Video Games – What Are You Playing?

Topic

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

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I just picked up the Sonic Colours Ultimate remaster and I’m quite enjoying it with the kids. This is one of the middle-era Sonic games that I never played before, as the original release coincided with my few years away from console gaming, so it’s nice to finally give it a go.

It’s pretty simple but so far it feels like one of the best 3D Sonic games – it’s nice and straightforward, not too punishing, tight little short levels with decent 2D sections, and the wisps work well.

Plus the two-player minigame is amusing and a nice addition.

Also, despite having heard of some bugs in some versions of the remaster, this seems pretty smooth (playing the PS4 version on PS5). Although it’s weird that the cutscenes haven’t had the same polish and HD upgrade as the rest of the game – presumably redoing them was too much work? It makes for quite a jarring transition.

Anyone here a fan of the Tekken games?

I could use some honest opinions and reviews.

Nope, I only play 2D fighters… but everything I’ve heard is Tekken 7 is a great game, and possibly the very best of them all (all Tekken games I mean)… for what that’s worth.

Are you interested in picking it up Al?

For any fighting game Al be attentive to the editions – there’ll be various versions.

[Al-x]

Jon wrote:

Are you interested in picking it up Al?

I am half and half about it.

It looks fun and should pique my interest.

I get the feeling though, that after a few sittings where you figure out a winning technique, it will just be repetitious.

———————

Any interest here in this upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy game?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Al-x.

Al-x wrote:

I am half and half about it. It looks fun and should pique my interest. I get the feeling though, that after a few sittings where you figure out a winning technique, it will just be repetitious.

That’s not how fighting games work, you won’t find a “winning technique” anytime soon… I mean, unless you only play the AI, but that’s not really the point of FGs.

If you don’t plan on playing against other people, maybe skip fighting games, because yes, they’re not very entertaining for single player purposes.

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Al-x

1-on-1 fighting has its limits, no matter the system depth.

Beating multiple punks up though? That never gets old.

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Al-x

Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins Demo 2

So, here we go, we’re off to kill…. Chaos. Yeah, that’s right. Chaos.  Chaos is here. We have to kill Chaos.

Well, the game really, really wants to be but let’s just say the writing needs a massive improvement over the next six months, as do the, er, “characters”, or rather the walking stereotypes – in nature and visuals – that we get here.

Despite that, this is a half-decent demo.  It does have some rather stupid stuff in it, like multi-level engagements that awful – if you’re going to have a fight, just have a clearly indicated arena so you don’t have to worry about climbing up and down, especially when there’s no jump button.

If you like fighting games that require you to lock on to individual enemies, I don’t, you’ll likely enjoy this demo.  Even with not being a fan of it, I was able to use it.  And the system? It is Final Fantasy pays homage to God of War, the death moves are pure Kratos.  They’re fun but you’ll be looking at them and thinking they look awfully familar and that’s because they are.  Familar or not, some moves never get old, like Hulk slamming Loki style smashing a giant crawer into the ground.

One total disaster is magic as it requires manual aiming, while selecting from a radial menu, while holding the button down – it’s far, far too fiddly and it practically prevented me doing stuff with magic, which is a shame.  Similarly the techniques are overly complicated being stuff like R1, R1, R2 – so again, something that prevented me using it.  At least on this initial run, maybe it’ll make sense on a second go.

Another weakness is there’s sometimes too much going on at times, with the visual clutter distracting from the enemy you have locked on.

The job system is potentially good, but the game explains it badly and some of its descriptions are very weird – it gives a sense of a club as this major weapon, you equip it and it’s this tiny thing.

It has the Souls-style – save / access a crystal and all enemies respawn.  Initially, that seems crap then you work out that you can just revive and kill your enemies infinitely, that powers up the characters and you do see that difference when you’re playing.  The combat is fun enough that you would be inclined to do this.

Graphically, it looks nice enough – on the second mission in the wetlands there’s a neat weather switching element and a good sense of light and shadow when you’re on the sunlight setting.  Soundtrack? Pretty forgettable.

Should you give this a go? If you skip or endure the cutscenes and can put up with this macho bunch of morons, there is some fun to be had here.  But it does need a lot of work between now and March 2022.

Never expected to post this but the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy is starting to look like it might be good!

GTA3 Trilogy getting a reissue/remaster. Rumoured for a while but now conformed. These three games are still extremely playable but a wee polish and updating is still welcome.

https://www.eurogamer.net/amp/2021-10-08-rockstars-grand-theft-auto-trilogy-finally-official-and-launching-later-this-year

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Dave

Bruce wrote:

GTA3 Trilogy getting a reissue/remaster. Rumoured for a while but now conformed. These three games are still extremely playable but a wee polish and updating is still welcome.

https://www.eurogamer.net/amp/2021-10-08-rockstars-grand-theft-auto-trilogy-finally-official-and-launching-later-this-year

The peak era of the series.

Be interesting to see how far they go in remastering these visually. They could do with a polish but too far and they might not feel like the same games any more.

There’s definitely a lot GTA 3 needs tweaking to be as good as people remembering it being. A new control scheme mainly, but mid-mission checkpoints would be nice too.

GTA3 was kinda remembered for being bad, no? I dunno, that’s the rep it had back then.

But yeah, I’d play those… although, I’ve had GTA4 for ages and haven’t touched it… and never got to 5 because they never put it on a cool discount (it was free on epic for a while, but fuck epic)… soooo, I don’t know if I’d really play them at some point…

On the other hand, Vice City is Vice City… I’d probably be down for that much. I wonder if they’ll add anything in terms of content, or if it’s just gonna be a graphical upgrade.

4 is good, 5 is great.

Jon wrote:

GTA3 was kinda remembered for being bad, no? I dunno, that’s the rep it had back then.

It absolutely wasn’t. It got loads of perfect scores on release, let alone good ones. It’s only as time’s gone on that it’s aged poorly, as everything it did was improved upon.

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Dave

Jon wrote:

GTA3 was kinda remembered for being bad, no?

No.

Andrew wrote:

4 is good, 5 is great.

I think V is really excellent, but yeah IV wasn’t quite there. Too boring and too many irritating levelling-up mechanics with the skills etc. Kind of the way things were starting to point with San Andreas.

Jon wrote:

That’s not how fighting games work, you won’t find a “winning technique” anytime soon… I mean, unless you only play the AI, but that’s not really the point of FGs.

If you don’t plan on playing against other people, maybe skip fighting games, because yes, they’re not very entertaining for single player purposes.

I see your point. With some games, you can figure out what the game is doing and you can figure out some technique/strategy to win the boss fight or whatever. That is what I had in mind and why I found some games repetitive.

Thanks a lot for telling me…

Al-x wrote:

With some games, you can figure out what the game is doing and you can figure out some technique/strategy to win the boss fight or whatever.

Well yes, that works with every game, because you’re up against an AI, but AIs are still ironically very dumb, or they “cheat”, like in fighting games… so yes, you can do that against the CPU.

But obviously the main attraction of FGs is playing against other people, and in that case, there’s no “figuring out” anything… you can figure out a player, sure, but the next player will be different and so on… FGs are like the most pure form of PVP in that regard.

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Bruce, Al-x

Martin Smith wrote:

It absolutely wasn’t. It got loads of perfect scores on release, let alone good ones. It’s only as time’s gone on that it’s aged poorly, as everything it did was improved upon.

Huh… well ok then… weird, whenever I talked about it with people, pretty much everyone always said it wasn’t wroth playing because it wasn’t great. Mind you, I’m talking about 2002-5 or so. I think Vice City was soooo much better that people just dismissed 3 by comparaison, maybe.

Al-x wrote:

Jon wrote:

That’s not how fighting games work, you won’t find a “winning technique” anytime soon… I mean, unless you only play the AI, but that’s not really the point of FGs.

If you don’t plan on playing against other people, maybe skip fighting games, because yes, they’re not very entertaining for single player purposes.

I see your point. With some games, you can figure out what the game is doing and you can figure out some technique/strategy to win the boss fight or whatever. That is what I had in mind and why I found some games repetitive.

Thanks a lot for telling me…

Games being repetitive is part of the charm, that you learn and play the system but the best games hide this very well.

Roguelike games that use random procedural generation of game content have become popular over the last few years.  But even with procedural generation you eventually start to spot the patterns.

Some games, like racing ones, encourage you to remember the tracks so you can better race on them too.

Square Enix tried to redeem/make up for their Avengers game by adding extra sections like the Wakanda material and the upcoming Spiderman section. But now there is this having to pay in the marketplace to “level up”:

https://mashable.com/article/avengers-game-paid-xp-boosts-leveling-problems

XP boosters aren’t new, AC Odyssey had one and that’s a few years old now.

