Video Games – The Next Level

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What are you playing?

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This got lost in the thread going weird (and me editing) earlier, apologies if it shows up twice.

The Final Fantasy VII
So, first off, I haven’t finished this. I’m… well, I feel far into it – over 20 hours, I think – but I don’t think I’m past the first disc yet (I’m not sure this Switch port would really tell me when the disc breaks are). I’ve just done Wutai, but I gather that doesn’t mean anything concrete, as it isn’t a fixed point in the story. I’m at Gold Saucer for a second time, to get a Keystone, if that helps.

But this isn’t me asking how far in I am, btw, I’m just saying to make clear that I don’t know what’s going to happen later (well, beyond Aeris dying anyway) and that I’d rather not be told.

Also, I feel I should preface my initial observations of this much of the game by saying that the only other FFs I’ve played are: a smidgen of the PS1 ports of 1 and 2, a good chunk of a fan-translation of 5 way back in the day, 6 and Tactics Advance, I guess. So this is the newest mainline entry in the series I’ve played.

Also, I while I was around for the PS1 era, I didn’t have a Playstation, I had a PC and Nintendo consoles, so I’m in a slightly odd position of having lived through that era of big, iconic PS games without having any first-hand experience of pretty much any of them and thus limited nostalgia.

Right, so, the game. It’s… ok, I guess.

The story’s solid, though a little thin. That’s fine. So far it’s pretty much just “chase Sephiroth” which is enough impetus to wander around the world map, frankly. The characters are cool. I even like Cloud more than I expected to (I only know him from Smash and Kingdom Hearts, where he seemed a bit lame). It’s a bit of a shame that the series’ first black character, Barret, is also the series’ first properly foul-mouthed one, it feels a little like Japan (or the US localisations team) playing to casual racism there, but there’s depth to the character, so it balances out. I really don’t get Cait Sith though. I assume she (it? they?) is going to get some backstory fleshed out the same way Red XIII and Barret have, and boy do they need it, because I have not a clue what they’re supposed to be.

The combat system is fine, but I have mixed feelings on Materia. On the one hand, it offers a lot of flexibility, letting you essentially just move your magic around between your party as you want, but the other edge to that sword is that the characters become a bit interchangeable for it. Sure, they’ve got different weapons and limit breaks, but I’ve at no point found myself needing to really have one over any of the others so far. It’s quite a change compared to FFVI, where Sabin played completely differently from Cyan from Locke etc. Materia feels like a smooshing together of the Espers from VI and the job system from V but without the depth of either.

There’s also a lot of mini-games, I guess is the best way to describe them, especially early on, which are pretty naff. The squats thing in Sector 7, the marching stuff in Junon, that awful bike combat section in Midgar, fucking Chocobo racing. It felt like a really long time before the game just let me get into a proper rhythm of exploration and combat without throwing in a gimmicky complication. The worst of those is the party system, again especially early on. Before you leave Midgar, the game continually chops and changes your party members. Now, this is justified by the plot, but it’s a real pain in terms of managing materia etc. Once you get out of Midgar, you get the PHS, which lets you change party members freely. Cool. Except that’s finnicky as well and there are needless restrictions. Mainly, why the hell can’t I change the equipment of an inactive party member? Rocking up to a new town and buying new weapons for everyone is one of the best bits of an RPG, but FFVII makes it a chore because you can only re-equip the three people with you and have to travel out of town and use the PHS to switch in the rest to re-equip them, which for a party of 9 people (with Cloud fixed in place) is a pain. It also makes moving Materia around annoying (although there’s a work around with the exchange system).

The most notable part of the game for me though is the graphics, which I’m still on the fence about. I’m not bothered by the fact they look dated – in fact that isn’t even an issue at times, some of the pre-rendered backgrounds look impressive even now (and I don’t think anything’s been remastered for this port) – but it doesn’t quite hang together. Characters are low-poly chibi models, which look a bit crap, but they’re surprisingly emotive and feel like a natural progression of the sprites from the previous games. But these chibi models really don’t fit in with the pre-rendered backgrounds at all. It’s like a cartoon character wandering around a Lord of the Rings set. Chests and items stand out like a sore thumb too, which is handy in that it makes them hard to miss, but it means I quickly got to the point of not bothering to interact much with the rest of the environment. There’s a sterility to the pre-rendered backgrounds which just suggests you can’t do anything to them, and I think I’ve probably missed stuff because of that. (In fact, I know I have, the Turtle Somethingorother flyers). The game knows this because it includes a “cursor mode” that shows you where the exits on a screen are. The move from pixel art to pre-rendered CGI means more interesting camera angles, which can be moody and atmospheric, but often feels self-indulgent and highlights the bigger problem: navigating a 3d space with digital controls that are only 4-directional (8 if the game is feeling nice). It just doesn’t work half the time, with directions on the pad becoming dislocated from the directions on screen (eg press down moving you to the right on some screens). It’s a constant frustration, especially when using the analogue stick (which is a shortcut run command).

This crops up in battles too, which really suffer from the move to cutting edge 3d graphics. Having different character models in battle seems a tad like having your cake and eating it, but whatever, they’re nice enough. And the summon effects are pretty cool. But even after switching the camera to static, battles insist on using stupid angles to show the field. When it’s a low angle from behind your party to show a big boss, fine, that works well. But when it decides to randomly go for a diagonal angle for a battle with five swarms of wasps or whatever, it’s a nightmare. Having all your characters and enemies standing in neat columns may look a tad silly, but it’s practical. It means you can easily navigate between them to select targets for attacks, spells and whatever. Despite the fact the characters are still in columns, FFVII breaks that with the camera angles, because directional controls become relative and so it’s a total crapshoot getting around the screen to select a character to attack or heal. Not only is that inconvenient in a game with a timed battle system, but on several occasions I’ve made mistakes and accidentally healed enemies and attacked my party because the game has decided that to move from Cloud to the bottom member of my party I was supposed to press, say, down and then right not down twice. How on earth does it make sense to have to use two different directions to move down the same column of characters? There are some battles where I’ve had to ignore one monster because I simply couldn’t get to selecting it until I’d killed all the others and it became the default option (and no, it’s not because it was in the back row and I was using attack).

All of which has me wish Square had left the 3D graphics for a minor game or two until they got the hang of it all and stuck with pixels for FFVII. I know that was never going to happen – polygons were the future of gaming, here now! – and the Playstation especially had to emphasise their use of them to show how much better it was than the Saturn, but man, a Final Fantasy with 32 bit sprite art would have been gorgeous. And less of a pain to navigate in.

The other thing of note is that while I’m mostly playing without a guide, I have had to look online a couple of times to check what I was supposed to be doing. There have been two instances of this where the guide has warned of a super-tough boss in optional sections and that it’s best to come back later in the game. And both times I’ve breezed past them. So either the guides are hyper-cautious, or I’m super-amazing at this game. The latter seems less likely (though I’ve not had a game over yet – helped no doubt by the Switch port letting you turn off random battles on the fly if you want, which I’ve indulged in now and then).

Despite these issues, I am largely enjoying the game though and intend to stick with it to the end, however far away that is.

Martin Smith wrote:

The Final Fantasy VII

Martin Smith wrote:

Right, so, the game. It’s… ok, I guess.

I finally decided to start Red Dead Redemption 2 – I like Hitman, but it’s so stressful that I don’t feel up to it at the moment. RDR2 so far is good – it’s been a while since I played the first game so I might be misremembering, but I feel like the protagonist last time was more honourable by default.

Your dude in RDR2 is a proper outlaw, part of a gang, taking part in a train robbery early on.

