Recently Completed Games

Batman: The Telltale Series (PC)

Flushed with my success earlier on, I went on to play through the final episode of this tonight.

OK, as is always the case with these games, the story more or less plays out by itself with you providing some dialogue choices and QTEs. But as a massive Batman geek, I really enjoyed the ride. The game takes some characters and some of the lore in a quite different direction from the comics and other media, and feels fresh for it. The episodes are good for a short evening burst of gaming, and the acting is good. Looking forward to playing the second one.

Solid 7/10

This just sounds awful. Reminds me of that final bit in FFVII where they give you a save point that you can throw down wherever you want, but you only get one of them. Of course I used it far too soon and gave myself about 1.5 hours of fighting grunts before I got to the final boss each time. Not sure I ever finished it because of that.

Octopath Traveller sounds like hell despite it being a great game. Imo there is no need for RPG to be 120+ hours to see the real proper ending, heard DQ11 is the same

Yakuza 6

finished it on gamepass despite owning on ps4 first and getting to chapter 3 or 4. really enjoyed it, although the big secret its a bit naff. 6 laid all the ground work for Kiwami 2 and future games but the newer games refined the combat and I miss not being able to carry weapons

8.5/10

Cyberpunk took a while to finish, it was a game I dipped into from time to time.

Lots of hours piled into it then, in its various patched forms. Still janky as fuck which kills the immersion somewhat, quests are not up to the witcher standard, main story was ok.

The open world is amazing in detail, but still feels somewhat empty, but it is the jankiness of the game that is unforgivable, cars floating in the air, piles of rubbish exploding when you step on it, and just general WTFness.

Shame on you CDPR, but you got your cash grab so like you give a fuck, I will say I got my moneys worth, but it was not the game it should have been.

6/10 Deleted and will not bother loading the PS5 version when its released in 10 years time (bugged to fuck)

Bugsnax

Such a strange, strange game. Part puzzle game, part critter collectathon, part listening to unnerving muppet things talk about their depression…

All credit to the writers, it’s probably the most inclusive game I’ve ever played. The characters range from heteronormative to gay to non-binary without ever treating it as anything other than normal. But feeding them cute food-based critters and seeing their limbs change into what they just gleefully gobbled down never stops being horrific. If you were terrified of Sweetums from the Muppets as a kid (and rightfully so) you’ll either hate this or enjoy it based on your own threshold for unearthly horror.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s pretty good. Satisfying to work out how to catch an elusive bugger, but a bit uneven at times. There were plenty of “was I supposed to be able to do that?” moments and the fetch quests grate after a while - especially since there’s no fast travel. My God I wish this game had a fast travel. The game would be two hours shorter without the constant backtracking and it’s a feature I cannot believe hasn’t been added.

But still, it’s different enough to warrant playing and at about 10 hours long it doesn’t outstay it’s welcome too much.

7/10

Don’t know about OT - but you didn’t see al of DQ11 in 70 hours.

The true ending is just a boss rush, really. The extra time it adds is less about story, more about making sure everyone is at a high enough level (because you need to use everyone)

I 'finished' Xenoblade 2 after 120 hours to make time for other games, but had to force myself to finish Octopath at around 80 hours. Only 2/3rds the length, but it felt like an eternal slog.

I do feel some RPGs are way too long, but I think it all comes down to how these games are made. Chapters help break things up nicely, but having side quests and bonus content to extend playtime is far better than having a padded narrative and repetitive structure to extend the main campaign.

Maybe some people beat it in 70 hours and others took longer?

Unravel 2

I don't really like this series. 
I think EG called the first one emotionally manipulative, and while I probably wouldn't go that far, it does rely on very cheap emotional cues, as if it's trying desperately to play the part of an indie darling. Slow melancholy music, a completely tacked on "heartfelt" story that it's hard to give a shit about, pretty paintings of birds, cutesy protag, even the levels themselves have "poignant" taglines thrown in.
Want to select a level? You're at the lighthouse, but it's not just called Lighthouse, it's Lighthouse - In which we choose our path. Rinse and repeat for every level. It even ends with a poem about love and bonds.
It tries so hard it begins to feel insincere, like they went straight through a checklist of how to be heartwarming to get here

When it comes to gameplay, if you liked the first you'll like this. It has some new ideas. I thought they were both pretty unsatisfying to play. This one has fewer levels than the first, but they're much longer, around 30 minutes each. I'm not sure why they did this, because they honestly just drag on. I'd rather they just split them up. None of them really standout either, I remember the levels from the first game far better and I played that a while back. I honestly can barely recall levels or even moments in Unravel 2 despite having just finished it. I did go and find the collectibles in Unravel 1 though, I simply can't be arsed in this one. 
There are also some challenge rooms to play. Some are OK, some are awfully designed with highlights such as requiring fairly precise platforming in a game that has floaty and imprecise controls. Great fun. 

I played it because I stupidly bought the bundle containing both Unravel 1&2 thinking I'll like the games. Disappointed with both. I don't think they're bad games though. 

Witcher 3 didn't have any padding, you could kill all the monster nests or bandit camps but its very much if you want to and can ignore them, so its not padding. The last 3 AC games are padded AF, the last one I played was Odyssey and you are forced to do side missions as main missions are level gated with huge level increase (unless you buy handy XP booster) The main issue is there isn't 60 to 100 hours of quality content in these games (maybe 30 to 35)

I really liked Yakuza like a dragon but there is a point at chapter 12 where the bosses is 10 levels higher than you (and have some damaging attacks) so you have to grind out 10 levels at the battle arena (you do get some decent armour and weapons) but its designed to pad out the game. Also for the last level it helps to grind out levels (but there is 1 enemy if you can kill within 2 hits you can gain a level) Would of been better game not to do this. Plus there is lot more things in the game to do

Some gamers love the repetitive tasks and justify it by saying "they throw on podcast or 5" but I see it as cheap way of the devs to pad out the game so reviewers can say its "60-80+ hours of content!!!!!"

I'd call it padding as it's not obvious which quests are crucial and which are not. I found myself chasing many a boring quest before giving up as I was fed up of trying to guess what was worth doing. Even some of the main quests had fetch quests laced in to pad them out.

Psychonauts 2 (Series S)

How do you make a sequel to Psychonauts? Well, for one, you double down on everything that made the original good: the characters are fun, the visual design is great, the voice acting is top notch, and the plot keeps throwing surprises at you while never feeling like it's jumped the shark. As far as story and presentation go, this is one of the finest efforts of the last few years, and while I have not played many of Double Fine's games, it is the best among them.

I do wish they had fixed the areas that needed fixing though. The combat system sees some improvements, but it's still mostly annoying. The platforming is generally fun enough by virtue of being more forgiving, but it's still not all that good. The new semi-open world is mostly pointless and the game is better when you are following the linear levels, which are indeed very inventive and quite well designed. None of the stage designs ever feel tired either, although following the "rule of three" in every single level gets noticeable after a while.

Essentially, just like Psychonauts 1, this is another game that might have worked better as a graphical adventure. But what is there works quite well already, and the gameplay faults are easier to ignore and forgive this time. And I guess that's a win.

8/10

for W3, is obvious which quests are crucial as they are marked as main story

Some games do have fetch quests as main quests, it does depend how the game does them. Imo Witcher 3 did them well but games like fallout 4 didn't (fallout 76 original main game is massive dumpster fire of shitty fetch quests, which awful story) Also skyrim introduced the crappy repeatable "radiant AI" quests that they shoved into fallout