Reason this one is getting more attention is SE said they wouldn’t add them and have done so.

The problem with XP boosters is the game will likely be designed in a way to encourage purchase of them.

Other gaming stuff:

<i>Yakuza: Like A Dragon</i> will be getting a sequel but produced by a new team at the studio, how did they announce it? In part, with this image:

Well played.

Talking of which, I finished the replay of Judgment.

On PS5 the graphics are better but that’s not what makes it really stand out on the newer platform.  No, it’s the load times being far faster and the movement being set to 60 FPS over the original’s 30 FPS. The effect of that on combat was pretty stunning.  In the original I rarely used the wall strike attacks or the sprint because it was jerky and delayed, but here? I used it all so much more and it made combat far, far more fun.

There were also the advantage of understanding the game system’s worked, particularly the EX boost.  Previously I had missed how fast it can be recharged, which made the bosses mortal wound strikes tedious and boring.  This time around? As soon their aura goes active I hit the boost and obliterated their arse into the ground.  Hugely satisfying.

There are some weaknesses to the game – the drone bits, the active investigation and tailing sections don’t really work, the latter often due to you following what seems like a paranoid intelligence trained individual and with a lack of hiding spots, oh and line of sight requirement.  But the fighting is good enough to make up for it.

These games live or die by their story and Judgment‘s remains fantastic.

(Note to Al: You want a good beat ’em up? Start on Yakuza Zero and work your way through that and the next six games in order.)

Ys VIII: Lacrimosana of Dana

A long-running action JRPG, this game is outrageously fun.  It just doesn’t do the things you would expect a game to do that gets in the way of you having fun.  Stamina bar? None – you want to infinitely sprint? Go for it.  Fall damage? That’s no fun, don’t worry about it.  Strong enemy on the field? You can spam your special attacks to kill it fast.  And all of this mad battle action will be running to a killer soundtrack.

Initially you boot you up and it seems like it’ll be your standard JRPG gaming comfort food.  Then Chapter 2 happens and whammo.  This game has story surprises and when they hit, they hit hard.  That said, after the hit, with hindsight, you will spot that they weren’t exactly being subtle about it.  Still works though.

So, it’s going to be this and Kena: Bridge of Spirits for the foreseeable future.

Yakuza 0 is a weird game. One minute it’s telling a gripping story of double crossing in the Japanese underworld, the next it’s getting me to train up a dominatrix and distract a crowd so a human statue can go for a piss. A lot of fun but the storytelling equivalent of whiplash.

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Ben, Martin Smith

[Martin Smith]

I finally managed to get hold of a copy of Timespitters: Future Perfect for the GameCube for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, I’ve bid on so many copies on eBay, I got a bit blasé about checking condition before going for it. I only noticed after I put in what turned out to be my winning bid on this that it’s in a normal DVD case instead of GC one, said case is also cracked and the sleeve is weirdly worn on the edges. It’s even worse in person – what looked like (and was vaguely described as) dirt on the case in the listing has turned out to be massive water damage to the sleeve. Well, beer damage by the look and smell of them. So that’s annoying.

The game actually works though and even just with a quick go against bots in multiplayer, I’m reminded how fun it is (I previously had it on the PS2). It’ll be great to give it a go with four players and to dive into the map editor.

EDIT: actually, just putting the disc back into the case and noticed it’s absolutely covered in scratches, so I think I’m going to end up trying to get a return/refund on the whole thing. Replacing the case would have been fine, but the sleeve, manual and the disc being damaged as well just makes it a nonsense.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Martin Smith.

Nintendo’s revealed the prices for the Switch Online Expansion thing that gives access to the N64 and Mega Drive games. In the UK it’s a £17 a year bump to £35. In the US it’s a $30 a year bump to $50. Which is… yeah, way too much for what it adds (you also get the new Animal Crossing DLC as part of it which isn’t much of a selling point if you don’t have AC). I thought it was going to be about £5 or so, maybe a £1 a month, but it’s not even available on the less than yearly packages.

I missed this over the weekend but it looks incredibly fun.

Hard to say if it will be as we don’t tet have a gameplay trailer.

I’m expecting similar to the Arkham games.

Yeah but Arkham City or Arkham Knight? There’s a rather big difference between the two and Gotham Knights looks to be doing pretty much that.

Onto other games….

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

This ended up being a surprisingly addictive way to spend the last month.  I’ve never played the series – this proved to be an excellent starting point.

It’s also a case where the full game is far superior to the demo, as you have have far time to learn and understand the game systems, so, on this basis, I’ll give Yx Ix a go when it’s cheap as for both games the demos didn’t work that well for me.

For the majority of the time the game is very well paced, with a very well set difficulty curve – you rarely feel unfairly hit.  There are a couple of major boss fights that rely on systems that are strangely explained or against enemies that really needed  a floor shadow as the depth perception can be hazy.  The strangely explained system? When they say throw, they mean run and aim like a human catapult, but until you realise that the boss fight concerned is pretty crappy.  But it was an isolated case.

The action RPG aspect is very, very smart, even if, like me, you don’t on well with lock-on systems. Those that do will also probably like the flexibility of it, for me it was a bit too flexible, but did work well on bosses.  When your party is on a role, doing numerous special moves and unloading hell, holy and unholy, on a major enemy, the on-screen chaos matches that of the Tales games, but with what feels like far less retstraint on your party characters abilities. You can really go to town on enemes here.

Graphics? JRPGs are variable here, some are stuning like Dragon Quest XI or Xenoblade Chronicles, others are more middling.  For a four year old game – probably older as 2017 was its western release – this looks good.  There’s a great anime design aesthetic that likely helps it here.

Music – Excellent.  The soundtracks are something else,far, far stronger than the graphics.  The majority of these tracks were designed for kicking arse and decking bosses.

Quests and gear and maps – it works well. Now? Now this would be talked of as a Zelda-style or Metroidvania JRPG as there’s a good amount of getting new gear that opens up new areas.  At the same time you need a certain level of survivors in your island village to clear obstacles which provides incentive to find them.  Which is how the game works very effectively – you always have the end goal of escaping the island that encourages you onwards.  Occasional reactive and pre-emptive monster attacks and hunts give variety and in the raid attacks there is clear effect from fortifying the village.

It has its flaws – that one big boss fight, tentacle enemies, it’ll feel on some raids it’s teleporting in enemies, it has fishing – which, like every other JRPG – sucks, some quests end faster than you expect – but, compared to the whole, these are minor points.  On the whole it is a very good game and if you see it going cheap, as I did, it’s worth the gamble.

Dead Cells

Oh dear, this? This is not good.  The problem? Compared to the other roguelike game I have played, Everspace, this is a stingy bastard of a game.  So much so that I see little point in doing the runs because I get so little reward from it.  In Everspace, even on a bad run, I could get something for the next one most of the time.  If you didn’t lose all the cells on death the game would be superior.  As it is? You die, you lose the cells you need for upgrades, the game then tells you that you have lost them to which the only logical response is: Fuck you, you mother-fucking, stingy piece of shit bastard, I’m playing something else.

The rewards are that bad, the carryover so incredibly limited – I don’t feel that I get anything from doing a run which is the foundation mechanic of this type of game.  You die, you invest your rewards, the next run is a little easier, you die, round and round.  Except here? I die, what do I have? Oh, sweet fuck all.  Oh, there’s stuff in bottles at the start? OK.  Oh, I can’t select it? Then what is the goddamn point?

Even its combat gameplay is off.  There’s a weird, split second lag on a lot of it, which in a game this fast really shows up.  It’sparticularly noticeable on the jump.  There doesn’t seem to be a remap controls option that would help.  It also does lots of cheap bollocks – you shoot an enemy with an arrow, but they’ve started their attack run, you have to dodge, not even an arrow in the face stops them.  That wasp enemy is on the other side of a wall so should be safe? Wrong, you can’t go through walls but they can.  Ditto enemies that shoot through walls.  And the procedural element? Only worsens all of these aspects.  Everspace‘s procedural generation worked on a win / loss structure – sometimes you got a crap zone that you could only le it from, other times you got one that was loaded with cash.

I’m sure this has its gaming masochists who love the pain it inflicts on them, but nope, I’m not in that crowd.

Ben wrote:

Yeah but Arkham City or Arkham Knight? There’s a rather big difference between the two

Were they that different (apart from the Batmobile)?

Personally, yes. Knight’s combat was far more complicated, too much so for my liking.  They upped the enemy types but just try getting to, never mind taking out a medic enemy.

