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Post by pierrepressure on Dec 29, 2021 11:53:24 GMT
Resident Evil 7 - 7.5/10
I'm not great with horror stuff, this scared the crap out of me AND I played it on easy (shameful I know). Felt like the last quarter of the game shit the bed a bit and the last boss fight was terrible but on the whole I thought it was a return to form.
Will pick up Village once it's sub £25.
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Post by kronos on Dec 29, 2021 11:56:40 GMT
Tales of Berseria. 4/5 . Loses a point because it dragged on for far too long.
Finally finished after 3 years of on/off playing.
Great characters.
Now onto Tales of Arise. See you in another 3 years...
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Rich
Junior Member
Posts: 1,959
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Post by Rich on Dec 29, 2021 13:18:29 GMT
Felt the same about Berseria. Far, far too long. Was a real slog towards the end.
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Post by RadicalRex on Dec 29, 2021 15:16:16 GMT
The Messenger - 8/10
Bit of a bumpy ride, my appreciation went up and down a lot during my playthrough, and a few times I was close to abandoning it. But I'm glad I didn't. It definitely feels like a game in the slipstream of Shovel Knight, but in my opinion it's definitely better than SK.
First of all I had to disable the soundtrack. Reviewers love it, but for my liking it's just too shrill and obtrusive. But I had the same issue with Shovel Knight, so if you liked SK's soundtrack, you'll probably like this as well. Not really an issue because I just played other music in the background that fit the theme.
It's all about learning and mastering ninja movement skills, which can be overwhelming at first as you quickly unlock them, and frustrating early on to master. But the more you play, the better you get at it and the more satisfying it becomes. There's a sense of progression, that you just breeze through sections that once were frustrating. There's this feeling of accomplishment, it feels earned, and I love that.
It definitely feels more modern indie than oldschool in the sense that it's more about environmental hazards than enemy encounters, think of games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste. Enemy design is very limited and simplistic, on their own they are total pushovers, and more often than not they act as platforming puzzles rather than actual hazards. Personally I prefer the traditional way of enemies being the main hazard, but compared to other games of this modern style, I liked The Messenger.
There are two main issues I don't like. The first is that it's very heavy on backtracking. For a "metroidvania", the stages/areas are very linear, portals are few and far between, and it sucks that you have to go back and forth 20 screens just because you chose the wrong time period to access a certain room.
The second is that I think your abilities are a little much to digest. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a ton of different moves and abilities, but sometimes it just gets too much, especially early on while you're still learning to even remember all of them while playing.
The biggest gripe I had was how Cloud Step and gliding are both mapped to the jump button. Effectively, in mid-air the jump button is context-sensitive, and in the heat of the moment where you have to improvise in small fractions of a second, that kept screwing me up.
Most notably, airborne attacks. During jump you strike left or right, during glide you strike down. So you have to enter glide mode whenever you want to strike down. Wouldn't be so bad if glide wasn't context-sensitive. If you're in Cloud Step mode because you just hit something, hitting the jump button will do a double jump instead of a glide. While all I want to do is to strike down, I have to make that double jump, then glide, then strike. In the heat of the moment, I still instinctively try to do it like in Hollow Knight, by just pressing down+attack. I really think gliding should have a separate button, it still confuses the hell out of me when I don't have the time to think about it.
But aside from those issues, I did enjoy the game and recommend it. It's in the Steam winter sale at 60% off for €6.71. Worth that? Hell yes.
100% playthrough time: 15 hours
edit: some said this game is extremely difficult, personally I think it's pretty fair. It's challenging, but not White Palace hard. Checkpoints are pretty generous.
