askew
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Posts: 6,599
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Post by askew on Aug 7, 2024 10:20:38 GMT
Peans for lunch?
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wunty
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Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,390
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Post by wunty on Aug 7, 2024 10:20:52 GMT
I’m nearly finished it I think. It’s so delightfully stupid.
“Hello, I’m a worm!”
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Post by rhaegyr on Aug 7, 2024 10:27:19 GMT
The big head sequence had me genuinely laughing out loud.
Game finishes really strongly too.
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,390
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Post by wunty on Aug 7, 2024 10:32:56 GMT
Ha yeah I liked that. And the bit where you randomly get sucked into a bit of meat.
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askew
Full Member
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Post by askew on Aug 7, 2024 10:43:12 GMT
Yeah, the last bit had me chortling. Played it twice over the weekend: the second time I just thought I’d sit down and spend 30 minutes, but I ended up ripping through it in about 2.5 hours 🥴
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Post by rhaegyr on Aug 7, 2024 11:23:19 GMT
I wanted more of Tiny Tom!
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,169
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Post by malek86 on Aug 7, 2024 20:45:49 GMT
Star Wars Rebel Assault 2 (PC)
Contemporary of Descent, but whereas that game had 6 degrees of freedom, this one gives you zero. Rail shooters are restrictive like that.
It's pretty hard, as you might imagine from a laser game. That said, it's probably one of the best from its genre. There's quite a bit of variety in the missions, despite the limited possibilities of the format. Shooting galleries are probably the most manageable levels, while controlling the obstacle-dodging levels with a mouse is... very frustrating.
The story is basically an excuse to keep throwing missions at you. And if you thought the live action cutscenes in Jedi Knight were bad, know this one is much worse.
I can't say it was all that bad, but I'm glad to be done with it, roughly 25 years since the last time I played it.
5/10
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Post by harrypalmer on Aug 7, 2024 21:55:45 GMT
Thank Goodness You're Here!Incredibly original, stylish, surreal and often very funny but there's very little (if any) substance to it from a gameplay perspective. Glad I bought it at launch because even though it's not a stone cold classic the premise, humour, artwork, music and setting are all fairly unique for videogames and I want more of it. Proper Yorkshire. 7/10 My 7yr old absolutely loves it, he’s in stitches the whole time, having a blast watching him play it. It’s a bit steep for what it is but it’s so funny I don’t begrudge it one bit.
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Post by richyroo on Aug 8, 2024 13:55:38 GMT
Gears of War 2 (Series X)
9/10
Great game, was fantastic to revisit it again after so long.
On to Gears 3 next. Cannot remember much about that one so looking forward to it a lot.
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Post by rhaegyr on Aug 8, 2024 14:15:26 GMT
Thank Goodness You're Here!Incredibly original, stylish, surreal and often very funny but there's very little (if any) substance to it from a gameplay perspective. Glad I bought it at launch because even though it's not a stone cold classic the premise, humour, artwork, music and setting are all fairly unique for videogames and I want more of it. Proper Yorkshire. 7/10 My 7yr old absolutely loves it, he’s in stitches the whole time, having a blast watching him play it. It’s a bit steep for what it is but it’s so funny I don’t begrudge it one bit. FYI - there's quite a big f-bomb near the end!
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Post by harrypalmer on Aug 8, 2024 14:22:10 GMT
Cheers, he’ll be alright with that. Already had to explain what a nonce is.
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,390
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Post by wunty on Aug 8, 2024 18:31:09 GMT
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Ridiculous.
Have a sausage / 10
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,169
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Post by malek86 on Aug 8, 2024 18:38:58 GMT
Gears of War 2 (Series X) 9/10 Great game, was fantastic to revisit it again after so long. On to Gears 3 next. Cannot remember much about that one so looking forward to it a lot. The one thing I disliked most about Gears 3 was that now you could be revived by your AI teammates. That sounds good on paper, but it actually means the devs made the game harder, since you had a chance to be revived anyway. Maybe I'm just bad at these games, but I remember going straight from Gears 2 to Gears 3 and wondering why the hell I was getting downed so often.
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Post by richyroo on Aug 9, 2024 15:55:16 GMT
You could be revived by teammates in Gears 2 as well
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Post by baihu1983 on Aug 10, 2024 5:39:09 GMT
Think you could in the first as well?