Ah, then I’ve maybe forgotten the details in the intervening years.

Either way, if it’s similar to Arkham but you get to play as the villains fighting the JLA, it should be fun.

From a development perspective, with Arkham-style combat having been picked up by so many other games, I could see them wanting to do something different.

Riders Republic – Trial Week

Despite some unfixed flaws and other irritations, this is a very smart move by UbiSoft.  It’s basically a 4hr preview run of the game.  Which is enough time to do the introduction and unlock a bit more of the game, while exploring the massive game world.

Flaws? The checkpoints still tend to blur too much into the background and the camera will fail to keep up with the speed.  The AI is also cheating, unsporting bastard who will hit you off course while you have no offensive options to speak of.

So, it would have been good if they’d made those checkpoints easier to see.  There is a High Contrast option in the game, might try it next week, but it feels like overkill to deal with one minor aspect of the graphics.

Talking of which, they have had a major upgrade from the Beta.  There were some stunning sections, which were supplanted by some very clever haptic feedback – that I don’t recall the Beta having either.  This time it felt far more like a PS5 game.

The biggest flaw remains the introduction.  If you can endure its extreme, wannabe hipster irritants, put up with the mandatory events and then get to the good stuff, where the game stops trying to guide you, that’s when it becomes superb.  But for taking it to the next level? Take the music down to zero and boot up a custom soundtrack and… It was wonderful.  I still had the SFX active, but music was entirely custom.

Other points – The sense of speed is excellent, the rocket packs are very fun to fly around with.  Maybe one day I’ll try the first person view.

This Knights game is Ok, but you won’t be Batman for the most part. I might still get it.

GotG aren’t really my Marvel heroes in the MCU, but again, I will get the word about it and then get it.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Well, with a lot of online help, I’ll probably be able to complete this but, so far, this is a damn shame.

It starts off so very well, so what happens? What happens is the gameplay is nowhere near the equal of its visuals and audio.  Too often it resorts to crude, old, hackneyed and bad concepts.  It’s combat is OK, but the lock is so erratic that its useless and I cannot say how tired I am of every game that gives your character a bow requires that that bow be always aimed manually.  It is beyond a joke, I might be locked on to an enemy but to shoot it? The lock on no longer applies.  It’s hugely frustrating.  It also relies heavily on that plague of indie games of believing its visuals alone are sufficient cue for you to work stuff out – they’re not.

The boss fights so far? Cheap crap where your only actual strategy really is battering down the health bar while always haing to manually re-orient the camera, because the boss always knows where the blind spot is. Cursed chests? Also cheap crap like you have to defeat five enemies, but the last one will be a super one you can’t possibly do in the time you have.  Dodge a hit? Nope, you can dodge but they can hit you when you dodge, so what’s the point of the dodge then?

Puzzles? Often total crap from the kind of people who deserve to be hooked to a trap, where if they don’t solve it in time, the pristine white shirt they are wearing gets drenched with Ribena.

I have enjoyed it to a degree because the audio-visuals do an awful lot of heavy lifting and just running around the game world is often a delight in itself.  It’s other major trump card is the Rot.  These super-cute little bastards steal the game completely.

It started off great and then, due to its utter stupidity of design, collapsed rapidly into a major disappointment.  I suspect the rest of the game will be moments and sequences where it escapes that – and every time you restore part of the world it’s a very satisfying part of the game – and then dives right back in with either a crappy puzzle or boss fight.  I’ll likely also be using a lot of online guides because that’s the only way to cut the frustration.  On one bit, the map was showing a gold destination icon, saying to go there, but what I actually had to do was complete a load of unmarked archery challenges.

I’m sure for those who are able to easily aim the bow, parry, don’t mind the lock-on or the puzzles, it’ll probably be a far better experience, but that isn’t the case for me.  One thing they have mostly got right so far is the Story difficulty, I wouldn’t want be playing on anything more.  It would also be improved by its tutorial info not being one offs that you cannot refer back to.  I’ll probably end up considering it to be a good game, but it should have been far more than merely good.

Dave wrote:

Bruce wrote:

GTA3 Trilogy getting a reissue/remaster. Rumoured for a while but now conformed. These three games are still extremely playable but a wee polish and updating is still welcome.

https://www.eurogamer.net/amp/2021-10-08-rockstars-grand-theft-auto-trilogy-finally-official-and-launching-later-this-year

The peak era of the series.

Be interesting to see how far they go in remastering these visually. They could do with a polish but too far and they might not feel like the same games any more.

I think they’ve hit a good balance there. I’m going to get the set, but a physical release and after the price inevitably drops from the £55(!) it’s launching at.

 

 

I finished a game called Gunman’s Proof today. It’s a fan-translated Super Famicom game that, at first glance seems very similar to Link to the Past. It’s got the same top-down perspective and even cribs some textures and backgrounds in places. Ultimately though, it doesn’t play at all like Zelda. It’s a much shallower game, though I don’t mean that pejoratively. It’s comedy, sci-fi Western, with a secluded Western island invaded by aliens, with only a local kid – possessed by a space sheriff – able to stop them.

Combat is based mainly around firing a gun and it can be a bit tricky to get the hang of until you realise (the game doesn’t tell you) how to strafe, which makes things immeasurably easier. It’s got the same broad Zelda format of an overworld containing eight dungeons, but the upgrade system isn’t as refined. You get basic upgrades to your gun and your punch (which is almost entirely unnecessary) and a few techniques (like spamming the punch button to set off a chain attack) which are also a bit irrelevant. But if you want different weapons – an uzi, a bazooka, a spiked ball and chain – you have to kill an enemy, hope they drop an upgrade icon and wait for it to cycle through all the options until it reaches the one you want and quickly step on it, which’ll give you a limited use of the weapon. It’s a bit clunky really.

Still, the game’s fun. Not desperately difficult or long, but worth a go.

ehhh I’m a bit disappointed with that GTA remaster… I thought we were gonna get some GTA5 graphics on that shit, not just a coat of paint… but then again, my fault I guess, it’s a “remaster” not a “remake” I suppose =/

Looking to be quite the remaster though.

And if they fix some of the most notorious missions, you might actually be able to follow the damn train.

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Andrew

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Well, this ended badly, with me reaching the point where I have no wish to continue playing the game.  Nor, with the way it does things do I have any idea as to who this game is for.  It has the style that suggests it is a universal game, suitable for all as an adventure, but even on the Story difficulty, it is a brutal game to play.  So, who is this for? It’s all over the place.

What killed it is it decided, for its final area, to scale up the enemies so if you get hit three times, regardless of how many times you have extended your health bar, you die.  This would not be as awful if you had a drawn-out view of the action but you don’t, it’s a more limited view.  Still, use the lock-on, that’ll help, right? Wrong.  It only locks on to one enemy and impairs your ability to keep track of the others, which means you will get hit.  The other problem is your enemies clearly increase in power but Kena doesn’t.  All the upgrades are moves, they don’t enhance offence or defence.  And then there is the display – you might think you have a dual health bar, they’re both the same shade of blue so must be the same, yes? No.  The longer one is your health, the other is your shield but in frantic combat its hard to remember that.  I only noticed it due to getting killed by the new enemy – they should be different colours.

On a boss fight, which added in shock / flaming circle attacks that go out across the floor I frequently couldn’t see them because of the angle – how do you see a horizontal level attack on a near flat ground level? You don’t.  Similar problems plagued a boss fight where you have to use the Rot Cloud creature to take it out, but when you do that you get this weird view of the conjured creature relative to you.  Outside of a combat encounter?  It works OK, but in one? It’s a disaster.  Oh and that’s another thing: Most of the guides online are useless, they will be hard to follow at best, at worst they give very false expectations for a boss fight.  That one I just described? Supposed to be easy, but it wasn’t anything of the kind.

It might be said in Ember Lab’s defence that this is their first game, to which the only reply is: Yes and it shows.  They excel on graphic design and soundtrack, but those, plus the Rot, super cute game-stealing little bastards that they are, aren’t enough to save it.