The landscape is beautiful, probably the best I’ve seen on PS4 so far, with rolling hills, desert sand, snow capped mountains, and gorgeous rivers and streams dotted throughout. It’s very early days so I have no money really, and basic weapons, etc. but I’m looking forward to getting through it probably on weekends where I can set aside a serious chunk of time per session.

I will say the voice acting is not quite as good as I recall RDR’s being, or even GTA5 which probably has the best acting (and story) I’ve encountered in a game.

Well, that was a first, can’t say I’ve previously played a game where instead of killing an already violated and mind-frelled young woman, I let it play out, so she kills her rapist father and abusive landowning Lord and his entire family, as revenge for his numerous acts of rape and murder of numerous slaves over the years,, but that’s Pillars of Eternity for you.

Turns out if you have a different party set-up, there are less harsh options on the table, but I didn’t, so there wasn’t.  Maybe on the next run.

What is more surreal that following these decisions I have Overwhelmingly Good status with Dyrford Village and am good terms with a psychpath cult.

Meanwhile Caed Rua is nearing completion and  I appear to be closing in on the end of Act II.

 

garjones wrote:

Dave wrote:

Wouldn’t be surprised if the SQ game was next-gen only as a result.

He did it, Jon got people using SQ.  😂

I thought we’d all been using SQ ironically for years?

Starting to look like Ps5 preorders will soon go active, with the game of chicken ending by default as, without Halo, Microsoft have no hand to play against Sony.

There’s been a load of price leaks this week, either the companies end the game or the leaks continue.

For myself? Have registered interest with Base, as they successfully got me a physical copy of Final Fantasy 7 Remake at the height of the pandemic, a physical copy of Ghost of Tsuschima to play on launch day, sent by post.  They’ve also been quick to reply on emails so all of this merits reward.

HAVE YOU PLAYED FINAL FANTASY 7 REMAKE YET BEN

NO. I’M BUSY WITH OTHER STUFF.

Too many games, too little time, a terrible problem to have.

More seriously, what’s stopping me is I want some idea of when the next part is due.

Only started on Trails of Cold Steel 1 now because 4 is out in October.

They’re working on it. I’d put my money on 2022

I’d still likely hold off but it’d help.

Meanwhile,  the big MS vs Sony duel has fizzled out with one side having no Halo and Sony’s reply is Spiderman + Ratchet & Clank as launch titles – only way for Sony to now lose is to say PS5 will be plus £500.

Anyone checked out Netflix’s High Score documentary series yet? I posted my full thoughts in the Watching thread but it’s well worth a look for anyone interested in games.

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Andrew

I enjoyed it, found out a lot I didn’t know and there’s plenty of material for future series.

Pillars of Eternity

Can you play and complete a game without really having fully grasped its systems? This one says, yes – you can.  Which is just as well, as without the Story Mode option I would have gotten nowhere and there were times when I got nowhere with it!

One of the things that makes this generation of consoles stand out to me is that it brought games that consoles were previously unable to play over.  CRPGs are one genre of those, the 4X games are another.

Despite a very steep learning curve, frequent bafflement, a lot of use of internet guides, I was never able to quite drop this game. One of the reasons for that is, most of the time, there were signposts as to where to go. Something not really the case with Divinity: Original Sin for instance, which I’ve yet to go back to.  The other reason was the degree of engagement with the world, the various, intricate conversations – all very well written and engaging.  Finally, the game grants the player more agency over the plot than they may be used to.

That said, if you are impatient or do not like loading screens, this is not the game for you – because there are many, many load screens.  Towards the end, the system’s struggling to keep track of everything could be seen by the loading time, plus the odd crash.

Graphically it is a small game, with limited aesthetic appeal, but what it lacks in flashiness, it makes up in mood and atmosphere.

The ending? Very, very smart and, for the most part, very satisfying.  The game’s final quest is indeed it, the DLC is set before that point.  I’ve already fixed a couple of things I didn’t like in my first ending and am working my way through White March.

It can be very easy to get a false picture of difficulty.  There are sidequests and bounties far harder than the main story, although that main story also has the odd spike of difficulty – that said, the game auto-saves frequently, possibly more than you would like.

Overall?  Given I paid £9 for a digital copy, I got my money’s worth.  Am I suited to pause-unpause combat systems? Not really.  It can also be hard to tell what is happening in fights, never mind how to respond.  A larger combat text window would help in this respect.  Some of DLC fights were particularly chaotic, in a bad way.  World design and characterisation is excellent and you do get out of this what you put into it, as if you don;t engage with it, you will get very little out of it and wonder what the fuss is about.  That said, if this is indeed an accurate representation of games as they were, it also shows why games had to change.

This looks like tons of fun.

[Ben]

Yep, got a PS4 copy preordered – hoping they do a free PS5 upgrade too.

Edit – this was a pleasant surprise too, had thought it was XBox exclusive, but it’ll also be out on PS4/5:

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/marvels-avengers-for-pc

[Ben]

Pillars of Eternity

Finished the White March and then went and finished the game a second time, but with a far more satisfying ending, which includes following up on what happened in the expansion too. It also included a couple of quests that I unexpectedly finished, which was neat to see it pick up on.

However, the technical issues with that expansion were pretty major. I had numerous crashes. The game auto-saves often so you don’t lose much but they irritate. The loading screens too became longer, noticeably so.

The game itself? Is very clever. I’m certain I’m lacking in understanding entire swathes of it. It’s also one not designed for the PS4 controller at all, the adaptation is smart but only goes so far.

Still, I racked up 70-75 hours on this due to the plot hook and the conversation mechanics that are mostly excellent. Although the console version does not show skill check requirements on dialogue, which made completing one quest without a fight very difficult.

Meanwhile, in other news, having bagged a new sensor bar, a HDMI converter and transferred over a HDMI lead, I booted up my old Wii today for the first time in years to see how some old GameCUbe held up 15-18 years later. Overall? Graphically, all are surprising good:

Rogue Leader / Rebel Strike – There is one major problem here – inverted controls that I just can’t get used to. Clearly, once upon a time, I was used to them. The GC controller is also far more sensitive than the Dualshock, so that takes some getting used. Did manage to almost blow up the Death Star, but could get the angle right on the shot. On Endor the Speeder level looked great, but found it far harder to see the gap in the trees.

Wave Storm – It seems utterly crazy that no one else ever did a game like this. 18 years on, the water effects still look good and, once you adjust to that sensitive handling, you can pull off some very sweet driving.

SSX 3 / SSX On Tour – Hey, remember when SSX was cool? Me, too. You might think, with the existence of games like Steep, these would no longer work. Wrong. Where Steep is about rendering a beautifully real world to explore at speed, these games go full on for utter absurdity, combined with very smart course design and a brilliant sensation of speed, topped off with a killer soundtrack. Oh and snowboarding as Mario? Never gets old. There’s this one course on SSX 3 I remember but haven’t yet found, I will do, while listening to Radio Big.

Still have Luigi’s Mansion, 1080 Avalanche and F-Zero GX to revisit.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

Oh man, I loved Rogue Squadron and Rogue Leader. I spent so much time on those games. I also have a copy for my Wii and a GC controller.

The GC return continues:

1080 Avalanche

Initially, this didn’t age quite as well as SSX. The graphic style working more against it, but once you get up speed it delivers a quite different experience, one where you have to be more careful and it gives you a better sense of just evading obstacles.

F-Zero GX

WipeOut is the future racer that is most well known, but the makers of RedOut cited that and F-Zero as their inspiration and this version really shows why.

