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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ugh no, it looks like shit… what the fuck are those butt-ugly designs? Aaaand it’s apparently the MCU GotG, or at least personality-wise, so get ready for the endless quips. Nah hard pass… although I’m guessing it’s a console exclusive, so it’s not like I’d get to play it anyhow.

Literally the only good thing in that trailer is the Cosmo cameo… Also, lol, He-man totally stole their thunder with that song.

Ever the ray of sunshine, Jon.

Indeed… and my light is shining on a pile of shit =P

Not my fault Square Enix is apparently incapable of doing a good Marvel game… and hey if it’s as good as the Avengers one, on top of looking like shit, it’ll also play like shit.

I do wonder though, why is it they never look like their movies’ counterparts? Do game devs not get licensing for likness or something?

Got it in one. Square Enix isn’t going to pay the licensing fees nor are Hollywood actors going to turn up to do the mo-cap work, though a sufficient amount of cash could be persuasive….

Thing is, SE could spend millions making that happen and, combined with good gameplay, it could sell a crapton of copies.  Enough to recoup all production costs and rake in the profits.

As it is? You have plenty of reason to be wary of any game that is presented as being a “triple A, live service” one.

There’s no point using the movie likenesses though. As you say, the Hollywood actors aren’t going to do mocap (although you can just put someone else’s face on anyone’s mocap acting, as they did in Insomniac’s Spider-Man) and it’d cost a bundle to license. One person refuses and it throws the whole thing out of kilter. Get them off by just a little bit and people will deride it.

And even if you get that all right, everyone knows that whatever story you do will be ignored and contradicted by future movies. You’re much better off coming up with your own take on things and having the freedom to do what you like, even if that presents the risk of coming up with something crap like Crystal Dynamics’ Avengers.

Oh and this isn’t a live service game, so gameplay comparisons to that Avengers game are rather pointless.

Gotta be honest, I find Star Lord’s hair deeply offensive.

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Bruce

Well I didn’t mean actors’ likeness, or their voices… I literally meant the costumes. I’m not sure if it’s a licensing issue, or that the devs want to “put their stamp on it” or some kind of creative decision like that.

Point being, Square Enix is 0 for 2 in terms of designs… and yes, Quill’s haircut IS offensive… so is everything else =P

The thing about the hair (aside from the style and the blondeness) is that Peter Quill is a slob with a sleeping berth that “would look like a Jackson Pollock painting if you shone a blacklight at it.” There’s no way he spends any time styling his hair.

The biggest problem for the Guardians game is SE’s credibility has been in free-fall since Avengers and the just announced Stranger in Paradise FF aka “chaos” hasn’t helped.  So there’ll be a lot of wariness around it.

Changing tack….

What the hell is wrong with Trails of Cold Steel II? It keeps doing these wildly unbalanced missions where you’ll go through an area, use the enemies to assess how your party is doing, see what tricks they use, to work out equip set-ups, get a sense of if you’re ready for the boss.  The problem is you cannot accurately assess how you are doing because the area boss will be utterly different to the previous enemies you’ve faced, thus you have no way to prepare – and even if you did? It wouldn’t make much difference because in the boss fight I had, much like the one with two super hounds, the single enemy spawns loads of others – if you kill them? It creates more.  Those in turn give entire enemy party massive boosts and after that? You’re screwed because the enemies are so spaced out you can’t kill them fast enough, they of course will hit you hard – oh and the boss has OHKO attack too.

It feels lazy, crude, unimaginative and utter, utter rubbish that is getting to the point of discouraging me from playing the game.  I’m starting to wonder if I wouldn’t be better off watching a collection of cut-scenes on YouTube.  The solution here? The crudest one possible – have character use S-Break, have next character use S-Break, switch out for new characters, use their S-Breaks, then finish with the heaviest spells possible.  Did it work? Even with a party wipe previously, because I decided I did not care anymore, which allows you to weaken the enemies, it was still incredibly goddamn close.

And after this? There was a Divine Knight battle where I hooked Reyn up with Sara, used her debuff attack and beat the crap out of the boss at ease!  It shouldn’t be possible to have two polar opposite experiences sequentially.  The difficulty in this game is all over the place and I don’t recall the first game being like this.   It’s as if they got too many tweets and emails from the “this is too easy” crowd, all of whom deserve numerous horrors inflicted upon them.  Even a guide summary gave very little save for “equip confuse resist accessories”, which you’re given no indicator of ahead of the fight.  The boss fights are doing this game a lot of damage by being either long, drawn out but survivable, but end with the boss declaring they’re done playing, so why waste my time with that bullcrap? – stupidly hard without warning, even on Easy; with nothing inbetween the two extremes, except Divine Knight fights that tend to go towards being too easy, if you use Sara.  Except, too often now has one of those followed a goddamn terrible boss fight and I just want to get through the Knight fight so I can save and not have to play any of that rubbish ever again.

Edit – Just tried to play the chaotic Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin demo. You can tell it’s a serious, seriously mature grown-up game with the game screen having your lead character’s head half covered by blood! It’s extreme, dude.

It’s also utter crap, because when you try to boot up the download 11GB you get told “data is corrupted, delete”.

“Chaos is here”. Oh yeah, just not in the way you meant.

This week, I’ve started playing Code Name STEAM on the 3DS, which I bought new a little while back for the grand sum of £3.95. Which, for a Nintendo published game is very unusual and suggests it flopped massively.

I can kind of see why. It’s by Intelligent Systems, who do Fire Emblem and Advance Wars. Like them, this is also a tactical game but a shooter, like X-Com. But a very esoteric one. Like X-Com, it’s an alien invasion but steampunk Victorian with an overt comic book presentation aesthetic and featuring characters from classic literature – Tom Sawyer, Tiger Lily, Lion from Wizard of Oz (but not cowardly) – all commanded by Abraham Lincoln. Like, I said, esoteric.

But it mostly works, on that level. Unfortunately it doesn’t on every. This definitely feels like a game crammed into the 3DS. The main reason is the camera. You’re limited to an over-the-shoulder view at all times which means you can never get a proper view of the battlefield. That’s presumably intentional, as there’s no fog of war or anything, so I guess it’s to add difficulty, but it gets to be a pain in the arse.

The other reason for it though is because your camera view is also used for aiming and this leads to the biggest flaw in the game. Everything works on a grid system – moving one square costs one unit of steam (which are essentially action points). But movement is also analogue. You can shift around within that square for better cover or aim. Unfortunately, while this doesn’t use steam, the game still registers it as movement. Say an enemy is in overwatch. Moving into a square within their line of sight will get you shot. Fair enough. But shift slightly once you’re in that square – even if you’re just angling the camera to get a better view of the terrain – and you’ll trigger the overwatch again and get shot again. Which really doesn’t feel fair.

The analogue nature of movement factors into aiming too. There are little flying aliens that show up in the chapter I’ve just done. Even if they’re in your range and line of sight by the grid, you can’t automatically aim at them, you have precisely line it up. Which for a tiny little bug that’s wavering up and down, means it’s incredibly hard to actually hit. And it’s not like this is in place of hit percentages, it’s in addition. Ok, you don’t get complete failures, but whether you get multiple shots in or not seems to be down to some kind of random chance as well as physical aim.

