The Video Games Thread

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What are you playing? Talk video games here.

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This is a very interesting interview:

https://www.timeextension.com/features/streets-of-rage-2-actraiser-and-story-of-thor-ayano-koshiro-on-her-career-in-games

Oh and Americans have themselves to blame for hard games.

Downloaded this to play with my son as he enjoys Dragonball Z and the game was on sale on the PSN for about seven quid.

It’s incredibly good fun – it has the frenzied chaotic feel of Marvel vs Capcom 2 mixed with the satisfying robustness of SFII and it looks great, just like playing an anime. Definitely one of the most fun 2D fighters I’ve played in a long while. It’s also really simple in terms of controls, so easy to just pick up and play even for young ones.

I’m not familiar with any of the characters as I’ve never been into Dragonball but there’s also a whole single-player story mode to work through as well as an Arcade mode, so hopefully a lot of value there for when I’m not free to play versus mode with him too.

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Martin Smith, Ben

Had a rare lazy day today with a lot of time for gaming – so I ended up playing God Of War Ragnarok for long enough that the PS5 controller battery ran out.

Covered quite a lot of ground – some sidequest stuff like destroying the smoking rigs and freeing the big whale monster, then got on to finding Tyr and taking Atreus to visit Freya, and then finally on to Alfheim.

It’s taking me a long while to work through the game but it’s because I’m taking the time to explore every location and try to do as much as I can rather than rushing through the story. And like a lot of these AAA games these days, it’s all so well-designed and looks so good that it’s fun just spending the time in that world.

The characters also really benefit from some great visuals and motion capture performances, with even supporting cast members feeling distinctive and well-realised.

Looking forward to finding more time to spend on this soon.

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Chris-S, Ben

Yay! And now you understand how hard it is to stop playing once you start on earnest.

The sheer detail in the mine sequence when you’re looking for Tyr is absurdly good.

How have you found playing Atreus?

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Chris-S, Dave

Yeah it’s incredibly detailed, really stunning when you see huge locations like that unfurl in front of you.

Atreus is fun for what little I’ve played of him so far, I like that they’ve managed to keep the controls similar to Kratos while still giving his combat a very different feel.

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Ben

The only recurring frustration I had was on some of the puzzles.

The one to open the second door in the mine I couldn’t see where to aim the axe at. There wasn’t an ‘aim here’ cue, the assumption was you could tell where the water would go but the perspective made that very difficult for me.

Generally though, despite stuff like that, the game sweeps you along and encourages you to keep playing it.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

The one to open the second door in the mine I couldn’t see where to aim the axe at. There wasn’t an ‘aim here’ cue, the assumption was you could tell where the water would go but the perspective made that very difficult for me.

I think the point at which they made it possible to make water gush from the sides of the spouts to drive the wheels (rather than just stopping the flow at the end) wasn’t communicated very clearly. Other than that it just seemed to be a case of exhausting every option each time.

I used a YT vid in the end but even with that it was still tricky – Ragnarok really likes its puzzles.

Have booted up the remaster of FF8.  It hasn’t had the greatest start so far.

2023’s new release schedule starting strong.

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Chris-S, Martin Smith, Dave

To my surprise I’ve gone back to Kingdom Hearts II. Despite a stupidly designed boss fight, it’s started to improve.

The biggest barrier was the Vivi battle in Struggle. (Where adults make kids fight each other.) The problem is Vivi practically has a longsword to the player’s shortsword.  Somehow I got a couple of hits in, nabbed the orbs and kited him until the clock ran out.

After that it got better, albeit remaining uneven.  It’s probably doomed to the fate of most KH games, best exemplified by Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, of a massive game destroying difficulty boss spike. (Unless you have spent many hours on an opaque upgrade system.)

The biggest problem with the series is it lies – you cannot breeze through the games on Beginner, despite it claiming you can. Then there’s the floaty combat, bad camera, lock-on beeaking enemies, block breaking enemies, ineffective to non-existent dodging, a menu system that will be another enemy – good luck selecting what you want when you want it – boss comboes that stun lock and take 50% minimum off your health.  The games are a mess.

By a minor miracle – well that and some level grinding, just got past Erequs in Birth by Sleep.  That bastard can burn.  Which is where the difficulty cripples the story.  You’re supposed to be sad about taking him out, but it didn’t work because he was such a total bastard of a boss fight.  It wasn’t good, enjoyable and the difficulty spike came out of nowhere.  Got past it, got a bit further and here’s another blatant wall that boils down to: Don’t play this game, go watch someone else do it on YouTube it’ll be more fun.

Dream Drop Distance does the same thing but worse, with one enemy that spams their reduce-your-HP-to-1 attack.  It does nothing good for the game, it’s self destructive idiocy.

The only reason Kingdom Hearts IV might be good is Kingdom Hearts III and its prelude were mostly easier.  Though both did final boss bollocks.

So yeah, on balance, the odds aren’t great for Kingdom Hearts II but I might at least be able to see a bit more of it.

Early reviews are out for Hogwarts Legacy and it sounds pretty good – basically seems like it does the Arkham/Spider-Man thing of making you feel like you’re really part of that world.

My daughter has pre-ordered it and is looking forward to playing it this Friday.

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Chris-S, Ben

I’m just watching ACG’s review and it is quite positive.  Not sure who of the YTubers I follow will also cover it.

It is, surprisingly, one of the most controversial games of the year due to its source material creator.  No one would have seen that coming four years ago.

For all the talk of boycotting it to send a message, I’m sceptical it’d be received, never mind acted on.  Rowling already has more cash than she can spend, a bit less extra won’t change anything.  Potter isn’t quite at the level of Star Wars / Trek mass fandom but it’s close enough.

What I’m expecting to be in the game is the very conventional set of “change your character” options. This is standard stuff, except in the charged political environment the game is being released into, it will be suddenly controversial fun to switch your character from male to female.  And that’s before polyjuice potions turn up…. I could see a good few people subversing this.

Yeah, I’m hoping to avoid all that commotion and just enjoy the game. It looks good.

ACG’s review is well worth watching.