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LTK
New Member
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Post by LTK on Dec 29, 2021 18:20:05 GMT
edit: some said this game is extremely difficult, personally I think it's pretty fair. It's challenging, but not White Palace hard. Checkpoints are pretty generous. I am some; I found the Messenger to be a lot more punishing right out the gate compared with Shovel Knight, which gives you plenty of time to find your feet. It's also strange to compare this to White Palace in isolation: when you get to that point you'll have had the entire game to practice your platforming, so it's justified to be the most difficult platforming challenge in the game. It's not useful to use that as a comparison to something that's challenging to begin with. It's possible I didn't give the Messenger a fair chance though. While it has wit, it didn't win me over as quickly as Shovel Knight, which was consistently funny and charming. I'm sure it's a great platformer in its own right.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Dec 29, 2021 18:27:00 GMT
White Palace was like its own game. Nothing prepared you for that (I can't remember if the White Palace is the same as the Path of Pain, but I mean the Path of Pain either way)
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Post by RadicalRex on Dec 29, 2021 19:02:25 GMT
edit: some said this game is extremely difficult, personally I think it's pretty fair. It's challenging, but not White Palace hard. Checkpoints are pretty generous. I am some; I found the Messenger to be a lot more punishing right out the gate compared with Shovel Knight, which gives you plenty of time to find your feet. It's also strange to compare this to White Palace in isolation: when you get to that point you'll have had the entire game to practice your platforming, so it's justified to be the most difficult platforming challenge in the game. It's not useful to use that as a comparison to something that's challenging to begin with. It's possible I didn't give the Messenger a fair chance though. While it has wit, it didn't win me over as quickly as Shovel Knight, which was consistently funny and charming. I'm sure it's a great platformer in its own right. To clarify: The Messenger is challenging, but it is challenging in a way similar to Mega Man games: the more you try, the better you get, the easier it gets. The reason I brought up White Palace is because some reviewers said The Messenger is hardcore hard (others said it's medium difficulty). The Messenger just gets easier the more you play it, once you learn how to play it even its hardest parts aren't a big deal. The White Palace on the other hand is gruelling no matter how long you've played HK. It's just that some reviewers made The Messenger sound like it's that kind of hard, but it's not. It's getting-used-to hard, not sadistic hard. White Palace is brutal and it doesn't get easier quickly with some practice. Games like Mega Man and The Messenger do get easier fairly quickly with practice. That's the point I was trying to make. Also, checkpointing. The Messenger is pretty generous with checkpoints, Hollow Knight is sadistic. Even Mega Man 1 from 1987 was more generous with checkpoints than HK. The Messenger on the other hand has checkpoints all over the place.
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LTK
New Member
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Post by LTK on Dec 29, 2021 23:44:34 GMT
White Palace was like its own game. Nothing prepared you for that (I can't remember if the White Palace is the same as the Path of Pain, but I mean the Path of Pain either way) I don't quite agree. All the techniques that Path of Pain requires are taught earlier in the game in some manner. But it was a kick to the nuts in terms of difficulty in a game that mostly limited itself to kicking you in the face until that point. They prepared you for what to do but not how perfectly you'd need to do it, which is kinda par for the course considering Godhome. To clarify: The Messenger is challenging, but it is challenging in a way similar to Mega Man games: the more you try, the better you get, the easier it gets. The reason I brought up White Palace is because some reviewers said The Messenger is hardcore hard (others said it's medium difficulty). The Messenger just gets easier the more you play it, once you learn how to play it even its hardest parts aren't a big deal. The White Palace on the other hand is gruelling no matter how long you've played HK. It's just that some reviewers made The Messenger sound like it's that kind of hard, but it's not. It's getting-used-to hard, not sadistic hard. White Palace is brutal and it doesn't get easier quickly with some practice. Games like Mega Man and The Messenger do get easier fairly quickly with practice. That's the point I was trying to make. Also, checkpointing. The Messenger is pretty generous with checkpoints, Hollow Knight is sadistic. Even Mega Man 1 from 1987 was more generous with checkpoints than HK. The Messenger on the other hand has checkpoints all over the place. I don't know if "the more you try, the better you get" means anything because it's true for all games. Maybe the Messenger has a more shallow difficulty curve than Shovel Knight (which got bastard hard pretty quickly) but I felt like it was pretty demanding early on. Platformers, even good ones, are very marmitey and it's hard to put my finger on what the ultimate reason why I like (or am good at) but not the other is. I also don't think Hollow Knight's checkpoints are especially bad. It's a metroidvania, you're supposed to go from point A to point B repeatedly and have it be an interesting challenge each time. In stage-based games like Mega Man and Shovel Knight you tend to play each stage once and you're done with it. I did not actually remember that the Messenger had metroidvania elements, but if it tries to kill you with environmental hazards and also forces you to backtrack, it might not have been a very good idea to add the 'vania in there; it wouldn't have benefited Shovel Knight either.