It’s a frustratingly flawed game. It feels like a slight rethink and the move to the bigger screen of the Switch could make for something pretty great, but given how hard this flopped, I can’t see that happening.

If you like being slapped around by cheap bastard enemies, on a screen that forever obscures where you are relative to the enemies, with an insufficient amount of lives – and no way to change them – terrible checkpointing, then yes, you might like Fight’N Rage.

For everyone else? Do not touch this piece of shit with a bargepole.  Better yet, nuke it from orbit, preferably with its designers at ground zero.

Every enemy hides off the screen.  Every enemy has longer reach than you.  The screen is always dark which wrecks your depth perception.  Oh and flying bullshit enemies too!

There’s loads of reviews praising this piece o’ shit.  If it’s so fucking good pay me £9.

Well it is praised because it IS one of the best beat ’em ups out there… =P

But the more impressive thing is that it was basically all done by one guy (except for the music). That said, I don’t like the visual style at all and I wish he’d had more money to hire a team of people to do the graphics, but there you go…

Other than that, yeah it’s very old-school and it’s pretty tough even on normal, but it’s a pretty neat game… the mechanics are amazing, it’s like an expanded SOR3.

I’d recommend you play the game with the bull-dude at first, he’s very strong and will make your life easier… also, remeber one key mechanic: DPs (down, up, attack) have invincible frames and are pretty spammable.

You can PayPal me £9 then.

First level was good, then from level 2 onwards it crawled up its own backside and slowly drowned in its own waste.  Level 4’s swamp fight was abysmal and it followed it with that load of bollocks raft section, with a boss fight on it no less.  And at that point I knew I would be wasting no more time on this piece o’ shit.

It wouldn’t have needed much to make it as good as it could be:

– Continues mimic the arcade and drop you back where you were.

– No having to play the entire thing in one go.  That it can be done in an hour? Bullshit.

As to old school beat ’em ups, the idea that a new one has to replicate all the old style bullshit needs to die.  I don’t want to play a beat ’em up now that is as it was 30 years ago, as but one that dispenses with the old-style crap while keeping the style intact.

If this is what is deemed as best for retro beat ’em ups then some gamers are very easy to please and the entire subgenre deserves to die.

Ben wrote:

it followed it with that load of bollocks raft section, with a boss fight on it no less.  And at that point I knew I would be wasting no more time on this piece o’ shit.

Ahhh yes, the sewers… I also raged A LOT at that stage, I remember… I even went on a rant on the steam forums… =P

So yeah, you’re gonna want to use DPs on that stage basically… and for the boss. You could try another path to avoid that stage…

Listen it ain’t perfect for sure, but it’s not exactly old-style, in terms of mechanics that is… it is retro in terms of looks and design, but again, it’s one of the more advanced ones in terms of mechanics… a lot more robust than SOR4 for example.

But hey, fair enough if you hated it =P

Here’s a handy path/ending chart if you give it another go… just avoid the sewers:

 

It desperately needs the ability for me to play a level, game saves, resume – it doesn’t have it.  It’s not alone in this, same thing wrecked Nex Machina.

Still, since there’s a way to avoid that crappy sewer and raft level duo, maybe I’ll give it another go.

Moving onto other disasters, the Accidents Will Happen package.  Comprising Dangerous Driving, Danger Zone and Danger Zone 2 from the makers of Burnout.  There’s only one problem – in the interim between then and now? They lost all their skills.

Dangerous Driving is a car crash of a game.  Burnout always nails the handling, but with a sense of heft and weight.  That isn’t so here.  You merely tap a car and it goes flying.  Your car drives all over the place and when you do a takedown? It doesn’t slow down time in the way the older games did, but it takes you out of the car and is disorientating when you get snapped back.

The idea of leaving previous wrecks on the track is one better in theory than in practice.  They aren’t obvious enough to spot and easily avoid.  Add in some crude rubberband AI and you’ve got a mess that is coasting on who its makers used to be.

Moving on to Danger Zone, everyone remembers Burnout’s crash mode, right? This recreates that but overlooks that it’s 20 years of game development later and this just isn’t cool as it was.  It has its moments when you pull off a great slew of vehicular carnage but it is very, very limited.

Does Danger Zone 2 improve it any? Haven’t yet tried it out, still downloading it.  The omens so far aren’t good.

After a couple of hours with Ratchet and Clank I’m pretty blown away by it. This might be the best looking console game ever – it’s quickly become a cliché to say this game is like playing a Pixar cartoon, but it really is at that level. Such depth and detail.

As a game and as a story it’s charming and likeable and immediately accessible, but it’s all the little touches that really elevate it to something special.

Particularly the subtleties of the controller feedback, from barely perceptible stuff like the beat of your footsteps to the changes in trigger resistance that make every weapon feel very different (that the satisfying God of War-style axe-throw is such a minor detail here just shows how much this game has to offer). The DualSense is quickly becoming the PS5’s major selling point given how much it enhances the feel of games.

Looking forward to exploring this world further.

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Ben

There’s one problem with having played Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart…. Every other game looks a bit crap next to it.

Where are you up to Dave?

Not far at all, just a couple of levels in. I’ve been tagging in and out with the kids so that we can all get used to the various mechanics.

Ah, that’s why I asked – be interested in how you find Sargasso.

The Club Nefarious bit and the lead-up to is very clever, as is the feedback when you’re on the electric wall panels.

Then there is that dimension hopping boss fight….

And all of it has so much personality, including the enemies and bosses.  The weapon previews are practically mandatory viewing because they’re so good.

 

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Dave

The gap between me seeing this DLC and buying it “for the kids” was around 0.73 seconds.

Scarlet Nexus – Demo

There are some nice ideas in this game, for instance it has probably the best executed version of telekinetic attack I’ve ever seen – using that is a lot of fun.  But it falls into a couple of major pitfalls that plague action JRPGs.

First, it feels floaty and imprecise as when you are and are not hitting the enemies.  Changing targets is a bit clunky. The camera is all over the place.  The powers idea is nice but let down by a missing detail, it’ll be telling you about a power but to see which it is talking about you have to hold R1.  To use some of them you have to be pressing circle – and only circle – if you still have R1 held it doesn’t work.  It’ll prompt you to hit L2 and sometimes it works spectacularly, then others times it doesn’t.

For those with the dexerity and the willingness to stick with it, there’s a good game trying to get out here.  But it’s really not helped by a map and mission indicator that is really unclear, so much so I had to stop playing because I was at a dead end and there was no indication of where to go.  It has a good design aesthetic, looks OK, but it has some major flaws for me.

I finished Code Name STEAM and, yeah, definitely a flawed game, but certainly worth the fiver or less I paid for it. It really goes all on on LoEG-ing 19th and early 20th century American literature, tying the aliens into Lovecraftian lore (and adding Randolph Carter as a playable character) and a lot of Oz stuff.