Sure, a lot of it is standard open world stuff in Potter dressings, but it sounds like it tries some new stuff too.

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Dave

I’m boycotting it in solidarity with trans people.

And also because I have nil interest in Harry Potter. Always makes boycotting something easier, that.

I’m currently clearing a couple of games off the backlog before Octopath Traveller II and Ishin: Like A Dragon hit.  And I know I will be seriously tempted by Tales of Symphonia Remastered that comes out just before those two.

Onto more important news – Everspace 2:

EVERSPACE 2 launches April 6 for PC, this summer for PS5 and Xbox Series

The first game had massive potential but was limited by its roguelike structure.  This one is an open galaxy, where it sounds like you can really develop your starship.

I finally finished Triangle Strategy last night. When it ends, it tells you you’ve unlocked New Game+, which promises to make a lot of the game’s internal systems less opaque. Which would definitely help to unlock the characters you only get for maxing out a certain ideology, one of which a robot made of barrels. Something for another day.

So now I’m torn between Fighters Destiny on the N64 (which I recently finally managed to mostly sort of remove the existing save data from, using an Action Replay) or Fallout 4.

Short notice Nintendo Direct tomorrow at 10pm. Roughly 40 minutes focusing on “games out in the first half of 2023”. So mostly Zelda, I suspect, bit of Octopath II and hopefully some F-Zero shaped surprises.

Octopath II is multi-platform this time, so suspect it might not feature.

They talk about third party stuff in Directs. Octopath II was first announced in one.

Third party exclusive to Switch or wider? I was surprises to see OT2 coming to PS4.

One day a game developer sat down and asked how they could inflict pain and dismay on people legally? They entirely overlooked that whatever sick crap they came up with gamers, masochistic idiots that they are, would go with it, thus legitimising stupid design from bastard developers. Thus Kingdom Hearts was born.

An unstable camera that is your enduring enemy, floaty controls, unsatisfying, terrible combat, a “block” that relies on perfect timing and vision of the battlefield you will not have, cheap bosses whose difficulty is far higher than the standard enemies that preceded them.

And then there are the Gummi ship levels that are a mess.  You have a camera that’s all over the place, targeting that is also all over the place and bosses you have no chance against because they fill the screen with so much fire you cannot see anything.

It’s a shame as the crossover combination idea of Disney and Final Fantasy has vast potential, but the execution is blighted by awful gameplay.  The same patterns recur across six games that could and should be far more enjoyable than they are.

Still, got as far as Auron’s level in KH2 so that’ll have to do.

Turns out there is an outrageous Gummi Ship exploit.

Way it works is by taking advantage of enemy ships targeting the centre of your ship.  Build a donut style ship and the shots rarely connect as they go through the hole in the centre!

It sounds too good to be true, but does it work!

Ben wrote:

Third party exclusive to Switch or wider? I was surprises to see OT2 coming to PS4.

Multiplatform third party games, they just tend to not mention they’re on other things. Return to Monkey Island was in a Direct last year too and that was on PC.

Still, big change for Octopath II to be multiplatform after the first (and Triangle Strategy) was actually published by Nintendo.

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Ben

Apparently now that the boycotters have realised Hogwarts Legacy is a pretty good game that tons of people are going to buy regardless, there’s a new campaign of trying to spread spoilers from it as widely as possible before people get a chance to play it. (I’m sure that’s really showing JK Rowling.)

I managed to avoid spoilers for stuff like TLOU2 and God Of War, despite leaks, so hopefully we can do the same with this one.

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Chris-S

That one game has probably brought out the gamerbastards in a way no other game this year will come close to.

For myself it being talked with the likes of Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max is a rather major red flag, as I didn’t get on well with either.  Mad Max was done by Avalanche.

As to the controversy over HL, it isn’t helped by Rowling claiming every bit of cash she gets from people equals validation of her views.  That’s a real throwing petrol on a fire move.

Ben wrote:

As to the controversy over HL, it isn’t helped by Rowling claiming every bit of cash she gets from people equals validation of her views.  That’s a real throwing petrol on a fire move.

I hadn’t seen that. But I don’t follow this stuff super closely.

It’s all pretty much confined to the hive of scum and villainy that is Twitter, with limited spillover into the wider world.

That said Potter sales did decline in 2022, down 40%.  Some of that will be helped by HL but how much is hard to say.  Especially as right now, for a few days HL is the only big game out.

That will change pretty fast with the slew of games that release across the second half of Feb – Tales of Symphonia Remastered, Octopath Traveller II, Ishin: Like A Dragon, Destiny 2: Lightfall.

And then March sees Trails to Azure and Resident Evil 4 Remake drop.

HL will have a hard time holding onto the spotlight in the face of this level of competition.

Some real blasts from the past in the Nintendo Direct:

Metroid Prime Remastered – digitally available now, disc release 22 Feb.

Baiten Kaitos 1-2 Remasters – due Summer 2023.

Plus a limited look at Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

 

It said 3rd March for Metroid Prime. Did you watch the US stream?

I was ambivalent about the Prime remaster until it mentioned twin stick controls and I remembered how painful the controls could be on the original (having to hold the analogue triggers down constantly being the main culprit).

Bit of an underwhelming Direct in all. No new games that particularly stood out. Birdo in Mario Kart is cool though and I’m interested in a port of Ghost Trick.

Oh, they’re different for each region? That sounds an odd way to go on, especially in the more global world we’re in.

I’d want to see the MP price and reviews.  Nintendo take the mick in pricing at times, especially on remasters.

Zelda was criminally short.

Yeah, the streams are different for different regions due to differences in licenses etc. also the US one tends to dub Japanese Nintendo staff while the UK and Europe ones sub them.

The difference in release dates is unusual but I guess it’s only a week and as a remaster it’s not a huge deal.

Yeah, I was expecting more than just a trailer for Zelda.

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Ben

There’s already some excellent gameplay videos up that show just how good Metroid Prime is at fusing sound with visuals.  Plus graphics comparison of the old and new, which shows up the work done for the remaster.