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,169
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Post by malek86 on Aug 10, 2024 6:34:24 GMT
Just checked, and it depends on the difficulty. In GOW2, if you play on Hardcore or up, you die immediately. Starting from 3, you can be revived by the CPUs even on Hardcore.
Guess it goes to show which difficulty level I've always selected.
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Post by Mark1412 on Aug 10, 2024 16:52:50 GMT
Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty 'finished' today. Fuck that was cool. This world and story and the characters in it and the combat (that slow mo...) is just operating at another level. Bigger, better and more love in that than 99% of full games. Ludicrously priced, really.
Don't think anyone's making worlds like CDPR. I LOVE this aesthetic and genre, so am an easy sell, but I said earlier in the thread I was really disappointed by the initial release version of Cyberpunk. I had such high hopes and THIS version of it is the one that was in my head going in. They have worked magic to get it to that level.
For DLC, 10/10. Judged to the standards of a full game... Probably the same.
Genuinely going to be teenage-me-waiting-for-Halo-3 levels of hyped when they eventually get round to the sequel. Building on this as a base... Wow.
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wunty
Full Member
Pastry Forward
Posts: 6,390
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Post by wunty on Aug 10, 2024 22:06:31 GMT
Still Wakes the Deep
It’s The Thing, meets The Rig. Erm. On a rig.
Loved it.
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Post by harrypalmer on Aug 11, 2024 7:24:51 GMT
Thank goodness you’re here - 8/10
Possibly the funniest game ever. Took me back to the days of proper bonkers British games.
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Post by dfunked on Aug 11, 2024 9:44:54 GMT
Dome Keeper (Steam) - 9/10
Fantastic little game. It was perhaps a little missold to me as a tower defence game crossed with mining, but the TD aspect is much more manual than I expected based on my limited exposure to the genre (although you do unlock some automations later) The mining part of it seems to be exactly what my lizard brain was in the mood for. It just scratches a hidden itch for me.
I'm counting it as finished as I've completed all of the keeper missions, tried one of the challenge mode ones and noped out of it. I might dip in and see how I fare on the difficulty above brutal (which wasn't too bad in fairness)
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Post by richyroo on Aug 11, 2024 9:47:48 GMT
Gears of War 3
9/10
I do like these shorter 8-10 hrs games.
Super impressed with GOW3. They really go all out with the bombasticness of this one.
Combined with fps boost and xbox one x enhanced, the game feels like it really shouldn't have been possible on X360. There is so much happening on screen at once, it feels a generation before it's time. It's a huge visual upgrade over GOW2 and it even impressed me more than GOW1 remake.
Bigger environments, larger battles, more enemies, more weapons. Was just pure fun from start to finish.
GOW Judgement next. Never played this one, but I know it's not regarded that highly? I'll make up my own mind on that one.
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Post by richyroo on Aug 11, 2024 9:53:09 GMT
Just checked, and it depends on the difficulty. In GOW2, if you play on Hardcore or up, you die immediately. Starting from 3, you can be revived by the CPUs even on Hardcore. Guess it goes to show which difficulty level I've always selected. Ahh that makes sense. I played GOW Ultimate edition on Hardcore. GOW2 I played on Normal and could be revived by teammates. I kind of regret it though cos it was too easy. GOW3 played on Hardcore and could be revived by teammates. Wasn't that difficult really except the end boss. Will play the rest on Hardcore. I completed them on Insane back in the day, but I'm older and don't have the patience now.
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malek86
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Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,169
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Post by malek86 on Aug 11, 2024 10:09:57 GMT
GOW Judgement next. Never played this one, but I know it's not regarded that highly? I'll make up my own mind on that one. I should get around to it myself someday. I remember playing it long ago, and stopping fairly soon... can't remember why anymore, though. It never got the resolution enhancement treatment like the other games, but it does have FPS Boost, so it should feel better to play than on 360 regardless.
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Post by richyroo on Aug 11, 2024 12:07:44 GMT
Yeah I had a 2 minute sneak-peak earlier. It felt great due to FPSBoost but could instantly see that the resolution was quite low, probably around 720p. Still looked quite good though, art direction wise. It also has auto HDR so the lights and colours all pop quite nicely.