Too often the puzzles show up why something like Zelda is so praised, in that that game explains its mechanics so when you asked to apply them later, you know what you are dealing with.  Too often a puzzle would require a solution which, when I looked it up, was something without precedent, so how would I know that doing X would do Y?  It doesn’t help that many of their puzzles are timed, involving manual aim of arrows or bombs against the clock, but with very hazy signposting of what you should do.  One of the ones that finally killed the game was having to run around forest shooting arrows which requires a certain speed of target acquisition and accuracy of shooting I just don’t have – and this was on Story setting.  An earlier version of the same puzzle very nearly killed it for the same reasons.  In the last section I did before the big second boss battle, they mixed in timed puzzles above an instant death lava environment, am I really going to be inclined to experiment in such a set-up? No, I’m not.  When I ask the question of how I would know to solve certain puzzles going by purely in-game information, I can’t see the answer, it just doesn’t add up.  In the section where I decided I was done it was requiring that instead of double jumping across a bridge, I dash, but I couldn’t tell how far the dash goes and missing it is instant death, it was too counter intuitive.  It will also show you a technique, you’ll try to use that on something that looks similar enough, only to have no effect – it’s very narrow on what effect works where.  In that last section it has Wraith enemies, to render them solid, you dash through them but why would that do that?

Talking of stuff that doesn’t add up – the game is built around you, as Kena, saving three corrupted spirits, but after the boss fight for each of the first two, I had no interest in hearing their stories of woe or seeing what happened to them.  Gameplay and story were totally at odds.  Having got through a pain-in-the-arse boss fight with these idiots, one I loathed the entire time because each was so bad, what I wanted was to send them both to hell to burn forever.  I didn’t care about the story, which required me to head back to village shrine to honour them, when what I wanted to do was leave a flaming turd on the grave.  I’ll probably watch a video playthrough of the last bit on YouTube and that way I might actually give a damn about these spirits.

Other bits that don’t work – the Cursed Chests – these are frequently chwap, unimaginative and not very fun, with very limited rewards.  Most of the time all you get is currency to buy Rot hats, that’s all.  If the bosses in this game had some actual confidence, you know, the ability to swagger up and reckon they can take you one-on-one, but no.  Every boss summons infinite minions, those minions in turn mess with your lock-on, which in turns screws your view of the combat arena.  It’s not good.

Finally, this game hides its hidden stuff far, far too well.  What they didn’t realise is if you whack up the graphic detail in the way that the PS5 enables, it is really easy to lose little details amid the graphic splendour.  It needs better visual cues as to what is and is not important.  There is loads of optional stuff I haven’t found because, well, it’s too well hidden.  I would have liked to have gotten the last Rot level, buty of the 65 little buggers I need I’ve only found 57.  Some I know are locked behind archery challenges that take the mick.  But even allowing for that, there must be another lot that are just too well hidden.

Did it get anything right? Some stuff, yes.  The spirit mail sidequests are superb. I think they should have done far more of those – have the three spirits uncorrupted and imprisoned, with you needing to find a certain number of spirit mails – and complete them – to free them.  With the visual signposting to match it could have been excellent.  It would mean less boss fights but none of the boss fights do much for the game so no loss.

Exploring the areas each time was often very engaging, those graphics really do encourage you to look around.

One thing they got right on the combat is they didn’t curse it with a stamina meter.

In the end it all comes back to that split identity – getting more of the Rot, watching them follow Kena, equipping them with various hats, it’s very, very fun and very sweet.  You have a game world that looks and sounds lovely, so much so that you really want to explore it.  And then there’s that sometimes brutal combat, very difficult boss fights, even on Story setting, plus puzzles that convey info in confused ways, with far too many being timed.  Across the 10 hours I spent on it, with a lot of help, I probably saw at least 75% of the game.  That’ll have to be enough.

Should you buy it? I really don’t know.  If you’re good at doing timed puzzle challenges, can quickly and accurately aim stuff, can manage the lock-on skew effect in 3D combat and evade enough, you might get on better.  If you can’t do all of those really well, perhaps bag the dosc edition out next month, that way you can always sell it if it doesn’t work out.

Brits of a certain age might enjoy this: a YouTube series going through each episode of Bad Influence. It’s quite funny.

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Bruce, Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Brits of a certain age might enjoy this: a YouTube series going through each episode of Bad Influence. It’s quite funny.

I watched and enjoyed the first one has added it to my subscription list. I dint know if it was just because they were finding their feet with episode one but i remembered the program being better than the video made it out to be.

I remember liking Bad Influence and feeling like it didn’t talk down to its audience. It and Gamesmaster felt like shows that were made by people who actually knew and cared about videogames.

Bruce wrote:

I dint know if it was just because they were finding their feet with episode one but i remembered the program being better than the video made it out to be.

Yeah, I think he’s emphasising the negatives a tad for comedic effect. Some of it does look a bit mince though, especially Andy Crane in places.

Riders Republic

A few more hours in and over 150+ stars later – a drop in the ocean, as the game has achievements /unlocks up to 7000! – how does it look?

It can be – and often is – fantastic fun.  Where it fails is due to self inflicted wounds.  Things like allowing other players in the Mass Race to hit you, but you can’t hit them, and if that doesn’t happen the computer will likely sabotage you.  The Mass Races are it’s biggest failure as they are a frustrating mess to play.  Clearly, there’s an audience for that kind of experience, Fall Guys proves it, but I’m not it.

The other big flaw is the decision to have cyan and lemon yellow for the checkpoints because too often they either blend into the background or will be obscured in other ways that impairs the experience.

When you are bombing on a run, can see the checkpoints clearly and are on top of things? It is a very, very smart experience.

Initially – and this was very true of the first beta version – it looks like a weak Steep sequel.  The Trial Week version was better, but it’s only with a lot more playing that this really sets itself apart from its predecessor.  It does that by having greater envionmental variety, greater verticality in its massive game world and being a whole lot faster.  You only notice the speed aspect when you start getting better gear that goes faster.  Enabling up and downhill travel over the entire game world, including flight is another – in Steep each of the mountains were a zone unto themselves.

One thing UbiSoft have learnt from Steep is to give a greater level of incentive to do the events, which is certainly so here.  The lure of getting better, faster stuff is very effective, as is the minimal reward level so, even if an event goes badly wrong, you will still, in most occassions, get something out of it.  One weakness is a lack of transparency as to what you are signing up to on some of the multi-races, but the concept itself is a good one.  Another weakness is an imbalance in the careers offered, the aerial ones are far, far harder than their ground-based alternatives and there’s far, far fewer events for them, so the rewards do look comparatively stingy.  The aerial events needed some actual practice runs.

Graphically, it is superb, with one of the biggest dangers during play being that you will be distracted by the scenary – it looks that good.  Soundtrack is OK, but on a game like this you really want to set the game music to zero and boot up your own songs via the PS5’s app.

The extremmmmmeee “characters” and the commentators all greatly irritate, you will want to kill all of them and hide their bodies in a crevasse.  Fortunately, they are a minor, but persistent, part of it.

There are some neat accessibility assists on the tricks, but the game will sometimes be inconsistent in its application of them.  I set my landing to auto but it felt like on some events that had been set to manual without warning.

There are various landmarks to track down, but the last one feels like cheap bullcrap, requiring an aerial landing on it, which is very difficult due to the camera view you have and limited controls.

On the various races, the AI is strange – you’ll be told you’re racing against other player ghosts but it’s unclear as to how it match makes those to your character.  In the race itself, you will have better gear than your opponents but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.  Other times, it’s far more clear-cut.  It’s odd.

It is an UbiSoft game so there is an entire suite of cosmetic dodgy microtransactions here, often with the best outfits being premium currency – ie. hand over actual money – and the Season Pass itself locks all the rocket version of the sports behind a paywall too.  If on sale? Probably will nab it then but I’m not paying £32 now for it.  None of this feels at all kosher.

Overall, there will be times when it seriously irritates but it balances those out with fantastic graphics and game world design, an incredible sense of speed and a lot of fun.  There are certain routes I’ve found that I know I’ll keep always wanting to play, like the Eagle Crest summit descent – it’s ludicrously long, intricate, downhill but brilliant and fun to match.

Well, the Metroid Dread demo really didn’t last long due to both a mandatory parry sequence and fiddly controls.

But if you did enjoy it and have access to a PS4 / 5, you should take a look at Matterfall.

Riders Republic

I think UbiSoft have problems with this game for the long-term. I know they’re intending to add stuff on over the next year which’ll help but there’s other things, some of which probably can’t be fixed.  Most of these become more apparent the longer you play, but some you’ll notice from the start.

First, some of the design for the events is at odds with how the event is presented.  So I might be doing a snow tricks run, but there will be oddly little in the way of opportunity to jump and do tricks, or build up the acceleration needed to get a decent jump to do a more ambitious trick.  Nor do you seem able to do more than one trick at a time, it’s weird.  I’ll be doing an event that presents itself a certain way but it doesn’t play that way.  One event called itself Pathfinder, saying I’m to find my way to the end but the actual event? Had mandatory checkpoints which is not me finding my own way!  The rocketwings are huge fun in the game world but the majority of the events for them are awful, involving checkpoints that are hard to find on your first run because a horizontal bar along the top of the screen is insufficient where a thord axis is involved.

