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Post by timmywimmywoo on Mar 19, 2024 22:18:23 GMT
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast
I first completed this back in 2002 when it came out - I remember buying it from WHSmith using my staff discount. Playing it 22 years later is still hugely enjoyable. I've been chipping away at it over the past month or so, and finished dastardly Desann off tonight.
The level design's still top-notch, though a few times I did need a walkthrough to nudge me in the right direction. The sense of vertical scale isn't quite up there with Jedi Knight, but the lightsaber combat is brilliant - I got a real chill down my spine when the semi-invisible Shadow Troopers appeared out of the darkness with red lightsabers glowing.
Each level goes on a bit, but never really outstays its welcome, and there's a pretty decent variety between indoor and (shonky looking) outdoor areas. But the story is decent enough and it's nice to see polygonal Luke Skywalker in a game. The Star Wars score pops up sparingly and feels well integrated too. My main gripe is the shooting is pretty crap, with very few hitscan weapons and laser blasts taking seemingly forever to reach their targets. As soon as you get the lightsaber (a few missions in to the game) that's nearly all you'll use, at least until you have to blow up some droids/robots/AT-STs.
I played it on medium difficulty and found it reasonably challenging at times, with a fair bit of save-scumming during boss fights. Force Heal is your friend! I didn't really use many of the force powers other than heal and speed, which makes lightsaber battles far easier!
Graphically it's held up just fine, and it's had me looking forward to sneaking an hour here and there when I should be parenting. There are a few console commands/config edits you'll want to do on a modern PC - like many Q3 engine games it has a ridiculously low gamma setting for some reason.
9/10 would Katarn again
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harrypalmer
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 21, 2024 13:46:33 GMT
Lies of P - 3.5/5
A very enjoyable and surprisingly well told Soulsborne/Pinocchio cross-over. Gameplay wise it's brilliant, the combat is nimble and chunky, it feels just like playing a FromSoft game, and it has enough new features to feel pretty fresh. As a homage to Bloodborne it works really well, and the story is genuinely good. I had a great time, it might be the best souls-like, but I really need to play Lords of the Fallen.
However, you do miss the special From sauce. The lore is not particularly interesting, the enemies are lacklustre, the bosses are extremely bland and dull to fight in general (with a few exceptions), the grunts are really dull and the environments, although lovely, are inferior copies of things From themselves have exhausted. But the biggest crime is it's linearity, you're funnelled through and even the secrets are impossible to miss, I'd be very surprised if there was much to discover. Without wishing to sound like Billy Big Dick, I found it all pretty easy and breezed through, but I'm absolutely fine with that, I probably would have abandoned it if it was kicking my ass over and over. I literally never mastered the core mechanic of perfect guards which the game really tries to sell you on, the timing never felt as natural as something like Sekiro or Bloodborne.
Will definitely play the sequel, as the developers clearly know their onions.
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Post by rhaegyr on Mar 21, 2024 14:11:12 GMT
How did you find Nameless Puppet?
Nearly had me tearing my hair out in the same way Sword Saint Ishiin and Demon of Hatred did but sadly it wasn't nearly as satisfying when I finally beat it.
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harrypalmer
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Post by harrypalmer on Mar 21, 2024 14:20:52 GMT
The hardest boss in the game, but I did some respec'ing and I was able to brute force through it. I was getting pretty annoyed with that second phase and if I'd run out of throwables I would have been mighty pissed off. But managed it in a handful of goes.
I never really felt like mastering the bosses was something I could do in this for some reason, I just never clicked with it in the same way, luckily I didnt need to.
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Duffman5
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big cook, little cook welcome to our cafe
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Post by Duffman5 on Mar 21, 2024 14:35:24 GMT
Completed 2 games today:
Resistance Retribution on ps5. I found it to be a chore due to the awful enemy sponges, probably around 9-10 hours to finish. I do like the series (love R3) and had never played this, it was free on PS. The story was actually pretty engaging and as you will see from my play time it is a pretty big game, especially as it was originally on the psp. One thing I was pissed off about was not getting the final level trophy and therefore not getting 100% and a Plat. I know this doesn't really matter but it would have been nice as I only have a few. 3/10
Outerworlds on ps5. Enjoyable if not overly engaging rpg from Obsidian. It is also pretty short, I seemed to get to the end fairly quickly even with doing lots of sides, although in fairness I only found 2 companions (one of them was not the bot on my ship! maybe I needed to look around a bit more) I did enjoy the humour, characters and gunplay. I thought the planets were a bit boring though and lacked variety. I have the complete edition and just started the dlc. 7/10
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Vortex
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Post by Vortex on Mar 21, 2024 15:34:44 GMT
Outerworlds was a weird game. Fun enough, yet a little boring. Good, yet also a bit shit.