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Duffmangb
New Member
Locust Forever
Posts: 186
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Post by Duffmangb on Aug 12, 2024 5:42:25 GMT
Gears of War 3 9/10 I do like these shorter 8-10 hrs games. Super impressed with GOW3. They really go all out with the bombasticness of this one. Combined with fps boost and xbox one x enhanced, the game feels like it really shouldn't have been possible on X360. There is so much happening on screen at once, it feels a generation before it's time. It's a huge visual upgrade over GOW2 and it even impressed me more than GOW1 remake. Bigger environments, larger battles, more enemies, more weapons. Was just pure fun from start to finish. GOW Judgement next. Never played this one, but I know it's not regarded that highly? I'll make up my own mind on that one. Congratulations you have just played the GOAT Played through G3 campaign upon release, also did on insane with Vortex,BFG,Le Spank,Jono et al. Brilliant fun and then we tackled the various maps on Horde. I still play Gears 3 KOTH daily/weekly. J's campaign is not like any of the others (and poorer due to this) it is more like arcade chapters, still fun and has some new toys, I love torque-bow traps. Make sure you do the "declassified" version of the missions as it adds mutators.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Aug 12, 2024 5:52:33 GMT
Finished Itorah, a very lovely looking hand-drawn style 2d platformer / metroidvania-lite.
Took about 12 hours according to Steam, although it didn't feel that long.
It's frustratingly close to being great. Looks lovely, amd movement is good once you unlock a few moves. Metroidvanianess is a bit limited as it's largely linear, except you can do branches in any order, which can sometimes be confusing if the save bonfire is down the other branch.
I'm not quite sure why it's not great. I think the pacing is just off. It starts out really easy, and then takes ages to ramp up. Then it suddenly gets pretty difficult, but the ending feels short. The starting enemies appear too much, and take too many hits to finish off, which gets a bit repetitive. You learn new moves, but I really wanted a damage power up that would let me plough through early enemies in one hit later on.
Then there are these nicely animated enemies that show up right near the end, and you only see them a handful of times. It feels like they needed to slightly shift some of the late-game content forward.
Still good fun, looks lovely, and doesn't outstay its welcome.
Did get weirdly laggy at unexplained times, but that's probably my pc.
Solid 7/10
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Ulythium
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Lily-livered
Posts: 6,784
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Post by Ulythium on Aug 12, 2024 8:27:05 GMT
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. What the actual fuck?! That's it - that's the review. [...] Okay, not really - you all wish I could be that succinct! - but it is as pithy a summation of this game as I've been able to conjure. In Stranger of Paradise, you play as Jack Garland, the Edgiest Boy in the Whole Wide World. It's as though the developers at Team Ninja played DmC: Devil May Cry, saw what an angst-filled edgelord Young Dante was, and went, "Hey, Ninja Theory - you think your protagonist is edgy and unlikable? Hold our beer." When he's not grunting monosyllabically, interspersed with the occasional fist-bump, Jack likes to work on his life's goal: killing Chaos. Killing Chaos is more than just an ambition for our hero - it's his primary reason for getting out of bed in the mornings. He talks about it in the same quasi-orgasmic tones that Suella Braverman reserves for the notion of sending immigrants to Rwanda. In whatever passes for Jack's tiny little mind, every minute that he spends not killing Chaos is time wasted. The other characters in the game may be marginally less one-dimensional, but that doesn't make them good. Your party members (Ash, Jed, Sophia, and Neon) all exist for two purposes, and two purposes only: 1) to support you in combat, and 2) to spout inane, repetitive dialogue. Only Astos, the mysterious elf with ambiguous loyalties, offers the player anything substantial in the way of character development and an actual story arc. Armed with a script so inane that it could've been written by the director's primary school-aged children, as a reward/punishment [delete as appropriate], you might think that the actors would've really swung for the fences - competing with one another to see who could chew the most scenery, and spurring each other on to new heights of spittle-flecked excess. Sadly, they don't. For the most part, they play it straight - this approach singularly fails to deliver, but when you're talking about dialogue that Nolan North and Laura Bailey would struggle to sell, it seems harsh to judge these actors for not doing