I’ve started playing Fallout 4. My only other experience with the series is 3 back on the 360, which I spent some time with and found it kinda fun but very grey and dreary, glitchy to the point of being broken (I gave up on it when I got trapped in a ~dungeon~ that the only exit from was locked because it turned out to be tied to a specific quest I’d missed) and I didn’t get very far in it. I couldn’t even find the dog!

Well, 4 has already beaten it on that front, as I found the dog. And it’s much less grey. And it’s kinda fun. But on the other hand, I’m 6 hours or more in and I still haven’t found a proper settlement that I can sell all my excess weapons and apparel in. Instead, it seems more interested in having you build up your own town, through the workshop system.

Which would be much better if the game actually bothered to teach you how to use those systems though! The first thing you’re told to do is make sure everyone has a bed. But with the scrap material I had from just odds and ends I’d found around the wasteland, I had enough to make one. Happiness dropped quickly. I went off looking for more bits of scrap and someone I could trade with. Imagine my surprise when I (accidentally!) discovered that you can move around in the workshop mode and scrap all the junk in the town to get what you need.

After that, you’re told to build defence and food resources. Ok, done. But it doesn’t tell you how to assign people to work the damn things. I had to look online.

And the game is just as glitchy as Fallout 3. People walk off in the middle of conversations, subtitles get stuck, in workshop mode you have two competing interfaces using the same button arrays. Combat is still as frantic and confusing as ever. Would it have killed them to make some kind of detective mode style visual overlay to help pick out enemies/creatures in the wasteland? Or a useful map instead of the radial thing? Or even a clear way to tell how many rads you’ve taken?

Your ability to see enemies is tied to your Perception stat.

The happiness rating for settlements is one you will never permanently crack.  Those bastards will always be carping about something.

Where the settlement stuff works is in allowing you to set up custom bases.  Having a radstorm hit when you’re near a powered, furnished base you can slip into and sleep it out is always good.

Though later, when you have Power Armour, walking through one of those is very cool.

Radial maps do suck.  I never likd those.

Don’t expect too much from the main campaign but the Far Harbour DLC deserves its reputation.  Well, mostly.

Ben wrote:

Your ability to see enemies is tied to your Perception stat.

The happiness rating for settlements is one you will never permanently crack.  Those bastards will always be carping about something.

Where the settlement stuff works is in allowing you to set up custom bases.  Having a radstorm hit when you’re near a powered, furnished base you can slip into and sleep it out is always good.

Though later, when you have Power Armour, walking through one of those is very cool.

Radial maps do suck.  I never likd those.

Don’t expect too much from the main campaign but the Far Harbour DLC deserves its reputation.  Well, mostly.

I bumped that up pretty high from the start and yet it’s like N64 levels of pop up at times.

… It is a Bethesada game.

Changing tack, Octopath Traveller II dropped a demo. I have it pre-ordered but might as well give it a go.

That combination of old style characters and towns and environment with entirely modern effects is still very effective.  The storytelling works really well.  Really sucked me in.

Combat is similar to before but the latent power addition is very useful and, if my one was representative of the set, you will need to use it to get past the first boss with your arse intact.

It is generally true that in any turn based battle system the AI cheats and it did here.  You’re supposed to have time to respond to an inbound enemy super move but in that boss fight it did power up and attack instantly! I also suspect the difficulty options are locked off in the demo.

Still, that minor flaw aside, it is a good demo.

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Martin Smith

I’m torn on giving the demo a go, as I know I’m just going to buy the full game. I must remember to check out the demo of Sea of Stars though.

The demo has save data carryover.

Done a second origin within the 3hr time limit, didn’t expect to.  Was very good.

Probably going to go back and grind on the first one as I hit that part of it.

Well, Fallout 4 can get fucked.

Just not a fun game really. Tried to do a mission where you fix some underwater pipes in a quarry. Swimming controls are absolutely abysmal (possibly because I was in third person). I used some Rad-X to prevent radiation poisoning but as soon as that ran out I died immediately. The game reloaded my last autosave, which I thought was on the shore but it had “helpfully” autosaved at the point the Rad-X ran out. Wonderful.

Changed tack and went exploring. Found Lexington, next to a quest location. Got repeatedly swarmed by surprise molerats. Then repeatedly swarmed and killed by ghouls. Then repeatedly blown up by raiders. And I just remembered why I didn’t stick with Fallout 3. 4 is a bit prettier and less annoying on ammo types but it’s the same frenetic, glitchy mess.

I think I have a vague, bad memory of that particular bullshit quest.

The only way to make either game playable is to scale the difficulty way, way down.

Meanwhile RedOut II has had another set of tracks and a training mode added.  The new tracks are your standard, even harder, nastier bastard DLC, but the training mode is where it really shines.

The game really should have had it from the start as it is easily the best way to learn the tracks, which you need to have a chance with the brutal AI. It also allows you to enjoy the tracks far more.

Hogwarts Legacy is lots of fun so far. It really puts you in that world in the same way that the Arkham and Spider-Man games do, and the character creator is a nice way of tailoring the experience and giving you the option to really put yourself at Hogwarts if you choose to. The combat mechanics are nice and straightforward (so far, at least) and the story is engaging. Plus the game looks beautiful. I think this is going to get a lot of play in our house.

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Chris-S, Ben

Returned to Octopath Traveller and spotted these differences for the sequel:

– Far less interiors

– Less voice acting

– Graphics are not as sharp

– No day / night cycle with character specific abilities, combat and not, linked to time of day

– No latent power ability in combat

That’s enough to change the sequel up quite a bit.

Also managed to take out a Cait! These are the high evasion, low HP enemy that will often leg it, but if you take one out? Masses of XP.  The one I took out gave 900-1,000 where other enemies are double figures at most.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (Demo)

A fantastic animated opening with a wonderful jazz riff on the Final Fantasy music themes dies exceedingly quickly as soon as you start playing it.

The problem is simple: Too much complexity thrown in right from the off.  There’s toi many systems and combinations for a first level.

It’s pretty sad how badly this absurdly slanted learning curve destroys the demo in seconds. Another problem is too much visual distraction on the screen too.

If you really enjoy rhythm games you’ll probably get on better, maybe. For me it’s a badly misjudged disaster.  Still, they put a demo out.

