Video Games – What Are You Playing?

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From Playstation to Xbox, through smartphone, Steam and Switch – what’s pushing your buttons?

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Booted up God Of War on the PS5 today and started a new game (as I only got partway through on my PS4 playthrough and wanted to start fresh).

It looks pretty amazing on PS5 and plays very smoothly with the 60fps enabled, and it’s also one of the games where I’ve really noticed the reduced loading time when you restart.

I’d also forgotten what a powerful and dramatic start to the story it was, really head and shoulders above a lot of other single-player game stories.

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Chris-S, Bruce

I’m slogging though Just Cause 4 which i picked up for about a tenner. It’s very much carrying on the Just Cause tradition of “build a massive fuck off map and fill with very little interesting features and stuff to do”. I mean there is stuff to do but there are only so many times you can do short wingsuit checkpoint races and “stunt” tricks (drive a car at this fairly slow speed through a hoop) before you want to kill yourself from boredom. The destruction side is still impressive but a lot of the time you go on a rampage and the enemy forces just shrug and keep their distance. It just adds to the feeling of emptiness of the map.

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Ben

Finished Horizon today. It does a nice thing where the final mission brings together all the people you’ve helped in side quests. I’d stop bothering with some of those by the end, so I didn’t get the full complement (and it was a little odd that Aloy greets one of them like she’s an old friend she’s not seen in ages when I only did her side quest on the way to the final mission – sandbox games, eh?)

Just looking up the cast – I hadn’t recognised that the voice of Aloy, Ashly Burch, was also Chloe in Life Is Strange and Cassie Cage in Mortal Kombat X.

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Chris-S, Ben

I tried Just Cause 4.  It didn’t last long.

As to HZD, I’m convinced Helis has more health than a fucking Thunderjaw.

Ben wrote:

I tried Just Cause 4.  It didn’t last long.

As to HZD, I’m convinced Helis has more health than a fucking Thunderjaw.

I didn’t have too much trouble with him, but yeah, the machine fights (mostly) are easier, I guess because you can use tearblast to just rip bits off and expose vulnerable elements. The final fight in the main strand of the DLC missions was bloody hard though.

Er, you know the Frozen Wilds was meant to be played post-game, right?

Ben wrote:

Er, you know the Frozen Wilds was meant to be played post-game, right?

I left the last bit of it (infiltrating the cauldron) til after the main story, but mostly I mixed it in with the main game when I was the right level for the missions.

It’s weirdly placed as being before the final mission, but I think its plot works better as an after main game piece.

Latest Just Cause 4 mission: drive a van through some hoops. Oh do fuck off.

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Martin Smith, Ben

Still loving God Of War. I’ve now got further through it than I did the first time and all the combat mechanics are coming a lot more naturally to me now.

I do think it’s odd though how the levelling-up mechanics of these games tend to have the side-effect of making combat feel pretty shit and difficult when you first start the game, and only getting easier as you unlock skills and abilities. It feels like the opposite of a learning curve where things should get tougher as you go along.

(It’s the same with the recent Spidey games too, you start off finding it tough to see off all but the most basic goons, and then by the end of the game you’re zipping around and dealing out damage like it’s the easiest thing in the world.)

Also, I’m finding all the upgrades/runes/clothing options to be massively faffy and overcomplicated, but I think that’s just my age and relatively low tolerance for RPG style elements in my action games.

Overall, grumbles aside, it’s lots of fun and the story and visuals are first class. Although I do worry I’m going to start addressing my kids in real life by simply growling “Boy….!” at them in a bass baritone.

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Chris-S, Ben

I have got to start on that game but Trails of Cold Steel II is proving rather addictive.

Just cause 4 has been made notably more fun by the discovery of a cow skin for the main character.

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Dave

Bruce wrote:

the discovery of a cow skin for the main character.

is it just a skin or do you become a cow. City of Heroes had a command that could turn you into a cow, but all you could do is walk around and say moo. You could type out War and Peace but all that would show on the screen would be “Moo”

Finally reached and completed the final mission of the first campaign in Hitman (1) – good fun; I feel like the second last mission (Colorado) was much harder than the final one (Hokkaido). There is something so very satisfying about pulling off the perfect hits, it’s unlike any other game I’ve played.

Rocket wrote:

is it just a skin or do you become a cow.

A cow that acts like a man.

I blasted though the end game of Just Cause 4 just to get it done. After a fairly mediocre campaign the final confrontation involved skydiving through the eye of a tornado, taking control of a rogue weather control satellite, and flying it into the private jet of the escaping antagonist. Pretty cool, huh. Well, it would be if it wasn’t all played out through a cut scene.

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Chris-S, Ben, Dave

Andrew wrote:

Finally reached and completed the final mission of the first campaign in Hitman (1) – good fun; I feel like the second last mission (Colorado) was much harder than the final one (Hokkaido). There is something so very satisfying about pulling off the perfect hits, it’s unlike any other game I’ve played.

I’ve had a copy of Hitman 2 (2018) sitting about since last Xmas. Just havent gotten around to playing it. It feels like the sort of game I’d need to set a decent amount of time aside to play for each sitting. Not really something i have at the moment (my gaming habit at the moment is grabbing half hour here and there when I can). Maybe next school holidays…

Hitman can definitely be bit of both. I tend do dip in sometimes just to scout a mission I haven’t done yet or just cause some general havok  and mayhem. 30 minutes, something like that. Then some other times, I’m in for the long haul setting up a proper plan for hours, with a lot of timed moving parts, before all hell breaks loose and I have to go the mayhem route anyway.

I’ve spent close to an hour on single missions, using 5 different disguises, hiding a bunch of concussed witnesses, collecting various tools and items.

And then watch some guy on YouTube knock over a two target mission using no disguises, and only piano wire for the kills, in 6 minutes.

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Martin Smith

That was not 6 minutes… xD

Also, damn I never knew you could shoot the stalactite… I don’t remember how I solved it for the fiberwire challenge only, but yeah it took a bit of time… I think I lured the woman to her room and the guy to the telescope room… don’t remember how I dealt with the virus though. One of the hardest challenges is one where you need to shoot the plane with a cannonball… holy crap that one was annoying…

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Andrew

Bruce wrote:

It feels like the sort of game I’d need to set a decent amount of time aside to play for each sitting.

I’m not sure it is, really. I’ve still not moved beyond Paris yet, and I have admittedly had spells where my vague aims for each run have petered out and I’ve just spent ages soaking in the details of the scenario. But generally it seems more geared towards incremental expansion: you go in, do a run at the mission, get XP rewards for it and unlock new wrinkles for it (starting locations, item cache locations etc) which let you take it from another angle, repeat.