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Post by theguy on Dec 30, 2021 12:09:25 GMT
God Of War
There's a lot to like here, but also a lot to dislike. The combat is nice and weighty, it feels satisfying and there's a good variety of skills you can unlock to mix things up. It improves further once you get an additional weapon, and I began to enjoy it quite a bit. But on the flip side, the camera is so zoomed in, you can't see any enemies a couple of feet from you, or know when they're attacking. There's a little red indicator to help with this, but it's hardly ideal. The camera also makes harder to counter enemies, since your attacks sort of block the view a bit to what they're doing. It's not usually too bad in practice, just really annoying at times.
It's not a true open world but it it falls into so many of the pitfalls of open world games it's ridiculous. A stupid amount of collectibles, needless bloat and for the most part, a lot of it just feels pointless. There's not that much variety in the locations in the main realm, so it just feels like you're doing the same thing over and over at times. Go to X, mark off A, B, C and D leave, just ticking off checklists. Some locations you'll have to revisit once you unlock a new ability.
One of the realms available is a challenge realm, with such imaginative challenges such as "defeat 100 enemies", or "defeat X enemies in Y time while they're standing within Z spot". Another one just has you running through a mini roguelike area, where you've got limited time in there to defeat randomly spawning enemies, who may or may not give you the loot you need. Oh and if you die or time out, you don't get to keep anything. Just an utterly crap way to pad content.
Everything is also done at such a slow pace. You row around slowly to each spot and there's sod all to do while you row except listen to some dialogue. It's not very enjoyable. There's animations for everything, even the feckin fast travel is slow. It's probably to mask the loading or something but it still grates. I'm on a PS5, using the internal SSD and there was an elevator that took 1 minute 47 seconds to complete. I've not a clue why.
The story is interesting but nothing amazing, I feel like the production values are the more impressive thing here but they're typical of a Sony game noe. Overall I did have a fun time with it though. Some of the boss fights are great and well designed. The combat is fun enough to keep you going and still quite satisfying. I enjoyed it a lot more once you get the 2nd weapon. Some nice puzzles and world design. Throwing your axe and retrieving it doesn't get old, and the main story is actually not that long, so you can breeze through it. It's a good game, just full of niggles
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Post by ToomuchFluffy on Dec 30, 2021 14:39:53 GMT
I'm done with Armored Head. It's a fun little arena shooter with 30 Waves and an Endless Mode. Surprisingly satisfying weapon selection I have to say. Otherwise it's worth mentioning that the arena has some complexity to it. Aside from the lava and the central bank which unlocks some things around the level (activatable jumping platforms, turrets), there's also a friendly "Collector"-robot cow running around. Guns get unlocked at the central spot as the next wave activates.