Just for a change, a couple of digital buys that, while not without flaws, I am enjoying.

Freedom Planet

A game from 2014 that mixes pieces of Sonic and Megaman but has its own identity too. It’s a fun game with a good set of difficulty options.  For instance, Casual grants health regen.

Its one flaw is that it’ll be, from time to time, very unclear on where you go, what abilities you have and / or how to get there, or what you can interact with.

Fortunately, the rest of the game outweighs it and it tends to be a one time effect.  What also helps is the rest of the game has a smart design.  The characters and story are good and there’s a lot of humour to the story.

It also has a sequel that came out on PC last year and is in-bound to consoles later this year.

River City Girls

I was ambivalent on this as talk is it is a hard game.  From my first few hours with it, I class it as more cheap than hard.  Enemies that have intangibility whenever they want, attacks that go through entire bodies, frequent invincibility – it has the usual cheap tricks of the beat ’em up genre.  It also has a cash penalty for its infinite continues.

So, what does it have going for it? A set of RPG lite systems that you can exploit.  Gear and move unlocks, levelling up, healing items – the first level is easily the hardest due to not having access to most of this.

As soon as you start getting new moves the game’s fun and charm factors start to outweigh its cheap ones.  Chief of which is the sense of personality it gives the enemies you beat up, along with great reaction animations as you hit them.  There’s neat use of rumble for your hits that really helps.

It’s fair to say bosses have too much in the way of invincibility phases, but level up plus stack up on healing items is likely to work well.

Story is very fun being an inversion of the Double Dragon tale – instead of the girlfriend being kidnapped by thugs its the boyfriends! Add in animated manga style cutscenes and it’s very fun.

The other ace card it has is the soundtrack.  Some of the tracks are superb and you will hang around in some areas just to listen to the music.

Flaws: Cheap AI, cash penalty continue system, enemy and boss invincibility.

Pros: Superb audio and visual presentation.  Beating up enemies is very fun.  Good combination of light RPG systems.

Having got it early, booted up Like a Dragon: Ishin.

The first 90 minutes is your standard RGG-style intro sequence.  Sets up the main plot and game systems.  90 mins for that? RGG have always liked to do their stories properly and their voice actors always sell it with conviction.

The new combat styles generally work well, each has their strengths and weaknesses.

The weaknesses in it are a lack of camera auto adjust, if you leg it to establish distance from your enemies to use gunman then turn around to shoot, the camera does not flip around with you.  Enemy health bars are too small to really tell when you’ve taken an enemy out. Finally, it really needs the general R1 lock-on the Kiryu Yakuza games had.

Despite these, the combat is very fun.  It also brings back fight intro / aftermath sequences that are funny and satisfying.

While there have been RGG games in 2020 and 2021, this one is a major step forward in terms of accessibility options.  Its subtitles options are also excellent.

Once you hit Edo the game opens up more and the city is very well realised.  I think this one is going to be fun.

Do check the online store for whatever system you play it on, there were a good couple of freebies on PSN.  Need to try to card code from the game box as it wasn’t recognised earlier.

Not a huge game in data terms, 36GB but it has a 5GB update to download and apply.

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Chris-S

River City Girls

Goddamn, this game would be so much better if it wasn’t so damn cheap.  Enemy occupies the same space as your character, does a kick into empty space to the left – game counts it as a hit! Get hit once and the enemy gets to do uninterruptable combo.  What’s that? They ran straight through a baseball bat strike? Yeah, they do that.

It also has some weird differences compared to other beat ’em ups.  You can only grab enemies when dazed.  But throwing into other enemies doesn’t work in the way you would expect.  Instead attacks that send enemies flying are more reliable.

The only reason you put up with that is, when it is not doing this and you have control of the fights, it is very fun.  Except….

There is a couple of terrible boss fights.  One renders the arena as a platform 2D environment, with the boss being invincible until you dodge and send a specific attack back on her.  Oh and in the final phase there is a one hit kill attack.  It’s as bad as it sounds.

Next is a guitar boss which does a guitar hero minigame.  Problem here is if your depth perception is crap – and mine is – it is no fun whatsoever.  Up until this fight, the game has used vibration very effectively to indicate hits on enemies.  I find it hugely helpful.  In this boss fight, the rumble effect is suspended! So a sensory bit of info that has been key to my playing the game is gone! And it wasn’t an error, it was back immediately after the boss fight.  Did not enjoy this one at all.  Terribly designed, awful design decisions.

Despite all this, have made it to the endgame – I did not expect to.

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Chris-S

Freedom Planet

In aesthetic terms, this is a good looking game with an excellent sense of style.  So where does it go wrong? It succumbs to the game malady of designicus bullcrapicus.

The later levels suffer particularly from this.  Unclear level design, with some looping and lacking signposting.  You have no projectile attacks, all your enemies will have them.  Ability to dodge? Very, very compromised.  Dodge boss atracks? Some are exceedingly difficult to do so.

Other times it’ll require you to do a move from a particular position to get elsewhere but your ability to judge it is impaired by the game. A door unlock puzzle in stage 7 was an especially bad case of this but not an isolated case.

For a game influenced by Sonic it has a very weird approach to momentum that never feels entirely right.  You’ll get some speed up, expect to loop a loop and come to a screeching halt instead.

If the game could get out of its own way, it could be spectacular but as it is? It’s a retro homage with all the bad habits of retro games reincarnated into it.  I don’t think those are wanted by anyone yet every retro game designer seems unable to resist adding them.  And I was playing on Casual, with health regen! Without it I would have gotten nowhere completing it.

The other two playable characters? Add little beyond much harder to control and, in one case, half the life bar.  Lilac is by far the best character to play.

It starts off great but then from about the halfway point it undermines itself with difficulty for the sake of it.  It’s just about all right if you buy it cheap but paying £25? I would feel ripped off.  The sequel? After the second half of this one, including a far too long Final Dreadnaught quartet of levels, I really don’t know if I’d go for it when it arrives later this year.

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Chris-S

Deliver Us The Moon

Even at £4.99, I can’t say this is worth it.