What I’m really liking about it is the adventure game puzzle elements of just mentally churning through possibilities and solutions. I did one of the Paris escalation missions that requires you to kill a guy in one of the least accessible rooms of the first floor while dressed as a member of the palace staff (who aren’t allowed on the second floor). I tried various routes of sneaking up there with no success, continually getting gunned down until eventually I noticed the drainpipes outside. I used one of those to sneak up, only there’s still loads of armed guards between there and the room. Eventually, I found another drainpipe of the opposite side of the building, which led into a storage room with one guy I took out. That led into an empty office, from which I was able to go out the window, hang off the ledge, shimmy round to the other side of the front of the building (unnoticed by the crowds and camera crews below) go up into an unused bedroom and from there get to the target. I killed him, nicked his outfit (armed security) and then just brazenly walked down the main staircase and out the building and mission. Immensely satisfying to work out and execute.

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Andrew

Yeah the escalations are fun… well, some of them… that cannonball one… ugh… One of the things you’ll also learn after your first couple of tries is which zones you can just run around without a care… or which costume you’ll need to do that in certain zones… it becomes a much faster game as you gain knowledge of the map and are confident to move around, and incrementaly you’ll be more confident in later missions too as you start understanding the rules and mechanics… but at first it can be a bit overwhelming.

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Andrew

Jon wrote:

That was not 6 minutes… xD

Yeah, he had to wait a while for the guy to eat the poisoned food and come around the corner, but it was far less than an hour, and no costume changes.

I take care to save often during missions just in case everything falls apart when I enter the next room; the problem is (for me) the saving and loading is sooo slow. Is that the same for everyone, or do I have a particularly crap PS4? The waiting really puts me off the game sometimes.

So, anyone else watching the stock market burn due to the Gamestop stock?  It’s turned up on Colbert and become quite the story.

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lorcan_nagle, njerry

Andrew wrote:

I’ve spent close to an hour on single missions, using 5 different disguises, hiding a bunch of concussed witnesses, collecting various tools and items.

And then watch some guy on YouTube knock over a two target mission using no disguises, and only piano wire for the kills, in 6 minutes.

For balance to that seven minute no witnesses, no extra kills and no disguises run of Sapienze – here’s the highlights from a seven hour long attempt to kill everyone in Sapienza at the same time by dragging them into a small room and blowing it up:

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Andrew

Just found out God of War is getting a major PS5 update tomorrow!

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Chris-S

Ben wrote:

Just found out God of War is getting a major PS5 update tomorrow!

Ooh, really? I’m a fair chunk into that now so be interested to see what changes.

Supposed to be full 4k + 60 fps.

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Dave

Oh, that should look very nice. I’ve got it optimised for 60fps at the moment and it already looks good.

It’s funny, I’ve just been waiting for the right time to play God of War and the upgrades just keep coming!

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Dave

Have you played any of the earlier GoW games?

This is quite different to those, but still very satisfying – and the story is really well done and strikes a good balance between standing as its own thing while still connecting back to those earlier games in meaningful ways.

A long, long time ago.  Wasn’t a fan of its QTEs.  Other bits were all right.

The QTEs are fairly minimal in this new game and not time-sensitive, so hopefully that should feel like an improvement.

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Ben

I just had a look at the options and it includes a hold option for the QTEs.

The 4k God of War update is now active for the UK.

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Dave

I’ve started modding Skyrim and seeing as this is a weeks-long process of testing shit out until I find the build I want I’ve started a new character to test shit out with. Gone from playing “seriously” to playing for shits and giggles and interestingly, I’m having A LOT more fun with this unarmed fighting murderous thieving khajiit bastard.

It’s just so immensely satisfying to not take it so seriously. Someone passes me in the market and says something condescending about khajiits so I punch them, but it’s a critical hit so it turns into an insta-kill bodyslam cutscene. I don’t know why, it just makes me laugh so hard…

Which in turn makes it kinda hard from running from the city guards who are now all trying to kill me on sight after murdering someone in broad daylight. Hard… but fun!

This is a great piece on the making of the Micro Machines games.

https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-micro-machines/

(All it’s missing is Violet Berlin.)

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Chris-S, Bruce, Martin Smith

Too bad Unicronic Arts have consumed (bought) Codemasters for $1.2bn.

[Bruce]

Dave wrote:

This is a great piece on the making of the Micro Machines games.

https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-micro-machines/

(All it’s missing is Violet Berlin.)

Oh man. Violet Berlin. That way a serious crush back in the day before I really knew what crush was. I’ve always liked that pixie style haircut on a woman ever since!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Bruce.

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Dave

I bought a cheap copy of the Rare Replay compilation. I dipped into most of the games on it already and found them to be unplayable retro garbage unsuitable for modern gaming sensibilities. The only one of the old games that’s really grabbed me are the NES RC Pro racers.

The only more recent game (that I havent played before) I’ve actually stuck with is Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. I love the first two games: classic N64 3D platforming. This sequel is an oddity in that it dumps what makes the series great in favour of a vehichle building mechanic. Once I got into it its been a lot of fun. It retains a lot of the look, sound and humor of the original games it almost makes you forget that the gameplay has been significantly altered.

Dave wrote:

This is a great piece on the making of the Micro Machines games.

https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-micro-machines/

(All it’s missing is Violet Berlin.)

I mean, we’re all missing Violet Berlin…

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Dave

[Bruce]

Bruce wrote:

Dave wrote:

This is a great piece on the making of the Micro Machines games.

https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-micro-machines/

(All it’s missing is Violet Berlin.)

Oh man. Violet Berlin. That way a serious crush back in the day before I really knew what crush was. I’ve always liked that pixie style haircut on a woman ever since!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Bruce.

So did Berlin take your breath away?

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Rocket, Todd, Bruce

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

This is a great piece on the making of the Micro Machines games.

https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-micro-machines/

(All it’s missing is Violet Berlin.)

I mean, we’re all missing Violet Berlin…

I looked her up after I made that comment and she sounds like she’s had quite an interesting career. Nothing will ever match up to Bad Influence though.

Martin Smith wrote:

I mean, we’re all missing Violet Berlin…

I finished God of War tonight. What a tremendous game. A great story with some excellent twists and turns all the way to the end, and lots of very satisfying sections of both story and gameplay.

This is also the rare game that saves a lot of its best stuff for the final act, with some wonderful setpieces and occasionally quite innovative gaming sequences, as well as the hack-and-slash killing-hordes-of-enemies while occasional puzzle-solving that you’d expect from a GoW game.

And on the PS5 it looks stunning and the pace never really lets up.

I think Ragnarok will be a day-one purchase for me.