Weird thing is that some of the characters’ names have been changed in the in-game text from the spoken dialogue, which seems to be a regional thing for the European release. So Tiger Lily just becomes Lily, Randolph Carter is just called Randolph in the US version but Carter in Europe, Tinman becomes “Tincan” Scarecrow becomes “Strawman”, Queen Ozma is just called Queen Oz  and perhaps the strangest is that Queequeg from Moby Dick is called “King Queg”. Presumably it’s something to do with different copyright periods and things not being in the public domain over here, but it’s a bit odd, especially that they didn’t think to record alt dialogue. And it must have been something they were aware of, as there’s a character called The Fox who, I discovered after looking this up, is meant to be Zorro (albeit female and with no mask or sword) – the copyright for whom is complicated and presumably required sidestepping.

[Ben]

Trails of Cold Steel II continues to be a game that just can’t help screwing itself over with its boss battles, watching helplessly as, for a finite time, they eclipse all that is good about the game. The Duvalie fight being a case in point.  She says she’ll take everyone on, but what the psychopathic little shit means is it’ll be her and two monster robots.  What follows is a crude and terrible boss fight that is a dreadful finale to what was a pretty cool mission.  And after? Oh, yeah, after…. It wasn’t in her orders to fight you, she just flunces off, rendering the entire frustrating sequence pointless.  Everything leading up to this?  The Knight fight, the bit with Sara beating the crap out of an entire Jaeger pack solo – that was a gloriously fun massacre – taking out everyone in the base, despite it doing some underhanded crap like one soldier also having an invisible mech in their enemy group, was really, really good.  The boss fights just continue to be, too often, blatantly crude walls that can’t be prepared for.

Before this, I did the Terra Shrine, which had a good deal in common with the schoolhouse levels of the previous game.  With a couple of exceptions, those levels tended to play quite fair – get your levels up, tweak your gear a little, you can probably take the boss with some cautious strategy.  And so it proved here – after the bullcrap the game had pulled on numerous preceding bosses, this was a refreshing change.  Also coimbined Rean’s Ogre form with an overdrive assault on that boss which proved very effective.

After that frustrating boss fight, I then respecced some characters, started equipping various characters with evade, speed and accuracy boosts, along with giving Laura a double damage first hit ability – the amount of use and abuse that has since had has been off the scale. The biggest test of the new equips will be with the next boss battles, but for now I’m just spending time levelling up to get cash to get all the new weaponry.  Oh and giving everyone a superspell for when hey get a zero arts chance has proved massively beneficial.

The problem with the boss fights is they tend to be so much harder relative to the rest of the mission that the frustration they cause takes time to fade away, which means I can’t really enjoy the post-battle cut scene.  This is a shame as the story tends to be well done, so I do want to enjoy it.  Fortunately, taking a break before continuing the character focused post-mission sequences tends to be an effective solution.

In separate news, it’s been hoped for, but it’s been confirmed that there will be western releases of the Crossbell games, the first, Trails from Zero, in fall 2022 and the second, Trails to Zero, in 2023, with Trails to Reverie, which is the sequel to both the Crossbell and Cold Steel games, also arriving in 2023.  There loooks to be a final set of games after Reverie, focusing on Calvard.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Ben.

I’ve started playing XIII – the original one, not the recent remake/remaster – as it was given away on GOG for free recently. I had it on the PS2 back in the day and didn’t get very far with it, I thought because, back then, I wasn’t very good at action games. But playing it again now, I think the game’s as much at fault as me. It hasn’t aged particularly well at all. I’ve got it set up with my Switch Pro Controller and yet it never really feels intuitive in its controls, which is a problem I remember having before. Cycling through weapons is a particularly pain, especially when switching between them and items you need to use. The movement and aiming is oddly floaty and it’s hard to tell when you’re taking damage really. Overall it just doesn’t feel particularly fun, you know. Not helped by an enforced stealth level that I’ve just reached, where as soon as you’re even slightly spotted, the enemies trigger an alarm and you fail.

Oh and I found it amusing that the game’s GOG store page hypes up its voice acting as a selling point, because David Duchovny is absolutely terrible as the eponymous XIII. Sounds half asleep.

Do I remember right that XIII was one of those games with the cel-shaded art style? I liked that look, it really stood out.

It was quite a short era when that was really popular but some good games made use of it – Jet Set Radio and Ultimate Spider-Man stick in my memory too.

Yeah, it’s cel-shaded and to be fair, while it’s a bit low res, that aspect has aged pretty well and it still looks good.

Which is why it’s so baffling that the remake just ditched it for some bland alternative.

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Dave

What a bizarre choice.

Well cell-shading is still very popular… Arcsys has made an artform out of cell-shading. The Dragonball FighterZ game being one notable example, or their newest game Guilty Gear Strive. Those games look amazing.

Yeah, they do. And all XIII really needed was some higher res textures really and it’d have looked fine.

The huge advantage of cell-shading is preciesly that it looks like 2D (if done well) and that also means it’ll never age badly visually. Like what happens with old 2D/sprite arcade games… if they looked beautiful 20 years ago, they still do and they always will… it’s pretty incredible when comparing those old 2D games to 3D games from the Playstation 1 era, that now look like absolute shit, obviously.

For PC Gamers:

Steam has a summer sale until July 8th. I am browsing but I haven’t even finished the games I already have. Don’t really want to add much to my library as it is.

If you are also browsing Steam, what are you interested in getting? What have you gotten?

Sonic Mania is free on the Epic store at the moment I think.

Al-x wrote:

Don’t really want to add much to my library as it is.

Then you are not a true Steam user =P

Al-x wrote:

What have you gotten?

Didn’t get much this time around because I just bought the new Samsho which was FINALLY after two years released on Steam (and btw, anyone interested: Stay away!!!! It’s a grabage port), and Orcs Must Die 3 is around the corner… So that’s about all the money I can spare at the moment. I usualy never buy games at full price or on release day, but I’ve been waiting for those 2, Samsho since 2019, OMD3 since 2020, and they happened to get a near release because of the exclusive deals…

Sooo I got the Banner Saga 3 since I’ve been playin 1&2 that I already had, the Battetoads game ’cause it was dirt cheap and another cheap indie game I’m not a monster… That’s it.

I’d like to try Guilty Gear Strive but it’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too expensive here… Acrsys went greedy after wroking with Bandai Namco… u_u

OK, let’s talk Ghost of Tsuschima: Director’s Cut – coming to both PS4 and PS5, but if you want to upgrade from PS4 to PS5 it’ll cost you £9, along with £16 for the upgrade to the Director’s Cut edition, which includes a new island.

It’s been kicking off but for myself? I could see myself going for this.  The 60 FPS aspect, once you’ve noticed it, is hard to give up, but whenh combined with haptic feedback? That transformed Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, for a game like Ghost of Tsuschima? Likely to be even more pronounced.  For £9? Yeah, that to me feels fine.  Plus, the graphical upgrade for an already stunning game.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart pretty much slung the idea of game quality = game length into a coffin and then blew it up with a RYNO.  If I’m looking at this upgrade in qualitative terms, then yeah, I’m likely to go for it.

In other news, the long awaited Streets of Rage 4 DLC, Mr X’s Nightmare, drops 15 July – haven’t spotted a price yet.

 

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Dave

I don’t mind paying for a substantial expansion DLC, but I’m a bit irritated about GoT being a separate paid PS5 upgrade just for the graphical improvement, after so many other games have managed it for free. I’m not sure I’ll bother just for slightly improved visuals as the game already looks good on PS5.