The idea was good, the execution just seemed a bit disinterested and 'that'll do'.
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uiruki
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Post by uiruki on Mar 21, 2024 15:40:00 GMT
I think disinterested is a good way to describe how Outer Worlds goes about its business. It has some interesting ideas at the start then it just sort of gets bored and wanders off, leaving you to go through the motions til the end.
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hicksy
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Post by hicksy on Mar 21, 2024 18:13:37 GMT
Guardians Of The Galaxy (PS5)
Pros
- It’s more Guardians… as good as you would hope for in a short tv series! - absolutely nailed the group bants - well acted across the board - exploring the Milano is ace! - great battle gameplay
Cons (minor)
- a little janky when it comes to ship space fights - slippy exploring sections are awkward - exploration is sometimes limited
8.5/10 - If you like Guardians, action adventures and at current pricing it’s a bargain (30hr generous game!)
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Post by skalpadda on Mar 22, 2024 0:55:13 GMT
Jade Empire, it's a bit silly and the mechanics are a little wonky, but on the whole more fun than I remembered. It's rather short, but I think that's a plus as it would probably start to outstay its welcome if it was much longer. It's a shame Bioware sort of died because I'd love to see them revisit it at some point (though I doubt the odds of that were ever good anyway). I'd take a Jade Empire II over any new Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
I sort of forgot the point of no return happens pretty early, so ended up missing quite a few side quests and didn't get around to romancing anyone, but meh. Also forgot just how silly combat against humanoids gets once you have the Storm Dragon style. Behold the terrifying penultimate boss (it works against the final boss as well, but spoilers):
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malek86
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Post by malek86 on Mar 22, 2024 22:14:18 GMT
Alone in the Dark 2024 (PC)Cleared it with Carnby. I wanted to wait until I had cleared Emily's story too, but from the first chapter, it looks like the game is mostly the same aside from cutscenes and dialogue (there is one character-specific chapter that I'm guessing is gonna be very different, but for the most part it's probably going to be the same). It's one of those games where the story and presentation holds everything together, because the gameplay sure doesn't. It plays at times like a survival horror, and at times (most times) like an adventure. Later on the lines get blurred though. Now the survival parts are half-baked and generally not that fun to play, while the adventure parts tend to be too straight-forward, which doesn't mean bad, but still there it is. Even so, I wouldn't entirely say the game would be better off without combat. There are a couple good bits too. Again, the story is the best part. It kept me guessing all the time, and keeps throwing curveballs at you, although the last couple chapters attempt to do a bit too much and actually end up losing the player's interest for a bit. It all comes back again eventually though. Visuals are nice too (stutters more than I'd like though) and voice acting is solid. Overall, the asking price seems excessive for what you get. This should probably be a 40 euro game, not 60. It especially sucks that it looks like I'll have to play the game twice to know the entire story. Still, I can take it easy. Anyway, it's good to have a decent AITD again, after so many years. 7/10Could, and perhaps should, have been a 6, but I'm adding an extra point because the ending is very much unexpected and totally mental.
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malek86
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Post by malek86 on Mar 23, 2024 9:51:05 GMT
I want to add though, that while it kinda sucks that the gameplay and levels don't change from Carnby to Emily, there's still enough carrots dangling - different cutscenes, different dialogue, a character specific chapter, and even new endings - to warrant at least a speedrun as the other character.
In particular, there's one ending that can only be obtained by playing twice (not technically, but it requires you to sequence break an early puzzle whose solution you shouldn't know at that point). Given that the normal ending presumably is the same between characters, it should be a good second ending to aim for. Working on it now.
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Post by brainbird on Mar 24, 2024 9:19:09 GMT
Maneater
Mindless fun, I really liked it. There's something oddly satisfying when you crunch a turtle. Doesn't overstay its welcome either at around 13 hours for completion. Subtract a point if you're not a sucker for anything underwater, add one if you are me.