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Andrew, Ben

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

The new title is rubbish but this is one very entertaining game. Not the best in looks – and its age of being nearly a decade old shows – but it’s a game not afraid to get out of its way and let the player have fun.  True, there are times when the camera forgets that fighting on a 3D plane means being to see more than a flat indicator that wrecks any sense of depth and you can get lost in the field of view when it pulls out too much, but on the whole? It works very well.

The two DLCs included are OK extras.  Neither is particularly revolutionary and the Dead Kell one messes with fast travel without warning, but they’re good enough and add about 10 hours to the game.

Like others it has a set of infinite quests you can never complete, which is something I’m coming to dislike, but easy to ignore most of them.

God of War

Finished Chapter 1 – It did not go well.

The PS5 makeover makes it look amazing, but there’s times when that also works against it, especially the darkness of shadows.  To start off with it wove story and gameplay together really well, with that only coming undone at the first boss fight.  The problems there? The way Atreus is talking suggests you can’t win this – but turns out you have to.  But worse is it keeps putting up info on screen, in mid-fight! I’m fighting a fucking boss, which is taking all of my attention, you really think I’ve time to divert my gaze to another part of the screen while doing that?  Fortunately, said boss pattern was limited enough that I took out the health bar and then, oh look, it’s a QTE.  Bye bye, immersion – yes, I am now reminded I am playing a video game.  Oh and the whole gate puzzle bollocks before it didn’t help.

So, headed back to the house and then spent ages wandering around aimlessly because of a lack of prompts.  Oh wait, amid all this graphical detail on the door there is this tiny white dot.  Ghost of Tsuschima fell into the same trap too.  Cue The Stranger boss fight…..

What a load of boring arse.  If this game just got out of its own way and let me just batter the moron, it would have been good but it was so utterly fragmented with numerous cutscenes I could never get into a rhythm for it.  Plus, all he has is a teleport-and-attack-from-behind move that the camera can’t keep up with and that kind of move feels like game bullcrap of the highest order.  Whenever the battleground moved into shadow I could barely see him and on the last part I got so bored, I put the control down and let him kill me.  Respawned and it felt like there was a stealth adaptive difficulty as he was far less of a pain.  Battered the health bar down, again, cue another cutscene.  Hel,. in the middle of it I found it difficult to even trigger the next phase.

The entire sequence destroyed any sense of story immersion permanently.  This is a game, it’ll never be more than that and if I get sucked back in, it’ll inevitably do some bullcrap to break its own spell.

The combat tutorials irritated – why would I want to grab and throw an enemy when I can just smack them in the head with an axe?  Similarly the Atreus arrows command is over-complicated, just give me a single button press but no, instead it’s hold this and that and aim that – in the middle of a fucking fight!  Simplicity is better, simplicity is good, this complicated crap doesn’t help me.

So it looks lovely, some really nice music but the gameplay is a mess.  The whole single shot high concept sounds great but it doesn’t work for me at all.  If that is to work the on-screen display, including indicators of where to go and what can be interacted with, has to be perfect and it’s far from it.

Might go back to it despite lacking enthusiasm, as it supposedly gets better and it’d be hard to see how it could get worse, but I really don’t know.  A first level is supposed to sell you the game and make you want to continue playing but this did the opposite.

Oh and the audio is pretty bad, without subs active I would be catching maybe 50% of the dialogue.

So, couldn’t leave it alone, booted up Chapter 2 of God of War, expecting it to be another disaster – it’s therefore quite nice to say that it wasn’t.

What did this do that the previous one didn’t? Well, it introduced upgrades, armour, enchantments, maps, plus a compass!  It also threw a couple of tutorial messages that would have helped had they come up much earlier.

Did I enjoy this far more? Yes.  I still dislike the puzzles but the main flaw there is one that I’ve noticed on both Immortals: Fenyx Rising and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, where the trigger images for areas tend to blur into the background. They’re put in with the intent of saying ‘shoot here’ but I just don’t pick up on the visual cue.  So, not a fan of the spike puzzles.

But the combat in chapter 2? Flowed much better.  Even managed to pull off a few stun attacks which are ludicrously over-the-top, thus so much fun to execute.  The ones for the Wyrms is especially good, as it has Kratos doing his best impression of Hulk pounding Loki!  Still think the camera is too close in, find it difficult gauging my position relative to enemies but the upgrades give me more of a chance there.  With the upgrades being particularly apparent on the fire troll fight, took more hits, could pound more and pulled off a couple of stun attacks.  This was unexpected given how I got on with the far weaker, earlier version!

The Ogre fight I think I did by pure luck as the thing had an attack that did in 50% of Kratos’ health but it still died.  That fight was a good example of camera difficulty.

The big difference in Chapter 2 is that the game lets itself flow, there’s nothing in it like that terrible, jerky Stranger fight and the story really gets going far better.  With the compass added, I don’t feel like I’m ever aimless or supposed to spot some tiny indicator amid a ton of graphic detail.  And talking of graphic detail – the designs for the various environments, the woods and the Witch’s garden, the lake, the temple – the game is stupidly good looking.  There were times when I was going slow just to appreciate the aesthetics.

So yeah, still don’t like the puzzles but enjoying the combat far more, even pulling off the odd boss win – and Atreus is far more useful.

Chapter 1 didn’t hook me at all, but Chapter 2 did.  Have just entered Alfheim….

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Dave

Glad you gave it a second chance and got on with it a bit better Ben. It took me two years to do that!

I agree that the fight mechanics take a bit of getting into. I was probably about where you are now when it started to come together for me.

To be honest the fighting abilities are a bit crap before you level up a little bit and spend some XP points on additional skills.

A couple of tips – using R3 lets you lock on to enemies (although I found I preferred not to, so that I could control the camera more freely) – this might help with the camera issues.

Also, spamming the square button during fights so that Artreus fires arrows at your target is a helpful way to grind them down.

The puzzles are usually fairly self-explanatory but a regular tip is to look out for the frost wheel thing that you’re shown early in the game, as a lot of them revolve around that mechanic.

Good luck and I hope you get on well with it and enjoy the way the story unfolds.

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Ben

God of War is strangely uneven – I say this because beating the crap out of the Svart-bastard boss was surprisingly far easier than dealing with his supposedly far weaker but far more numerous minions leading up to him!

The puzzles I continue to find frustratingly vague in their idea of logic.  On the one to break into the hive I cannot tell why the solution worked at one point and not at another, as far as I could tell, I was doing the exact same action in the same location to wildly different effect.  There was no visual cue either so it was blind luck.  Even online guides could not make sense of it.  Too often something I’m supposed to hit either looks like part of or fades into the background. Other times the result of action is counter-intuitive, for one puzzle the action was to get Atreus to shoot it.  So, those arrows now have enough kinetic force to shatter an entire platform? Apparently they do.  Problem is, looking up the answers online is very unsatisfying to play, but too often that’s the only option due to lack of clues.