Second, the “player ghosts” – I’m not buying this.  They may have some player name on them, but I’ve seen these things skip checkpoints, catch up remarkably fast and, well, look too good.  Where it falls apart further is the way it matchmakes on early events – on some you’ll win, others you will have no chance on and then, adding insult to injury, you get a tiny amount of XP from it giving you little incentive to re-try.  Other events don’t pay out XP based on position, but you’ve no way to tell – or later remind yourself – which is which.

Third, and this be the biggie, its career XP reward RNG algorithm needs some serious fixing.  As once you have the majority of the events unlocked, where the remaining ones are for the careers that I haven’t finished I have no, they don’t display on the map – you get one of two rewards, gear or in-game cash.  Problem is there is frequently litte good to spend this currency on and what there is will be pricey.  For gear? It might give you gear that is worse than what you have.  It takes time to get the XP up a level – getting crappy rewards for doing so is not good.  I did six levels today, I got four lots of money and two inferior gear.  Each time the amount of XP to go up increases too.  The motivation to keep doing this when there is unlikely to be good rewards will fade fast.

Oh and putting all the good outfits for purchase by the real-money currency only? Low, very low.

It’s a very strange combination – you have this game world that is fantastically fun to play around in but the events are blighted by checkpoint placement that feels like video game bollocks of the worst kind.  The secondary objectives on events? All over the place – some you’ll get easily, others will be a minor one-off miracle you’ll never replicate and others you’ll look and conclude you have no chance of getting them.

How it’s likely to play out for me? Well, you will find a miniroty of events you can do, so those you hit again and again to manipulate the game into giving you stars.  Why you will be unable to replicate your success on those events to others will be an enduring mystery.  But over 700 stars later, I’m going to get the RR Invitational, which hopefully is where those final events are hiding, give them a go then put it on one side and come back to it every now and again for casual around the world fun.

Other weird things are it has these challenges that say things like 0/5 but what is it I need to do to qualify for the count? It doesn’t say.  It uses some events to advertise the season pass content like rocket bikes and rocket skis.  The problem? The skis are kind of fun enough but the bike? Controls like a pig and isn’t at all fun to use, I have no idea what the design team were doing on that.  Which gets us back to the main point – the game’s mad fun ethos is opposed by a whole lot of the game’s event design.  Due to that, unless people are logging on for the multiplayer, players are probably going to bail on this.

Well, reached the end….

Riders Republic

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game like this, where the more I played it, the more it fell apart – culminating in an climatic endgame event that was utterly underwhelming.

The initial gaming loop? That works – do a few events, get XP, that XP gives you gear and opens up new events, you then use those to get more XP and gear.  It’s only when you have done this for a while, when you have a majority – or even all of – a career events unlocked, that the blatant padding kicks in.  Suddenly, you’re getting in-game money for going up a level, with little good to spend it on, or you get worse gear than what you already have, or even worse, a duplicate of what you have! This RNG algorithm destroys the endgame entirely.

The late star “rewards”? One or two of the Shack Daddy events are good, but they pay dreadfully – 1 star, no career XP, it’s very stingy – like the rest of the game.

But the actual endgame contest, the Riders Ridge Invitational? An utter disaster, not worth the time spent getting to it.  A weak, unimpressive course that, in all three sports forms, distills everything that is wrong about the game’s event design.

Is it worth buying? Actually, yes, but not for its so-called story, its awful characters, even more dreadful “how do you do, fellow kids?” writing, a majority of its events. No, the fun here is in casual fun across the brilliantly designed game world which doubles as a massive technical showcase.

Go in on a purely casual level, don’t waste time on the stunts or mass races, do the events long enough to have them unlocked and some better gear but don’t go thinking you should spend lots of time in a RNG pursuit of Elite gear – it’s a waste of time, and you’ll have fun enough.  Especially if bought cheap.

It’s a shame that the gameworld and its wonderful graphic design doesn’t get a game to match it, but there it is.

Lost Judgment

Hard as it may be to believe, this sequel is trying harder to terminally wreck itself on its introduction opening than its predecessor.  It does this by taking two aspects that were rubbish before, tailing and photos, and rendering them each even worse here.

The tailing it has made the conceal spots harder to spot and to know what you can and can’t interact with.  Your target is even more paranoid than in the previous game and there’s an awful, bitton hold ‘look casual’ ability that is woeful.  It still requires line of sight on your perpetually paranoid target at all times and it’s, it’s not good.

The photos? Now have a Focus Time aspect that the game suggests is optional but turns out to be mandatory, with photo requirements being split between good and excellent categories, you must get them all and you only get the good one by use of the Focus Time.  It is very counter-intuitive.

Got past that and it then re-introduces active search and renders that worse, with even more opaque sinposting as to what to look for or rumble to act as indicator to the degree that I had to look up the answer online.  Haven’t yet tried to apply the info, probably still be very bad.

There’s time for it to get better, like its predecessor, but this is a spectacularly bad start.

Holy cow, The Division 2 is still going. I hadn’t played in a few weeks and fired up the next mission – it’s one of these games where you need to be online to play (even though I’m not subscribed to the PS network so can’t play online multiplayer), and you can’t save just at any point – there was a literal 30 minute mission; if I abandoned it at any point, I’d have to start it all over again the next time.

Switch Black Friday sale runs 21-27 Nov.

This is Nintendo, so they won’t be cheap, but will be cheap-er than the usual £50-60.

It’s Old Games Day

– Knights of the Old Republic on Switch

– Skyrim on PS5

– GTA Trilogy

All came out today.

Picked up Carrion in a recent xbox sale. Decent six hour campaign that essentially asks “What if The Thing was the main character in The Thing?” Lots of bloody bitey tentacley action. The free DLC of a Xmas themed half hour campain was a nice extra too.

Waiting until Black Friday to possibly get Guardians of the Galaxy…

It is set at $60 ($59.99 actually give/take the penny)

If it goes at half price to $30… maybe.

I am in no rush as I have a bunch of games to occupy my time.
————————–

I was sofa king upset that the Spiderman dlc section on Avengers was exclusive to the Playstation consoles and not the PC.
Sony has a very tight grip on those Spiderman rights…

Oh well…

Al-x wrote:

If it goes at half price to $30… maybe.

It just came out no? It’s not getting a discount at all… 5, 10% if you’re lucky, but 50%? nah… you’ll need to wait a few more months for that at the very least =P

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Al-x

Yeah 50% is optimistic, but it hasn’t done amazingly well and is an Ubisoft game, so I think it will go down a fair bit by the end of the year. That Greek myth game Ubi did last year was in a similar position and was going for ~£20 new near Christmas.

Well yeah, I guess if it tanks it might get some discount… but yeah 50% is waaay too optimistic. Ubishit are quite stingy as well…

Speaking of Ubishit, I played Farcry 3 recently… it was alright… the first half was much better with the guy from BCS, by the second half I kinda got bored with the whole treasure hunt and side objectives, so I mostly did the main missions. Is FC4 the other good one? might check that one out in a couple of years =P

Oh also, fuck Ubishit and their forced Ubisoft Connect crap launcher which is somehow worse than Uplay… Man, I hope all those shit-tier launchers disappear at some point.

So the GTA remaster sounds like a disaster by all accounts. Did anyone pick it up? Is it as bad as the reviews are making out?

Nope, you can’t buy it right now anywhere, it seems… but yeah, apparently they were “remastered” by AI and it’s pretty shitty (or at least according to the video reviews I saw), basically a massive cash grab with zero thought put into it. Oh and they also removed the original versions from sale in most places… so fuck you if you wanted to get those…

Good thing I bought the collection ages ago… =/

Yeah, thankfully I still have the original versions for the PC on CD/DVD if I ever want them, but that’s irritating that the digital versions have been delisted.

These are important games and they deserve better.

Yeah, honestly I’m glad I have the GTAs (except 5, but it’s recent enough) and the Max Paynes already, I don’t have to worry about them suddenly disappearing.

Quake got an update recently… it’s a free update for people who owned it, which is nice, but I didn’t, and OF COURSE they took the opportunity to double the price and revise their regional prices, so it’s more than double than a month ago for me… too bad I completely forgot to buy quake earlier, since I’m not a massive fan (I’m only really interested in the first one), but yeah, I missed on that one… u_u

At least it’s an enhanced version of the OG one, so nothing’s disappearing yet, but also, apparently you can play either version with the update, so the new enhanced one, or just go with the OG, so that’s already a much better thing… kinda pissed they increased the price for an almost 30 year old game though, but hey, triple A publishers…

Simon the Sorcerer got screwed with an “enchanced edition” too. They just applied a shitty smoothing filter over the pixel art, raised the price and removed the originals from sale.