As for the SoR4 DLC, yeah it looks like there’s a lot there in terms of new content. I’ll be there for that as long as the price doesn’t take the piss.

Ben wrote:

In other news, the long awaited Streets of Rage 4 DLC, Mr X’s Nightmare, drops 15 July – haven’t spotted a price yet.

8 bucks.

Dave wrote:

As for the SoR4 DLC, yeah it looks like there’s a lot there in terms of new content. I’ll be there for that as long as the price doesn’t take the piss.

I’m a bit disappointed with that DLC, I was hoping for new stages and maybe new enemies, but alas no… but hey, considering it’s super low budget and they probably only have a skeleton crew working on it, it’s okay… plus the price seems fair… 8 bucks for 3 new characters, a new mode and some other stuff? Yeah it’s ok.

I would’ve paid 30 bucks for another campaign though…

Jon wrote:

I’m a bit disappointed with that DLC, I was hoping for new stages and maybe new enemies, but alas no…

I read an interview with one of the devs where they talked about introducing new characters from the old games into the mix, so we are getting that. Plus it looks like the new mode will include new stages and plenty of new gimmicks. It’s just not being presented as a separate campaign.

So if it’s only $8/£5 I think there will be a lot of value there.

I think they’re just using the enemies from the old games, so basically using existing assets… and I’m assuming a lot more pixelated stages.

But yeah, they’re adding a few things… new moves for all SoR4 characters, the new mode with new backgrounds (I’m assuming they’ll be like arenas), and a few other things, and of course the 3 new characters.

[Martin Smith]

The fabled “Switch Pro” has now been revealed. It is not, as all the baseless rumour-mongering totally well sourced reporting suggested, a big upgrade in the style of the New 3DS, with exclusive software or even software enhancements. It’s more of a slight revision in the style of the DS Lite.

“Switch OLED model” has a slightly bigger screen (7″) that’s now OLED; a new wider kickstand; better speakers; a new dock that has an ethernet port and now 64gb of internal memory.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Martin Smith.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Martin Smith.

I can see myself going for this with better internal storage and internet capability.

Internal storage is a bit moot if you’ve got a big enough SD card, though, surely? I can see the appeal of the ethernet port if you’ve got poor wi-fi though.

It’s one of those less of a faff aspects.  Can be managed without but better to have.

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Martin Smith

Trails of Cold Steel II is a strange game.  In that I’m at the finale, in the endgame dungeon and my party is kicking large amounts of arse, including bosses!

There is a school of thought that says certain tactics should not be used, but courtesy of some of the crap this game has pulled earlier on, my response to that is: I say thee nay! If you’re not supposed to use it, it wouldn’t be in the game.  If that means I strategically deny the enemies a turn for as long as possible, up to and including them not getting a turn at all before killed, so be it.  You better believe I’m going to inflict that on enemies.  The result of this has been two very satisfying dual boss fights where they got their arse handed to them.  On the first one I removed one of the supports, then took one boss, then the other support, then the last one.  Tonight’s fight saw me destroy their lead up to a big attack, split their turns apart which in turn split their super attacks, recovered from each and then slowly decked them.  The whole time they could see what was happening but they just didn’t have a turn! It was death by a thousand cuts.

Even the post-scene “ah, but now I power up” was far less irritating due to how they executed it.  Feels weird to have had massive problems during the middle game but then be slaughtering enemies left, right and centre in the endgame.

 

I’ve been on a Metroid binge the past week or so. I replayed Metroid Fusion, which I really enjoyed. Then the latest version of Another Metroid 2 Remake, which was solid.

That then spurred me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for ages – go back to the original Metroid 2 on the GameBoy and complete it.

I got the game originally for my birthday in 1997 or 98, as it and Wave Race were packed in with the new(ish) GameBoy Pocket. It was my first experience with Metroid and I liked it, but didn’t get very far. It’s an incredibly confusing game – essentially a dungeon exploration game but with no map. I racked up absolutely hours in it getting lost and making next to no progress.

I’ve always been a little intimidated of going back to it because of that and knew if I ever did, I’d want to have a map to hand. I instead played through with a GameFAQs walkthrough, which only had ASCII maps, which were good enough.

It’s a smaller game than I remember (and certainly smaller than its remakes), but I can see why I got lost. Even with a walkthrough, I got turned around a couple of times and it doesn’t help that the game straight up reuses entire rooms close to each other. Almost certainly done to save on memory, but disorientating.

I was surprised how little trouble I had with it though. I mean sure, I had a walkthrough, but in terms of actually beating it, it wasn’t too bad. I only died a couple of times through most of the game. The later stage Metroids are a bit annoying but not insurmountable. The biggest problem I had is that it’s hard to grind for health and missiles. The game sporadically has hidden refill points and while that was fine for health, I ran out of missiles at one point (despite getting all the available expansion packs) and had to backtrack a bit to refill them.

The most difficult bit was the final boss, the Metroid Queen. Except, it turns out, not really. Even with my guide, I died several times, so I resorted to watching a YT recording of the battle and was amazed to see how quick and simple it is when you know what to do.

Unlike later Metroids, the game doesn’t give you an idea of how much time you’ve racked up on the file select screen. I figured I was in the middle of the 3-5 band for the middle ending, only to beat the game and be told I was at 3:10. Just ten minutes off the good ending! And I know where I could have saved those ten minutes. I’m not normally bothered by the speed run elements of Metroid, but damn, so close!

But maybe it’s right I didn’t get it. I didn’t really deserve it, given I used a walkthrough so heavily. But at least I’ve finally beaten the game.

God of War Kratos actor to voice Black Panther in Marvel’s Avengers

https://www.polygon.com/22578443/marvels-avengers-black-panther-voice-actor-war-wakanda-christopher-judge

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Some 90 hours later, I’ve finished Trails of Cold Steel II.

Overall, it’s a very good JRPG, not without a couple of significant flaws, one of which it shares with its predecessor.  Fortunately, it’s other aspects – story, world, characters, battle system and structure, mostly enable the game to escape the hole its recurring major flaw casts it into.

Some see this as a game that shamelessly reuses assets.  While I can see where that comes from, I don’t agree.  In the first game, you were introduced to various places in Erebonia; in this one you get a far stronger sense of how the places connect and the overall world.  Without the framework set up by the first game, the second wouldn’t be able to develop in the way it does.

The biggest flaw then? Boss battles.  If you are not winning the battle but losing in the cut scene that follows, to such a degree that the boss battle is often rendered a pointless gameplay wall for the sake of it.  Nor can you often use the enemies leading up to a boss to assess your chances or prepare tactics or equipment.  Too often, the bosses will do whatever they like without warning, which makes for a frustrating experience, especially when they tend to be far, far stronger than the enemies leading up to them, even on the game’s easiest setting.  It’s no surprise then that I did not enjoy the game’s final bosses, two of them being particularly unpleasant, one to such a degree I ended up going with the S-break nuke approach because it deserved nothing else.

The other flaw, which it shares with its predecessor, is far, far too much hidden stuff.  Short of using, and strictly following, a guide, on your first run you will miss loads of things, which can be frustrating if you want to get the Academy Rank A0.