7/10
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Post by A46Matt on Mar 24, 2024 22:10:01 GMT
ManeaterMindless fun, I really liked it. There's something oddly satisfying when you crunch a turtle. Doesn't overstay its welcome either at around 13 hours for completion. Subtract a point if you're not a sucker for anything underwater, add one if you are me. 7/10 I really enjoyed it, enough to 100% the base game. Had zero expectations going into it, was a very pleasant surprise. It’s just a fun game
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apollo
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Post by apollo on Mar 25, 2024 16:21:27 GMT
No more heroes 3
It had some good bits as it has Suda51's usual craziness but its quite samey, they do try to mix up the boss fights although the QTE for the musical chairs is fucking terrible and the real boss fight is 1 hit kill. One boss fight turns into something out of Ghostwire: Tokyo DLC which is great
Very much a gamepass game that you delete after you complete it
6/10
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Post by brokenkey on Mar 25, 2024 17:19:19 GMT
Dave the Diver. Bought this because it's got lots of nominations in the Baftas. Starts off really good - a remake of Scuba Dive on the ZX Spectrum (what's a spectrum, said my 16 year old daughter). Has a nice little mini-game about serving sushi, made from all the fish that you've caught.
I'd read something about how mobile games draw you in with adverts showing one sort of game (zombie shooter), and then transform during play into something else (management sim). This game does that. Eventually, it introduces a farm, which you have to visit and walk around and weed and water, and another farm, which is on the far side of a map you have to spend mintues traversing, and a fish farm, which if you grow properly will save you ever having to go diving again. And then it introduces a restaurant franchise which requires you to manually allocate fish resources to one-at-a-time (there's hundreds of them) with no automation.
There's also a bunch of quick-time game elements.
I've got about 30 hours played on it, and I enjoyed the first 20, but now I've finished the story, I've got no desire to go back and finish the pokemon collect 'em all that is the only need for further diving at this point. And I don't like how it started as one thing but then ended up as something very different.
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Post by dangerousdave on Mar 26, 2024 13:41:46 GMT
Dragon Quest XI
I already had a lot to say about this game yesterday, so I’ll keep this brief. I just didn’t realise how close to the end I actually was, otherwise I’d have saved my thoughts a day longer!
Overall, it’s an excellent game. An RPG classic. Considering how strongly the series leans on its 30 year old foundations, there’s something to be said for just how satisfying it is to play. It’s like a comfort game. All the basic elements of an RPG are there, but it’s never overwhelming. There’s a lot of room to experiment with the game, but it can also be as simple as you like. In one sense it’s an entry level RPG and in another it’s also the best of so many others.
It’s not my favourite in the series, but it’s certainly a good starting point if you’ve yet to dip your toes. If I had a kid, this would be the first RPG I’d recommend to them, for sure.
There’s also end-game content I will be going back for, but after 99 hours and 6 minutes, it’s time take a short break. I’m not sure what else the narrative has to offer, but I know I’ve mopped up most of the side content already.
5/5
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malek86
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Post by malek86 on Mar 26, 2024 16:08:04 GMT
dangerousdave you could have grinded xp for another 54 minutes, just saying.
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malek86
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Post by malek86 on Apr 1, 2024 15:57:38 GMT
Doom Resurrection (32X emulation)
Some guys went and made a good version of Doom for the 32X. And it is good indeed. You can choose to play at a semi-high resolution of 320x180, but it is kinda slow... on the other hand, if you keep the game at the default 160x180, it really flies. They also added rotating sprites for all enemies (original 32X only had front-facing sprites), remade the music to sound actually okay, added some monsters that were missing from the original, and restored some maps from the Jaguar version. They even added a high color mode. All around amazing effort.
As for how it is to play? Well, you need a 6-buttons controller, otherwise enjoy dying a lot. On the other hand, with 6 buttons you can strafe, and the game becomes fairly easy. Many of the maps have been reworked to be less resource-intensive, and some of them are missing all around (there are 24 levels in all, plus 3 secret ones). The maps do feel a bit too simplified at times. But it still plays a lot like the original, and is very much playable even today, despite looking very low res. Changing weapons can be annoying in the middle of a fight, so they added some command shortcuts to make the controls a bit easier, but I still prefer numbered keys.