The dark elf enemies can go fuck themselves, preferably with a syphilis-laden rusty fork so they die of both sepsis and a STD.  Cheap, crappy bullshit enemies.  All the combat really has, in terms of “challenge”, is camera fuckery and a direction indicator that is frequently wrong.  On one time it flashed red behind me while I finished an enemy in front, turned around and…. no one there.  So why the indicator then?  Also, combat is so fast paced the quick turn button is forgotten about amid all the others I have to remember.  Pulling the camera a bit further out would not have hurt the fights at all, likely would have improved the immersion by allowing better sight of the battlefield too.  Still, am getting better blocking and sometimes evading, but that is not as good as might be thought, often due to the compromised view.  The game’s one ace card is the feel of it all – whether it be with the axe or bare-handed.  There’s a great sense of impact, with audio-visuals backing that up to hilt.

The upgrades have become irritating as they do the improves-this, weakens-that trick that doesn’t really make sense to me.  Makes it far harder to work out the benefits of a particular, with the loot being so stingy that I don’t want to pick the wrong one.

The game’s other ace cards are two: One, the Kratos-Atreus relationship, which is smartly done and has kept my interest.  The second is the sheer visuals of the world design and the effects for fire, light, shadow – Even over two years later it looks amazing, though granted, I’m playing the now super-boosted PS5 version.

It’s a very up and down experience for me, with a great deal of Alfheim coming close to being far, far too down.  Hacking a Draugr apart however? Yeah, that’s a high.

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Dave

I never really used the quick-turn move as usually by the time you turn around the enemy has already moved elsewhere.

Sometimes those red arrows are warnings of an imminent protectile hit fired from further away, not necessarily a baddie nearby.

I also thought the elves were dicks, especially the boss of that section with his blackout mechanic.

As for the upgrades, I don’t have a lot of time for those RPG elements in games so I kept my approach fairly simple. Upgrade the axe whenever you can; choose clothing and charms etc. for maximum strength and defence; use any options that offer a health boost; and put your XP points into the offensive skills that will best aid you against the toughest baddies.

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Ben

So, I’m going to Helheim.

God of War remains exasperatingly uneven, but there is some brilliant stuff here.

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Dave

Saints Row 3 remastered. An “open world fannying about” simulation where all the fannying about feels like proper fannying about.

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Ben

I played as the “geezer” personality type when I played the game first time around back in 2011/12. The “smooth and sexy” line is something that I’ve regularly used in real life (mainly to wind up the wife) since then so it was a no brainer to chose that again on the remastered game.

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Saints Row 3 Remastered was great until the Live With Killbane mission – shitty helicopter controls + slow, slow speed + follow this car in perfect alignment + time limit crap =  a dead game.

Bruce wrote:

I played as the “geezer” personality type when I played the game first time around back in 2011/12. The “smooth and sexy” line is something that I’ve regularly used in real life (mainly to wind up the wife) since then so it was a no brainer to chose that again on the remastered game.

Hah! Kinda similarly, I played with Zombie speak on my playthrough and to this day I sometimes go “aufghgehguufhfhghfgufuehfehfhfuehfhfh”,

OK, up for a rollercoaster ride? Yeah? “Boy….. Buckle up.” Of course it has to be God of War.

After Alfheim, the sequence to the mountain and the snow fight sequence was pretty damn smart.  At one point, an Ogre turns up – and got annihiliated!  As to the extensive puzzle inside the mountain? Far less a fan.  Too often I just can’t notice or see what I’m supposed to be seeing, it just doesn’t register.  Several times I’d look up the answer and it’d be something I couldn’t really see any visual or audio cues for, in one case audio directed me away from the answer.  I despised the fight with the flame trap because there were times when I couldn’t see that tiny axe target indicator because it had turned dark red on a dark background.  On the other hand, the troll fight was far more straight-forward than I thought it would be.

And then there was the utter fiasco that is the Hzaelyr fight.  Cory Barlog and co join the long list of game creators who fucked up a dragon fight.  Hated every second of this, came to suspect I was lacking the dexterity the game demanded – the timed Nornir chests I have zero chance of doing – but also adding Barlog to the list of those who forget that an ‘easy’ setting is supposed to be… Easy.  A fight where I’m forever having to manually re-aim the camera, manually aim lightning balls – and still somehow miss a massive fucking dragon – and just have such a compromised view was never going to go well.  Couldn’t even enjoy the post-fight cutscenes due to being so hacked off and exasperated by the stupidity of it all.

Getting to the summit was well done, it was a good sequence.  Getting back to the witch wasn’t due to both map and compass being useless, but also there might be another element on this.  I’m not convinced the game is really designed to work with the deeper blacks of 4K HDR.  As, the place I was supposed to go looked like an impassable black wall, it was that convincing.  The witch cave puzzle felt pointlessly convoluted.

Heading to get a magic chisel ended up being surprising in the best ways.  First, new werewolf enemies – Kratos tore through them, was so damn good.  Then a load of Draugr and two, count ’em, two Ogres turn up.  Screwed art thou.  Except, it didn’t play out that way.  Took out a draugr, laid into the Ogre and stunned it, used it to take a couple more Draugr while evading the other Ogre, then laid into it.  Bit of cleaning up and one epic sequence of kicking arse ended with loot all other the battlefield.  This wasn’t the first time, but it’s the best example of feeling that the fighting system was coming together and the immense satisfaction that came be got from it.

Some puzzle crap followed, bit more combat – one section that was cheap was a troll fight, but it blocked me from doing a stun attack as I could get to it, it was against a wall.  Then got to the Modi and Magni fight.  Groan, dual boss fights always suck and this was no exception.  Not helped by these bawbags having cheap tricks coming out of their arse.  Also felt more like God of Wousse due to the sheer amount of protection given to Magni, just let Kratos kill the bastard already.

The sequence of returning for the Blades of Chaos…..  This has to be the high point of the game thus far, it even almost, almost, makes up for the puzzle bollocks and cheap crap boss fights that preceded it.  Everything comes together here – sound, graphics, plot, gameplay – it all works perfectly to convey Kratos’ sense of reluctance to do what he knows he must and everything on the screen backs it up to the hilt.  And when you get the blades?  Cue an insanely satisfying fight where you go through numerous enemies.  It looks and plays amazingly great.

When I took out the Svart-bastard boss in Alfheim, one of the things I noticed while the cutscene played out, what was going through my head was: The detail on this guy is insane.  Granted, this is the super PS5 version, so yeah, it’s supposed to look great but, even allowing for that, it looked amazing.  Someone, somewhere, will have spent an inordinate amount of time getting this brief visual so very perfect.