A rare Nintendo-Sega team-up, the sense of speed is amazing, the course designs wonderfully inventive – and brutal.  It’s very clear to see what RedOut took from F-Zero, with it arguably being the greater influence on it.

Back to the current generation and I ended up playing all the way through:

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

The PS4 remaster of the Ps3 game is quite a nice package, if nabbed at the bargain price of £6.99, which it was.

This is a short game that you will complete in 6-7 hours, but one that you will return to play every now and again due to the skillshot system.  The more creative you get with the tools the game gives you, the more points you get, thus:

• Shoot a guy in the nuts, then headshot him,
• Kick enemies into spikes, off cliffs, into fans, giant flytraps, into electric cables, into smelting pits – the variety is endless.
• Set fire to, use explosive barrels.
• If in enclosed space? Splat them into the ceiling.
• Got a group heading your way? Send an explosive pair of bollas grenades onto one and detonate him with his friends.  Alternatively, lasso and let the timer count down slowly.

This is probably 20-30 of the just over 160 skillshots the game has.  Thus it’s less about completing it and more about how you play and re-play it.

That said, the game does weaken as it goes on, by the end often resorting to difficulty-by-enemy-horde that is an unimaginative match to what the gameplay wants to encourage.  There’s also no direction of fire indicator from enemies.

Nonetheless, in an an age of, still, super serious, realistic military shooters, this one knowingly rips the hell out of it and remains a huge amount of fun.

The 20 greatest home computers – ranked!

This is a pretty good list of home computers (from a gaming standpoint). Nice to see the Amstrad get a shoutout as I always feel like it’s a bit forgotten. I had the later 6128 which was a decent gaming machine for the time.

I finished Final Fantasy VII last night. Overall I enjoyed it, but it never really overcame my earlier complaints about wonky controls and mismatched graphics. And gratuitous mini-games too. Given how many had come before and when the game was released, I shouldn’t have been surprised that it throws a random snowboarding section at you for no good reason, yet I was. It definitely feels like the liberating aspects of CDs (FMV video! Multiple discs! Huge storage space!) went to the developers’ heads and no-one tried to reign them in. So you end up with a game bloated by half-formed nonsense like that tedious tower defence game.

Anyway, I did like the story and the characters, which kept me going through to the end. The end of the main game that is – I haven’t bothered with Emerald Weapon et al because I have absolutely no interest in Chocobo breeding and racing and whatnot. I beat Sephiroth first time, which I was quite pleased about. Still not quite sure how I got through the first phase, given his section C wasn’t taking any damage and then suddenly just died, but I had the one-winged angel bit well in hand.

So, with it done, I can see why the game had the impact it did at the time, given the context, but… it’s no Chrono Trigger, that’s for sure.

Microsoft’s ‘smallest ever’ Xbox Series S to sell at budget £249

I’m not dead keen on this continuing fracturing of the console market. Even as someone who follows this stuff, the differences between the Series S and Series X aren’t immediately clear, and it feels like one of the main benefits of consoles compared to PC gaming – of not having to worry about spec and what games will play well on what system – is gradually being eroded, similar to how the PS4 Pro opened up a two-tier system for PS4 games.

Leaving all that aside though, the price point is low and sets an interesting point of reference for the PS5. I’m still assuming the PS5 will come in at around £349 for the digital-only version and £499 for the full version, but a competitor this cheap could change that calculation. We’ll see.

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Andrew, Ben

I could see Sony going for RRP £400-450, going for recouping the loss by game sales.

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Dave

That’d be good.

They’d likely get some new PS+ subs too – as cloud data will likely be the only way to copy save data from PS4 to PS5.

I wouldn’t be looking to copy everything, just the data for the games that benefit most from PS5 boosting.

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Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

I shouldn’t have been surprised that it throws a random snowboarding section at you for no good reason, yet I was. It definitely feels like the liberating aspects of CDs (FMV video! Multiple discs! Huge storage space!) went to the developers’ heads and no-one tried to reign them in. So you end up with a game bloated by half-formed nonsense like that tedious tower defence game.

It was a huge deal at the time, gaming mags were going nuts at the idea that not only was the main game so big, the FMV miles ahead of the competition but it actually had extra games within it. It was a huge leap in showing what the console could do over other games and yes I think there was a fair degree of showing off involved.

In retrospect, yes a lot of them are pretty tedious (the tower defence game drove me mad on a replay a couple of years back) but FFVII basically invented minigames as we know them today.

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Ben, Martin Smith

This is interesting. Metal Jesus Rocks (an American video game YTer and former(?) games dev) talks about using the ZX Spectrum Next retro machine, his first experience of the Spectrum.

The whole 80s British micro-computer scene must feel so alien to Americans, especially ones who were gaming in the 80s but unaware of it. That typical Spectrum graphic style (seen in the likes of Robocop and Batman in the video) is an interesting side-path to the progression of Atari 2600 to C64 and NES that the US market would have only had.

 

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garjones

The Spectrum was super popular too. I was a Commodore 64 guy but friends owning Spectrums were way more numerous (they were a lot cheaper).

The graphics element is always interesting, the colour options were limited in that each item could only be one colour at a time but there was a kind of elegant roundness to the characters you didn’t get on a Commodore which looked more blocky.

The other thing is the C64 was famously an absolute bitch to try and program, very difficult. The Spectrum being much easier meant loads of bedroom developers (in those days where one person could do a game on their own) so even though the C64 had both US and UK titles it’s arguable the Spectrum had a better suite of games overall.

Streets of Rage 4

What a massive disappointment this game is.

Oh, it looks good.  It sounds… OK.  The fight effects are pretty good, but the soundtrack? It just isn’t there.  Granted, it’s up against one of the greatest soundtracks going in Streets of Rage 2, but even allowing for that, it’s far weaker than it should be.

The biggest problem is it doesn’t play right.  The first flaw is over-complicating the controls.  They add a back button attack, a Star move – which never, ever worked, I hit that button? Fuck all happened – a pick-up move.  It’s the last that does the greatest damage.  If you are new to the series, this doesn’t matter, you’ll just learn the new habit.  But for anyone who learnt the style on the old games, the pick up button is a pain in the arse and it just gets in the way.  Too often you’ll hit attack instead of pick-up because that is what you are used to.

The other major flaw is they allow everyone to be able to interrupt the special attacks, this severely undermines their usefulness.  I think they could be in the old games but the AI just was nowhere near as cheap as it is here.  Then there are enemies who have either infinite block or unstoppable attacks.  And they span them, all the time.  Consequently, every boss fight in the game becomes an exercise in frustration as you deal with enemies who are, when they want to be, immune to everything and you have no dodge ability worth a damn.  Boss fights became a dull exercise in attrition, can I hit them enough before all my lives run out? Often the answer was yes, but that doesn’t mean it was a fun fight.

This game plays as if someone looked at Streets of Rage 3 and went: Yeah, that’s too easy, let’s whack the difficulty up.  Also, having played it solo, I can’t help but feel it is more designed for co-op play.  Some of the enemy swarms on solo is nuts, but not in a good way.  The shield enemies are particularly irritating.

There were moments when it was fantastic.  There are some half-decent stages in there and there are a bare handful of decent, almost enjoyable boss fights, but the overall package? It’s too frustrating and has been built on a flawed understanding of the games.  The sole form of challenge in this game is cheap AI and endurance battles, that’s it.  That’s all it got and it shouldn’t be that that’s all it has.  It should have more to draw on.