96% of people online who pirate games while banging on about “preservation” and talking bollocks to justify theft, but increasingly companies are making a good case for the necessity of it.

WB’s MultiVersus Officially Announced, Features Batman, Arya Stark, and More

https://www.ign.com/articles/wb-multiversus-announced-2022-release

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Al-x

Well, that’s gonna make them a SHIT TON of money for a few years… Still though, I’m not into the smash-like games at all… so I was still holding out hope for an Injustice 3 announcement =(

Lost Judgment

At just over the halfway mark, I’m starting to conclude that the change in senior creator staff at the studio could be the best thing for both this series and Yakuza.  Because this is falling apart rather badly and I’m also wondering if it can recover.

The observtion scenes are far harder to do without the rumble tip-off, so I end up looking up the answer online while not seeing any way to do it with just what the game gives me to work with.  The chase sequences are OK, suffer from a drunk camera and some very unfaiur auto-steering – you don’t catch your target, you just exhaust them.  Both camera and drone have been used relatively little.  Tailing remains weaker than its predecessor.

The biggest problem is the one area where you can usually rely on the series and that’s the story.  It’s falling apart and all the voice acting in the world, with the most serious conviction, cannot do much with bad story decisions.  A chapter that should have been – and was clearly intended to be – an epic piece became the opposite due to its pacing and design.

Even the fighting has started to show some major issues, like that the targeting is weird, you will often not be able to target who you want to, once an enemy starts their attack animation they will intangibly phase through all attacks and the camera goes so close in it impairs your view of where enemies are, at which point an off camera attack hits.

I’m enjoying it to a degree, I’ll finish it to get my money’s worth but this is easily the weakest entry in the series and, short of a drastic turnaround, not a patch on its predecessor.

I’m currently playing The Adventures of Hourai High: Transfer Student Drama Bomb. It’s a comedy JRPG, based off an old TTRPG done through the post, and is a fan translation of a previously Japanese-exclusive release.

And it is pretty funny. I’m not entirely sure how much of that is down to the translation and how much is the original game, but it is a good translation job. I think whoever did it is British, as it definitely uses British slang and idioms which helps it imo. It’s about a special Japanese high school on a remote island – think halfway between St Trinian’s and Battle Royale. You fight people like PE teachers, prefects, lost students, a weird cult in penguin costumes etc.

Comedy is probably the main thing going for it though. Gameplay is a bit of a drag. The random encounter rate is incredibly high. It’s made more bearable by combat being pretty damn simple (I’ve not had a party member knocked out yet, let alone lost a battle). But that also means it’s fairly uninvolving and tacticless. There’s an autobattle option and I’ve ended up using that quite a lot.

The game is also pretty damn glitchy. Some of that is the translation. I had a hardlock crash at the end of one chapter. Turned out it’s caused by having the text speed set to maximum, as occasionally the text will run outside its box and if at max speed that’ll overwhelm the game.

But there are some pretty serious bugs part of the original game, I found out while finding out how to get past that other bug. Apparently it will crash if you revive a fallen ally in battle (which I’ve not even had the opportunity to try yet) or if you use a certain attack.

Weirdest though is that the game doesn’t properly apply the stat benefits of your equipment. One of the translation team pointed this out and doing a rudimentary test proved it. You take as much damage wearing no gear as being fully kitted up and you deal as much damage unequipped as you do wielding a weapon (which are things like letter openers, PET bottles, tennis balls etc). So almost the entire inventory system is useless.

I wonder if the mindless combat is a quick fix to this. It doesn’t feel like you’re ever underpowered for not having the benefit of the equipment, so I get the feeling it was noticed late in development and they decided to nerf combat but up the encounter rate to try and cover for a bug they couldn’t fix.

That does also render the theoretically interesting class system a bit null though. Instead of being a ranger or warrior or mage etc you enrol your party in after school clubs – maths, surgery, cheerleading, sci-fi, mad science etc and learn skills from them. But the majority of them give skills around giving and curing status effects (sleep, confused etc). But they hardly ever come up. I’m halfway in the game and I think I’ve only had people suffer status effects in two battles.

Ultimately, Hourai High is a hot mess. Playing it has, so far, been a mix of fun and moderate tedium. It’s frustrating, because the elements are there for a really solid game.

 

Watched the first episode of the new E4 GamesMaster reboot. It’s a pretty great continuation of the show that definitely recaptures the vibe of the original and features a decent selection of games and guests.

Plus it’s obviously made by people who love games, with some nice reviews and features alongside the traditional challenges.

Here’s the full first episode:

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Bruce

I’m going to hold off til it’s on E4 (Thursday, I think), to help the linear ratings so they don’t think this “shove it on Youtube first” model is working,.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bruce

Oh, that’s how it works? So it has its own channel?

Yeah, it’s a “digital first” thing premiering on YouTube before E4 a few days later, which is a great way to train your audience to not watch TV.

I watch YouTube through my TV anyway so the specific platform doesn’t make much difference to how I see it. Plus the YouTube version is ad-free.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

I already don’t watch TV

[Martin Smith]

Al-x wrote:

Waiting until Black Friday to possibly get Guardians of the Galaxy… It is set at $60 ($59.99 actually give/take the penny) If it goes at half price to $30… maybe

You’re in luck, Al. GotG’s being discounted for Black Friday to around $30.

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

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Dave, Al-x, Ben

whoaaaa that’s pretty big… I guess it really didn’t do all that well…

Lost Judgment

While the story is very much a reflection of its title, the same could apply to its creators.

If you start playing the Yakuza / Judgment series here, you might get on better than those who have played preceding games.

The game’s biggest problem is that it is far from the equal of its predecessor and, as a sequel, it fails to boost itself in the ways expected of one.  There are systems in this which are worse than in Judgment which should not happen.  The rumble feature that I relied on in search investigation sections? Gone.  The signposting in those sections was so bad that I had to resort to a video to work out the answer.  The chase sequences would be better termed ‘pursuit’ or, better stil, ‘exhaust’, as you never have a chance of actually catching them, you’re just running down a health bar then you catch them.  The tailing sequences have no indicators now of what you can and can’t hind behind and the target is now red-lined, which blends in far too much,  The camera shot section? Overly complicated and badly explained.  The instant-fail stealth sequences? So bad they’re even before the prehistoric era of gaming.  The ‘parkour’ sections? Utter rubbish, they would have been better off ripping off Assassin’s Creed.  Even the game’s best card, its fighting system, it does its best to wreck.  It does this by a camera that goes too far in and R1 targeting of enemies does not auto-move thus you get hit from off-camera; the R1 targeting is wonky and can be broken; the mortal wound attacks no longer hit your health bar but still feel cheap; the dodge is so slight as to be useless and frequently is.  Finally, the series’ consistently strongest cards, its story telling, and pacing especially, falters badly here.

So, why on earth play it? Because, even with these numerous self-inflicted wounds, it’s still got a strong enough core that it is still good enough to play.  It’s closest predecessor is Yakuza 5, with some terrible, mandatory minigames.  Tearing through a load of enemies, using the various hear moves – even if there feels far too few of them here – is still very, very fun.  The new Snake style became my favourite as in response to an enemy using their infinite block abilty, you just grab them and smash their arse into concrete!

Clearly, the aim was to give variety to the player but none of the pieces really add much, either individually or collectively.  If anything they tend to break the spell of immersion badly – in story terms, if he knows how to climb up buildings, Yagumi will know the route or what to look for.  Arkham-style ‘tec vision would have helped these sections greatly.  Similarly, none of the ‘reveal the evidence’ sections work – why? Because I’m not a goddamn detective in real life.  Much of this game would work far better as pure cutscenes – slinging in QTE bits just mean I won’t be paying attention to – or enjoying – the cutscene.

Pacing – this is where it goes off the rails – you’ll have a big, climatic plot sequence, do a couple of major fights, then the momentum screeches to a halt for a search or climb sequence.  Or you have a big boss fight, beat the crap out of the enemy then, in the cutscene, a barely wounded same identical guy defeats you – so the point of the boss fight was? It did this at the midpoint in the game and in the finale.  I don’t understand the decisions taken here in how the game pieces of a level were arrayed, on how the decision to array in that particular way was arrived at, because it damages the player experience massively.  In the midpoint chapter I was skipping entire cutscenes because I was so irritated by it that I didn’t care about the story anymore. Losing by cutscene to a boss I’d beaten up three times before? It didn’t add up, it didn’t cohere, it didn’t flow at all.