What makes up for these then? The battle system is a lot of fun and, eventually, when you come to understand it properly, of how it can link to your equipment and quartz set-ups, there is one hell of a lot room for creative combinations.  Setting those up and seeing them play out can be  very satisfying.  The link attack idea is one of the best additions to turn-based combat and, if you remember what symbols denotes what, is one that can likely be severely exploited.

The Divine Knight battles are a missed opportunity.  It can be fun to use Valimar on normal enemies, but you’re limited to three turns. The biggest problem with the proper battles is too often the stances are so minor in their change they look the same to me.  Some battles have the enemies say things to indicate their next action, but these statements are not subtitled, which is a major weakness.  Fortunately, if you pair Valimar with Sara, she has an ability to weaken the enemy, which made the battles far easier and more tolerable.

The story remains ambitious, with a huge cast of characters; a surprising amount of moral ambiguity in the conflict, with political agendas to match.  The result is a game that, the great majority of the time, I wanted to keep playing and get to the end of despite the flaws.

One short section towards the end is rather confusing, but since we’re getting remasters of the Crossbell duo, it won’t be so in the future, with people able to play them in the right order.

I’ve now booted up Trails of Cold Steel III….

Ahhh so this where all that Steam money has been going to…

This is gonna make some huge waves, and while I don’t think it’ll destroy the Switch entirely, it’s gonna make a big dent considering what it’s capable of.

It’s even tempting to buy one of these instead of upgrading my PC, to be honest.

Played a bit of the SoR4 DLC. I quite like the new survival mode, lots of cool new stuff in there but it is a bit limited overall. The new characters are good though and each feels genuinely different to play as.

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Ben

Oh yeah, that came out – had forgotten about it.

Much like you’ve forgotten about Ratchet & Clank, perhaps?

Ben wrote:

Much like you’ve forgotten about Ratchet & Clank, perhaps?

I haven’t had much time to get back into it lately, for reasons I won’t bore you with. But I’m looking forward to spending a decent chunk of time on it again when I’m able to.

Cheers, I don’t want to end up spoiling any of it for you while wanting to know how you find it.

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Dave

While a substantive graphics upgrade and an overhauled combat system both boost it quite a bit, even allowing for those, the end of chapter 1 of Trails of Cold Steel III is among the strongest set pieces in the series.

Having a story difficulty setting definitely helps, but even if its precessor had had that, I suspect its bosses still would have been more uneven.  Here, there is a far more gradual difficulty curve – with bosses being more linked to the enemies you fight leading up to them.  At the same time while there is still hidden stuff, the game isn’t hiding it to the extent its predecessors did.  What made the set piece so good was that everything worked in combination – the initial boss fights, the initial Divine Knight fight, then the main one, which adds link attacks to it.  Having a partner in the knight fights also defangs the whole thing of working out which area is best to hit.  It still has the EX arts too. The final team-up special attack was a glorious piece of mech arse-kicking.

The whole thing was incredibly fun to fun to play and if this is what it is doing this early in the game, then it’s going to be quite a ride.

Christopher Judge? this Christopher Judge

Youngsters and their video games. This is Teal’C of SG-1

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JRCarter, Ben

“Indeed”.

….

Someone had to say it, but he’s probably better known now for…. “Boy…..”

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Rocket, JRCarter

Edit – Goddamn formatting rubbish

The short version: Rebel Galaxy – it’s shit, do not buy, not even for £4.

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Martin Smith

Finished GTA5 again, and realised that every single time I’ve finished it I’ve chosen one particular ending option and never even seen the other two endings. I reloaded the appropriate save file and tried them out too, some 8 years since the game came out. They were interesting but less satisfying than the option I usually choose.

I have immediately started the game anew, even though I have, like, 6 other recently purchased games to play (including Witcher 3, and Fallout4) – it’s just such a good game!

Hit the point where I needed to bag another external hard drive – this one primarily for PS5 games or those that are best played in it.

Which is where it gets interesting.  The relatively small memory size of the PS5 has been talked of, but storing game data externally changes everything.

It takes a bit of time to get a game onto the external drive, but once you have? If you want to play it, the PS5 copies from the drive.  It doesn’t move it.  And the PS5 copies it very fast.  It went through around 100GB for four games in 10-15 minutes.  And this is with a standard non-SSD drive.

Trails of Cold Steel III continues to be a very assured game for the most part.

It does have its flaws – mostly when it throws in its accursed swimming game, there’s something about the speed circles decrease in size, relative to a target circle, set around a button symbol, that doesn’t work at all for me; or it throws in a weird, pointless chase sequence; or it just sets up random crap multple chioce questions; oh and et’s not forget it deciding I must play it’s Vantage Masters minigame – but, it’s also far more adept at dispelling the irritation those moments cause.

Of all its self-inflicted flaws, the biggest is its habit of hiding way too much stuff – you think you’ve done everything in a chapter and then get a B or C rank because there’s still stuff to find but you’ll need a guide to do it.

Outside of these though? The story flows very, very well.  I can see why, for some, it falls victim to the criticism of ‘win the fight, lose the cutscene’, but more often than not, the same cutscene is used to reintroduce Old Class VII characters, in very over-the-top but fun style.  Hard not to like that kind of execution.  Chapter 1’s finale was supern, chapter 2 surpassed it, with chapter 3 then topping both its predecessors.  Chaining multiple boss fights together should really irritate but here it doesn’t.  The game’s habit of enabling regular time limited guest characters changes up the party roster in a way that encourages experimentation.  As do its quartz systems.

For anyone thinking you can start this game and have a clue as to what is going on – you really can’t.  Sure, it summarises as best it can, but even with that, there will be so much you miss out on due to the sheer size of its two predecessors and the web of character relationships it sets up.

The battle system continues to be fun, working out that an order gives the party 80% reduction in spell costs, allows for a very brutal magic defeat.  Alternatively, you break your enemies and then take them out with a series of chained link attacks.  Having partners positively transforms the Divine Knight fights too.

WAR FOR WAKANDA Trailer Teases T’Challa and Shuri Conflict

Does T’Challa want everyone to get COVID vaccines and Shruri refuse?

 

I’ve been replaying the MechCommander games recently. Not sure why – I’ve got plenty of unplayed games waiting, including the recent Battletech game. But whatevs, they’re fun.

Well, the first one definitely was. It really holds up, even *counts* 23 years(!) later. The way it makes you care about your mechwarriors with just a one-line bio, a blurry photo, some radio messages and call-sign is so impressive.

I started on Mc2 yesterday though and, wow, it was a real shock. Just awful. Considering it’s  20 years (sob!) old, I whacked all the graphical settings and whatnot up to max, figuring my new graphics card could handle it all. And yet the game chugged like hell, the mouse lagged and it looked atrocious, with a dismal draw distance and chessboard ground textures. It not only looked worse than I remembered, it looked worse than its predecessor. I had to turn the resolution down to a mere 1024×768 just to get it run properly.

It was really disappointing. I cast about online to see if anyone had done an HD texture mod or something, just to make it more playable when I stumbled upon a page somewhere with tips for getting it to run on modern machines. One thing it suggested was to delete two .csv files called vidcard and badcard.