Ups vs Downs?  It’s probably fairly even, but despite a couple of the Downs nearly blocking me from future sections, the Ups have far greater density and weight, so that skews it to them.  Definitely feeling better on the combat and when that works? It is pretty fantastic.

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Dave

You’re really racing through the game Ben. Glad the good is outweighing the bad for you.

Personally I had very few frustrations – a couple of the fights were tough and required multiple attempts to get through (like the timed “lift” section), and a couple of the puzzles weren’t immediately clear to me, but mostly I found it all fairly well balanced. Stuff like the dragon boss was fine for me.

Also, I do think the big story moments are so well-done that it just elevates the whole thing. The sequence returning home for the blades is a great example.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

[Ben]

God of War

Well, this is an interesting one. If it is true that a good ending can make up for a litany of sins, then it applies to this game. As an overall package it has aspects of brilliance, but other, self-inflicted aspects drag it down from great to good.

But the story is brilliant! Yes, it is very well done, especially its execution, the only duff notes being when Atreus was going off the deep end, but this cannot be purely evaluated on story, what of the gameplay, the combat, the experience of it? That’s where this fell down for me and it would have been very easy to mitigate the difficulties I had. Simply placing a more easily activated at distance visual cue for the circle button would have helped a lot. Drawing the camera out a couple of inches or so more, enabling better view of the combat arena – frequently I found that the game’s challenge revolved around off-camera attacks and the compromised viewpoint. When a teleporting troll does a multi-hit attack of hit, teleport, hit, but every single attack comes from the camera blindspot, something’s off. Getting rid of the projectile based enemies who are always far away and high up and difficult to see, even with the arrow indication – which I also found very patchy – would be good.

It is kind of funny to me that, even the game that popularised the dual bars system of stagger and health, can’t really make it work. Often it’s better to just batter your enemies down. The stun moves are hugely fun to execute but I rarely get on well with hold button systems, the same thing blighted Final Fantasy XV. The problem is simple – compared to a button press, how long is a hold to be? It just never feels fast or responsive enough. If the stun moves worked more like Yakuza’s heat moves I would have enjoyed them even more than I did, which was a great deal.

The puzzles… Fuck the puzzles. The ones in Tyr’s shrine were of sufficiently awful nature that my view of them is they should be removed from the game entirely. Their absence would make the game far, far better. Frequently, the puzzles work on the basis of you remembering something from hours before – nice theory, I don’t. Combine this with weak signposting and indicators as to what I can and can’t do and a whole lot of 31 hours I played were my trying and failing on a puzzle, before looking up the solution, just about applying it, but in some cases, still no closer to the organising principles or logic of said puzzle. Some of these also required more dexterity than I have, the timed chests being a particularly strong example.

Graphics. The new PS5 upgrade that has just released deserves almost all the plaudits raining down upon it. Almost? Yes, almost. On the face of it, better graphics should never be a bad thing, but what if they get in the way? What if 4K HDR renders dark sections even darker, so much so that they become too dark? The boat ride in darkness at the end of the game in the world serpent was the only one where I regularly could not easily see where to go. Other times what was a dark tunnel looked like a black impassable wall. I paid a brief visit to Muspelheim, went outside and could not see shit, screw that. Other times points of detail I’m supposed to be focusing on, like the axe throw target, get lost amid all the other detail – now this would have been an easy fix, allow me to change the colour of the target so I can always see it more easily. As it was, too often I found that, whatever the visual language of this game is, I don’t understand it well.

One of the supposed to be big, epic set pieces, of fighting Baldur on a dragon, was ruined by it alternating between interactive and non-interactive sequences because I couldn’t always tell when it had shifted from one to the other. Other QTEs? They didn’t work either. All they did was pull me out and remind me I was playing a game. As did a few enemies going “ah, you have hit me four times, now I get to block / go intangible and hit the camera blind spot”.

One of the weirdest things in the game was how easily Spartan Rage activated, I don’t think I’ve come such sensitive L3 / R3 buttons. Then again, I didn’t care for that mode much, don’t really go for rage modes generally. So not a huge problem, but it’s weird given how much harder they tend to be to use in other games.

Difficulty? Even on what is supposed to be easy, it is all over the place. Hardest boss fight by far was the dragon, then the teleporting motherfucking troll. Harder by far than them were the various puzzles, often made worse by graphical effects. Some standard enemies were harder than entire bosses due to their doing sequential unblockable attacks and that close in camera. Too often my experience was up and down, am I going to be able to get through this bit to maybe enjoy the next bit? Often the answer was hazy. I don’t think feeling de-motivated and defeated was the intended result of some parts of it but that was what I got from it.

The stats and gear system is partially successful, but I’m not convinced that they really get what makes for a good one. The open world element is another mixed bag, as it isn’t really and there’s still this one chest I can’t get back to because the geography is a mess. The idea that you can explore everywhere post-game is one I don’t think is true, it’s too patchy and often I can’t relate the environment I am in to the map. Oh and manual search sections, yuck.

Did I like any of it then? Yeah. I loved the world design, the environments are frequently a master class in aesthetics and style. The various boat rides all felt different and, despite various shadows, I could tell where to go on all but one. The map would have benefited from a greater zoom function. Some of the side content I enjoyed a great deal, especially exploring the Lake of Nine. The standout moment of perfection in the game, where none of its individual pieces worked against each other, was the return home to acquire the Blades of Chaos. The start and end sequences are close competition, but not quite as great as that single sequence was. When I was able to be in control of the combat, to see what was going on and respond to it – in those moments, it was superb. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus plays out very well, bar that one section. Mimir was a frequent delight, often getting the best lines.

And that final mission in Jotunheim? That did manage to really pay off and conclude the game in very fine fashion.

The post-game content? Can’t say either Muspelheim or Niflheim appeal to me at all. The Valkyries? Hahahahah – I tried one of those, it didn’t go well – let’s leave it at that. Would I give New Game Plus a go? Right now, I really don’t know but it’s nice to have the option.

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of other players experience of this game will probably be far better, maybe more even too, than mine. In terms of feeling up and down, mine renders a Pollack painting. Frequently when going around the environments, it was fun to just look around and take in the incredible visuals. Some of the music was lovely. When there was a successful combat sequence, where Kratos demolishes everything in sight, often with some of the incredibly detailed graphics you’ve ever seen – on some moves you can almost feel the hit being inflicted – it felt amazing and like no other game. In those times it felt uniquely brilliant. Other times not so much. Overall, I am glad I played it. If nothing else I can now far better appreciate why so many are eagerly anticipating the Ragnarok sequel. It will be intriguing to see what they can do with a full PS5 game given how amazing this one is on the audio-visual front.