I'd argue this is better than most of the other console versions, and makes me wonder what some of the canceled 32X games could have looked like. For example, there was supposed to be a port of Alone in the Dark at some point. Feels like the polygonal requirements should have been possible for the console.
7/10 for the game itself (it's Doom, though cut down and less easy to control) 10/10 for what they pulled off 8/10 average!
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Apr 2, 2024 16:10:50 GMT
Tainted Grail - Conquest (34 hours): It's a rogue-like deck-builder/RPG, where the nine characters all start out with a basic deck and slowly add cards and passives, gain items and so on. When a run is finished it unlocks further things based on score. Like the various characters, more cards and passives.
I did play runs with six of the characters so far and just finished off what seems like the main part of the story. But as the small maps are randomized there is no reliable way of doing side quests and such. Some characters that you might want to interact with might simply not show up for a few runs. I don't mind the model too much as there is a good amount of replayability in the different characters, unlocks, slowly developing side quests and characters, but it can feel somewhat repetitive at times.
Still, it has good atmosphere with a unique and fitting soundtrack, good storytelling and apparently well designed systems. I have seen some complaints about balance, but I have mostly had a good time with most of the characters and their design is at times pretty interesting.
The last character I have played - the Necromancer - was a bit hard to wrap my head around at first, but it's a really interesting and unique concept. His summons have different functions in living form and in ethereal form after having been killed or sacrificed. They also lose a level each turn and while they are alive they damage the Necromancer based on their level, so a lot of consideration goes into how to manage all of that. And that's all before even talking about Lich form and the separate deck for that. It's completely different from playing a Summoner.
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nazo
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Post by nazo on Apr 3, 2024 7:28:10 GMT
Prince of Persia - The Lost Crown
I haven't played many Metrovanias so can't really compare it to others of its ilk but I really enjoyed this for the most part, a few frustrating bits aside. The environments are great, the time powers are fun and there are some really cool puzzle sections that are very satisfying to solve; some of the instant fail spike traversal sections had me tearing my hair out though. For the most part the really hard ones are optional though, and there are some nice difficulty options to suit all skill levels. Minor gripes - it's a bit buggy and I ran into a number of glitches in my run-through, though none of them particularly bad. The story, while not essential to a game like this, is pretty underdeveloped. It starts off fairly straightforwardly but then introduces perhaps too many twists and turns, some of which don't make a lot of sense and aren't really resolved by the end. The finale is a bit underwhelming too, like they ran out of budget. Oh and some of the voice acting is awful, like they just grabbed random people to red lines off a card without any attempt to add any flavour to it.
Overall pretty great though and the kind of game that you can just pick up and tick off a few sections here and there without feeling like it requires a major time investment every time.
4/5
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Post by pierrepressure on Apr 3, 2024 8:46:58 GMT
FFVII Rebirth - 9.5/10
So much better than Remake, it follows the open world Ubisoft formula a little too closely but it gets a pass from me as I'm back in that world again.
The combat is so good, I hope they stick with this for the next FF games as its a nice mix of action and strategy.
Didn't think Square had it in them, glad I was wrong.
Recommended if you have any affection for FF but probably a high 7 if not.
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Post by Phattso on Apr 3, 2024 11:38:26 GMT
Prince of Persia - The Lost Crown
I haven't played many Metrovanias so can't really compare it to others of its ilk but I really enjoyed this for the most part, a few frustrating bits aside. The environments are great, the time powers are fun and there are some really cool puzzle sections that are very satisfying to solve; some of the instant fail spike traversal sections had me tearing my hair out though. For the most part the really hard ones are optional though, and there are some nice difficulty options to suit all skill levels. Minor gripes - it's a bit buggy and I ran into a number of glitches in my run-through, though none of them particularly bad. The story, while not essential to a game like this, is pretty underdeveloped. It starts off fairly straightforwardly but then introduces perhaps too many twists and turns, some of which don't make a lot of sense and aren't really resolved by the end. The finale is a bit underwhelming too, like they ran out of budget. Oh and some of the voice acting is awful, like they just grabbed random people to red lines off a card without any attempt to add any flavour to it.
Overall pretty great though and the kind of game that you can just pick up and tick off a few sections here and there without feeling like it requires a major time investment every time.
4/5
I played the game with the Persian audio option, and the characters sounded fucking epic the whole way through. The only way to play. Now that you've cut your teeth on this entry-level Metroidvania, seek out Hollow Knight. Prepare your teeth for gnashing!