There is a good argument that, due to much of the nature of the story, I should not have played this series entry.  Having enjoyed all the previous games, however, it is a series I wanted to support.  Unlike Yagumi, I never warmed to the psychopathic bullying little shits you encounter at the start and don’t really buy they’ve reformed, despite the end cutscenes.  Society, be it eastern or western, hasn’t worked out what it really wants to say about bullying that is of any practical use to those being subjected to it at any age.  There’s a whole lot of platitudes, along with the idea there’s somehow an appropriately restrained level of pushback that a victim can apply and the line on that is where exactly?  Social media has only added petrol to a raging fire.  Should games be afraid to cover sensitive topics? No, but there needs to be a recognition of the careful handling needed and this game fails that test.  One thing is does do reasonably well, despite sledgehammer subtlety, is convey the active bystandr concept.  This goes contrary to all that we are told from a young age of not interfering, of only minding your own business, of being told that individuals will always help if they need it – which isn’t true, an individual might be too scared or ashamed to ask or not know what help they need.  The belief that no one will step in, that nothing will happen to stop them is key to the bully mentality, yet without enforcement of rules there are none.

For a third game in the series? If the search bits are to be kept, restore the rumble. Ditch the parkour bits.  Make the camera stuff easier or better get rid of it, along with the photography, parkour and stealth sections.  Improve the fight camera and the targeting, get rid of the mortal attacks completely – they contribute nothing positive.  If there’s collecting of stuff, make it easier and clearer how it used – the crafting in this game is awful, whereas in Yakuza: Like A Dragon? Far superior.  As it was in this one I got a master frame blueprint, how do I use it? Dunno, it was never communicated.  The big one is draw on the world established to a far greater degree.  This game has the main characters back, but in Judgment, various relationships with people across Kamurocho were established, they’re all gone in this game – why?  Why is there a generic name NPC in Le Marche when in the previous game the owner made Yagumi a custom suit? Why aren’t those relationships here?  Don’t be so stingy on the sidequests or the heat moves, both are reduced from the previous game, along with un-nerfing the EX boost aspect.  There is a sense here, after eight previous games, of creative stagnancy.  In this respect the staff changes at the studio could be the best thing for the series, as changes are needed.

Ultimately, I was interested to persevere with this flawed game for 36-37 hours, beating up over 3,000 enemies – talking of, yes, the enemy spawn in this one is riducolously frequent – over the course of 13 chapters.  I might have even played it longer if it hadn’t locked the bulk of its School Stories content behind a terrible robot Chess/Tetris hybrid, where the awfulness of the concept is only matched by your AI “allies”.  It does have a core cast you’re interested in and you do, most of the time, want to see how it plays out, despite all the self-inflicted mis-steps and falls.

Relative to its predecessors, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life was a weaker entry, but that was followed by Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Hopefully the same will be true here.

Martin Smith wrote:

You’re in luck, Al. GotG’s being discounted for Black Friday to around $30.

I will be there online…

camping overnight outside like in the old iPhone days or The Phantom Menace movie. 😂

Al-x wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

You’re in luck, Al. GotG’s being discounted for Black Friday to around $30.

I will be there online…

camping overnight outside like in the old iPhone days or The Phantom Menace movie. 😂

I think those discounts are  available online now. I wouldn’t hang around. It’s $25 somewhere.

Rather strange playing the original KotOR on Switch 18 years later for the first time and seeing a Mass Effect influence, when it’s the other way around!

Ok… It is Black Friday

I just saw on Steam that the Guardians game is 38.99. It went down 35% in price.

Exciting, eh?

So… I am so sure you are all waiting for my imperial decision whether or not to buy. I kind of feel like those stock market guys on TV on buying stock and what is a great investment…😂

I picked up Guardians myself today on PS5. Looking forward to making a start on it this weekend.

I’m certain Guardians will fall lower, but did nab Miles Morales Ultimate Edition, as it went below £50 at Base.

Other Black Friday buys were Xenoblade Chronicles, Astral Chain and Thunder Force AC on Switch.

I nearly picked up God of War for £8 and briefly considered Guardians for £30 on Amazon, but given I won’t get around to anything I might have bought today until well into January, it just seemed more sensible to wait til then to get them.

Dave wrote:

Watched the first episode of the new E4 GamesMaster reboot. It’s a pretty great continuation of the show that definitely recaptures the vibe of the original and features a decent selection of games and guests.

Plus it’s obviously made by people who love games, with some nice reviews and features alongside the traditional challenges.

Here’s the full first episode:

I got around to watching this last night (for all my talk of linear support, I got the day of broadcast wrong and watched it off my Sky+ box, so ::shrug::). It’s a bit of a mixed bag but generally good.

I was surprised by how good Rab Florence was, because I’ve not liked him in anything else I’ve seen him do and I quite liked Frankie Ward. Trevor McDonald was really good too, definitely on-board with the tone of it all from the off. But I don’t really get what Ty’s bringing to the format. Is it just so they have an excuse not to show really violent bits (like in the MK11 fight) full screen by cutting to him waving a microphone towards the watching crowd?

I liked the concept of pretending to throw the losing contestants into the lava, but it didn’t really work most of the time because only Ketchup really got on board with it. It was just a bit cringey when the CoD challengers and the celebrity I’ve never heard of did it (plus the effects look shonky as hell). I think there’s a better way to do that gag, probably by just showing them being put in the door thing and then cutting to the shot of an unidentifiable shape falling past the GamesMaster into the lava.

I don’t think the celebrity challenge worked, which admittedly is largely down to me having no idea who she is. It meant she was just interchangeable with all the other people they had on really, except she got away with bluffing about knowing much about games, (while all the others were, pleasingly, not forced to dumb anything down for the less knowledgeable viewers). Having her play Splatoon just seemed kinda arbitrary and meaningless and then the precocious child actor I could really live without. I don’t know if the Big Boy Barry connection is legit or faked but it didn’t really add anything either way.

But I did like everyone else they had on. It was nicely diverse and inclusive. The miscellaneous other sections were ok. The bit about game music being reactive would have been better if it wasn’t lumbered with the artifice of having to be explained to someone who knows nothing about games and the couch co-op section was a bit too slight.

So I think it needs some tweaks if it gets recommissioned, but I’d be happy if it does.

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Bruce, Dave

Ben wrote:

I’m certain Guardians will fall lower, but did nab Miles Morales Ultimate Edition, as it went below £50 at Base.

Other Black Friday buys were Xenoblade Chronicles, Astral Chain and Thunder Force AC on Switch.

Guardians is still at 39.

Maybe it goes lower next year.

Oh, I just remembered:

The day after Thanksgiving in the States starts the Xmas shopping and called Black Friday.
Now since the rise of online shopping for programs and so on, there is a Cyber Monday.
The Steam sale went from Thursday to Monday, so it covers the 5 days.

Amazing how our lives and spending habits are governed by religious and national holidays as well as capitalism.

[Jon]

Well I was gonna buy some stuff this weekend, but then I decided to wait for the winter sale… might squeeze a bit more discount, plus I’m playing some of the old crap I still haven’t played or that I tried to and didn’t pull me in at the time for whatever reason, like Thief… and I’ll probably move on to Shadow of Mordor next… or Hitman 2… there are still a good 100 games in my library I haven’t really played, so there’s no rush to buy more right now.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Jon.

Spider-Man Remastered (PS5)

I wasn’t expecting that much from this, how much better can they make an already mostly great game? Well, in this version of the game I caught two, yes, two pigeons! I never managed that on the PS4 version.  How did I manage it here? Because this version has an expanded suite of accessibility options that improve the game massively for me.

Graphics are, hard as it sounds to believe, way improved in the ray-traced mode – swinging through the world always looked and felt great, but with haptic feedback and ray-tracing enabled? What was great becomes impossibly better.  Add in 60 FPS and it plays very differently.

Then there are the load times….. Wait, what load times? Exactly.  In the PS4 game if you want to change the time of day you go into the research station, select and you wait for it to load.  It’s a well-designed and neatly executed transition but a load screen is a load screen. Here? You walk in, change the time, walk out and it’s changed that fast.  You decide to take on a hideout? You take out the guards and go in, it instantly boots up.  Even a year later this remains one of the most impressive aspects of the new tech.

The result of all this? After a couple of dodgy, how-do-I-play-this-game-again fights, I was scything through Sable agents, demons and convicts, stopping vehicles and all of that was done with so much style.