Should you play this? Despite my own experience, yes you should for two reasons – One, it’s cheap, you won’t waste much cash if it does go too wrong. Second, it does have a far smarter than you might expect checkpoint system. Without it being so, I would not have gotten past two boss fights. If you have a PS4, it’ll probably look good enough, but on PS5 it’s amazing, plus it has that better 60FPS responsiveness.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

That very final story sequence is good, isn’t it.

(By the way, did you return to your home for a rest yet after completing the game? There’s a little extra surprise/teaser if you do.)

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Ben

[Ben]

Yep, done all that.

Have you booted it up on PS5 with the new upgrade active?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

Fired up Witcher 3 to give it more of a chance since we had a completely free weekend – I’m now actually enjoying it, though the combat and upgrades are still a bit baffling (maybe it’s intentional but the combat is really hard; just regular bandits around the countryside regularly kill me, after quite long battles) (I’ve picked up loads of plants and things and so far none are indicated as being able to be crafted into anything).

(Is it insulting to suggest that all games with cutscenes should not only allow you to skip them, but also to just display the text without having to wait for the voice acting? I don’t want to skip crucial information but I’d rather read the lines (quickly) than hear them.)

Graphically it’s quite patchy and jerky, with loads of pop-up – I know it’s old, but it looks worse than, say, Far Cry 4 which came out a year earlier (3rd person vs. FPS notwithstanding).

[Ben]

The Outriders demo is now out! 18-19GB download for PS5.

Edit: My earlier interest was misplaced, as Square Enix insist you must have an account with them, which you then have to link to the game, in order to play demo.  No.

Thus, in one fell swoop, SE have screwed this over for the developers.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

Apparently the Final Fantasy VII remake is one of the free PS Plus games in March. I’ve never played any of the series but do I take it this is a good place to start?

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Chris-S

The great majority of Final Fantasy games are self-contained.

The only ones that have had sequels are X and XIII. VII had a load of spin-offs but you don’t need those for the main game.

One odd thing about the PS+ version of FF7R is it does not get the free PS5 upgrade.

Dave wrote:

Apparently the Final Fantasy VII remake is one of the free PS Plus games in March. I’ve never played any of the series but do I take it this is a good place to start?

Possibly. It won’t be a complete story and there are changes from the original that are, as I understand it, supposed to have impact for being changes, which will be lost on you for not having played the original.

I’d suggest starting with FF 4 or 5, if you’re ok with 16 bit era games.

Ah ok. I was wondering about stuff like that. Thanks.

(And yes, I’m more than ok with 16-bit games!)

FF7R is as far from 16-bit style JRPGs as you can get.

I had a weird moment on Hitman last night. I’ve been through all the campaign stuff now and I’m replayed to get Mastery level 20 on each location, as well as doing the bonus missions (Patient Zero, the Sarajevo Six etc). Anyway, I was in Colorado, redoing the main mission to get challenges for mastery XP. I’ve offed two of the targets already: one I triggered the OCD of and drowned him in a small shack and hid the body without being seen, the other I managed to kill with a lawnmower explosion (which actually happened when I was nowhere near it and without me triggering it). So I’m off in another part of the map, which is pretty big – an old farm that’s been taken over by a paramilitary terrorist cell. There’s an explosives team working on stuff, an elite military team with some hackers in an old house and then a strike team practising a car-jacking type assault and using a shooting range. I’m off in the top of barn, waiting for one of the targets to move and suddenly a message comes up and says “gunshots heard”.

Normally, that’s for when you’ve shot someone/thing and have been noticed, but I hadn’t used a gun the entire mission. Suddenly, the entire camp is on high alert looking for a shooter and, despite the fact that it sounded like it was the other side of the map, they got suspicious of me. I’ve really no idea what triggered it or why I was suspicious for it. It’s especially weird given there’s a shooting range there on which people are regularly firing ammo. How was it even heard. The best explanation I can think of is that either a gan canister I’d tampered with in the hopes of exploding had somehow gone off and then triggered a gun stashed nearby or it’s just a completely random glitch.

Either way, as weird as it was, it was fun and added a bit of spice to my mission. It’s definitely the sign of a great game that you can have something like that happen and it enhances the experience rather than ruins it.

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Andrew

Started on Yakuza 7 on PS5.

The advantages of doing so? The graphics look great but the bigger deal is the load speed, which is fast.

It’s also very much a Yakuza game.  One moment you’re dealing with serious gangster politics, the next you’re after a plunger to deal with a blocked toilet!

Martin Smith wrote:

Anyway, I was in Colorado, redoing the main mission

That was the most daunting of the initial mission settings; I found it weird that the settings didn’t get harder in sequence.

Andrew wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Anyway, I was in Colorado, redoing the main mission

That was the most daunting of the initial mission settings; I found it weird that the settings didn’t get harder in sequence.

They are a bit uneven in difficulty, but I found Hokkaido the hardest, simply because you’re hamstrung with equipment and I hadn’t unlocked the electronic lock scrambler from an earlier location when I did my first run at it. Part of the beauty of the game is that the more time you spend in a map, not only do you unlock more options, but you find routes and pathways that weren’t obvious the first time. They’re really well designed maps. Like assassinating Eric Soders in Hokkaido seemed incredibly daunting my first few goes, as there’s so much security and you’re blocked from accessing that part of the hospital in most disguises. But redoing that map last night I discovered that you can actually get there pretty easily from the morgue (which is fairly accessible from the service tunnels under the resort) and it’s easy to walk in and shoot the guy in the head and then blitz your way to the snowmobile escape option. Handy for grinding for achievements.

I’ve just got the two bonus Sapienza contracts left now (though I’ve not done all the escalations – I’m not masochist). Hopefully they’ll make use of the seemingly redundant lawyer’s office in the town square.

Martin Smith wrote:

I hadn’t unlocked the electronic lock scrambler from an earlier location when I did my first run at it.

I never got it – still don’t have it! – but managed to complete several variations of Hokkaido on first pass which wasn’t the case with Colorado. There are two guys near the cable car you can knock out and adopt their outfits without being detected and no one ever finds them from what I’ve seen.

IIRC Hokkaido’s easiest exit is from the mountain pass/cave… you can unlock that entrance too at some point which makes some bonus objectives a lot easier

Martin Smith wrote:

I’ve just got the two bonus Sapienza contracts left now (though I’ve not done all the escalations – I’m not masochist). Hopefully they’ll make use of the seemingly redundant lawyer’s office in the town square.

I remember a bonus objective in that office, so yes.

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Andrew

Andrew wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

I hadn’t unlocked the electronic lock scrambler from an earlier location when I did my first run at it.

I never got it – still don’t have it! – but managed to complete several variations of Hokkaido on first pass which wasn’t the case with Colorado. There are two guys near the cable car you can knock out and adopt their outfits without being detected and no one ever finds them from what I’ve seen.