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Post by richyroo on Apr 7, 2024 17:32:58 GMT
Dave the Diver - 7/10 Pretty much agree with brokenkey . Was great for the first 20 hours or so and then it became a bit of chore once it stopped focusing on exploration. Was glad to finish it after 30 hours or so. Dead Island 2 - 7/10 I played this solo, but if you can team up I would imagine this could be a hell of a lot of fun and maybe a 9/10. I enjoyed it though, it had some very impressive visuals at times which almost looked photorealistic. I do prefer the much smaller and focused locations of this over the open world of Dying Light 2. The world in Dead Island 2 is just so much more fun to explore with its interesting locations.
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uiruki
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Post by uiruki on Apr 8, 2024 15:05:12 GMT
Been too long. Here’s the last of 2023 before I post up 2024. Annoyingly I can’t format on mobile so I guess I’ll have to come back later to edit up.
34. Dredge - PC - 3/5 - 29 Nov A neat fishing game that gets a lot from its setting and the general vibes. Ended just as the mechanics were starting to wear out their welcome.
Steam Deck report: Runs just great. The repetitive main game loop suits commutes and shorter journeys really well.
35. Lies of P - PC - 4/5 - 3 Dec What a surprise this ended up being. From a weird trailer, to a promising demo, to a genuinely really good action RPG.
Initially the game is a bit frustrating due to some stiff handling on the character, particularly on knockdown, but with patches they not only improved it but also started building in essential skills to smooth that process out.
The game’s setting helps it stand out as well: it takes everything seriously enough that the game and plot has stakes, but not so seriously that it can’t have lighter moments.
Overall one of the best of the Souls-inspired games that have followed it. Bonus kudos for a sequel tease that made me excited rather than tired, too.
Steam Deck - runs great. Spends a lot of time at 60 with minimal settings tweaking and the HDR is actually a real treat on the OLED model!
36. The Exit 8 - PC - 4/5 - 22 Dec A fun distraction for an hour and a half. Best experienced knowing nothing because you’ll pick it up.
Steam Deck - works just fine; played the whole thing in one go in a hotel room.
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uiruki
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Post by uiruki on Apr 8, 2024 15:25:27 GMT
And here’s 2024 so far. Big post incoming!!!
1. Chants of Sennaar - PC - 4/5 - 10 Jan A strong language-based puzzler that’s easy to recommend. A beautifully stylish look, sufficient variation and that good old fashioned satisfaction of a single clue leading to you solving multiple puzzle sections in one go make this well worth checking out. Go in with minimal knowledge for best results.
Playing on a plane, I was able to resist the urge to look up answers for the first time in a long time and the game was so much more enjoyable for it. Only some clunkiness in the fast travel stops this from being a 5.
Steam Deck - runs great, a solid 60. As mentioned above, I played about 8 hours of it on a plane in one go.
2. Inside - PC - 3/5 - 12 Jan A neat side scroller with some cool animations and a memorable ending. Occasionally frustrating as the game’s messaging can sometimes be a bit unclear as to what you’re doing wrong.
Steam Deck - as you’d expect for a 360 game it’s perfectly smooth though the presentation is unavoidably blurry.
3. Ys X Nordics - PS5 - 2/5 - 23 Jan The game kind of got there for me in the last ten hours or so but the preceding twenty were frustratingly slow and boring. From the mountains of exposition from the very start, the break system making an early boss interminable to defeat (this might have been an issue patched later on as I didn’t have this issue again) and the boat which at the end of the game is at the speed of expect it to be at the beginning at the game, I found Ys X to be a real slog and bounced off it multiple times.
On the fourth attempt I finally pushed past about the halfway point and started having fun but the balance is all wrong. Another step back for Ys but one that can be remedied.
4. Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth - PC - 5/5 - 18 Feb Yeah, the plot’s a bit all over the place and we still have the usual slightly crap “big bad” at the end but everything else barely puts a foot wrong. The strongest character and side story writing yet make this a game you can just exist within for hours on end; the number of times I got sidetracked and said to myself “wait, what was I doing?” after half an hour is the most I’ve experienced in a game.
Supporting this, the new Hawaii map is great. Not only is it huge but it’s as well-divided into different areas as you’d hope. There’s multiple cities worth of stuff in there, going by the standards of earlier games, and it all looks great. Being bilingual the mix of Japanese and English was really fun to experience too, even if they couldn’t (for whatever reason) bring over the dub actors for when significant characters spoke English. I was looking forward to Danny Trejo but he just sounded like some guy!