It’s supposed to be this narrative led game but the way the game fails to convey information, to give you any help at all works against it at every turn.  At every point in the way the controls and the general lack of signposting reminded me I was playing a game.

If the game had had some assists, like automatically looking at where I need to go or anything that gives me the sense I actually know what I’m doing, then maybe I would feel more immersed in the story.  As it is? It doesn’t work.

Unclear indications, timed rubbish, bad controls, not that great a story, it all adds up to a mess.

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Chris-S

I don’t think anyone saw a fall coming of the magnitude that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is for Rocksteady.

1-4 player coop, always onlinr, third person shooter, set in the most boring version of Metropolis ever, with the gameplay built around …. shoot the glowing orbs.

Oh and they’re in competition with Insomniac’s Spiderman games with the swinging around mechanics…. yeah, that’ll end well.

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Chris-S

River City Girls

Actually finished this.

The flaws of the game are uneven difficulty, especially boss fights, with 3 and 5 being much harder than the others, including the final one.  Cheap and frequently intangible enemies don’t help.  The game could do with health bars for enemies, as they tend to have a lot.

The pluses are with the way the stats boosts from food work with the levelling you can get the characters powered up and see a difference over time. Your characters will get faster, hit harder, acquire new moves and combining those new moves is very fun.

Its boosted by the game’s sense of style, in both its visuals, audio, but also its manga cut scenes.

For all that a couple of boss fights inflict a lot of damage on it, this ended up being pretty good.  If the sequel was on sake cheap, I’d now be inclined to give it a look.

Mayhem Brawler

Should a game try to do something new with its genre? Generally yes, but it has to do so successfully, which is where this one is more mixed.

It does integrate a block move into its gameplay better than both Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All, as frequently you couldn’t see clearly enough to use it, and River City Girls, where it only works some of the time.  Seeing an attack coming, blocking and then countering is quite smart.

Enemies have health regen and an unblockable grab move, the only way to escape it is to do special move.  Having a separate energy bar for special moves is good but this is still a very cheap feature.

The status symbols are an interesting idea but the execution is flawed.  The payback one works OK, but the counter after a couple of hits is very irritating.

On your first play, even on Cadet setting, it will seem very, very cheap.  Enemies do a lot of damage, regen health and there’s ranged attacks that annoy.  You can die very, very fast.

Then you work out that the solution is to play very, very aggressively.  So juggle enemies to get them either killed or near to it.  Use every weapon you can get, there’s no shortage.

The levels are short but intense.  They are, however, uneven.  Level five deserves its reputation as an unfair difficulty spike.  Both boss fights on the following levels were easier.  The branching idea is pretty good, played 12 of 13 levels.

Graphically, has a good sense of style and soundtrack is OK.

Overall, if bought cheap, this can be an OK game that tries some new things in the beat ’em up genre.  It’ll be interesting to see how the sequel builds on this mixed first effort.

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Chris-S

This is (mildly) interesting.

In the course of working out your star/letter rating for a Grand Prix, Mario Kart Super Circuit weights it differently based on which character you picked.

It’s especially odd given that I think Super Circuit was still in the mould of just having weight classes that characters performed interchangeably in, so there’s no real reason Yoshi should be a worse choice than Peach or Toad.

Cool bit of news, The Outer Worlds, is getting an upgrade that includes PS5 and XBX versions.

For those who already own it, there’s a cheap upgrade path of £5 / $9.99.

 

Final Fantasy XVI is sounding pretty epic:

https://www.vg247.com/final-fantasy-16-11-hours-cinematics

So, JRPG is just a linguistic shorthand to describe a game with fantastic world, magic, party based combat, real time or turn-based, with a particular design aesthetic. That’s all, right?

But what if there’s another way to read and understand the term? SkillUp has a FFXVI video out and one part of it is getting some attention:

https://www.rpgsite.net/news/13861-naoki-yoshida-doesnt-want-final-fantasy-xvi-to-be-called-a-jrpg

It’s a very interesting take from a different perspective, one that it’s hard to say Yoshi P doesn’t have a point on.

If you accept his critique then what should replace JRPG? Arguably, just go with RPG.

Ben wrote:

Final Fantasy XVI is sounding pretty epic:

https://www.vg247.com/final-fantasy-16-11-hours-cinematics

FF games do have a habit of being a bit like Windows releases, they release a great one, try new flawed ideas in the next, fix them with another great release. 16 is looking good from the previews, a very classic style with the old ‘summons’ we know and love.

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Chris-S, Todd, Ben

You know what’s more fun than Destiny 2? Probably YouTube videos of all the story bits.

Is the game open to playing solo? Technically yes, if you’re good enough, if not then you can get lost.  And Lightfall does not change this, if anything it doubles down on the no respawn / bullet sponge boss with absurd health bullcrap.

Which is pretty sad.  The pre-Forsaken material did not do this.  I was able to enjoy that version of the game far, far more.

Thing is, worse than this, the no respawn mechanic contributes nothing good to the game.  It wrecks any sense of fun, kills the monentum.  It would lose nothing and everything by getting rid of it.  And I’d be able to easily enjoy all the stuff it does well – world and enemy design, superb FPS shooting, story telling.

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Chris-S

You know, I played every Final Fantasy game up to 8 and none after that. Because I didn’t have the kind of time anymore to play this kind of game.

What I am saying is, when I’m retiring one day, I’ll spend about a year of my life doing nothing but playing Final Fantasy IX to whatever will be the current one in, like, eighteen years.

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Chris-S

If you try to do the infamous skipping rope challenge in FF IX, it will be the rest of your life.

It is interesting how FF XVI fits into SE’s past few games. FF XIII, for all the flak it got, was their first attempt at a faster combat system. FF XV then tried to take it further, with mixed results. FF VIIR is where they were felt to have nailed it.  FF XVI looks to take that much further.

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Chris-S, Christian

Ben wrote:

If you try to do the infamous skipping rope challenge in FF IX, it will be the rest of your life.

I did spend a lot of time herding chocobos in VII, so it’s a possibility :)

Well, it’s 1,000 perfect skips in sequence.

FF X then followed this up with an infamous “dodge 200 lightning bolts” one.