I missed those two guys entirely until several goes in. First time I went to deal with them to nick an outfit, I stupidly dumped both over the side into the abyss before stealing their clothes.

The Icon mission in Sapienza is a nice little thing. Lots of ways to get rid of the RDJ parody. Shame you can’t steal his outfit and do the stunt though.

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Andrew

I not bothered either way by the prospect of a retro looking side scrolling TMNT beat em up but I am into Mike Patton of Faith No More doing *that* theme tune.

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Dave

That looks like fun. I wasted a lot of money on the TMNT arcade machine back in the day.

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Chris-S, Bruce

Well they did a rather good job with SoR4, so yeah, I’m excited about it… Edit: So it’s not the same dev-team behind SoR4, but that’s not bad news, ’cause it seems like it’s the same peeps who did the now legendary Scott Pilgrim game… I wish they’d re-release that one at some point. Anyways, that’s a good reminder to not take too long to buy it, because these licenses expire rather quickly.

I do hope they imrpove their netcode and make it a 4 player game on-line too…

Jon wrote:

the now legendary Scott Pilgrim game… I wish they’d re-release that one at some point.

It’s being rereleased some time in the next few months (if not already).

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s being rereleased some time in the next few months (if not already).

Ah cool… I’ll be sure to get it this time…

Martin Smith wrote:

Jon wrote:

the now legendary Scott Pilgrim game… I wish they’d re-release that one at some point.

It’s being rereleased some time in the next few months (if not already).

It’s been out for a month or so now. I saw it in the xbox store whole browsing at the beginning of Feb.

Bruce wrote:

It’s been out for a month or so now. I saw it in the xbox store whole browsing at the beginning of Feb.

huh, it’s not on Steam… that sucks =/

Yeah, on PSN too, maybe…. It’s on Epic?

Glad Scott Pilgrim is back- I didn’t know that was happening. I still have it on PS3 from the first time around and it’s one of the kids’ favourites.

Ben wrote:

maybe…. It’s on Epic?

looooooool it is!!! what a joke… oh well, guess no Scott Pilgrim for me then…

Dave wrote:

Glad Scott Pilgrim is back- I didn’t know that was happening. I still have it on PS3 from the first time around and it’s one of the kids’ favourites.

The  PS4 one has all the DLC too.

[Ben]

Other quick bits:

Nabbed Hotspot Racing on the cheap.  It’s a very neat, well executed little racing game with excellent aesthetics and a good sense of speed.

New Outer Worlds DLC hits next week!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

I’ve been replaying Prince of Persia: Sands of Time this week. I had it on the PS2 back when it was released and it fell victim to my old habit of not finishing games, always meaning to go back to them and rarely ever doing so. I’m actually playing on the GameCube now (nicer console, impossible to find a working PS2 pad these days).

And it really hasn’t aged particularly well. Some of that is inevitable: blurry low res visuals, for instance, which make it hard to see things all that clearly. Some of it is technical: the camera is absolutely dreadful, utterly unhelpful in many instances, but that was common at the time. The sound mixing is also pretty bad, with voices forever getting lost in the mix, even when you set them louder than everything else.

But some of it is harder to excuse. The combat is just abysmal. It starts tiresome and quickly becomes a total chore. Enemies that endlessly respawn until an arbitrary point is hit, having to defend Farah, getting swarmed by enemies that can counter everything you down and relentlessly hammer you if they floor you (which is really hard to get up from anyway). It’s gruelling.

The vaunted time manipulation powers aren’t as good now the novelties worn off either. The rewind has no function to prevent you stopping it in the middle of a fatal action, so you can easily end up wasting a go or two. It frequently sets rewind points at inopportune moments in combat. The slow-motion power is utterly useless, as everything gets even blurrier than normal and the Prince goes slow- mo too, so there’s no real benefit, especially going through traps. The super, use all your sand to kill everything power is ok, but it threw me off a bridge and killed me once and it doesn’t kill all the spawning enemies in an encounter, so you can use it and then be stuck having to fight off a horde still with nothing in the tank.

But it’s just about all made worth it by the platforming. Oh, the platforming. Wall-running still, all these years later, feels magical. Despite it being a bit hard to see things, the environmental puzzles are (mostly) really fun. In those moments, the game sings.

It’s also a characterful game. The Prince and Farah are hugely endearing (when you can hear them) and make a great double act. I love the use of omniscient first person narration to keep thr story going as you continue to explore and the remarks the Prince makes when you die; “No, no, that’s not what happened. Let me start again”.

I’m about halfway in now and yet have only racked up about 4 hours, according to my save file. The sad thing is, I’ve long since passed the point I reached on my first attempt back in the day, which means I got a shockingly little use out of that game even though I probably bought it around full price. 😬

Yakuza: Like A Dragon

I’m at the 25 hour mark, on Chapter 5 of about 15 and this is a weird RPG.  It’s not bad but some of its ideas are decidedly half-baked.

Let’s start with its Perfect Guard idea.  Here, if you hit the button at the right time, you are supposed to take less damage.  The problems are that the windows for when you hit are vague, the camera frequently doesn’t help you and the rewards are all over the place.  I’ve had enemy do a two hit attack, was hit on the first for 6 points of damage, perfect guard the second but still get hit for 5 points.  So it only saved me 1 point? The hell?  Also, doing perfect guard for all the combo attacks feels next to impossible and almost every enemy has a standard two hit attack.

Next, it has the idea that everyone is moving around in battle.  OK, but this doesn’t work well with other ideas.  For instance, if you are near to an object, you automatically pick it up and do more damage.  The problem is you can’t really know if this will happen in advance because it’s not that clear.  Similarly, enemies can intercept and block attacks, but the degree of space they need to do this is hazy.  Sometimes your character will run right by an enemy to hit another; other times they will be blocked.  The worst hit is on area attacks because you cannot ever work out with any reliability who you will hit with one of these, maybe you’ll get the entire group or just one.

A more minor flawed aspect is you can knock enemies over, leaving them open to a more severe attack but the clock for this counts down while you are going through the menus to choose what you want to do and who to target. It’s quite easy to lose an opportunity to hit a downed enemy because they recovered while you were in the menus.  An easy fix – just freeze time on menu choices.

Even with these defects, it’s still enjoyable battle system, but it’s very easy to see how it could be so much better with a bit more refinement.

Its job system is another case where it’s OK, works well enough, but it could be better – especially where switching jobs is concerned.  Why? Because many of your stat increases is linked to the job, not the character.  Change a job, even for a much better one, and initially it’ll be far worse until you’ve gone grinding to get the rank up.

It’s not a bad game, I’m enjoying it for what it is and want to keep playing it.  But it is a flawed game.