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Post by erekose on Dec 30, 2021 15:53:08 GMT
God Of War
There's a lot to like here, but also a lot to dislike. The combat is nice and weighty, it feels satisfying and there's a good variety of skills you can unlock to mix things up. It improves further once you get an additional weapon, and I began to enjoy it quite a bit. But on the flip side, the camera is so zoomed in, you can't see any enemies a couple of feet from you, or know when they're attacking. There's a little red indicator to help with this, but it's hardly ideal. The camera also makes harder to counter enemies, since your attacks sort of block the view a bit to what they're doing. It's not usually too bad in practice, just really annoying at times. It's not a true open world but it it falls into so many of the pitfalls of open world games it's ridiculous. A stupid amount of collectibles, needless bloat and for the most part, a lot of it just feels pointless. There's not that much variety in the locations in the main realm, so it just feels like you're doing the same thing over and over at times. Go to X, mark off A, B, C and D leave, just ticking off checklists. Some locations you'll have to revisit once you unlock a new ability. One of the realms available is a challenge realm, with such imaginative challenges such as "defeat 100 enemies", or "defeat X enemies in Y time while they're standing within Z spot". Another one just has you running through a mini roguelike area, where you've got limited time in there to defeat randomly spawning enemies, who may or may not give you the loot you need. Oh and if you die or time out, you don't get to keep anything. Just an utterly crap way to pad content. Everything is also done at such a slow pace. You row around slowly to each spot and there's sod all to do while you row except listen to some dialogue. It's not very enjoyable. There's animations for everything, even the feckin fast travel is slow. It's probably to mask the loading or something but it still grates. I'm on a PS5, using the internal SSD and there was an elevator that took 1 minute 47 seconds to complete. I've not a clue why. The story is interesting but nothing amazing, I feel like the production values are the more impressive thing here but they're typical of a Sony game noe. Overall I did have a fun time with it though. Some of the boss fights are great and well designed. The combat is fun enough to keep you going and still quite satisfying. I enjoyed it a lot more once you get the 2nd weapon. Some nice puzzles and world design. Throwing your axe and retrieving it doesn't get old, and the main story is actually not that long, so you can breeze through it. It's a good game, just full of niggles Pretty much exactly what I felt like, and I tried to get into it SO MANY TIMES!
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Post by theguy on Dec 30, 2021 16:27:11 GMT
It took me a while to actually get into it too. It does start very slow so I don't blame you for leaving it. I could have actually gone on about things that grated in that game. I was getting bored up until I got the 2nd weapon. Not that it radically changes the game or anything, it's just that it added some welcome variety, and at that point I had a lot of the side stuff already done so had less padding to get through. Early on though it is just a complete mess of systems and it's hard to give a shit about any of it.
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Post by erekose on Dec 30, 2021 20:58:49 GMT
I didn’t find it a remotely bad game I just somehow never felt gripped by it to the extent that I wasn’t thinking about playing other games instead. I’m a sucker for hype though, so if a game comes out with a lot of acclaim I usually assume I’ve got it wrong and keep trying.
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Post by dominalien on Dec 31, 2021 8:37:37 GMT
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
My GOTY for sure, though it wasn't when I was fighting the last two bosses. I put it on expert and stubbornly refused to lower the difficulty for no reward and heaps of frustration. Perhaps it'll be good practice for a possible master playthrough.
Excellent world, great music, very pleasant voice acting.
It's extremely competent, just missing exceptional territory.
8.7/10
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Post by pierrepressure on Jan 1, 2022 9:49:40 GMT
Ori and the Blind Forest - 9/10
Superb with only one or two slight niggles with the difficulty in certain sections.
Is the sequel worth playing if I enjoyed the first?
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LTK
New Member
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Post by LTK on Jan 1, 2022 10:20:11 GMT
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Post by dfunked on Jan 1, 2022 10:23:59 GMT
dominalienI felt something similar when trying to figure out what my GotY is. There have been so many competent games this year, but no exceptional 9 or 10s that would've been an easy decision.
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Post by beastmaster on Jan 1, 2022 18:59:35 GMT
Bayonetta 2 - 8/10
Had this for ages but have spent the last few days playing it after a number of failed attempts. It just didn’t look that great on my huge 4K telly. Recently purchased a 27” Dell monitor and the image is much better suited to that so I’ll be running the Switch through that from now on.
As for the game itself it’s not as good as the original, which was a 10 for me. Kind of seemed like one boss fight after another. Didn’t think the story was as good either. The ticking clock cut scenes got annoying as well with an over reliance on stills rather than animations.