Let me put it like this: I played Streets of Rage 2 a few months back.  It still held up, over 25 years later, near perfect difficulty level, excellent enemy variety, good boss fights but without bosses being the cheap fucks they are here.  I completed it and wanted to go round again.  This game? I do not wish to go around again.  I may play the odd decent stage with some other characters, might unlock some classic skins, maybe, but re-play the game? On Normal? No.  Easy was hard enough and it wasn’t enough fun.  If I get to the end of a game and my conclusion is ‘thank God that’s over, now I don’t have to play it again’ something’s gone seriously wrong somewhere.  By the end, I just wanted to unlock the level select.

I wasn’t a fan of the dash move in Streets of Rage 3, but in this game? It would have made a probably substantive positive difference.

One rather neat extra of buying a physical copy was the artbook.  It shows off the enemy design neatly and all of them are excellent – that part, it got right.

garjones wrote:

The other thing is the C64 was famously an absolute bitch to try and program, very difficult. The Spectrum being much easier meant loads of bedroom developers (in those days where one person could do a game on their own) so even though the C64 had both US and UK titles it’s arguable the Spectrum had a better suite of games overall.

One thing I’ve been wondering about recently is the games that were sent into magazines for people to type into their machines themselves. They were in BASIC, right?

Because I was reminded recently that the NES (well, the Famicom) had a BASIC programme (and keyboard) available early in its life, so naturally wondered how feasible it would be to get a Spectrum game written in BASIC running on a Famicom.

Ben wrote:

Streets of Rage 4

What a massive disappointment this game is.

Oh, it looks good.  It sounds… OK.  The fight effects are pretty good, but the soundtrack? It just isn’t there.  Granted, it’s up against one of the greatest soundtracks going in Streets of Rage 2, but even allowing for that, it’s far weaker than it should be.

The biggest problem is it doesn’t play right.  The first flaw is over-complicating the controls.  They add a back button attack, a Star move – which never, ever worked, I hit that button? Fuck all happened – a pick-up move.  It’s the last that does the greatest damage.  If you are new to the series, this doesn’t matter, you’ll just learn the new habit.  But for anyone who learnt the style on the old games, the pick up button is a pain in the arse and it just gets in the way.  Too often you’ll hit attack instead of pick-up because that is what you are used to.

The other major flaw is they allow everyone to be able to interrupt the special attacks, this severely undermines their usefulness.  I think they could be in the old games but the AI just was nowhere near as cheap as it is here.  Then there are enemies who have either infinite block or unstoppable attacks.  And they span them, all the time.  Consequently, every boss fight in the game becomes an exercise in frustration as you deal with enemies who are, when they want to be, immune to everything and you have no dodge ability worth a damn.  Boss fights became a dull exercise in attrition, can I hit them enough before all my lives run out? Often the answer was yes, but that doesn’t mean it was a fun fight.

This game plays as if someone looked at Streets of Rage 3 and went: Yeah, that’s too easy, let’s whack the difficulty up.  Also, having played it solo, I can’t help but feel it is more designed for co-op play.  Some of the enemy swarms on solo is nuts, but not in a good way.  The shield enemies are particularly irritating.

There were moments when it was fantastic.  There are some half-decent stages in there and there are a bare handful of decent, almost enjoyable boss fights, but the overall package? It’s too frustrating and has been built on a flawed understanding of the games.  The sole form of challenge in this game is cheap AI and endurance battles, that’s it.  That’s all it got and it shouldn’t be that that’s all it has.  It should have more to draw on.

Let me put it like this: I played Streets of Rage 2 a few months back.  It still held up, over 25 years later, near perfect difficulty level, excellent enemy variety, good boss fights but without bosses being the cheap fucks they are here.  I completed it and wanted to go round again.  This game? I do not wish to go around again.  I may play the odd decent stage with some other characters, might unlock some classic skins, maybe, but re-play the game? On Normal? No.  Easy was hard enough and it wasn’t enough fun.  If I get to the end of a game and my conclusion is ‘thank God that’s over, now I don’t have to play it again’ something’s gone seriously wrong somewhere.  By the end, I just wanted to unlock the level select.

I wasn’t a fan of the dash move in Streets of Rage 3, but in this game? It would have made a probably substantive positive difference.

One rather neat extra of buying a physical copy was the artbook.  It shows off the enemy design neatly and all of them are excellent – that part, it got right.

They just released a balance patch yesterday or the day before, the game is now considerably less frustrating than on day one.

Also, about the control scheme, you can choose “legacy” set-up in the options menu, where it works mostly like before (you pick up with attack button), the back attack has always been there since sor1, you can do it by pressing jump+attack at the same time, or by pressing opposite direction+attack quickly (it had a dedicated button if you had a 6 button controler, too). In “legacy mode” you only have three buttons, so throwing weapons is also jump+attack, and the star move is attack+special. You should try that, see if it works for you… at first I used that, but I honestly just switched to the new layout, it works a bit better with this game.

If you really don’t like the music, you can also choose to hear the retro soundtrack in the options menu.

And as for specials, yea, they decided to make offensive specials (forward+special) vulnerable, which sucks a lot for Axel because you always get hit out of it, thus making it very limited in use… however defensive specials (neutral+special) are still invulnerable, and since the patch you can also get out of hit-stun with them.

Also, if you keep playing, you can unlock the retro characters, which play almost like their old iterations (specials are always invulnerable for exemple, and SOR3 chars can all run, etc…) but they’re all unfortunately locked behind some lame points system.

Well, that’s it, the extra buttons aren’t needed because the controls worked.

Will give the Legacy and Retro options a go, might improve it quite a bit.

How are the star moves supposed to work? Feels like a rather hefty missing chunk.

 

Ben wrote:

Well, that’s it, the extra buttons aren’t needed because the controls worked.

Will give the Legacy and Retro options a go, might improve it quite a bit.

How are the star moves supposed to work? Feels like a rather hefty missing chunk.

 

What do you mean? They’re just a super special attack… it has a wide AOE and they do a lot of damage… great to get out of a bad spot (like when you’re surrounded by mobs), or to extend combos or as finishing moves… they also hit enemies on the ground, oh and I’m pretty sure they ignore all armour too. it’s just a super OP attack.

But you need to collect stars throughout the levels, since you only get one at the start. Think of them as the “cop missile” special from SoR1 (and in fact, the SoR1 characters need stars to do the cop missile thing).

Jon wrote:

And as for specials, yea, they decided to make offensive specials (forward+special) vulnerable, which sucks a lot for Axel because you always get hit out of it,

Nah, if you time it right you can get Axel’s offensive special working a treat.

I really like the game, I think it’s a great update that if anything sticks a little too close to SoR2 to feel like its own thing, but it’s interesting reading your takes on it.

yeah, it’s not completely useless… but you can’t spam it like in the other games, basically, where it had invulnerability all the way through. Now it’s mostly a “corner move” and a combo extender. That’s just for SOR4 Axel though, the other characters’ forward special are all different and less situational.

Controls said press R1 for the star move, did that – nothing happened.

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Ben wrote:

Nah, if you time it right you can get Axel’s offensive special working a treat. I really like the game, I think it’s a great update that if anything sticks a little too close to SoR2 to feel like its own thing, but it’s interesting reading your takes on it.

Try again, but harder. Repeat.

Ben wrote:

Controls said press R1 for the star move, did that – nothing happened.

Oh… maybe you didn’t have a star? =P

Hum, try pressing special+grab on regular control scheme, or special+attack on legacy control scheme… but again, you need to have a star to do them… you can see if you have them next to your health bar… just start a new game and do it… it should work.

Oh, I always had stars.

Then I’ve got no clue… might be a bug… try the button combination if the specific key-binding is not working… if it’s still not working, then maybe re-install or something… it should be working.

