Good and Evil HD and Ducktales Remastered.
Then on to Ratchet and Uncharted 4! My Xbox One is really being neglected right now...
Archive Post
Game 14 - Final Fantasy VII [PS4] ★★★
Final Fantasy VII was my favourite game growing up, but I only ever played it right through from start to finish once. I've gone from start to North Crater maybe 30 times, but I've only done the endgame once, and I'd never beaten Emerald or Ruby Weapon. I think that's part of the reason I held it in such high regard. I played the game inside out, but there were still things beyond me, and it always had something more to offer. As I grew older and had less free time, the likelihood of me burning hours upon hours grinding on disc 3 of an ancient game I'd played a ton dropped to zero. The shortcuts offered in this re-release, though, finally gave me the chance to see it all and I'm happy with that, but it's probably been a little too long. As the source material is nearing its 20th anniversary, it simply doesn't hold up well. I don't know if it's because it's dated so badly or simply because I'm not playing it as a 9 year old with a hyperactive imagination to fill in the gaps, but the story in particular is a weak link here. A lot of the dialogue is clumsy or incoherent, the characters are pretty much all 1-dimensional tropes, and the most pivotal plot moments all seem to hinge on spirit energy voodoo bullshit that just makes up rules as it goes along. It was fantastic at the time, for sure. One of the greatest of all time. But it wasn't fun to go through in 2016, and now that I've seen it all, I'll never go through it again.
Game 14 - Final Fantasy VII [PS4] ★★★
Final Fantasy VII was my favourite game growing up, but I only ever played it right through from start to finish once. I've gone from start to North Crater maybe 30 times, but I've only done the endgame once, and I'd never beaten Emerald or Ruby Weapon. I think that's part of the reason I held it in such high regard. I played the game inside out, but there were still things beyond me, and it always had something more to offer. As I grew older and had less free time, the likelihood of me burning hours upon hours grinding on disc 3 of an ancient game I'd played a ton dropped to zero. The shortcuts offered in this re-release, though, finally gave me the chance to see it all and I'm happy with that, but it's probably been a little too long. As the source material is nearing its 20th anniversary, it simply doesn't hold up well. I don't know if it's because it's dated so badly or simply because I'm not playing it as a 9 year old with a hyperactive imagination to fill in the gaps, but the story in particular is a weak link here. A lot of the dialogue is clumsy or incoherent, the characters are pretty much all 1-dimensional tropes, and the most pivotal plot moments all seem to hinge on spirit energy voodoo bullshit that just makes up rules as it goes along. It was fantastic at the time, for sure. One of the greatest of all time. But it wasn't fun to go through in 2016, and now that I've seen it all, I'll never go through it again.
rottendevice
Member
Main Post
Game 13: Limbo (3 1/2 hours)
This is a really good game. It very much reminds me of Braid, seeing that both games are side-scrolling puzzle-solving games. The checkpointing is generous, which I'm grateful for. I wish more games checkpointed as frequently as this.
One thing about this game is that the puzzles start out easy, but get pretty darn hard toward the end. Keeping the Braid comparison going, I never once looked at a walkthrough or FAQ for Braid, but had to refer to one a number of times for this game.
All in all, really well made.
4/5
Game 14: Super Mario Bros. DX (~1 hour)
What is left to say about this game? This is one of the greatest games of all time. It invented the platforming genre, and put video games back on the map after the Atari crash in the 80's. Perfect score, no question.
5/5
Game 13: Limbo (3 1/2 hours)
This is a really good game. It very much reminds me of Braid, seeing that both games are side-scrolling puzzle-solving games. The checkpointing is generous, which I'm grateful for. I wish more games checkpointed as frequently as this.
One thing about this game is that the puzzles start out easy, but get pretty darn hard toward the end. Keeping the Braid comparison going, I never once looked at a walkthrough or FAQ for Braid, but had to refer to one a number of times for this game.
All in all, really well made.
4/5
Game 14: Super Mario Bros. DX (~1 hour)
What is left to say about this game? This is one of the greatest games of all time. It invented the platforming genre, and put video games back on the map after the Atari crash in the 80's. Perfect score, no question.
5/5
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