Last Game You Finished And Your Thoughts V3.0

I know about the lore but the game doesn't have a story mode like Injustice, Tekken 7, Battle Fantasia etc

Plot 0/10 - Guy Fawkes had a much better chance of overthrowing the ruling elite than this cartridge does.

Gameplay 0/10 - I'm being objective here, and the dictionary definition of gameplay is thus the features of a video game, such as its plot and the way it is played, as distinct from the graphics and sound effects Since it's plot is clearly a 0/10, it's gameplay has to be marked at that level too. Sad

Sounds 1/10 - it doesn't make any noises on it's own! I've tried sitting in silence and talking to it but all those things won't make it do anything. It's only when I throw it that it makes a noise, and to get different noises you need different things to hit it on in the house. Pointless DLC fest!

Lifespan 0/10, it isn't alive.

graphics 7/10 is a fictional man getting punch by a fictional woman. Important. Colourful. Compact. But not enough to redeem this 'game.'

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

I really enjoyed this and it holds up well given it's now 10 years old. Granted, there are infuriating pieces of gameplay that stop it from being a great game, but as a linear adventure that keeps you hooked with its light-hearted script and strong performances, it's definitely worth checking if you've not played it.

The climbing and jumping is a little messy - I must have died 50 times due to inaccurate jumping or taking cover incorrectly. Speaking of cover, there's certainly a Gears of War feel to the combat, albeit far less satisfying. I also wasn't keen on the

Spoiler:

Maybe I'm mis-remembering Gears of War, but it came out in 2006 and Uncharted seems to lift quite a bit from it and I've never seen that comparison before. Odd.

Despite this, I am very tempted to play it through again as there are some fun rewards upon completion (costumes, cheats...) akin to Resident Evil 4.

Now on to the second game...

8/10

I kickstarted this game and did an interview on Gintendo with Bill Gardner that I may do a proper review on Gintendo but for now.

Plot, 7.5, this is where the game shines as you play as Cassie over the few chapters in what is sort based on a true story.

Gameplay 6, Rather simple puzzle solving walking sim game where if you weren't blind it would be even easier.

Sounds 7, Due be being blind this plays a huge part of the game but also means the game lacks music for instance.

Lifespan 5, The game is about 3hrs it doesn't need to be any longer and doesn't stay out it's welcome, it is just average for a £20 indie game.

Graphics 6, Due to being blind everything is blue with the odd bit of green or red that it isn't a great looking game and things like the menu screen and the whole white dot as a reticle feels like this is a cheap steam greenlight game.

Perception is different and maybe worth a play but you going in, you need to know the game is simple but with a unique premise.

This is a real nice little game. Obviously, saying I finished it is a bit disingenuous. I've only done it with one of the three characters, whose different fighting styles feel like they'll drastically change the game. Also, it's fairly short and obviously designed for time attacking, but without anyone else trying to do it I can't see myself getting super into it.

It's lovely, though! Looks and sounds beautiful, in a way Balla will hate. Plays incredibly slickly, like a tiny 2D Zelda. The four levels all have a different kind of ruined feel, but they look simple and gorgeous. The goal is to light four vaguely shintoistic shrines and go through to a boss, but the currency is all based on getting big combos against enemies. There are always a couple of secret health and power pickups to find as well.

This is the definition of cheap and cheerful. A gorgeous game that can be finished in a sitting or two is ideal for me these days.

10/10

Kamiko is one of a few games I want to pick up on Switch but just haven't got around to with having so much more to play already.

I bought it when it launched but I didn't get around to playing it until I finished Shovel Knight. It can be done in like an hour or two, so worth buying if you've got an afternoon to kill.

I do like that and why since Persona 5, I've finished like 6 or 7 games.

Ninchock -

ARMS



For anyone not in the know, fights in ARMS aren't introduced with "Ready? FIGHT!". Someone says "Ninchock - ARMS!" Or, at least, that's what I think they're saying - well, except for "ARMS", because that's easy to understand. After that Classic Zero Wibble, let's delve into spoiler territory.

Spoiler Territory:

That's ARMS in a nutshell, though. It throws down the gauntlet - a suspiciously boxing glove-esque gauntlet - and demands that you git gud. You can beat the Grand Prix on level 1 with very little skill but going up a tier demands that you become more tactical, more evasive, more patient - that you wait for that chance to strike and do so with efficient and effective brutality. And then do it again. And again and again, and again and again and again. If you enjoy challenge, get ARMS in your life: the Switch's finest exercise in frustration management so far. Emphatically not for everyone.

One day I'll see you online.