more therewith. Final Fantasy games are often lauded for their music, and while the Stranger of Paradise soundtrack checks all the usual boxes in this regard, it's wholly bereft of the spine-tingling X factor that the best video game OSTs (e.g. Nier: Automata, Hades, or The Witcher 3) have in spades. It's just plain serviceable. Graphics-wise... well, as I've said before, this game looks like my ass. (Disclaimer: this link does not lead to photographs of my posterior. I've learned my lesson in that regard, and I apologise once again to everyone who received those late-night PMs with unsolicited butt photos attached.) How Stranger of Paradise on PS5 manages to look exponentially uglier than the original Nioh did on PS4, I have no idea. I can only assume that it's an issue of art style rather than graphical fidelity, unless Koei Tecmo somehow downgraded their graphics engine in the interim, but SoP more often resembles a late-gen PS3 title than a current-gen AAA game. So we've got risible dialogue, a nonsensical story, mediocre acting, an average soundtrack, and weak-as-hell graphics... that's everything there is to say, right? A total disaster of a game from top to bottom - all that remains is to figure out whether to rate it higher or lower than Devil May Cry 2, my previous bête noire, and move on with my life. I feel as though I'm forgetting something, though. Oh, right! The gameplay. Guess I may as well deal with that, for completeness' sake if nothing else. Here goes nothing... ... It's fantastic. No, seriously! This isn't a bit - the gameplay in Stranger to Paradise is genuinely excellent. The combat mechanics may not be quite as multifaceted as those of Nioh 2, but they're in the same ballpark; the JRPG-style job system is insanely detailed; and the acquisition of randomised, tiered loot feels more like a central pillar of the game than the afterthought it was in previous Team Ninja titles. All told, Stranger of Paradise is as mechanically deep as it is narratively shallow. As I've said before, I'm very much a "gameplay first" kind of guy. The Witcher 3 really put that philosophy to the test, causing me to love everything about it except the gameplay (which I really didn't enjoy at all); meanwhile, Slay the Spire tested it in a whole different manner, presenting superb gameplay with almost nothing to offer in terms of story, dialogue, acting, or music. Now Stranger of Paradise has come along, pushing my "gameplay first" approach to its very limits. It contains all the 'missing' elements from Slay the Spire, but they suck ass for the most part. What's worse: having those aspects present and correct, but near-total crap, or not having them at all? How does one compare The Witcher 3 (which got a score of 92 at Metacritic, and is regarded as one of the best games ever made) with Stranger of Paradise (which scored 72, and is regarded as an interactive meme), when one honestly enjoyed playing the latter more than the former? And how to rate Stranger of Paradise against the Niohs and Wo Long, all three of which I really enjoyed, but each of which drove me up the wall in its own unique way? Damned if I know, my friends. Damned if I know. Perhaps I can turn to Ol' Blue Eyes to help me wrap up this overwrought spiel, and summarise my thoughts on this glorious mess of a game into the bargain: "He lived a life that's full He traveled each and every highway And more, much more than this Jack did it his way."8/10.
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Post by zisssou on Aug 12, 2024 9:13:57 GMT
Thank Goodness You're Here!
Smacky bum out of 10.
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Derblington
Junior Member
Did you know I have a girlfriend
Posts: 2,057
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Post by Derblington on Aug 12, 2024 11:18:27 GMT
Also finished Thank Goodness You’re Here yesterday. A few amusing lines throughout but the game itself is fairly shit.
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Post by richyroo on Aug 12, 2024 12:03:14 GMT
J's campaign is not like any of the others (and poorer due to this) it is more like arcade chapters, still fun and has some new toys, I love torque-bow traps. Make sure you do the "declassified" version of the missions as it adds mutators.
I'm probably about half way through Judgement. I'm not really enjoying it that much. You are spot on when you say its more like arcade chapters. It all feels very disconnected. You just go from one small area to the next with a score that pops up in-between breaking the flow.
I started doing the mutators but am now ignoring them completely. They do not make the game any more fun, in fact quite the opposite.
Can't wait for it to be over really, although I will stick with it. At least the gunplay still feels great which is what is keeping me somewhat entertained. If this was a 20hrs+ game I would ditch it, but thankfully its about 7-8 hrs.
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