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Christian

Ben wrote:

FF X then followed this up with an infamous “dodge 200 lightning bolts” one.

To be fair that wasn’t essential, it was for true completists only and once I read about it there was no chance I was bothering with that (and that’s from someone who grinded to beat the optional Ruby and Emerald Weapons in FFVII). I happily completed FFX despite being frequently frazzled by the lightning bolts. I’m not against having silly challenges for obsessives as long as they are optional.

Christian is right though that RPGs in general are a time suck. In theory you could play 30 minutes a day and complete them in a semi reasonable time but having the discipline to do that is a whole other matter.

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Ben

I find it amazing that it’s in there but if someone really wants to do it, OK then.  As you say, it’s optional.  I think Zelda: BotW’s “collect 900 seeds to get a golden turd” might take the prize for a mick taking optional quest.

I did find a worse time sink than RPGs.  4X games.

Booted up Stellaris, started building a couple of space stations and fleets, dealt with my PM developing a drug habit, resolved a world killing asteroid strike…. and it’s suddenly three hours later that I’ve spent looking at a load of numbers!

It’s a very good game, has a way of drawing you in but time can really vanish in playing it.  By reputation the Crusader Kings series is similar.

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garjones

In synch with the conversation I am currently playing FF X-2. It’s a game I have started a few times in the last couple of decades and dropped off. I adore FFX as one of the very best in the franchise and it’s a weird one because despite using the same world map and lore it radically changes the tone and battle concepts. FFX is very serious and sombre and X-2 starts off with a pop concert and your powers largely decided on what pretty dress you wear.

It’s also very open world (for that time at least) there is minimal direction in what to do next and why. I am persevering though because I really do want to see where it goes. It’s more my lack of concentration that gave up before, it’s still a fun game.

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Christian, Ben

To my surprise I hit 100% completion for River City Girls.  Not 100% trophies, 100% game completion.  Rarely do this on any game so this was a nice surprise.

Also returned to Elder Scrolls Online.  Finished its first zone of Bleakrock Isle, got all the main and sidequests done.  Then moved onto the city of Bal Foyen, repulsed the Covenant attack and did the sidequests there.

Found it pretty good.  The addition of weapon swap really improves it, as I can have both melee and ranged attack sets.

Stonefalls is next, looks a bigger area, so probably occupy me for a while.

I’ve gone back to Sonic Frontiers this week to try and give it a second chance after finding it underwhelming at Christmas. And I’ve enjoyed it better this time, in part I think because I’ve reset my expectations.

I initially went in expecting a speedy platformer and didn’t get that – but this time around I’m quite enjoying the ambient, non-linear, exploration-focused vibe. It’s something a bit different for a Sonic game. And it’s quite a pretty game with nice music that makes it oddly relaxing to play.

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Chris-S

And where are you on GoW: Ragnarok?

I’ve been off that for a few weeks as I’ve been away for work and haven’t had the time to put in. I think where I left it I was in Alfheim doing all that stuff with bouncing the axe off the crystals. Quite a fun little game mechanic.

Er… It can be fun, but also really irritating on some of the later puzzles.

Picture the scene: you’re up late playing some Mario Golf on your Game Boy Color (with only the light of the modded backlit screen to play by). You’re doing the fourth, final and toughest tournament, on the Links Course. You’ve had a slow start, hovering around mid-table, managing to stay around par, while the leaders are around 7 under. But then, after the turn, you start to claw things back. You get birdie after birdie until, on the final hole, you’re tied for the lead. A birdie here might well get you the cup (or at least a play-off). You get to the green with a chance at a birdie putt. You strike, the ball rolls to the hole and…

The power cuts out on your GBC as the batteries die, plunging you into both literal and metaphorical darkness.

Reader, I need not imagine, for that for was me last night.

That’s the first time since I’ve been using battery powered handhelds recently that I’ve had them die at a critical moment and man, what a moment. If only I’d turned the brightness down a bit, they would have lasted longer. Sigh.

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Todd

Bagged a load of on sale cheap stuff on Xbox.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

This game certainly has a reputation.  I recall playing the demo and disliking it as every enemy was lightsaber resistant.  Given how I found it then, I now suspect they messed up the difficulty setting for it.

It starts off well – an intro level where you’re playing Vader is almost a total success.  Watching Vader rip throw obstacles and Wookiees is very, very fun.  So, that almost? The Rogue Jedi boss fight is terrible because it assumes you know stuff the game has not told you.  You can batter your way through, but that and the end QTE isn’t fun.

Talking of, the QTEs in this game blight it.  The windows are small, the indicators are bad and they effectively stop you enjoying an epic scene because all you’re looking for is the prompt.  They also seriously disrupt boss fights by breaking any sense of flow.

It’s other big failure is its Force throw which requires you to aim where you want to throw and release the trigger.  Problem is its really hard to aim with the way the camera is and you have to aim and release exactly.  If you don’t, no throw.  It renders it practically useless.

Outside of this it can be fun, so long as you allow for it being an old game.  Thus the camera  does not track enemies, and is also an enemy, especially on narrow platforms. No lock on or minimap indicators either.

It’s OK but it also shows up just how much Jedi: Fallen Order pulled off.

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

These were the games that put Lego on the map.  As such playing an opening level of TPM was hugely fun.  It also lacked the nastiness of later games where the True Jedi collecting level is concerned.

It was also seriously boosted on the Series X. It practically matches last year’s The Skywalker Saga.

Lego Star Wars III: Clone Wars

In contrast, this one does have the nastiness of requiring a much higher level of studs for True Jedi.  It also is far less boosted and did some seriously weird and bad stuff.

The level wasn’t too bad, but did like its streams of infinite enemies a bit too much.  You close doors but then they get re-opened.  Despite the perspective placing a lift in shadow and making it hard to see, you can get through thd level.

The Ventress boss fight isn’t good.  One later bit has you build a staircase to pursue her but the visusl signposting of it isn’t good.  Then the next bit is a robot fight where you have to target and throw your saber.  Problrm is there was no animation shown of my doing that.  Did damage by pure luck, again no saber throw animation.  It then went into a final section with terrible perspective and controls.