It’s double button shite.

Not limited to Streets of Rage 4 either.  Every game that has ever had ‘press triangle + circle’ type moves, I have never pulled those moves off because the DualShock doesn’t register the combined press, it’s always one button or another.  Spider-Man. The Arkham games. Ghost of Tsuschima.  All of them engage in this dumb crap.

Bigger problem is, to get around it, the options are:

• Use the Legacy option, which inflicts double button rubbish or
• Use normal controls, which inflicts the Pickup button that also doesn’t work.

The perfect option? Pick ‘n’ mix from both.

That said the Retro soundtrack improves the game massively.  Still flawed and less than it should be though.

Ah it sounds like it’s an issue with your controller, because I have zero issues pressing both… in fact, I have the opposite problem where I’ll get a back-attack when trying to jump>attack too quickly.

But yeah, I do wish you could bind however you want instead of having two modes, but hey, at least they put it the option to go old-school with only 3 buttons…

Martin Smith wrote:

One thing I’ve been wondering about recently is the games that were sent into magazines for people to type into their machines themselves. They were in BASIC, right?

They were but just for fun each system had its own form of BASIC. I suppose a bit like Chinese having several different dialects.

That’s why it was easier to code for the Spectrum than the Commodore. So if you typed in a program from Your Sinclair into a C64 it wouldn’t work. So it’d need tweaking at least to work. I’ve never been a programmer though to say how much.

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Martin Smith

Jon wrote:

Ah it sounds like it’s an issue with your controller, because I have zero issues pressing both… in fact, I have the opposite problem where I’ll get a back-attack when trying to jump>attack too quickly.

But yeah, I do wish you could bind however you want instead of having two modes, but hey, at least they put it the option to go old-school with only 3 buttons…

Nah, it’s more likely an issue with me but newer games are using all their other buttons, this one isn’t.

So, am now on PS+.

Why? Well, the Ps4 didn’t want to switch on this morning – eventually it sorted itself out but it took a while.

Game install data? Is all on the external HD. Save data? Ah. So, decided to nab it to make use of the cloud storage as a way to protect a few hundred hours of gaming.

But it does open the door to online play…. A pool I’m a bit hesitant to head into, but Streets of Rage 4 could be a goon one to start with. Maybe nab Destiny 2 now as well?

Ben wrote:

A pool I’m a bit hesitant to head into, but Streets of Rage 4 could be a goon one to start with.

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Ben

I’ve been playing Transformers: Devastation this week. Fitting, in a way, as it is a game that straddled the cross-gen hand-over from the previous to current and we’re just about at that point from current to next.

Anyway, it’s notable for two reasons: first is that it’s authentically G1 styled, featuring characters from the 80s cartoon with their original voice actors (where possible) in a cel-shaded graphics style that looks (superficially) similar to the cartoon. Second is that it’s by Platinum Studios (Bayonetta etc) which is an unusual choice for a random revival of an 80s cartoon.

I’m not a huge fan of Platinum style games – I find them overwhelming, confusing and largely button mashers. I know there’s nuance to their systems when you drill down, but I rarely reach that point – but well, Transformers. So I’m persevering. And that really was what it felt like initially, as you get barraged by enemies, tutorial tips that will not shut up and notifications of items you’ve collected that seemingly make no sense (it kept telling me that I’d earned “melee weapon – uncommon” or “ranged weapon – common” with no explanation of what that meant or sign of them in my inventory). On top of that, it’s tough as a nails and I died a lot.

Eventually though, it lets you go to the Ark, where you get to freely switch between characters (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Sideswipe initially, Wheeljack after Chapter 1 and Grimlock after Chapter 2), buy new moves, create upgrade chips (with randomised effects) and actually get those weapons, which you can buy, sell and even combine for RPG style stat boosts. The Ark is the real hub of the game and the first point where it doesn’t feel an entirely overwhelming mess. They really could have done with introducing it earlier on.

I got through Chapter 1, which is all on one large map of a generic city being cyberformed and contains 20-odd missions. Again, this isn’t well explained, it’s easy to miss when you’ve started a mission and given you’re graded on the time you take on them (amongst other things) that’s not helpful. The game offers various hidden things you can look for down sidestreets – usually just caches of items, but also unlockables for the extras menu, like concept art and whatnot. It’s an uncomfortable balance between an open world exploration action game and a set-piece mission based shooter-brawler. I somehow even managed to miss one of the missions in completing the chapter, which is odd. I can see how it happened, given the confusing map, but I’m not sure why the game let it happen.

Chapter 2 was when things started to click for me though. I had a handle on the game’s style, the location (a spaceship) was less free-form and confusing than the city and I was doing better – dying a lot less, making clear progress, which I thought was down to my upgrades, new moves and increased handle on the game. It turns out though that the game, at some point, bumped me down to the easiest difficulty setting without telling me. On the one hand, it’s kind of annoying, because it’s a bit of a shitty and patronising thing to to do, but the other, I am enjoying it a lot more, so what the hell.

It definitely feels like the kind of game where you’re expected to struggle through a first playthrough and then redo it all once you’ve upgraded your characters and equipment to a competent level, getting better grades on it all. Which I guess is a valid design choice, but I’d rather have a well-balanced game that offers a satisfying experience to play through once and maybe revisit.

In terms of its story, well… it’s ok. I’m surprised how much it’s actually drawing on material from the 2012 RID comic by John Barber – in the supporting text files at least (I’m dubious how much of that backstory will come into play in the game). Considering the game exists as a nostalgia trip, they could have been a lot lazier with it. Having the original VAs back is nice, Gilvezan and Bell resume their roles well (I haven’t heard much from Berger as Grimlock yet), though you can feel the years (or the effect of movie gravitas) in Cullen and Welker’s performances. They have managed to authentically replicate Soundwave’s vocoder effect though, which isn’t always a given. Wheeljack’s replacement VA is ok (better than the replacement for Starscream, definitely). The cast does feel somewhat driven by the availability of actors though. Prime, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Wheeljack and Grimlock is just an odd grouping. Sideswipe over Prowl or Jazz or someone with a better gameplay gimmick like Trailbreaker?

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Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

One thing I’ve been wondering about recently is the games that were sent into magazines for people to type into their machines themselves. They were in BASIC, right?

Because I was reminded recently that the NES (well, the Famicom) had a BASIC programme (and keyboard) available early in its life, so naturally wondered how feasible it would be to get a Spectrum game written in BASIC running on a Famicom.

There were minor differences between BASIC on different platforms, I remember that if I wanted to type in a program from a magazine onto my Amstrad I would have to alter a bunch of lines of code if it was originally written for the C64 or whatever.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reference out there on the differences between Nintendo BASIC and any other flavour, but it might be more work than it’s worth to try and convert a game over.

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Martin Smith, garjones

Replaying the whole Halo series (the shooters at least – I’ve no interest in the RTS Halo Wars games).

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garjones

There’s an ad appeared on the local equivalent of Amazon for a knocked off colour Gameboy with 400 games included for the grand total of US$1.59.

How is this even feasible at that price? It has a rechargable ion/lithium battery and HDMi Port to display on your TV. How is it possible to get those parts and assemble them for under two bucks? It has a lot of reviews with pics of people using them and a 90% positive seller rating.

I saw a watch for 67 cents and was tempted but I definitely have to go with this. If it’s a scam well I’ve paid more for a can of Coke.

Just placed the order. I may have to do an ‘unboxing’ video. 😂

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Martin Smith, Bruce

garjones wrote:

There’s an ad appeared on the local equivalent of Amazon for a knocked off colour Gameboy with 400 games included for the grand total of US$1.59.