Absolutely terrific end of game sequences though.
Not sure what’s next. I’ve got plenty of AAA games on many platforms. I quite fancy Streets of Rage 4 on Switch. Halo Infinite maybe,
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2022 22:39:00 GMT
Streets of Rage 4 is excellent, if you've not played it yet.
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Cosmopolitan
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Font Geek is a stupid name
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Post by Cosmopolitan on Jan 4, 2022 11:59:00 GMT
Completed Enslaved: Odyssey to the West on PC in about 9 hrs. And what a trip it was (sorry). Liked the environments, the setting, the story, Trip, traversal. Kinda disliked Monkey, HATED Pigsy. The robot fights became mightily annoying as the game moved forward. The ending was sort of Matrix-y but I liked it. Overall a solid 8/10, will not bother with DLC.
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スコットランド
Junior Member
Delicious gruel
Posts: 3,934
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Post by スコットランド on Jan 4, 2022 12:25:59 GMT
Yakuza 6 I finished part 5 3 days ago (70 hours) and bought this digitally while the credits were rolling and jumped straight in. At 16 hours this was perfect. I didn't do that many side quests as I was so engrossed in the story I just had to push on. I finished in 2 days I was that caught up. I laughed. I cried. I gasped. It is melodramatic tosh but it is so fucking brilliant, damn I will miss Kiryu, definitely my favourite game series of all time. All 7 done in 2021 and all 10/10. This also didn't have any nasty difficulty spikes etc. A solid 10/10 To rate the series... all 10/10 but in order. 0- possibly the best 6- a perfect send off Kiwami 2 Kiwami 1 5 - I disagree it was bloated. I liked the variety 3 4 - still good, but story was nonsensical. So you haven’t played Like a Dragon yet? Boy, you’re in for a treat.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2022 13:31:01 GMT
Yakuza 6 I finished part 5 3 days ago (70 hours) and bought this digitally while the credits were rolling and jumped straight in. At 16 hours this was perfect. I didn't do that many side quests as I was so engrossed in the story I just had to push on. I finished in 2 days I was that caught up. I laughed. I cried. I gasped. It is melodramatic tosh but it is so fucking brilliant, damn I will miss Kiryu, definitely my favourite game series of all time. All 7 done in 2021 and all 10/10. This also didn't have any nasty difficulty spikes etc. A solid 10/10 To rate the series... all 10/10 but in order. 0- possibly the best 6- a perfect send off Kiwami 2 Kiwami 1 5 - I disagree it was bloated. I liked the variety 3 4 - still good, but story was nonsensical. So you haven’t played Like a Dragon yet? Boy, you’re in for a treat. I am on chapter 14. 55 hours in and it is fucking amazing.
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Post by Chopper on Jan 4, 2022 13:33:20 GMT
Completed Enslaved: Odyssey to the West on PC in about 9 hrs. And what a trip it was (sorry). Liked the environments, the setting, the story, Trip, traversal. Kinda disliked Monkey, HATED Pigsy. The robot fights became mightily annoying as the game moved forward. The ending was sort of Matrix-y but I liked it. Overall a solid 8/10, will not bother with DLC. I was considering getting this or Remember Me for a replay, but I think I have enough games to get through right now; good to hear you enjoyed it though. I finished Sable (PC) - good to get the first game of 2022 out of the way early. I enjoyed it, though I did cut it short and head for the end game after ten hours. You can extend the game by a lot longer than that, if you want. Its strengths are obviously the strong graphical style, and the world was really, really cool. I didn't have the same issues with say, the hoverbike movement, that a lot of reviewers had - it was perfectly good if you weren't driving it off precipices. However there are still some annoying bugs - the worst being that quite often the controller would not respond (while keyboard commands still worked) and required you to close the game and restart. Enjoyable when it worked, though.