15/20

Funny- I've played considerably more, it seems, but I'm nowhere near the point i would say ARMS is a game I've "finished". I am continuing to notice a gitting of gudness, though. Had one or two recent sessions online in which I've kicked the proverbial, and I'm making my way through Level 5 just now. I'm enjoying it as a multiplayer thing and as something I can hop into for a quick go, though as my primary game I think it will be usurped by Zelda again shortly.

The real test will be whether it ever gets another look in once I own Spla2n.

I threw my view in here because I finished the campaign, mainly. I'm so wary of going online, but the first ARMS experience of most o'y'all was the old Testpunch... online PvP all the way. Anyway, to be honest with you, I'm almost certainly going to trade it in the next time I buy a new game. I like to play one-on-one fighters but always forget that about half of the ones I play disagree with me.

Hoo boy, this game is the textbook example of flawed fun.  After bingeing on the final four chapters last night I saw everything right and wrong with this game all in one nice compact vortex.  

Lets start with what the game either got right or close to right.  The music for instance, absolute perfection, and I'll be blunt, was wasted on this game.  The soundtrack is a glorious concotion of epic orchestral that fits perfectly with a tale of empires and kingdoms waging a war, with a lone prince-turned-king trying to reclaim his birthright.  It weaves a story of gods and kings, of light fighting overwhelming darkness.  

So it was extremely disappointing that most of it was poorly used.  As many will know it's not enough for a game to have a killer soundtrack, it needs to actually use it right.  A lot of time and effort was clearly put into the soundtrack for this game, and yet the game itself frequently undermines all that effort outside of battles.  Beautiful overworld themes either rarely play or get cut off constantly by any number of causes, such as being engaged in battles of any kind, or even opening the menu to adjust equipment.  The result?  You'll rarely hear these pieces of music because between the game seeing fit to copy the dire Western RPG approach of rarely using music in an open-world and this games unique issues of cutting it off if anything actually happens it rarely gets a chance to pass the opening bars.  Heck everything past the forty second mark of that theme is new to me, that's how bad it is.  


This leads me straight to the other big issue this game has: the story is absolute and utter garbage.  Oh don't get me wrong, the skeleton of a really good story is here, but the game decides that even the good parts of its story should be undermined by absolutely amateurish direction.  For example the game loves to kill characters off, and yet when these events happen they fall absolutely flat for several big reasons, the main one being the game never develops any of its characters to the point you give a toss about them or their fates.  They decided with this game to not bother with character arcs, or backstories, or worldbuilding.  And the result is an absolute mess.  When it comes to crunch time and the game tries to wheel out its big emotional moments they always end up falling flat.  


It gets worse though, because the game seems to almost be self-aware that it either poorly fleshed out or didn't flesh out characters.  So instead we get treated to flashbacks hours after said characters have exited stage left in a shallow attempt to make us care.  Again these fall flat, the characters are often indisposed for various reasons, so the flashbacks instead leave the player feeling like their time is being wasted.  


Oh don't get all of the above wrong, they did actually do some minor character and world building.  Guess where.  That's right, optional side-media.  Want to know the details behind the empire and its crushing of the main characters kingdom, an event that sets the entire game in motion?  Watch the movie.  Want to know anything about the four protagonists?  Better watch that movie and a four episode anime.  

This is NOT how you do storytelling.  Side material is a good way of enhancing and augmenting something, I'll never deny that, but when you decide to skimp on the basic building blocks of storytelling then you have failed at telling your story.  I almost burst out laughing as, an hour away from the final battle, the player is shown a cutscene where you literally have a god explaining the story up to this point because the game itself didn't bother to tell you anything about the main conflict or the world up until this point.


For most of the game a major character, Ardyn, ends up carrying the entire story on his shoulders due to his excellent characterization and flamboyant charisma.  Alas the game in the final act even manages to f*** him up, not because he's a bad character or villain, but because of the combination of every other issue I mentioned coming together.  When we finally have the reveal of who he is, what his goal is, and why he's doing what he's doing it all falls flat and feels incredibly artificial.  Why?  Because the lack of worldbuilding meant that when he explained his origins and motivation it was the first time we even heard about these apparently critical aspects of the world.  This ended up making the entire scene feel like the writers had suddenly realised they'd forgotten to give Ardyn any motivation or backstory and thus made it up on the spot to fit his role.  



Now I know anyone that actually managed to read what I've typed is likely thinking "well you clearly didn't like this game then!", yet strangely enough that isn't actually the case.  Again, the game got some things very right, and other things horrendously wrong.  What it got right was right enough to make the experience ultimately an enjoyable one.  The gameplay itself when ignoring the rest of the games issues was entertaining, combat was consistently fun (if not difficult in the slightest as you can literally heal-spam your way through anything, even getting one-shotted can be ignored as the game allows you time to heal before giving you a game-over), and the optional hunt for the the majority of the Royal Arms (special weapons hidden throughout the land) often led to some extremely fun and satisfying dungeon spelunking.