I finished Prince of Persia; Sands of Time this morning and it is a frustrating experience over all. There are great bits – like the prison you have to get out of, which is 70% platforming bliss. Trouble is, the other 30% of even that section is tedious combat and an unhelpful camera. Near the end of the game, you get a third sword upgrade, which can one-hit-kill all sand enemies and yet combat is still pretty damn tedious because the enemies you face, ones you’ve seen quite a lot up to this point, can suddenly block almost anything you do and take off massive chunks of health with each swipe (more than they did before).

You lose the dagger for the last section too, which hobbles you a bit in combat, but really underlines how much the time-rewinding gimmick makes the platforming more palatable; there’s a large section you have to do (after falling down yet another hole) getting up the tower with the treasure room in and it’s so easy to plummet to your death because it’s too hard to discern the distance of a grabbable bit of scenery or because the camera angle’s changed while you’re in the middle of wall-jumping and so the directions you’re using are suddenly wrong (it’s annoying enough when you enter a room and the camera angle cuts and you suddenly find yourself doing a 180 because pushing up on the analogue stick suddenly registers as a different direction, let alone when you fall to your death because of the same poor bit of design).

The obvious ripping off of Disney’s Aladdin for the main characters is a little ridiculous too. It’s easy enough to go along with the Prince and Farah for most of the game, but when you meet the evil Vizier again at the end and he’s wielding a large snake staff, it feels a little bit lame.

So I’m probably going to end up trading this in, as I can’t see myself enduring its flaws again. But I may check out the upcoming HD remake at some point, if it can smooth out some of those issues.

Didn’t Disney ape the Prince of Persia game first though? It came out a lot earlier than the movie… =P

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Martin Smith

Got a couple of games on the go at the moment.

Call of Duty Black Ops 3. The lack of Kevin Spacey in this one means I dont feel like I’m going to get groped during each cut scene. Played through the campaign twice and I’ve moved onto the Nightmare mode which essentially smashes the campaign story and the zombies mode together. The result is a pretty tense and exciting game mode that looks and feels a bit like a Left 4 Dead game if you squint hard enough.

I also got Grow Up for a few quid in a sale. It’s a fun little physics 3d platformer. Collect stuff, get more powers, reach more stuff to collect. It’s a little bit fidgety at times but its charming look and world design buy it a lot of slack.

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Dave

Bruce wrote:

Call of Duty Black Ops 3. The lack of Kevin Spacey in this one means I dont feel like I’m going to get groped during each cut scene.

I’m not clear on whether you consider this a positive or negative.

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Todd

Dave wrote:

Bruce wrote:

Call of Duty Black Ops 3. The lack of Kevin Spacey in this one means I dont feel like I’m going to get groped during each cut scene.

I’m not clear on whether you consider this a positive or negative.

It can be two things!

Dave wrote:

Bruce wrote:

Call of Duty Black Ops 3. The lack of Kevin Spacey in this one means I dont feel like I’m going to get groped during each cut scene.

I’m not clear on whether you consider this a positive or negative.

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Dave, Todd

Second part of Doom Eternal’s DLC dropped today. I’ve a pile of games lined up already so I’ll hold off on this just. Hopefully pick it up in a sale later in the year…

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Dave

For all that I get the cynicism around Square Enix, this is looking like could be rather good:

Forspoken comes to PS5 in 2022

I’ve started playing Final Fantasy III on the DS this week and in trying to sum it up, the word “gentle” keeps springing to mind.

Not necessarily in terms of difficulty (though it’s not teeth-grindingly hard either) but just generally, it’s a somewhat relaxed and chill tone. The graphics are this nice chibi 3D style. The plot is pretty generic “chosen warriors of light must defeat the darkness stuff” with next to zero drama in it. Combat is turn based and so generally not particularly stressful. It’s just sort of… nice, you know? I think it’s what Bravely Default was forked off from.

Its magic system can fuck right off though. Although it claims to, it doesn’t really have traditional MP. Instead, depending on what job your character has (and your character and job level), you get a set number of uses for each level of magic. Level 1 is basic stuff like cure and fire. Level 2 is thunder and mini. Level 3 is cura and firaga etc and spells are equipped like Materia in FF7. I’m about level 15, I think, my Black and Red mages have 1mp each for Level 3 spells and I’m around the point where that’s what’s needed to effectively damage enemies. So I basically get one shot at one of those spells until I restore my MP, otherwise I’m stuck using the lower level ones. Which wouldn’t be so bad, but there are no items that restore MP. It doesn’t replenish when you level up, either. Your MP is only restored when you rest at an inn or beat a boss. So you’re essentially discouraged from ever using your highest level magic much because you’re probably going to need to save it for the next boss battle. Which is that kind of “saving for best” attitude I have to actively stop myself from doing in some games anyway, so it’s a bit annoying to have the game encouraging it.

On top of this, the game has various points where you have to use magic spells to progress. At one point you have to use Mini to find some gnome village, at another you use Toad to turn into toads and dive down into deep water to find a cave (which you can then instantly return to human form in, oddly). That’s fine, but you have to do this using your MP allowance, which, so far, has been enough to cover transforming and transforming back and nothing else. So just getting into the next stage of the dungeon or game wipes out a level of your magic for use in battle.

Being Mini really sucks because the game straight up tells you to make all your characters magic users, as your physical weapons will be useless. This is under an hour since you’ve unlocked the job system and it’s already limiting your use of it. But if you change job, from say warrior to mage, while your MP allowance changes, it doesn’t refill, so you’ve now just got a useless mage instead of a useless warrior.

Running around Yokohama, whacking enemies with names like Steamed Punk and Capitalist Punisher with a big hammer, while wearing a tiger onesie.

It can only be Yakuza.

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Martin Smith

I finished up Sherlock Holmes: Devil’s Daughter after picking it up ridiculously cheap. It worked better as a story rather than a game. Rather than making you feel like the world’s greatest detective it makes you click on every single item in a scene before progressing. That can be extremely frustrating at times. There was an instance early in the game when I realised I needed to track a suspect down to the pub after reading about it in a letter but I was continually stopped at the door with Holmes muttering “I’m not thirsty just now” as I hadn’t found a flyer for the pub in the previous scene. It was also weird in that at the end of each case I essentially got to convict whoever I wanted by interpreting the evidence in different ways without it having any impact on the story progression. But all of that, coupled with clunky controls, QTEs, weird voice acting, and glitches I enjoyed it well enough. I’ve played a few of these games before so knew what I was getting in for and only paid £2.24 so I was inclined to be quite forgiving.

Coincidentally a trailer for a prequel game was released today and it looks like more of the same with some action elements added in too.

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Martin Smith

That reminds me of Lamplight City both in that you have relatively free reign to accuse/convict suspects for each case and the game is over-bearing in not really letting you investigate at your own pace.

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Bruce