How is this even feasible at that price? It has a rechargable ion/lithium battery and HDMi Port to display on your TV. How is it possible to get those parts and assemble them for under two bucks? It has a lot of reviews with pics of people using them and a 90% positive seller rating.

I saw a watch for 67 cents and was tempted but I definitely have to go with this. If it’s a scam well I’ve paid more for a can of Coke.

Just placed the order. I may have to do an ‘unboxing’ video. 😂

It might be an attempt to game the rating system on their marketplace website of choice. They sell some items at a loss to get more positive ratings, getting them a higher standing in searches?  I was readin a thing earlier about those seeds that got posted fro China to thousands of houses in the US, and it’s a prevailing theory there too.

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Dave

I think it must be something along those lines, parts and labour are cheap but I can’t see any way you can get the battery alone for that cheap. Anyway it’ll be fun to see if it actually works when it arrives.

It sounds interesting. I’m going to guess it has a battery life of 15 minutes and there will be about 12 games you’ve heard of and then the rest are shovelware nonsense most of which are the same games just with name variations.

Could be, they never tell you which games it comes with because they’ll clearly all be pirated and illegal (although then the picture clearly has a Mario Bros. screenshot). For $1.59 I’ll call it a winner if it actually switches on and works. 😂

I’ll give an update when it comes (which’ll probably be a week away, Lazada has the variety but none of the speed of Amazon).

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Martin Smith

I am really interested to see how it turns out.

There’s been another “leak” (read: theft) of Nintendo stuff in the past few days, this time a load of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Most of it is just files for released games, but there are some interesting unreleased games in there too, including full yet unused English translations of some Japanese games, like X aka Lunar Chase, the first game by Argonaut before they did Starfox; Gargoyle’s Quest II; a Legend of the River King sea-fishing spin-off. Some late era Game Boy Color games that were just shelved in favour of the GBA – companion pieces to Japanese exclusive Nintendo Power SNES flash cart download games mainly. But also there’s some games unreleased for less obvious reasons, including an Edd the Duck game (which is just a reskin of another game).

Amazon’s pre-order pages for the PS5 console have been taken down, so I guess today’s the day. The latest Sony presentation is later today so hopefully we get a price and release date.

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Ben

Since they got me a copy of FF7R at the height of the pandemic, I’ve registered my interest with Base a few weeks ago.

Everything I’m hearing says early purchase of this one looks the best option.

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Dave

I’m watching the PS5 reveal event over my dinner (timing means it goes out at 9pm here) and it all looks pretty good, but at the same time I can’t shake that sense that the leap between the generations feels more gradual than ever.

It’s to be expected I guess, but it would be nice to see something that really feels like it couldn’t be done this generation.

Still, Spidey looks good and the Harry Potter game could be fun for the kids.

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Ben

£449.99. Reckon I can live with that.

(If my PS4 disc drive wasn’t broken I might hold off for maybe a year or so, but given that I can’t play most of my games at the moment I think I’ll just bite the bullet and get one rather than have to pay for another PS4 now and then a PS5 later.)

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Ben

The big next-gen graphics game tend to turn up 18 months to 2 years after launch, Witcher 3 was that and it sold me the PS4.

That said, I think both Miles and Ratchet & Clank will give the first indicators.  The big change is likely to be load times.

I can work with £450.

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Dave

I’ve still got so much from the current gen to catch up with that the PS5 (and series X) feel almost irrelevant to me, frankly. Hopefully there’ll be a price drop by the time I’m in the market for one (of course the other possibility is that the disc-drive versions are phased out after a year or so)

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Andrew, Dave

[Ben]

The big problems this time are supply issues in 2021 and Brexit.

Normally, waiting for the price to drop would make perfect sense.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

Trailer de #FinalFantasyXVI #FF16 pic.twitter.com/dRMAbBdBUb

— Paola Del Castillo (@paodlcastillo) September 16, 2020

UK preorders for PS5 active at Amazon, bit hard to find but used news article on Eurogamer to get to it.

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Dave

They had a link up for five minutes but it didn’t go to a page! Eventually got it working and pre-ordered.

Glad I did as it’s now sold out within half an hour.

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Ben

Wow, I’m starting to think Base are up against it on this one.

I read something yesterday about PS5 production being squeezed because of issues with the yield on a key chip (some of the reports were citing as low as 50%), meaning Sony had been forced to cut production this year from 15m to 11m units.

So I guess it’s possible there will be supply issues on release. Even with a pre-order, I’m not betting on having one immediately.

I’ve heard similar but the expectation is those supply issues will hit 2021 supply.

Ah, ok. That makes sense.

People Are Creating Nightmares With The Sonic Forces Character Creator

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/11/people-are-creating-nightmares-with-the-sonic-forcescharacter-creator/

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Thanks, I hate it.

JRCarter wrote:

People Are Creating Nightmares With The Sonic Forces Character Creator

Sonic fans in “behave like Sonic fans always do” shocker.

They’re behaving just like they did three years ago!

Hey, wait a minute…

Might get offered a PS5 via Base next week, they’ve confirmed it’ll be sent by courier / Parcelforce.

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Dave

Far Cry 3 Classic vs Far Cry 4

As an unwelcome trip back through time to how games used to be, Far Cry 3 Classic just about works, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.  Far Cry 4, however, benefits greatly from all of its predecessor’s screw ups.

The third game suffers from too many enemies – you might just be after a pig, but before you know it, two psychos in a jeep have pulled up, then another one and another one, before you know it a hitherto deserted area has become a warzone and that’s not including psychopath animals that will just turn up out of nowhere.  Add in that your character is basically paper, you take damage quick, there’s frequently little cover, your enemies have both superhuman eyesight and aim – even on the lowest difficulty.  The only balancing out factor is that they have these abilities in alert state only, when inactive you can quickly takedown a group because the one in front will not turn around.  The game gives you papier mache body armour for a laugh, as one hit later, it’s gone.

Other problems are that the tagging of enemies by camera is difficult.  When it works, it’s quite smart but it’s hard to make it work and, even the if you do, the game will always bring in more enemies right behind you.  The driving is all over the place, with any jeep you drive having the unerring ability to impale itself on any obstacle, while enemies see you from a kilometer away.

In contrast, the fourth game benefits from a number of improvements – your character is not quite as weak, it’s still bad and body armour is still a joke but it’s not as bad as its predecessor.  Enemy swarm over the area is far, far more reduced which makes exploration more fun.  Have been able to do some hunting to unlock the weapons and upgrade some other gear.  The bow makes the whole clean kill rubbish a bit more bearable, but the range and aiming for it is shit.  The aim assist is not the joke it was in three, but still not as helpful as it could be.  One of the best new additions is the autodrive, as that allows you to appreciate the world design.

Three I still feel ripped off by despite paying only £2.50, it comes across as a masochistic game. If you like lots of death and superhuman invisible enemies, maybe it’ll work for you, but for me, Four wins this battle.

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Andrew

News just in – Microsoft buys Zenimax Media for $7.5bn. Yes, you read that right, $7.5bn.

To put it in other words: Microsoft buys Bethesda and id Software.

Thanks for the Far Cry 3/4 shout above. I was hesitant on starting up FC4 again, because it reminded me way too much of “Far Cry 3: Bugs bugs bugs”. Since I read your review I have completed act one and… well. It’s Far Cry 3 with a different, much better, dressing. I like it well enough as far as “problematic freedom fighter power fantasy” goes.

I will give FC3 credit for being willing to have it’s villains go around yelling “get that fucking arsehole”.