It isn't all good however. The game's "open world" wasn't exactly as open as one would like. Coming from Breath of the Wild to this was absolutely eye-opening at how good Breath of the Wild is. A big appeal of open world games is being able to traverse any location in the game, and yet frequently the game barred the player from true open world exploration. Often times I found I would be unable to climb some rocks, not because they exceeded my ability to jump them, but instead because invisible walls would prevent further escalation. Compare this to Breath of the Wild and its "you can climb EVERYTHING shenanigans and it got rather restrictive. The worst case of it was when I cleared a dungeon that put me in an open area for the boss battle. After the battle I looked around and spotted a pile of grassland that looked fully explorable, and found my progress barred by invisible walls.



Overall Rating: 6 out of 10
Personal Enjoyment rating: 7 out of 10

This game was rushed to all hell and it shows. Plot and lore is either thrown in side-material or thrown to the player at the last minute, and the world exploration is lacklustre at best (when you can tell where all the hidden dungeons are just from looking at your map and knowing where the game stops you from going you haven't exactly made a organic world), the game absolutely cements that Tales Of and Atlus various JRPGs are now kings of the genre. Despite all that never let it be said the game was at least entertaining and fun.



And with that done I'm off to get my platinum trophy from maxing out the fishing skill, then it's on to a game I've heard distils the best of the genre.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the game has a fun as hell fishing mini-game! Heck maybe I was a bit pre-emptive to knock SE announcing a dedicated Final Fantasy XV fishing VR game at E3!

Athrun888 wrote:

 Beautiful overworld themes either rarely play or get cut off constantly by any number of causes

I never heard the guitar bit in that track! I only ever heard the opening flute. What the fuck?

I get your point about the characters only really getting fleshed out by the movie and the anime. That sucked and I wished they'd just have included that in the game proper someway.

What were your thoughts on the campfire ending scene, Athers?

The campfire scene was one of the only times the game managed to actually pull off an emotional scene for me actually. While it still technically fell into a pitfall regarding fleshing out after-the-fact it managed to do so in a way that still felt relevant as well as a emotional send-off for the game.

Speaking of that scene I was also surprised at how well the song they brought in went with the game, normally when I see Final Fantasy using a pop song or ballad I just roll my eyes and lament them not doing a ending version of the core musical themes of the game, but Stand By Me went with the tone of the ending and the campfire scene perfectly. Put simply they did good there.

I think I’m about as finished as I can be with Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers on Switch. There’s not too much to say about it, as it’ll all be quite familiar to the majority of folk by now. The arcade, training and online multiplayer modes work as anybody would expect, they're mostly the same as before (on PS3/360, when this was the HD Remix version). No real complaints about any of that...yet I think this overall package could have been better.

The new characters, audiovisual remixes and modes are a bit duff, with the game’s Way of the Hado mode being the absolute worst thing that I’ve played on the Switch so far. The D-Pad on the JoyCon doesn’t really lend itself to the accurate inputs that you’d need for this either – unless you’re playing casually, you’ll need to get the Pro Controller to get the best of out this. That’s on top of the game costing £35 as well, which is a bit cheeky to say the least. Overall though, it just feels like a bit of a missed opportunity – I don’t think this is as definitive as a ‘final’ edition of a game should be. More could have been done to make this stand out.

So, it’s a little bit disappointing in that sense, but it’s still brilliantly playable. Street Fighter II remains one of the best fighting games ever. It’s one of the best games on the Switch, but, then again, it’s not. 6/10.

Ghost Recon Wildlands

Ever since this was revealed at E3 2015 I was excited for it as I liked the idea of an open world squad based shooter but by the time it released in March this year I had grown somewhat tired of open world games and the map for this one is pretty big in fact it's probably too big. (It also had to contend with BotW so it was swept to side for a good while)

Now if you create a massive world with really varied terrain then you better make it fun/easy to get around in and Ghost Recon does have a bunch of air, sea and land based vehicles the latter of which I wasn't too keen on so most of the time I'd go for Helicopter which while easy there just wasn't much to contend with when you were up there except for the odd anti air missile if you got too close to an enemy base. Onto what matters the most then which is the shooting & managing your squad, this is definitely where the game is the most fun as it has you scouting enemy bases/towns with your flying drone or binoculars to gather intel so you can figure out the best way to complete your missions. The shooting has a satisfying pop to it when you take out a sniper in a tower that is 200+ metres away but it is equally as satisfying to get up close to your enemies and take them out that way or line up a sync shot to take out 4 enemies at once, controlling your AI squad can be a bit fiddly at times because the radial menu doesn't cycle smoothly between the 4 options (fire/hold/Go to/regroup) and I did die a few times because I couldn't select the fire option easily in a high pressure situation but I did eventually get used to it.