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Post by theguy on Jan 4, 2022 14:17:07 GMT
I played through Enslaved somewhat recently, having missed out on it when it released
I didn't think much of it gameplay wise, thought the writing was a bit naff too. If I recall right, it's very repetitive, and those sections where you have to sneak around and take out a robot are a bit of a bore. I basically saw Monkey as Shrek, which livened things up a bit.
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malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,169
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Post by malek86 on Jan 4, 2022 17:03:09 GMT
Garage: Bad Dream Adventure (Android)Well, I wasn't exactly expecting an adventure game about robots to be a metaphor for a screwed-up relationship but there you go. It's both visually and aurally haunting, and game part is actually quite fun, as you need to go around and solve the puzzles while also keeping track of your resources and energy (not to mention a pretty deep fishing mini-game that is actually required to get through the story). But the second half is too fetch-questy, it took me 13 hours to get through the game and half of that was spent moving between places. Also, sometimes it's hard to tell which dialogues are truly deep, and which ones are just the author going off their rocker and being angsty and pretentious for the sake of it. 7/10
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2022 11:33:00 GMT
Yakuza 6 I finished part 5 3 days ago (70 hours) and bought this digitally while the credits were rolling and jumped straight in. At 16 hours this was perfect. I didn't do that many side quests as I was so engrossed in the story I just had to push on. I finished in 2 days I was that caught up. I laughed. I cried. I gasped. It is melodramatic tosh but it is so fucking brilliant, damn I will miss Kiryu, definitely my favourite game series of all time. All 7 done in 2021 and all 10/10. This also didn't have any nasty difficulty spikes etc. A solid 10/10 To rate the series... all 10/10 but in order. 0- possibly the best 6- a perfect send off Kiwami 2 Kiwami 1 5 - I disagree it was bloated. I liked the variety 3 4 - still good, but story was nonsensical. So you haven’t played Like a Dragon yet? Boy, you’re in for a treat. Yakuza like a dragon. Started straight after yakuza 6, 60 hours later finished, just the last dragon race to get a platinum and I am done. Loved every second, I thought I would miss Kiryu but Ichiban was great and fun. The combat change I liked even more than the main series, the side quests were fun and the whole party was good. My only gripe was I played in English and it was awesome, until some old guard reappeared which killed it. Hearing... Old characters I won't spoil in the wrong voice was horrible. But that was my only gripe apart from one difficulty spikes out of nowhere. 10/10 2022 is off to a great start.
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Post by RadicalRex on Jan 5, 2022 13:02:28 GMT
Outer Worlds - 6/10
Fallout 4 meets Mass Effect Andromeda meets Borderlands. Combining the strengths of those games could have made for a very interesting experience, sadly it has the strengths of neither imo. Instead, I found it was combining the middling or even weak parts of those games, the result being that overall it's worse than any of them.
It's not really bad, but I found it remarkably bland and forgettable. Those other games, no matter their issues, all left an impact on me. I found any impact is strikingly absent in Outer Worlds. In the second half, I increasingly hoped it'd be over soon because it was so repetitive I felt like I'm wasting my time playing a broken record. Thankfully, it's not as big a game as those others.
Well, the scenery is pretty, I'll give it that. Then again, the environments looked pretty similar to each other, I wish they were as diverse as Andromeda's.