I gave that a go this evening, booted the game up and suddenly it’s vastly improved. Running silky smooth (almost too fast, actually, with the movement speed of enemy vehicles) much better textures and draw distance, no lag or chugging. Even runs fine on the highest resolution (although the interface is all too small at 1600×1200 so I have ended up at 1280×1024).

It seems that with those two csv spreadsheets, if the game doesn’t recognise your graphics card – or even just its architecture or something – it assumes it’s a potato and changes some hidden graphical options to maximise its compatibility and chances of running. Unfortunately, that’s not a very future proof idea and it lumps modern graphics cards in with them. With the csv files gone, the game just stops second-guessing your system and leaves it to it. A very odd little quirk.

So with that sorted I’ve been able to dive back into it properly and it’s much more enjoyable. I still don’t think it’s as good as its predecessor, but it’s an entertaining game. And totally free and open source now, for some reason, if anyone else wants to play it.

Also, bit of gaming trivia, the creator of CyberPunk (the table-top RPG that inspired the game, not the genre, obvs) Michael Pondsmith appears in it. The mechwarriors in it are all portrayed by members of the dev crew and he was working at Microsoft at the time, so was included as Steel.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

Does T’Challa want everyone to get COVID vaccines and Shruri refuse?

Dude, spoilers!

Trails of Cold Steel III

This is easily one of the most confident and assured JRPGs I’ve every played.  No one in their right mind should try starting the story from here but if you’ve played the first two games it is an excellent continuation.

It’s one flaw is the one shared ny predecessors – it hides too much stuff and some of its minigames really irritate, but the latter is probably just me, as everyone else seems to love minigames.

It might be said the school sections that precede the field exercises, which host the major content, is lacking but they tend to work well as a calm before the storm section. You know that storm will be coming.  What was most impressive was th way each chapter in the game managed to surpass its predecessor.

It even managed to chain multiple boss fights in a way that didn’t irritate.  Some might say this game should not be played purely for the story, I can see the merit of that, but personally? The Story setting made this game far more fun than its predecessor.  The difficulty was far smoother, but bosses could still hit hard if they were permitted to.  True, there is a ‘win the fight, lose the cutscene’ aspect, but often the way those cutscenes played out were so effective I didn’t mind about that aspect.  The easier difficulty helped too in this respect.

You can do some absurdly complex strategies in combat if you so are inclined to – and it is those strategies that I suspect become mandatory on the hardest difficulty.

And then there is that ending… This has always been a series of games where it is very much in your interest to have the next one on standby for when you finish the one you’re on, as it is likely you’ll want to start it immediately.  This applies to all three games.

[Ben]

Tales of Arise

For all that I’m busy with Trails of Cold Steel IV, this was one very good demo that does a good job of selling the game.  It looks particularly good on PS5.

Edit – do not buy, even when in sale, unless you like games with overcomplicated controls:

Raji

Road Redemption

£14 down the drain, bollocks.

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

It took some time, but I got the dlc or extra content to the Avengers game: A special section on Wakanda with the Black Panther.

I might get into it this weekend if I have time.

[Martin Smith]

Started on Ghost of Tsushima this week. Not because of the Director’s Cut that’s come out this week – that’s entirely coincidental. I’ve had it since Christmas but have only just got around to it. I played it for a few hours on Tuesday and not again until Friday, in which interval the DC update was applied, which changes the title screen and some of the main menu layouts and stuff, which is weirdly disorientating when you’ve only played the game once before.

Anyway, that aside, it’s a lot of fun. Utterly gorgeous, especially in magic hour. Combat’s been a bit tricky at times, I think because I very quickly forgot to parry and then also strayed into an area with tougher enemies than I was able to cope with at the start.

I can definitely see the basis for complaints of it being a staple Sony single player game. They have rather turned the GTA 3 format into a formula to a degree and I’m glad I left so many months between playing this and Horizon, because despite the wildly different settings and themes, they do play very similarly.

Ghost of Tsushima also has a heck of a lot of collectables to the point where I did laugh at it a bit when, after talking about supplies, iron, various types of wood, linen, shrines, hot springs, artefacts and more, it then casually threw in “singing crickets”, which I apparently need to collect to increase the weather options available on the magic flute. That sounds so stupid now that I type it out, but… well, yeah, I guess it is, though it does kind of work in context. Anyway, it did start to feel a little like a Rare N64 collectathon at that point.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Martin Smith.

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Dave

Have you unlocked any stances yet?

Um… maybe? Is that like water and whatnot, changed by holding R2 and pressing a face button?

Yup and they make a huge difference to the game, so prioritise getting them unlocked.

The one I really liked was the anti-spear stance as those enemies were annoying.

Yeah, the spears are annoying, but I’m finding the enemy archers a real bugger at the moment. Need to unlock the arrow deflection perk.

I’ve got the water stance and it’s ok. It doesn’t particularly seem to break shields much more than the default one.

Hmm, I found it pretty effective but I was playing on Story / Easy – might be stagger resist increases on higher difficulties.

[Andrew]

I had long ago bought Fallout4 on PS4 when it was on sale digitally but had never played it; very well regarded, well-reviewed game. I’m completely unfamiliar with the franchise apart from having seen that little 50s style cartoon character that is part of the game icon. I played for about an hour or two but it really hasn’t grabbed me. I might have to come back to it; add it to the pile of unfinished, well regarded games like Witcher3 and Batman: Arkham Knight.

Back in April I took a week off work and bought a bunch of games from a 2nd-hand game shop at the local mall (that Batman game among them) – three of them I never started so thought I’d give one of them a go on Friday. When I was at the store I literally brought up Metacritic on my phone, sorted PS4 games by score, and looked for the games near the top of the list – Battlefield4 was among them. I’m not an online gamer, but I always thought of the Battlefield games as similar to the Call of Duty series – I’d played a bunch of COD on X360 and even though I dabbled in online play then, the single player campaigns were still rewarding on their own.

Not so with this – knocked it over in a few hours. I was shocked when I got to the end; I thought that that might have just been the first of three chapters. Luckily all these games only cost a few dollars each. It was enjoyable in its own way, but not exactly a polished piece of work. Pretty tropey plot and characters, some weird clipping/physics, and silliness. Graphically nothing special either.

Having wrapped that up I started one of the other games I bought – Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Completely unfamiliar with this series, I was immediately impressed by the graphics and presentation. It’s a 3rd person shooter, with RPG elements like upgradable weapons and abilities, set in a post pandemic, kinda post-apocalyptic Washington DC. The graphics are really great and so far I’m enjoying it. Hopefully will keep me going for a few weeknights at least.

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

Riders Republic Beta

Sigh, this one hurts because this was one of the big ganes I was really looking forward but it is a damn mess and I don’t see it being fixed in two months.

If you like extreme sports “characters”, a monotone teenager who sounds like she’s about to die of terminal boredom explaining stuff, on screens without subs too, the gear system – maybe you’ll like it more. For me? All of it would be better consigned to the sun to burn. It’s crap and it gets in the way.

This game’s biggest problem? Its own predecessor, Steep. That had an immediacy of access, of being able to pick up and play, with minimum to zero bullcrap interfering. In this game, it’s interfering bullcrap all the time.