Booted up a couple of YouTube vids and they had the saber animation that was entirely absent from my experience.  All that does not encourage me to return to this game.  I also questiom who this game is for, as it doesn’t seem suited to adults nor kids.  Having played the first game just before this really showed up the differences.

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Chris-S

Still into Spider Man

Swinging through the City is great. Fighting the Kingpin’s crew in those construction sites and warehouses is one thing, but that Demon Mafia that moved into town.

Sometimes I switch to another game to break the repetition. Anyone else playing a game on the side?

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Chris-S, Ben, Dave

Al-x wrote:

Sometimes I switch to another game to break the repetition. Anyone else playing a game on the side?

Yeah definitely, for me gaming is a little bit like reading books, I like to have several things on the go at once to suit different moods.

I’m gradually working through GoW: Ragnarok but have recently moved over to Sonic Frontiers for some undemanding fun. And interspersed with those are some fun quick arcade-y games that I like to play with my son.

Variety in your gaming diet is a good thing!

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Chris-S, Al-x, Ben

Seconded. Variety is always good.

Been getting into Elder Scrolls Online.  It’s a terrifyingly vast game.

But after playing a pair of short beat ’em ups, Mayhem Brawler and River City Girls, it’s a nice change of pace.

A change will be needed at some point which is where the likes of Like A Dragon: Ishin, Octopath Traveller 1-2 and Trails From Zero come into play.

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Chris-S, Dave

Al-x wrote:

Anyone else playing a game on the side?

No, I make myself be pretty single-minded with games (and books) because otherwise I never finish anything. I broke that rule recently to mix a bit of Mario’s Super Picross (which I keep going back to in the aim of eventually maybe completing it) in with Mario Golf GBC, which I’m playing through at the moment. But it just meant I didn’t play any Mario Golf for the week or two I was on Picross and then felt a bit back at square one when I picked it up again.

For all that it is scarily huge, Elder Scrolls Online is mostly very fun.  Mostly? We’ll get to that.

What’s nuts about it is you’ll do what you think is a quest in the current area and it’ll take you somewhere.  So the choice is to do the quest there or work your way back to where you were, which can give you a great sense of it being a world.

The mostly bit then? It does these short but very irritating instant fail follow / stealth sequences.  They are awful.  No good indication as to what is too close or far, enemy patrol routes, cones of sight and distance.  One of these near wrecked a zone story, success in it was very much due to luck.

Outside of this though it does have a neat line in world and areas.  Being in a fight and getting help from another player or vice versa never gets old.

Haha, screw you, Mario!

(hmm, let’s ignore that that awkwardly placed bit of green confetti over Azalea’s nose).

Took him on in match play with absolutely no expectation of winning (given his drive is 50 yards further than my character’s) but actually managed to keep pace with him, pull ahead and then scraped a sudden death win.

Finished Sonic Frontiers, it was a fairly undemanding but pleasant game, and – crucially for me – the kind of thing you can pick up and play for half an hour and have some fun with while still making incremental progress overall.

I do find it a bit odd that there’s an additional final boss on hard mode that the game never tells you about (I only found out after I completed it). Luckily though you can just reload your last save and switch to hard mode at the last minute to get the full experience.

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Chris-S

So 70 hours later and the stat percentage for Elder Scrolls Online says 18%! That is one big game!

For the most part, its general structure is pretty good – get quest, follow prompts, sometimes kill enemies then boss, done.  Other times, however, the quest structure will be awful.  Invisible timers, massive difficulty spikes, unfair mechanics – they are the exception and vast minority, but they certainly sour the game when they turn up.  The best solution if you hit one of thesr? Abandon it and do something more fun.

That aside, the zone structure is effective, the stories are told well.  True, if you boil it down to essentials, you get a handful of enemies – rogue, heavy, mage, archer plus boss variants.  But it mixes it up enough too.

Playing it on PS5 where there are practically no loading screens, bar a second here or there, is a very smooth experience. Suggests Starfield could be a lot of fun on XBX later in the year.

It has quite a bit in common with the huge Assassin’s Creed games of recent years.  It’s not taxing, it’s not a Souls-like, it’s very recreational and straight forward.

New gameplay video, 10 minutes, from Nintendo for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Looks very interesting.  Weapon durability being retained is a pain, but the rest is far more intriguing.  Can’t see myself being willing to pay £60 for it though.

I’ve got it pre-ordered at ShopTo for £50. I nearly didn’t bother with the preview because I want to go to it fresh. But I’m glad I succumbed to temptation because I’m even more hyped now. The merge mechanic looks great.

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Ben

That’s a good price.

Still making slow but steady progress with GoW: Ragnarok, reckon I’m maybe halfway through now. And while it’s a very polished game overall, I do have a couple of niggles:

One is mini-bosses that seem to have the ability to teleport/speed-dash out of the way of axe throws at the last minute. It’s silly and breaks the experience of playing to have them be able to dodge an attack that should be hitting them, presumably just because the game doesn’t want you to be able to hang back and chip away at enemies (which is a shame as I find that technique quite effective). Just give them a blocking ability or something. The dash feels so cheap.

The other is the game teasing areas or collectibles that you can’t access until you backtrack to that area later with a new ability or item to unlock them. I have no problem with games offering hints of what’s to come, but when you have a glowing chest or obviously blocked pathway that needs to be unlocked – but it isn’t clear whether you should currently be able to do that or whether you’ll need to wait until later – it can lead to some time-wasting and frustration as you exhaust your current options.

That said, otherwise the game is very enjoyable, with some great designs (both in terms of the characters/creatures and the various worlds you visit) and some satisfying challenges.

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Chris-S, Ben

Due to rarely being quick enough on target acquisition and aiming, I didn’t really use the axe throw in combat.  This is despite how good it feels to use.  So didn’t notice that element.

Does make sense in that you’re supposed to be the God of War, bringing war to your enemies, not the God of Chip Damage.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

Does make sense in that you’re supposed to be the God of War, bringing war to your enemies, not the God of Chip Damage.

Ha! I’m definitely the god of running away and throwing things at you from a safe distance.