Playthrough time: 18 hours
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Post by Aunt Alison on Jan 5, 2022 16:24:08 GMT
Outer Worlds - 6/10Fallout 4 meets Mass Effect Andromeda meets Borderlands. Combining the strengths of those games could have made for a very interesting experience, sadly it has the strengths of neither imo. Instead, I found it was combining the middling or even weak parts of those games, the result being that overall it's worse than any of them. It's not really bad, but I found it remarkably bland and forgettable. Those other games, no matter their issues, all left an impact on me. I found any impact is strikingly absent in Outer Worlds. In the second half, I increasingly hoped it'd be over soon because it was so repetitive I felt like I'm wasting my time playing a broken record. Thankfully, it's not as big a game as those others. Well, the scenery is pretty, I'll give it that. Then again, the environments looked pretty similar to each other, I wish they were as diverse as Andromeda's. Playthrough time: 18 hours Found it pretty boring as well. It was OK at first but after a while it just felt like all I was doing was spending the majority of the time travelling back and forth to talk to people. The combat was so easy as to feel like it was just getting in the way and annoying. Didn't finish it in the end
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Post by RadicalRex on Jan 5, 2022 16:27:03 GMT
I don't know if "the more you try, the better you get" means anything because it's true for all games. Maybe the Messenger has a more shallow difficulty curve than Shovel Knight (which got bastard hard pretty quickly) but I felt like it was pretty demanding early on. Platformers, even good ones, are very marmitey and it's hard to put my finger on what the ultimate reason why I like (or am good at) but not the other is. I also don't think Hollow Knight's checkpoints are especially bad. It's a metroidvania, you're supposed to go from point A to point B repeatedly and have it be an interesting challenge each time. In stage-based games like Mega Man and Shovel Knight you tend to play each stage once and you're done with it. I did not actually remember that the Messenger had metroidvania elements, but if it tries to kill you with environmental hazards and also forces you to backtrack, it might not have been a very good idea to add the 'vania in there; it wouldn't have benefited Shovel Knight either. Sorry for the late reply, but I'll try to explain. First of all, is it a metroidvania? The early game (I'd say roughly 1/3 of the game) is just a linear platformer with increasing skills. I think Gargoyle's Quest is a good analogy, that is also a fairly linear platformer with an increasing skillset. But after you finished the first third of the game, The Messenger suddenly becomes a metroidvania lite, with mostly linear levels to backtrack but branching paths in some places. If you've played Demon's Crest (the semi-official sequel to the Gargoyle's Quest games), that is kind of what you can expect. Revisit linear stages but take a branching path at some point. Some reviewers said The Messenger is brutally hard, and as another modern platformer with a focus on environmental hazards, to me that kind of raises the question: is it as hard as Celeste or Super Meat Boy, is it as hard as HK's White Palace? And I don't think there's an easy answer to that. I found The Messenger pretty hard and frustrating early on, because your skillset and the controls are so convoluted it takes a lot to wrap your head around early on. But then, during all the backtracking in the second third of the game, I got used to it and it clicked. The platforming challenges weren't all that hard anymore once I learned how to play the game. Once I learned how to play it, I found it's actually pretty fair. HK is different because there's not actually a lot to get used to. Its mechanics are fairly simple, straightforward, easy to understand. And while The Messenger's challenges are mostly about mastering your moveset, HK's challenges are simply brutal no matter what. All of The Messenger's content becomes fairly easy once you master the moveset, HK remains gruelling when it wants to be. As for checkpoints, I really really appreciate if a game gives you a checkpoint right before a difficult boss fight. Even Mega Man 1 did that, that was what I was alluding to. If a boss has a 4-5 minutes first phase, only to then suddenly transform and kill me quickly, so that I have to go through those tedious 4-5 minutes again just to reach its second phase, that annoys the shit out of me. Many games do that, to my dismay. What makes it even worse is if there's no checkpoint right before the boss fight, if the checkpoint is a dozen screens (or more) away from the boss fight, making the grind to get to its second phase again even worse. And HK loves to piss me off doing that. The Messenger is among those games that give you a checkpoint right before every boss fight.
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Post by Aunt Alison on Jan 5, 2022 16:51:53 GMT
That's why I don't like games like Meat Boy and Celeste - they're designed so that you rapidy repeat sections over and over until you pull it off. There's no feeling of mastering a level/the controls/the game. It's very possible in something like Mario to go several levels without dying.
Can't say the checkpointing in HK was ever an issue for me (never found it as difficult as others seem to) but understand the frustration with multiple phase boss fights. The Dark Souls series has some mean 3 phase fights that were frustrating
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