Graphically? It’s OK, it’s nice enough but it suffers, in a way, from being too big. It’s hard to know what areas are best for which sport, where to start from and so on. There is a great sense of speed, but often the camera will not keep up with it – in races, you will mess mandatory checkpoints because of it. The biggest problem with the graphics is it feels like the team who did Steep have been restrained – there’s some verticality here, but it feels and looks less impressive than the older game despite being made for PS5. There’s something missing here.

The big selling card of the mass races? It’s one of its biggest failures – because it’s too chaotic. You can’t see where to go, you’ll be sabotaged by everyone else, if you want Extreme Fall Guys, I suppose this is it, but in Beta it mixes in sports you haven’t been able to try out, so that means you don’t know the controls and it doesn’t tell you. Mix this in with a camera that can’t keep up and too much screen clutter and mandatory checkpoints, rendered in a pastel yellow that blends into the background far too easily – it’s a bad cocktail and I quit the second race midway through because the rocket packs are crap to control. Yeah, I didn’t want to play it. The weirdest thing though, in the initial rocket intro it had intuitve controls I could use, but in this race? Totally different.

In short? If you have Steep, you don’t need this.

If I see it going cheap in a year? Maybe, but I’m not paying £45-50 for it now.

Saints Row 3 Remastered

I didn’t expect to finish this game. The reason? Helicopter and aircraft controils – they’re crap. Any mission that features either aircraft will have you fighting the controls the entire time.

Since despite all that sabotage, I unexpectedly made it past the idiocy that was the Live With Killbane mission and after that? It was far easier to go all the way to the end and see both endings.

The big success here is the PS5 makeover the game gets. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so graphically entranced by a game, it looks amazing – when you’re in a major firefight at night, blowing up vehicles all over the place? It looks stunning. That said there are times, at night, when you’ll want to turn the HDR off to better see enemies.

The game’s final mission, Three Way, has a surprising lack of game bullcrap, it’s go here, kill stuff; go there, kill more stuff; and once more, then you decide which ending you want to go for. It was a huge amount of fun for both versions.

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Andrew

Decided to give the Riders Republic Beta another go, as it’s a limited time item, what changed this time around?

• No game story rubbish getting in the way
• Unlocked the Rocketwings
• Started looking at it as its own game rather than Steep

These three steps were deceptively effective.  With my just exploring the game world, the size of it started to work for it instead of against it as I found some very impressive locations that looked amazing and played even better.  Having the Rocketwings took out the irritation of the game throwing in a massive chasm as you try to get somewhere.  That said, they are very flawed in terms of camera and your ability to judge your speed relative to the environment, nor is the parachute any better.  The other point that became apparent after a good amount of exploration is the environment variety – there is more here than is apparent at the start.  It takes time because the game world is the size it is.

It is inconsistent in its physics, you’ll go through all manner of stuff without injury, then the game just decides you are going to crash.

But at least time I got to see very impressive vistas with far more impressive height and draw distance – it looked far more PS5 at times.

It’s only available until end of tomorrow so the aim will be to see as much of the map as I can, now I’m far more motivated to do so.

Will I get the full game? Probably wait on reviews first I think.

Final day of the Riders Republic Beta and it finally came together neatly.

Used the Rocketwings to nab the final parts of the map I hadn’t got and that showed up a lot of how the world is put together.  If you give the player air travel, you need a massive world to explore because going aerial shrinks it.

At the same time having the map filled in shows the geography and how it is set at various altitudes.  At one point I’m cycling along a road in a very good looking desert, with some massive mountains in the background, knowing I can head to and up them.  At that point? I knew how the game worked.

Not the first plot bomb it has dropped, nor the last, but Trails of Cold Steel IV certainly revealed an entire set of new revelations that neatly pay off the entire three preceding games!

It was a pleasant surprise too to have boss fights that weren’t taking the mick, though the second of the trio did engage in some spammy crap.

Loving The Division 2. This seems like a game that should have garnered more love and attention. The mechanics are great, the graphics are beautiful (in an ugly way since it’s a garbage strewn, post apocalyptic Washington DC), I bought it for like 6 dollars and thought it must be really old; it’s only from 2019.

It’s a bit busy in terms of the map and the menus and options, but after a few hours it all starts to make sense and there’s a lot of depth to the gameplay.

I know this game has a significant online multiplayer component that I’m not bothering with but I’ve read that the single player campaign is still a good 30 hours worth of play, which makes Battlefield 4’s ~5 hours really offensive. I’ve been playing for a week and it still seems like there’s a fair bit to do – strong recommendation if you want a 3rd person shooter.

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Dave

The Takeover

Even bought on the cheap, this is a seriously flawed game.

Was everyone so desperate for a Streets of Rage sequel that they would practically forgive anything and everything?  Because it certainly feels like it and, let’s face it, even Streets of Rage 4 forgot what made Streets of Rage 2 the pinnacle of the series.

Let’s start with the good – most of the time, the graphics are very good.  There are times when they get in the way of the action in obscuring your view and sometimes there will be too much visual clutter on the screen, but most of the time? It looks very good.  Soundtrack? Probably the game’s best and consistent card.

So how does it go so wrong? First, it has nothing that tells you what the controls are nor is there any remap option.  There is a tutorial, but all that does is invoke punch and kick symbols without telling the buttons! It’s amazing in all the wrong ways.  What the tutorial also showed is the window for its combination moves- you know the kind, direction plus button, is very, very small.  So much so I gave up trying to use them.  It also has a rage feature linked to L3 – so very easy to trigger by accident, too easy.

It also gives you guns but wrecks the use of them. Yes, somehow they screwed that up.

The other big problem? All your enemies are 2D cardboard cut-outs – that’s what it feels like to play.  You will be convinced you are lined up and still fail to connect, as it seems your enemies have a random intangibility power. Boss fights?  Pretty much all rubbish due to being very cheap, which combines with the intangibility.

Finally, it has no mid-game save feature! You want to unlock all the levels? You have to do it one go.  I hate this.  It is so damn crappy.

Still, it does have a relatively easy difficulty.  It also gives you weapons which you keep using until you lose them which can be quite fun.  Once you adjust to having both a kick and punch button, flipping from the one to other to batter an enemy, once you’ve connected a hit, can be very good.  There will be times when you are storming through enemies and it’s in those moments the game is at its best.

There are a couple of bonus levels which could have been good, if they had an intro screen with the controls, but they don’t so they end up a jerky, oh-god-how-long-do-I-have-to-play-this-crap mess.

The sad thing is it doesn’t need much to be fantastic – a controls listing and remap, game save, more substantive enemies, that’d probably do it.  But it doesn’t have these little extras so it’s stuck.

 

Bought it and tried it, but didn’t really win me over… I might give it another go in the future… I’m not so hot with sooo many buttons… I like simple things =P

It looks and plays more like Final Fight, tbh.

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Ben

In terms of scrolling beat-em-ups, I’m looking forward to TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. Looks like fun.

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Ben

Turtles is looking good, as is the Asterix one.

Meanwhile Sony are royally screwing themselves over with Horizon: Forbidden West.  How? No free or even charged for upgrade from PS4 to PS5.  Oh and they’re messing with photo mode, something many people care greatly about.