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Ben wrote:

News just in – Microsoft buys Zenimax Media for $7.5bn. Yes, you read that right, $7.5bn.

And to think Marvel was sold for 4 billions… =/

Anyways, I don’t think Zenimax is worth all that… I mean, sure Bethesda and id are pretty huge, but still… Oh well, let’s hope they fire some people at Bethesda who need firing, and let’s hope this means a better regional pricing scheme, although I’m not holding my breath.

My $1.59 Gameboy arrived. It works!

The build is pretty light and flimsy but it charges, switches on and does have a load of games. Martin is partially right, when you scroll through the 400 games it starts repeating halfway through but that does mean 200 games. The usual ones you’d expect but I spotted a newer game in Angry Birds on there (I have no idea when they stopped making Gameboy games).

Overall a big winner. Now let’s see how long it lasts.

 

 

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Martin Smith, Todd, Dave

Amazing!

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garjones

I rather foolishly had a quick go of Track and Field which of course is a surefire way to knacker the thing with button mashing! 😂

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Dave

Definitely keep us updated on how it is long term. At a couple of quid, even if it doesn’t last long, I’d be tempted to get one for my nephew as a first taste of video games.

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Dave, garjones

Far Cry Classic 3

Despite some bizarre design decisions, the Supply Drops are stupidly awful and the forced escape and chase from the hotel needs both checkpoints and better design as the Uncharted series pretty much craps all over it, I did today finally get a sense of why the series is the major success it is.

What changed? First, I got a sniper rifle, second, learnt how to use it and third, staring taking outposts.  The first couple I even managed to achieve 100% stealth on – all killed without ever seeing who was killing them.  For those times when I was spotted? Shotgun.  When you absolutely need to kill every motherfucker in the place, accept no substitute.  A shotgun is the perfect cleaning up tool.  I also snipe shot an explosive barrel with an enemy next to it and watched him get BBQ’d!  Have turned a large part of the map green and have 5 of 18 radio towers done.

The game still has its flaws, the way it decides you’re doing a mission at a 200m distance from the start, with no way to abandon it is weird.  I did a radio tower, didn’t want to do the mission, so it failed and wiped out that achievement.  I know it’s an old, but fuck, that sucks.  The amount of enemies that turn up out of nowhere gets ludicrous at times but, on the other hand, shotgun.  Also grenades.  Oh and I killed a load of sharks to get the final weapon slot unlocked.  Fishing method of choice? Grenade in the water.  Despite the game’s self-inflicted idiocies it does feel more even, that I have more of a chance of doing this – if nothing else, I might be able to get the towers and the outposts.

 

I remember REALLY enjoying Far cry 3… specially like you say, once you get the sniper… I’m sure it plays rather badly today, but it still must be somewhat fun.

It’s hard to complain when a game is £2.50, but what takes time to adjust is that the game will kill you often, but it won’t penalise you in the way many games will when it does.

What is nuts is the enemy eyesight, you cannot tell me this lot are human – it’s absurdly variable.  They spot you at hundreds of metres away but never turn around if you’re sneaking up on them.  The takedowns are wonderfully vicious and the enemies do have a great sense of personality for psychopath bastards.

No Man’s Sky: Origins

Well, this was quite the update – I’ve barely scratched the surface of the new stuff but the game is now beautifully distracting.  If you’re in a binary or ternary star system just flying through space is amazing.  I’ve found two new planets and both demonstrated the new design quite nicely, albeit in a limited way, but there’s certainly more verticality to the environments now.

I found a Paradise Moon planet, went down there – wow, it looked good, but it was at night time it became something else due all the light effects.  So, I rocked up next to a trading post – and those have had a major upgrade! – found a good spot and decided to build a new base.  Wasn’t planning to but the place just looked that good.  Set up a central core, added an observation gallery with twin stairs access, added a landing pad, stuck a stargate on that landing pad, set up the power system of solar and batteries and yep, a nice new base is established.

The other big change to the planets is the sheer amount and size of alien creatures, it has gone way, way up.

Due to going to other, new planets, have unlocked a lot of base parts.  Also did a derelict freighter and got my first bulkhead, also found how to get those coordinates for free, which suddenly renders it all far more attractive.

The only thing that didn’t work is I got an invite to pay with someone else, accepted it, warped to their system, then got hit by lag that made it unplayable, which was a shame.  The multiplayer features are woven in quite neatly now.

Think it might have re-hooked me with this update, after a few dud ones.

Been playing through Halo 1, 2 and 3 over the past couple weeks. The games hold up pretty well and I ended up playing the campaign for 1 twice and intend to replay the campaign for 3 having just completed it this evening. I had been playing these after work when the kid was still up and on the go and didn’t think anything of it but when she handed me this drawing I realised I may have to rethink my gaming timetable…

I have to admit I’m impressed with how well she’s captured the image of Master Chief on the back of a Ghost.

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Dave, Ben, Todd

Bruce wrote:

I had been playing these after work when the kid was still up and on the go and didn’t think anything of it but when she handed me this drawing I realised I may have to rethink my gaming timetable…

You’re afraid she’s going to start hogging the games, aren’t you?

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Dave, Ben

Todd wrote:

You’re afraid she’s going to start hogging the games, aren’t you?

She’s building up a wee repertoire of games she can play on her own – Mario Kart 8 (will win on 50 CC against the computer but is utter shite against human opponents), Peggle (actually pretty good at it), and Goat Simulator (there’s no real point to the game so it’s not really possible to be good or bad at it – Sophie has an absolute riot playing it through).

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Martin Smith, Dave, garjones, Todd, Ben

Speaking of Mario Kart, I replayed Mario Kart 64 recently. It’s been on my backlog for a while, but it’s a game I know really well, so I was just waiting for when I was in the mood to go through the cart I got at the gaming market last year and unlock everything (“everything” being just mirror mode and a different title screen). And it’s tougher than I remember!

Part of that is that it took me a little while to stop trying to play it like Mario Kart 8 – attempting to do tricks off the jumps for speed boosts and boosting off every power slide. In fact, just getting the hang of the 64 power slide again took a while. I also struggled a bit with the game’s traction element. If it thinks you’re swerving about too much (by, say, steering through a series of tight corners) it’ll have you spin out, as though you’ve hit a banana. Incredibly frustrating at the higher difficulties. But the main issue was having forgotten just how much of a cheating bastard the AI is. MK8 – where I’m used to just sailing away and winning by a healthy lead on 100cc, let alone 50cc – has spoiled me and I wasn’t quite ready for how much of a fight even 50cc would be. The rubber-banding is insane. I had a golden mushroom at one point, got about six boosts off it, passing Mario and Bowser on the first or second. Within less than two seconds of using those, they both came sailing past me again, as if I’d been crawling along.

What also surprised me was how competitive the championships are. I always remember it being that the CPU would have three basic driver AIs – competitive (who’d be challenging for wins), competent (who’d be around 4th/5th) and useless (who’d be puttering around at the back) – and at the start of each cup, it’d randomly assign two characters as competitive, two or three as competent and the rest as useless. That means you’re usually racing up front against the same couple of people, meaning you’ll be tight for points in winning the cup if you don’t win every race. But as I went through, and certainly in 150cc, it’s not that clear cut. In one attempt I made at a cup, Peach won the third race by 15 seconds. Just stayed out of trouble and didn’t hit anything the entire time, breezed through. But she hadn’t won any points in the previous two races and came dead last in the fourth. I managed to scrape through and win the cup with only 21 or 24 points, I think. In one go, the cup ended with everyone (except Toad) having scored points.

