The Video Games Thread

Topic

What are you playing? Talk video games here.

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I am too busy and slow, but I am getting there on Survivor. I was on this desert planet and doing these puzzles with timers. Then I found out I can go to settings and slow down the timer. I finally did it and wish I knew earlier. Would have saved me hours.

I don’t know how many of you are into this Baldur’s Gate 3, but someone with a lot of time (bless them) worked out an X-Men mod

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/m/mutant-powers-x-men#description

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Ben

Finished Dawntrail! Well the main quest part, still have the crafter and gatherers to do. And the game dropped a pile of post-game activity on me too.

Given what a bastard of a trial Endsinger was, I didn’t know how Interphos would go. In the end it proved to be comparatively straight-forward. Not sure how I survived a major attack and died once due to walking off a ledge!

After that, went and got the trio of society quests up and running and then started Crossroads. It started running in an interesting direction then it dropped a dungeon on me.

Yuweyawata Field Station has quite the reputation and I can see why.  If the game is going to have faster mechanics then they need to be clearer, both conceptually and visually, which they are not. It’s OK on the first boss, but the second is visually confusing. Did survive its red pool combined with movement override, unexpected but welcome.  Third boss drops 90% of the arena away, but before that its rock spiral attack wasn’t that easy to read. On these latter two bosses I did get close to dying but evaded it.

Got past it but it does raise the question of who this kind of content is for and what it is doing in a mandatory story quest. Those two aspects look to be at odds for me. It would be a shame for FF XIV to fall into the trap of listening too much to elite players.

I finally played Return To Monkey Island across the last few days. I was little hesitant about it because I was burned by Ron Gilbert’s last adventure Thimbleweed Park. It had been really enjoyable, but then absolutely disappeared up its own arse, making a load of not-as-clever-as-it-thought-it-was meta-commentary about the limitations of the game and the quirks of Kickstarter stuff so for instance one of the Kickstarter rewards was getting your name in the town phonebook, which a lot of people did. In the game’s finale, this is called out as one of the things that doesn’t make sense about the world as the game, as the phone book has far more people in it than the population of the game. This is as the world of the game is revealed to be a video game and your player character turns it off. There’s also a thing where the sheriff, the coroner and someone else are all the same person using different vocal tics, which works as a kinda fun weird quirk of a strange town, but then at the end the character that’s seen through the fourth wall points out that it’s a limitation of the game’s budget or somesuch. It was really unsatisfying to spend hours invested in a game and then have it just go “oh none of its real! None of this matters!”

But with my PC upgraded, I thought it was time to return to Monkey Island, a series I adore (except Escape, obviously. I’m not mad). Gilbert wouldn’t burn me twice would he?

I really enjoyed it for the most part. The art style absolutely isn’t what I would have picked, but it is undeniably well made and animated. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with a huge amount of returning actors (the only problem I had is the replacement voice for LeChuck. Weirdly, minor character Gullet sounded more like classic LeChuck than new LeChuck did). There’s some properly funny lines, as you’d hope, and the puzzles were generally pretty good and not too obtuse. I made good, steady progress and was entertained.

But then I finished it tonight and my immediate reaction was “oh fuck off“. Because yes, Ron Gilbert did it again. Does the story have a satisfying conclusion? No because Ron decided that rather than actually craft a proper ending, he’d just do another bit of pseudo-intellectual msaturbation. As Guybrush descends through Monkey Island after LeChuck to open The Secret, he arrives back on Melee Island, but it’s a theme park type place with characters you’ve met previously just cardboard cut-outs and animatronics. Stan appears and gives you the keys to turn off the lights and lock up. You open The Secret and it’s a t-shirt (a callback to a running gag in Monkey 1) and Guybrush goes off with Elaine, like a middle-aged sadsack leaving an escape room/low rent pirate Westworld. It then cuts back to the framing narrative, of Guybrush talking on a bench to his kid, who complains that the ending doesn’t make sense and Guybrush spouts some bollocks about the nature of story telling and the Secret means different things to different people and… just fuck off Ron.

It’s not that I’m expecting some grand reveal of what the Secret Of Monkey Island finally is. I’ve not been on tenterhooks for 30 years to learn that or anything. It’s clearly a macguffin that can never have any satisfying explanation/reveal. But I’m not the one who created a brand new story explicitly about said Secret. I just wanted to play a fun pirate adventure story with some characters I love, but apparently I need to get some condescending bit of homespun “the journey is more important than the destination” bollocks instead of a satisfying conclusion to the narrative I’ve been engaged with. Which I’m not convinced Ron actually knows how to do. It’s like he’s stuck living in the shadow of barely anyone understanding the ending of Monkey Island 2 – which he very obnoxiously taunts people with here by having the opening seemingly pick up from it, only to turn out to be Guybrush’s kid and his friend play-acting the story of Monkey 2 in the future – and keeps leaning into it in the hopes that, I dunno, people will get this one and hail him as a deep thinker or something?

Seriously, going “ah but the true value of a story is not the ending, but what you take away from it” is not big or clever. It’s the cheap way out of actually giving your story a meaningful ending. It’s absolutely worse for video games where you have to be more actively engaged and for longer than you would a movie or possible even a book.