The only other minor issue I had is that they removed the special move shortcut buttons from the previous game to accommodate Kiryu’s style switching.
Steam Deck - 40 is fine, 45 is a bit of a stretch but rooting around in the dungeons or doing side stories you’re going to have a good time. Try and save the big story bits for the big screen.
5. Tekken 8 - PC - 3/5 - 20 Feb Just for the story - a fun little romp that gets going a little bit too slowly but the climax is some Like a Dragon style stuff that got me really excited. More of that, less of Lars Alexandersson talking please!
6. FF7 Intermission - PC - 4/5 - 21 Feb A short standalone story DLC which does a great job of advertising the following game. The story’s fine but Yuffie as a character in the story and in battle gives the whole thing so much more energy. It solves the battle system
My main problem really is that there’s relatively little in there. It feels like the kind of standalone demo you used to see, with a short scenario chopped out of a longer production. As a “freebie” with the PC version of FF7 it’s hard to get too grumpy though.
Steam Deck - I only played this on my main PC but I wouldn’t advise trying this on Deck. The engine is really struggling and I was hit by stutters and slowdown on what is a pretty fast machine.
7. Granblue Fantasy Relink - PC - 4/5 - 28 Feb There’s loads of Granblue in here, with loads of unique characters that all have callbacks to the mobile game and a terrific visual look that does a great job of transferring Hideo Minaba’s art style to the big screen and an excellent soundtrack. I ended up gravitating to Narmaya, a character whose relentless attacking style gracefully switches between two stances with some timing bonuses: attacking a big enemy with a relentless rhythm culminating in huge hits for massive damage. Extremely satisfying.
The story itself is a bit less compelling and it’s here where you can sort of see some of the taped over fringes of a troubled development. Many of the stages are just running along a straight corridor to a boss encounter and I straight up disliked how many extra missions they throw at you in the post game to complete the story, especially with how much it needs you to grind to get through it. There’s way more content in the game than the story can support.
Nonetheless it’s got me looking forward to the inevitable expanded sequel. Hopefully it won’t take another 7 years because I definitely want to spend more time in this world with these visuals.
Steam Deck - 30’s going to be your target here and it’ll dip below it pretty regularly as you don’t have much in the way of graphics options and it is surprisingly heavy. It’s not so bad as to throw your timing off but I wouldn’t like to play it on a big screen like this. The soundtrack is absolutely great through earphones though - boss fights are incredibly exciting because of the audio and visuals.
8. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - PS5 - 5/5 - 10 March Thinking back on this game, it really feels like at every production meeting, whenever someone asked whether to include something from the original game, the instant response was “yes, and…”. This is an absolute extravaganza of a game, a complete celebration of the game it is loosely remaking, and an absolute triumph of project management. That last one almost sounds like damning with faint praise but by taking the Like a Dragon approach of iterating on the same engine, the FF7 team have delivered a package that could reasonably have been two games, full of stuff to do, at a remarkably high standard throughout. Sure there are things (like the gliding minigame) that don’t hit, and the game more stops than ends - the problem with being the middle chapter - but for the most part you really are seeing the budget on the screen. Some of the cutscenes are absolutely incredible.
As a game they have taken a system that could feel a little undercooked in the first part of Remake and (via the massively improved system in Intermission) come up with the most fun action battle system in an RPG I’ve seen yet. Each character handles in their own way and has multiple unique gimmicks; coming from the original FF7 where materia could make characters feel very similar to one another it is probably the best single improvement that they’ve made. Connected to this is how well the characters’ personalities and relationships are brought out with the writing. The game is full of great moments and the characters are at the centre of all of them, boosted by some excellent voice performances.
Overall I did end up speeding through this to try and avoid spoilers but ultimately I think I probably would have absolutely hammered the game anyway; it does such a good job of keeping you interested that you always want to see what’s next. Since finishing it I have also gotten a kick out of seeing just how many things which I didn’t remember from the original game are actually there, just redone with much more flair. A special mention has to go out to the soundtrack too: in the spirit of the game itself just being absolutely chock full of callbacks and extensions with new original parts that blend well, the whole soundtrack does an incredible job of constantly firing brilliant pieces of music at you.
9. Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story - PC - 3/5 - 14 March Overall this feels like a bit of a promise under-fulfilled. What’s there is a lot of fun and I got a real kick out of seeing some of Jeff’s earliest games and the notes that accompanied some of them but there just isn’t enough Jeff. You can tell the interview footage is from elsewhere as it’s a bit spotty and inconsistent and in general what really stands out are the gaps. There are many games and versions of games which are mentioned that just aren’t in there (they have the manual for Trip-a-Tron but not the software itself), and the C64 sound emulation in particular is a bit off.
It’s still nice to have these games in one place but for the videos I might as well watch the documentary and for the games I should play them on my Mister with more accurate sound reproduction.
10. Astlibra Gaiden - PC - 5/5 - 17 March I loved Astlibra and this was a great excuse to go through the progression again. Satisfying side scrolling combat and loads of weapons and magic to use.
11. Portal RTX - PC - 5/5 - 18 March It’s Portal but it looks state of the art! It was just really nice to go through this again as it’s a perfectly executed puzzler polished to an absolute sheen.
12. Sixty Four - PC - 2/5 - 27 March The curate’s egg shows up here: the style is outstanding and building up machines is fun and satisfying but the way it lands between automation style clicker games and a more active play approach comes to bite it during a multiple hour lull about two thirds of the way through, and the perspective makes moving things around the play area a complete pain at times as your view is almost constantly obscured.
That said, there’s some promise here and I’d definitely take a look at another version of this concept.
13. The Gnorp Apologue - PC - 3/5 - 28 March Another idle game with a neat style to it. A big sized hump at the end is a little frustrating after the rate of progress earlier on but I enjoyed my time making a pile of stuff from a rock.
14. Star Ocean 2 Remake - PC - 4/5 - 7 April You can tell from the off that there’s so much affection for the original within this remake. From the re-arranged soundtrack, getting all the original Japanese voice actors to re-record the entire game (though some of them are just plain too old for the young characters they’re trying to portray), to the almost obsessive devotion to recreating the original game’s pre-rendered backgrounds in real time, this remake is probably my favourite of the “HD-2D” throwback games that has appeared.
In addition, not only did they smooth out the battle system they also added a significant amount of extra features that file the edges off a game which feels very strongly like it was designed to sell game guides. As a result I encountered so many scenes and even characters I wasn’t aware of on my earlier experiences with the game.
The biggest issue with the game, as a result, is the one thing they couldn’t really do much about: the plot. While making the character interaction scenes in Private Action much easier to access fills out the characterisation nicely, the actual plot itself is surprisingly perfunctory and the game just steps on the accelerator in the last few hours and disposes of its bad guys with barely a character portrait and a name in many cases. The whole second section of the game flies past way too quickly and one can only assume they just ran out of cash and needed to get to the end. A shame as when it’s firing on all cylinders it is the best that Star Ocean can offer, with dynamic battles, varied characters and a bunch of weird systems in the background that you can optionally use to complete the game.
Steam Deck - runs great. In towns and battles you’ll be at 90 easily; in the world it drops below that but not enough to make it really worth messing with the settings.
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mrpon
Junior Member
Posts: 3,543
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Post by mrpon on Apr 8, 2024 15:33:49 GMT
Needs the titles boldening
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uiruki
New Member
Posts: 798
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Post by uiruki on Apr 8, 2024 15:37:00 GMT
It’ll have to wait til I get home as I can’t see a way to do it easily in mobile.
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JonFE
Junior Member
Uncomfortably numb...
Posts: 1,836
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Post by JonFE on Apr 8, 2024 15:37:23 GMT
Needs the titles boldeningIn fairness, he did say that he cannot format on mobile and will edit these posts later...
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Post by JuniorFE on Apr 8, 2024 16:07:36 GMT
It’ll have to wait til I get home as I can’t see a way to do it easily in mobile. "b", then "/b" except instead of quotes use brackets [ ], and whatever text is between them will be bold. Similarly, i and /i for italics, s and /s for strikethrough and u and /u for underlining... Oh, and spoiler, /spoiler for spoiler tags (brackets around each one). For future use should you need it
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uiruki
New Member
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Post by uiruki on Apr 8, 2024 19:34:36 GMT
I fixed it now, hopefully I won't let it pile up again for another six months.
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