And this is with an improved competition from MS via Gamepass and a prior commitment a year ago to free PS5 upgrades!  Sony seem hell bent on wrecking themselves and their reputation.

Call me anti-consumer, but I don’t really understand the expectation that people should get a free PS5 version of a game when buying the PS4 one. There’s no expectation of a free blu-ray when you but a DVD, or a CD album when you buy the cassette. If you want the PS5 version, just buy that.

In this particular case, Sony put out a statement a year ago saying they would stick with free PS5 upgrades for their big dual releases.

The other aspect here is that both XBX and PS5 remain very hard to acquire.  So, people may want the PS5 version but can’t get the tech to play it.

The smarter move, which they still would have got blasted for, would be to do what they did with Ghost.  £9 to upgrade to full Ps5.

Instead, if you want that abilty on HZD, you have to buy the digital deluxe edition, RRP £80.  So the optics are that Sony are both breaking their word and paywalling features on one of their biggest titles.  It’s not a good look, they might get away with it, but to borrow a Gowron line, gamers will feel betrayed in battle and that they do not forgive, or forget.

And after a day or so of a digital kicking from all directions, Sony will set PS4 H:FW with a free PS5 upgrade.  This honours their statement from Nov 2020 that it would have one.

Future main games like God Of War 2 and Gran Turismo will have a $10 upgrade fee.  That is a far easier sell.

God Of War: Ragnarok trailer is looking pretty great. Definitely more of the same, but that’s what I’m hoping for.

2 Spider-Mans (which is what I will exclusively be calling it) looks good too.

Spider-man 2, God of War 2, Wolverine all look good.

Forspoken was a surprise, looks great.

Project Eve could be a good action title too.

And then there is the Star Wars KotOR Remake that sent the internet insane.

Martin Smith wrote:

2 Spider-Mans (which is what I will exclusively be calling it) looks good too.

Yeah it looks great.

“2023”?!

Well, they also have the Wolverine game too.

Andrew wrote:

“2023”?!

2023 is only 16 months away.

You want Spider-Man 2: Cyberpunk edition?  Of course not, no one wants that so 2023 it is.

Has anyone heard about Midnight Sons? I saw a trailer for it and it looked interesting. I know the Midnight Sons from the comics but this looks different.

Buzz around it seems pretty positive.

There was a mini blow up over suspected mucrotransactions, due to there being random card-based loot, but this was confirmed not to be the case.

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Well, after around 320 hours of gameplay, I have reached the end of the Trails of Cold Steel quartet.

Let’s start with the very few flaws – there are times, far more in the second and fourth games, that the developers went with the idea of difficulty equalling quality – as even on the easiest difficulty there were some nasty boss fights in the second and a handful in the fourth.  The thinking in each appears to be that doing so immerses the player, as the characters are supposed to be feeling up against it – the prblem is these fights don’t have that effect, instead breaking the spell the story has already crafted more than well enough.

Another weakness is the combat system, probably in response to giving the player quite so many tools, pretty much has to resort to being cheap in the major fights.  Often it’ll go with a random boost that the boss invokes whenever it likes.  The final boss fights of the fourth game were a pretty tedious slog, whereas the final hidden boss fight was far, far better.  The Divine Knight battles never really tapped their full potential due to the stances system and its application being inconsistent.  Getting partners in three and four helped but couldn’t solve the problem entirely.

When the games are not doing dumb crap – and the third is the most consistent of the four entries – they are very good JRPGs.  There’s also a clear sense of pay-off to developing bonds with your party members, which then pays off in battles.  The link attacks in the first two were already a great mechanic, combining that with the break mechanic in three and four becomes even more fun.  You have a good amount of latitude in character build and some of the last game quartz you get access to are insane, as they give both high-level abilities and stat boosts.

What this quartet of games really proves is the benefit of a lack of player choice on the plot.  The plot here is linear, your job is to get from A to B, that’s it, there’s minimal branching, with it only really coming into play on romance quests and sidequest results being lower or higher, that’s it. But it is this very linearity that helps it.  Both the first and third games end on a massive cliffhanger.  For anyone used to a video game telling a complete story, like the Yakuza or Uncharted series, this is a major shock.  For this reason, once you know you like the series enough to commit to playing it all the way, always have the next game available in advance.  At the same time, they get to leverage character and plot progression in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else.  By the finale of the fourth game you’ll be taking out strong standard enemies that are more powerful than the final boss of the first game.  While it is doing that, it is weaving in more and more characters, with an ever increasing level of complexity and ambiguity.

Does it work? Yes it does.  The fourth game has an amazingly consistent sense of paying off its previous three predecessors and more.  That in turn racks up the sense of stakes and weight of the action and fights.  In both the second and fourth the way your characters recover from the spectacular amount of crap the previous cliffhanger dropped on them from a great height is very, very well executed.

And yet – the Legend of Heroes series, of which this quartet is but a part of, is far larger.  There are references here to the Crossbell duo of games, which are getting remastered and western releases in 2022 and 2023, but also to the first trilogy whose availability is far more limited and next to zero in the west, with the first two of the trio available on PSP.  There is an epilogue game to both this and the Crossbell duo, that also gets a 2023 release.  And after that?  Sounds like a final trilogy is on the cards.  This series is nowhere near over.  Falcom have said they would like to remake the first trilogy.  I can see them getting requests to do that, especially once the next trio get their western releases.

It was also quite fascinating seeing how their ambitions for the series increased with each game, with the third representing a far higher level of ambition, which it successfully more than achieved.  The fourth went further still and again, pretty much succeeded.  There is a very high sense of confidence here.  You can also see the four games reflecting the changes in gaming over the years of their creation, the first duo are harder, the second duo have a story setting.  Hopefully, so too will the Crossbell remasters, as it improved the second half greatly.

The combat system combines a sense of timing and space, with elemental and attack weaknesses, buffs and debuffs that you can take to a ludicrous degree – and those who have completed these games on Nightmare setting will have had to do just that.  Mostly, it does a good job of encouraging and rewarding experimentation.  I only ever felt Craft Points were too hard to easily reacquire and the cost for the S-Craft moves too high due to that.  Everything else? Really, really works.  It might be said CRPGs go much further – probably true – but they’re less accessible in the main.  When you watch your gang execute a series of perfectly timed attacks and spells that completely cripples or outright kills a major enemy it is very, very satisfying.

Will I be getting the next trio? Most definitely, but I won’t be playing it until 2023. Playing through this quartet back to back has been hugely rewarding so I’ll pair the Crossbell duo up then play them. And maybe, just maybe, the sales of that trio convince Falcom to fire the gun on the first trilogy remake.

Anyone lucky to have a PS5 – get the new system update and enable 3d audio.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Kena is looking so fantastic I’m likely to buy it sooner than 28 Sept, which was the original plan.

Meanwhile, I don’t care about Far Cry 6 but the new trailers with Giancarlo Esposito are very good and funny.

Ben wrote:

I don’t care about Far Cry 6

I can’t rave enough about Far Cry 4 and Far Cry: New Dawn.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Anton Castillo hates Far Cry.  You have a problem with that? Take it up with Anton.  You affairs are all in order, yes?