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

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Todd, Dave

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

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Todd, Ben, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

An island is involved, I see.

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Martin Smith

Capcom have enabled a very fun weekend via a pair of demos.

Pragmata – Demo

To my surprise, I actually made through the demo on Casual.

Story is intriguing, graphics and sound are excellent.

Gameplay was a bit weaker as the camera can be a bit too close in and extra weapons are temporary, not permanent. The trick is in being able to quickly see a hack path, while aiming at an enemy, while keeping track of others, and evading attacks. How easy, or for me difficult, you find this multi-processing may decide your view of it.

Generally, it was only with confined combat I found it very tricky. Larger, open spaces give you far more latitude, which certainly aided me in the boss fight.

Monster Hunter Stories 3 – Demo

Wow, just spent an hour on the demo, did the intro and first expedition.

Capcom have expanded the series to an absurd degree. Monster ability and skills are clearer and more set, far greater out of combat use too. The strategy and tactics are far deeper, as demonstrated by the two boss fights.

It’s undeniably smoother, especially compared to the first game I’m working my way through. World design is a huge leap, with superb environments. Though that was expected with it being RE Engine.

Bugger, I really don’t need to buy another game in 2026 and do have the first duo to do, but this demo makes a very strong case for a buy to support the series.

With this and the Pragmata demo Capcom are continuing their very successful roll.

And I still have stuff to do in the demo!

Another near 90 minutes later and I’ve taken the demo as far as I can:

• Hit the level cap
• Got a load of new.monsties
• Got some new weapons and armour
• Nabbed all the Catavan stands.

That last one is more hazardous than it sounds as there’s no warping, so if you get to one, you still have to get back from it and there’s some very nasty monsters near some of them that you have no chance against.

Overall, very smart and a great showcase.

Lots of updates from the latest Sony State of Play, including this surprise drop:

That was one of seven games I had no idea existed.

Kena’s sequel looks amazing. Then there’s John Wick from Saber.

The new 007 trailer had a perfect opening.

They showed off a huge amount of good stuff.

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Dave

Yakuza 3 Kiwami: Dark Ties

Ultimately, sad to say, this is a missed opportunity and one that manages to make the new twist ending even worse.

First, Dark Ties main plot with Kanda and Mine is incredibly sleazy, still, you, as Mine, get to go Highlander on Kanda, right? Nope. Mine’s arc is flat: He starts as an arse, he refuses all opportunity to not be an arse, and at the end, remains an arse.

The final scenes are baffling. Mine talks of himself as another man who has erased his name, but that only works if you know the later games, who is this for? Oh yeah, also, if you fall on a hedge from a 10 storey fall you’ll survive.

Their last game had an anti-hero lead in Majima, but he has a charm of his own that Mine utterly lacks.

If you’ve bought the game, still play it, you can get a good 10 hours out of it. Mine’s fighting style is nowhere near as good as Kiryu’s styles, and has a rather counter-intuitive button layout and combinations to boot, but you can have some fun with it.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

My completions for AC games is patchy. AC2 and Brotherhood, yes, Revelations, AC3, Black Flag, no. Origins onwards, yes. I can’t say I expected to complete this one.  And it got close to that.

Syndicate’s world design is design, its gameplay OK, as is the story, but its main missions are frequently awful and the optional objectives abominable. And it proved that way across the Sequence 9 missions.

Optional reqs like don’t kill anyone or requiring a carriage to be returned, right in the middle of a host of enemies in a restricted zone. The final mission was up and down, the bit with Evie was horribly narrow, the next two parts far better, then came that terrible “boss” fight.

After that, did some clean-up attempts but the associate missions are a real mixed bag. The game is far too fond of throwing out a time limit from nowhere. Tried the first Dreadful Crime but even with a guide it didn’t make much sense of it.

Do have the Jack the Ripper expansion, so will give that a go. Have done more of the game than I thought, plus the main sync percentage is far better, above 90%.

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Dave

I really liked this short 7-minute video from Second Wind:

Aside from the main point that games can now change drastically for the better post-launch, it also makes reference to the sheer amount of games now out.  That there is more than anyone can keep up with.

And it might be that becomes my major reason for stopping at PS5-XBX-S2, that I want the time to play the collection I’ve amassed.

Only done two levels of Marvel Cosmic Invasion so far and, well, sad to say it ain’t all that. Hopefully, as I continue with it, it’ll improve enough.

One problem is the oddity of missing beat ’em up staples. There’s no grab or throw attacks, no weapon pick ups and little in the way of destructible items.

Another is over-complication. The dual heroes, each with their own health bar to juggle is one example. Flying is another. Do either really add that much? No. Neither is the block well executed.

The biggest problem, far from unique to this game, is the belief players want all the cheap bastard bullcrap of retro beat ’em ups, as I don’t. This game is cheap, lots of projectile attacks that magically pass through enemies, the bosses are very cheap, which adds up to a less enjoyable experience.

My sense of dis-satisfaction is probably amplified by the characters starting off weak and having to be powered up. That can be done well, River City Girls is a good example. Here? Not so sure. In some ways it’s akin to Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All. Great graphic style but very shallow gameplay.

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Dave, Martin Smith