You’re right about the axe though, it’s not as much fun in combat as the blades.

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Ben

E3 cancelled:

https://www.ign.com/articles/e3-has-been-canceled

Feels strange, E3 used to be such a big deal but increasingly less so now I guess.

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Ben

Nintendo UK are now officially fixing joycon drift for free.

https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-pledges-to-repair-switch-joy-con-free-in-uk-until-further-notice

Although it states “for products purchased in the UK, EEA and Switzerland”, which makes me think they still won’t fix my drifting joycons I got from North America.

Some people are saying they’ve been doing this in practice for a while now, but when I last enquired about getting drifting joycons fixed, they refused to say whether it would be free or not, despite it being policy in the US and Japan.

Martin Smith wrote:

Nintendo UK are now officially fixing joycon drift for free. https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-pledges-to-repair-switch-joy-con-free-in-uk-until-further-notice Although it states “for products purchased in the UK, EEA and Switzerland”, which makes me think they still won’t fix my drifting joycons I got from North America.

So you’re saying they won’t do anything about Tokyo Drift?

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Ben, Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

Ben wrote:

Does make sense in that you’re supposed to be the God of War, bringing war to your enemies, not the God of Chip Damage.

Ha! I’m definitely the god of running away and throwing things at you from a safe distance.

You’re right about the axe though, it’s not as much fun in combat as the blades.

Just wait until you…. No, said too much.

I took a small break from Spider man. Now I understand a little more what “grinding” is. When I get back to the game, I have to do more of these warehouse brawls (20 to 1) challenges and this skills thing to get the needed tokens, and then I can buy the next suit.

Too bad the Avengers game didn’t work out. I used to love going to all the treasure chests.

God of War: Ragnarok gets New Game Plus.

While No Man’s Sky drops its Interceptor update.

Today is a good day to play.

Just over 95 hours later and I have, in Elder Scrolls Online:

– Completed the Ebonheart Pact story

– Started but not finished Morrowind

– Have stuff to finish in Coldharbour.

– Completed the main quest.

– Completed the Fighters Guild quest.

– Midway through the Mages Guild

The final quests for the main game were sadly a mix of the good and the goddamn awful of game design.  The latter comprising enemy groups being warped in, many AI allies and lots of chaos.  A dark chamber section so dark you can’t see where to go, this was immensely irritating and killed the momentum it had built up dead.

Got past that and the next bit, started the final quest, get powered up. What followed was very epic and very fun, with it finishing with a duel with Molog Bal.  Then, once you get him low enough, it does this very odd sequence where he gets to almost kill you, then a load of monologing.  It was very unsatisfying after the lead-up.

Still, it’s done now, don’t have to keep returning to the Harbourage too.

There’s a lot to like in this game, the CP system particularly.  But damn, it makes some very clunky moves at times.

My dog goes crazy when she sees dogs in videogames, barking, running round the room and generally getting very worked up and agitated.

She got very jealous when I played with Alice in TLoU2, and she went absolutely nuts when Cosmo appeared in the GotG game firing lasers out of his eyes.

So today’s encounter with Garm in GoW: Ragnarok has been… interesting.

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Chris-S, Todd, Ben

Getting close to the endgame of GoW: Ragnarok now, and today came to the great Tyr/Odin twist revelation. Really well done and I love all the little clues that point to it.

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Ben

Finally! Ain’t it a killer moment? In one respect, for a character, literally.

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Dave

Pushed through and finally finished GoW: Ragnarok. A great game with a very satisfying story and an ending that ties things up nicely without resorting to cheap developments for emotional impact. Everything felt very earned and it was quite touching the way some of the relationships were handled.

Plus the final chapter(s) felt very climactic and dramatic to play through. It helped that I’d done almost all of the sidequests in the game as I went along, so was pretty well-levelled-up for the final fights (the last few bosses were surprisingly easy, even with their cheap spammy unblockables), but I think that made it a better experience rather than a worse one. There was a real sense of stakes and chaotic warfare to the final stage.

I ended up putting a fair chunk of time into my playthrough (around 45 hours), which is maybe a little bit too long for a game for me these days, but the story was strong enough to carry it – and like so many AAA games these days, part of the appeal is just spending time in such a lush, fully-realised world.

For that reason I’ll likely push on with the post-endgame content and tie up a few loose ends before moving on to my next big game.

I’m thinking of maybe trying to get through Horizon Zero Dawn next, as I got a little way into it when it first came out but then it ended up being left unfinished.

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Chris-S, Ben

One tip for Horizon Zero Dawn – finish the campaign then do the Frozen Wilds expansion.  Also, play in the PS5 – it gets a massive boost akin to how the first God of War gets boosted on PS5.

As to Ragnarok, it does so much, so well. Now you can see why I was asking where you were up to, as I didn’t want to give anything away.  The final fights with Thor and the three-on-one Odin fight worked incredibly well.

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Dave

I’ve been playing F-Zero X lately, which is a great game and has barely aged since release. I can’t remember how good I was at it originally – I think I mainly played Death Race mode, tbh. This time, I’ve breezed through novice difficulty, then struggled a bit on standard until I found a car better suited to my driving style and smashed it but now I’ve stalled in Expert. I fluked through the Jack Cup, but cannot win the Queen Cup.

Coincidentally, I’ve been watching Game Center CX again recently and the episode I got to yesterday was on F-Zero X. A big deal was made on the show of the original F-Zero, with Arino really going through the wringer with it and getting good, so I sort of assumed the same would be true for the sequel and I might get some tips.

Unfortunately, Arino spent 13 and a half hours just to clear the game on Novice (and even then he only did the first three cups, not the unlockable Joker cup). So no tips, but at least I’m better than Arino.

Fatality!

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Dave, Martin Smith

F-Zero X update. I’ve beaten all of Expert mode (which is as far as I’m going to go; there’s a Master mode above that, but I can’t be arsed).

I won Jack Cup on my first go, Queen Cup on my 20-something-th go, King Cup on my first go and Joker Cup on my second go.

No idea why Queen Cup is so much harder than all the others. I’ve played those six tracks more than all the others combined now, I think.