So I guess maybe the AI’s more nuanced and complicated than I gave it credit for. Or, possibly more likely, the items are a little borked and Peach won that race, for instance, because her collision detection wasn’t working. I noticed a few odd little moments like that going through the game. One time, I fired off a red shell (which is supposed to home-in on your nearest rival) and it turned around and went straight for me, costing me a win. Another time, I fired off a blue shell, which is supposed to go straight for the winner, but also take out everyone else it meets along the way. It immediately plinked off a wall and gave up, like the red shells always do when faced with trying to home in on someone around a corner.

It was fun going back to MK64 – I did enjoy the challenge in some regards – and it’ll always be a fun thing to break out for some nostalgic multiplayer, but it’s fair to say Mario Kart 8 surpasses it easily.

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Dave, Bruce

No Man’s Sky: Origins

I have to admit, this was a pretty captivating update.  I got about 10 hours out of it. There are times when the game looks incredible.

Also, standing untouched in a nuclear flamestorm in a mech is very, very cool.  Though your mech is more Megatron than Optimus Prime, as you show up, blast all the resources to steal them and leg it.  I still wish they hadn’t nerfed the other Exocraft environmental protections to push the player into using the mech.  Still, once you have that jetpack powered up, you get to do some quite crazy jumps.  Also, summoning the mech is very Titanfall 2.

The one part that remains very, very broken by its terrible design is the Living Ships update.  Even if you play in first-person view – I can’t, it doesn’t work for me at all, NMS only came alive for me when they enabled third person view – it still remains awful as you have these coordinates that are so unstable you can’t tell where to go with any reliability.  It also relies heavily on RNG mechanics that the game is moving more and more away from.  Hopefully at some point, they’ll change it so it can actually be played in a way that’s actually fun.

One big change was the inventory and storage limits, both have been massively increased from what they were and it really helps the game.

I’ve also now got the hang of derelict freighters, despite the odd bug that prevents 100% completion.  They are quite effective little sections but don’t see the need for the block on saving while on-board.

The whole power business? I can work around it but still don’t like it.  They made it overly complicated and wired tech doesn’t fit into the world at all.   That said, the solar towers that are on a couple of my bigger bases are damn cool to look at.  I also managed to stick in a set of powered floor light panels in the newest base – it looks good.

Finally, have found some of the new extreme volcano planets – they live up to their rep, you will need the mech for these.

What does it add up to?  It’s a better game overall, the collecting resources is easier, which makes basebuilding easier.  There’s some neat additions for the freighter – and mine is pretty much the game’s version of a Super Star Destroyer.  Flying up to your fleet is always cool – thugh a way to dismiss and recruit new members to alter the balance would be cool, as would be building your own space stations but who knows? Maybe that’ll be in the future.

I bought Middle-Earth: Shadow of War on a sale on Steam. Haven’t played it yet though. I did enjoy Shadow of Mordor quite a bit. I hope this holds up.

Also got Rogue Legacy 2, I do like my roguelites. And Rogue Legacy (1) was the start of that liking, many moons ago…

Oh shit… I completely forgot I bought Shadow of Mordor years ago… xD

Started playing it, it didn’t hook me at all, so I dropped it…. I should give it another go…

It has some odd mechanics and takes a while to settle. It’s a great game once one gets into it.

Anonymous wrote:

It has some odd mechanics

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Bump

I’ve started playing over the last few days Octopath Traveler on the Switch. It’s a retro-ish JRPG by Square-Enix and I’d say there’s three notable things about it.

Graphics

The game uses a style called HD-2D and it’s pretty distinctive. The gameworld is made up of pixel-art style voxels, like a 16 bit era game has been expanded into three dimensions (which has me wondering if the game started development on the 3DS). Characters are traditional flat 2D sprites, but things like fire and water are rendered realistically.

It’s a really beautiful effect and it’s enhanced by a lot of dynamic lighting effects (possibly too many at times) which give a real atmosphere to everything. Enter a cave and your lead character will produce a lamp which actually lights up your way naturally.  It’s pretty swell.

Combat

The game is turn-based, which is great, and has a couple of gimmicks to that. The first is that each enemy character has a shield level. This doesn’t stop them taking damage, but it lowers it significantly. Each enemy also has a set of vulnerabilities though (which are displayed with symbols on the combat screen) which you have to discover through trial and error. A hit from one of these effective weapons or magics will take off a shield level and if you take that down to 0, the enemy will be dazed and in a vulnerable state, losing their next turn and being open to large damage.

Thankfully, this doesn’t apply to the player’s characters too. As well as standard attacks and magic (and some class specific abilities, like the pharmacist’s ability to make up healing items and elemental attacks from raw ingredients) they have something called BP. Each character has 1 BP at the start of combat and they gain a point every turn, unless they have 0, in which case they have to wait a turn to get more, I think. Anyway, BP is used to enhance attacks. For physical attacks, this means an extra hit per BP you spend, whereas for magic, it just powers up the spell (without increasing the mana cost).

The combination of these creates a lot of depth and complexity, especially against bosses, who can have 8 shield points. Do you use all your BP on extra hits to get through the shield quickly and make them vulnerable? Or do you weather their attacks, chip away at the shield and then load your BP into attacks to take advantage of their vulnerable state?

Story structure

So the other interesting gimmick the game has is that it’s got 8 player characters. They’re all equally considered the main character though – you can pick anyone to start with. After you do their backstory (which is essentially a training sequence) and then the first chapter of their story, you’re free to go around the map and meet up with the other player characters and add them to your party. They’re placed around the main in a rough circle (arranged so that their initials spell out OCTOPATH when read clockwise). As soon as you’ve done a character’s first chapter, their second is added to the map, in a position that is on a outer concentric circle and opposite to their starting point. Primrose’s first chapter is south on the first ring and north on the second ring, for instance. You can go and do that second chapter straight away, but each chapter marked on the map comes with a recommended level and that initial second chapter you unlock will be level 22. I finished Primrose’s chapter at level 7, so you’re really encouraged to go around and get all the other player characters and build your party.

When you find another player character, you see their backstory (which is actually optional, I guess to speed up second playthroughs) and then join them to do their first chapter. To stop these being too easy, as your earlier party member inevitably level up, the game dynamically scales the difficulty. The initial couple of first chapters I did had a suggested level of 5, I think. I’ve done 5 of them now and it’s scaled them up to a suggested level of 14.

It works really well at keeping the challenge there as you go around and meet all the characters. There is a downside to this system though. I’m 7 or 8 hours into the game and it still feels like I haven’t really got going as it’s still establishing all the characters. Ok, there are 8 and that’s going to take a while, but it requires a degree of patience, I suppose. The other concern I have is that by having 8 characters with their own separate storylines, there’s not going to be anything to really bond them together as a party. Maybe that’ll change when I get to the second ring of chapters, but as it is now, you meet a new character as they’re about to go do their first mission and your party doesn’t really interact with them. To allow the flexibility of you going around in any order (I, for instance, went South, South-East, East, then looped back to South-West and have carried on clockwise) your existing party is silent when talking to the new member, who will say something like “what’s that, you want to help me go rob this mansion? Ok, you can come along, I guess”. There’s no real cohesion to it, so far at least. There’s been no moment when Primrose has spoken to Tressa in any distinct, let alone, meaningful way. There’s no justification for why Olberic is going off helping a thief rob a mansion when he’s tracking down the guy who killed his king. It’s 8 individuals with their own things going on that have arbitrarily banded together and I’m not convinced that entirely works.

But we’ll see if the game proves me wrong further down the line.

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Ben

That art style looks lovely.

It really is and there’s huge variety in the locations too.