The only real mystery about this game is why they haven’t enabled it to be a standalone product – the only way to get access to this is by buying Miles Morales: Spider-Man, but it’d sell so easily on its own too.

This game is jaw-droppingly amazing and it’s one hell of a showcase for the PS5. So next? Trying the DLC then moving onto Miles’ game.

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Dave

Spider-Man: DLC 1

And then it reminds me of the stuff I don’t like, like the whole radar location indicator that doesn’t factor in 3d or obstacles and you’re in a time challenge, or the Screwball challenges, the first of which gives you 90 seconds to hit 6 generators in a certain and then – while you’re doing that, interrupts your sense of flow constantly with other requests, which steals time.  All of that and the auto-fail stealth sequence with MJ sucks, as do the minigun brutes….

But, these idiotic irritations aside, this is a good continuation of the story, it has some smart sequences – some of it it over-eggs, I thought there were far too many guys escaping with loot in the museum sequence, nor did I particularly like the fight with the Sable-armed goons, as too often a bazooka bro was in an improbable location far too quickly.  Despite its best attempts at self-destruction along the way, did finish it, got all the artworks too.

The Riftbreaker (demo) (PS5)

The art of doing a good demo has really been lost.  Demos are supposed to make you want to buy the game, not the reverse.

In the videos for this you’ll look at it and think it could be good – the problem? It doesn’t actually play like that.  You place a wall and you place a single wall, that footage of easily be able to place an entire line of wall parts for your base? Utter bollocks.  Maybe, just maybe, it works that way on PC, but it sure as hell doesn’t on console – the placement controls are awful.  Then it hits with ‘you don’t have the resources to build what we have just told you to do so’, oh and it does this while saying to prepare for an attack from the west, you’ll be hit from the east.  All the while idiot superiors keep chiming with such an attitude that taking a trip to the military, nuking it to high heaven and sending the families a notification saying ‘they died due to being a pontificating bastard’ feels entirely reasonable.

There might, might be a good game in here but this demo does not show it off, instead it exasperated and frustrated and deleting it was easily the best move.

 

I’ve been playing Ratchet and Clank the past few days. The 2016 remake(? reboot?). It’s not a series I’m particularly familiar with – I always get it confused with Jak and Daxter – and I got this one free from Sony’s Play At Home thing back in April.

It’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s incredibly funny. Very smart use of narration that sometimes reflects what you’re doing (not quite to the same level as Bastion), incredibly sharp writing. I definitely want to finish the game to get the full story.

But gameplay-wise, the novelty has worn off, I think. I don’t know how far in I am, but combat is just getting tedious. Despite constant upgrades, every gun has far too little ammo available, which means continually having to switch between at least half a dozen every time you get in a drawn out combat section. This is as much a cover-based shooter as it a third-person platformer, which was a bit surprising. The guns themselves are quite fun – I especially like the disco ball one that makes all enemies dance, which is very handy – but god I wish I could turn off the vibration. The most useful weapon throws out a large ball which then sends out pulse-waves, every one of which is reflected by a strong pulse on the controller and it just gets unpleasant after a while.

I’m probably just going to turn the difficulty down and breeze through the rest to experience the jokes.

Spiderman: DLC2

I think it is fair to say I never would have completed this or its sequel in the PS4 version of the game.  The reputation of it being a major difficulty spike is very much merited but does it benefit the game? Not really.  If anything it shows up the flaws more, especially the dodgy targeting where you might really want to apply a finisher to the flying jetpack bastard but instead hit basic grunt cannon fodder bastard.

It was also marred by technical issues on the penultimate mission where instead of an end event triggering, it re-applied the instant fail condition it had just lifted and restarting from the last checkpoint did nothing to fix it.  The Spiderbot stealth mission suffered from a lack of signposting and paranoid gang members.

Story flowed fairly well from the first episode.  The way it plays out with setting up Yuri to become the Punisher worked but was a sad development.  Other story moves that failed was Peter beating himself up about stuff he had no way of knowing about or preparing for. The final boss fight was more straight-forward than expected as it didn’t throw in the new enhanced enemies.

Spiderman DLC 3

While harder than the second, this one isn’t as much of an increase as its predecessor because the armouring up of enemies tends to play out in them taking more hits, but without having developed new tactics, you know how to take them out by now.

Technical issues returned to plague it briefly, with one mission not progressing and taking two checkpoint restarts to do so.  This was a shame because the actual mission was excellent fun.

The final boss fight was a chaotic mess – plus, gven it takes place on a boat the boss should not have infinite goon supply.  The biggest problem was that in order to see the things I needed to hit the boss meant sending the boss off camera, cue cheap attack.  It wasn’t good.

The City That Never Sleeps DLC As A Whole

I definitely had good reason not to buy it on the PS4.  On the PS5? Managed to pull it off.  The story is reason enough to play this, as it’ll clearly bridge from where things were at the end of the first game to the Miles Morales game.  Pretty much all of the new mission ideas don’t really pan out and I can’t say I’m feeling particularly forgiving to either Black Cat or Yuri for their bullshit.  Sable is more to the point than either of them, Symkaria clearly equalling Poland.

This very much does the standard “more content at higher difficulty” tack that much post-game content opts for.  I’m not really convinced that that pays any more significant dividend than simply raising the difficulty level.  If there was new gadgets or suits to unlock that levelled the field or further power up oppportunity, it might work better but as it is the enemies get stronger and you can’t.  Hency why I don’t think it works that well.

As way of scene-setting for Miles Morales, it works well enough.

For everything else though its scenarios tend to highlight the weaknesses in the game, especially the lack of precise targeting in fights coupled with enemies being in too good a position too quickly.

https://www.polygon.com/22445448/new-timesplitters-sequel-announced-deep-silver-free-radical-design

If this comes to fruition I am going to be all over this like a tramp on chips. Love me some Timesplitters.

Every year before Christmas I try and replay an old game. This year I’ve started a bit early as I’m trying to do two: Freedom Force and its sequel Freedom Force vs The Third Reich.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, you’re really missing out. FF is an early-to-mid 00s squad-based RTS that is a love letter to Silver Age comics.

The characters are barely disguised homages to Marvel and DC ones – Minuteman is Captain America, his sidekick Liberty Lad is Bucky, Alchemiss is Scarlet Witch, Manbot is Iron Man etc – but they still manage to have character of their own. It’s all presented in a really great comic book style and has stuck with me through the years. Well, less so FFvTR, which is why I want to replay it this year.

But man, it’s a lot harder than I remember. I’ve been playing for a couple of hours this evening and repeatedly failed the secondary objectives on the second level (which is the first level where you don’t have your hand held), which meant I kept getting swamped by thugs with guns. Either I’ve got a lot worse at this game in the intervening years, or I was definitely playing it on easy back in the day.

A good few trailers at the Game Awards.

Star Wars: Eclipse is too early to really say anything about.

Fourspoken is looking good, as does Suicide Squad and Horizon: Forbidden West.

Wargammer: Space Marine 2 could be good.

RedOut II Trailer!

Out in 2022. On PS5!

…. Shit. My eyes are going to be wrecked, the first game was heavy enough. Could only play 10-15mins at a time but it was so good.

This GoTG is all right so far.

I was disappointed that The Spiderman extra section (DLC) was only for Playstation but what can you do?

I play these games because they are under the Marvel brand like the Batman games because of the DC brand, same with Star Wars etc…

Thing is, what if there are actually better style of play games than Marvel, DC, Star Wars, but because they aren’t branded under the big franchise name, no one really notices?

Al-x wrote:

I was disappointed that The Spiderman extra section (DLC) was only for Playstation but what can you do?

Isn’t that for Avengers only?

Al-x wrote:

Thing is, what if there are actually better style of play games than Marvel, DC, Star Wars, but because they aren’t branded under the big franchise name, no one really notices?

I don’t think that’s really true.  For instance, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order is a SW riff on the Souls sub-genre, much as the recent Assassin’s Creed trilogy was, but without the severe difficulty.  Squadrons is more a homage to old SW flight sim arcade games that don’t have much in the way of competition.

What style or genre of games do you have in mind?  As if you’re looking at SW Racer and want a far better future style racer, RedOut remains overlooked.  Beat em ups? See Yakuza / Judgment series.  Adventure? Uncharted.  Quirky combination of ideas with unique style? Kena – Bridge of Spirits or The Pathless.

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Al-x

[Al-x]

Ben wrote:

Isn’t that for Avengers only?

Yes, that’s what I meant … I left out the Avengers game.

Sorry. 😊

… and thanks for the suggestions on the other games… I only paid attention to the ones under the big franchise brand.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Al-x.

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Ben