The missions do quickly become very similar though with most being do this without being detected, kill/capture this enemy or blow this thing up and in my opinion it lacks the variety because of the open world aspect as if it was a more linear game then the missions could have had more freedom to deliver exciting set pieces. So Ghost Recon Wildlands is probably better played with a squad of people you know rather than solo, I had my fun with it but it's shame it's only good & not the great game I wanted it to be.

Although I usually feel that it's unfair to review any type of media two days after getting it, I think that Micro Machines World Series on PS4 is a rare exception to that rule. In just a few hours, I've played all the tracks, battled in all of the arenas, drove all the cars and went up the ranks in the online leagues. There really isn't that much to see, play, or think about here. That's a big disappointment. I think that the lack of content - and specifically the lack of any single-player championships, like you'd find in every other Micro Machines games since the first one - just about humps the whole thing. What a stupid thing to leave out. So, online is basically your only shout here, and even that doesn't work properly - it's quite buggy, repeats the same three tracks all the time and has so few folk playing on it. I think that the developer focused too much on the Battle modes as well. It's Micro Machines: who gives a flying fuck about the battle modes?

In all these senses, it's definitely not the revival that I was hoping for. That said, the actual gameplay itself is actually quite good fun! Right enough, it isn't that far removed for what Micro Machines was on the Mega Drive - the tracks still have the same snooker tables, bunsen burners and baked beans as before - but it's such an appealing formula and it's so well executed that it doesn't really matter.

This game though? It's not bad or anything. Just competent and half-baked. 5/10.

Just seeing the word, Micro Machines, covered by a winged emblem is enough to bring back a wave of nostalgia for weaving around toast and cereal. It was always a game full of stuff though. Multiplayer stuff, single player stuff, tracks, cars, gadgets, boats. Just a shed load of stuff. I don't like the sound of a Micro Machines game that's not bursting at the seams.

I only had the gameboy version and MicroMachines V3 back on the ps1. If I was to go back and actually play them, maybe I wouldn't find them so full as my memory tells me they are. But that's the thing about nostalgic re-boots; they've got to conform to what you remember about the oldies, even if the memory is off point.

It's a shame because not much has come close to the sort of stuff MicroMachines did.

Muss wrote:

Just seeing the word, Micro Machines, covered by a winged emblem is enough to bring back a wave of nostalgia for weaving around toast and cereal. It was always a game full of stuff though. Multiplayer stuff, single player stuff, tracks, cars, gadgets, boats. Just a shed load of stuff. I don't like the sound of a Micro Machines game that's not bursting at the seams.

I only had the gameboy version and MicroMachines V3 back on the ps1. If I was to go back and actually play them, maybe I wouldn't find them so full as my memory tells me they are. But that's the thing about nostalgic re-boots; they've got to conform to what you remember about the oldies, even if the memory is off point.

It's a shame because not much has come close to the sort of stuff MicroMachines did.

I recall those Game Boy games and V3 being much fuller than World Series. I played those for months, whereas I'm considering trading World Series in tomorrow, three days after starting it up. It isn't worthless or anything, it's just that the fun is a bit limited by the fact that it isn't close to bursting at the seams. If it's ever under a tenner though, go for it - the nostalgia is still strong, and the core game is still as quality as it was back in the 90s.

I hear Toybox Turbos on PS3/360 is much better than World Series. It's supposedly double the game for half the price. The old Mashed games on PS2 are really good Micro Machines-alikes too.

Mashed was a good little game. Rough around the edges but many a good multiplayer match to be had in there.

Plot 7, This should be the standout thing in a game like Blackwood but it all rather predictable

Gameplay 6, I thought it was a full on walking sim but the game does have some puzzle elements but rather simple

Sounds 6, Some nice moments during the game

Lifespan 5, Took around hour and half to finish the game but I am going back to get the platinum as 3hrs overall isn't long

Graphics 7, Has a kids animated film like look to it

I picked the game up in the sale and I would only recommend it to a few people

Mighty Gunvolt Burst



If you are into Mega man even a little bit you should enjoy this little retro platform shooter, for the most part it's pretty standard stuff as the level design doesn't truly shine until the final 4 stages which is a shame considering the concept of the VR world your character is in. The customisation for how your character shoots and moves (extra jumps etc.) gives you way too much freedom for my liking which left me a bit lost in figuring out what all the abilities actually do so if this was just handed out to you for either beating bosses or from finding gear within the levels it'd be much easier to grasp and you'd spend less time experimenting to figure out what works for you and what doesn't.

All around though I enjoyed what I played so if you are looking for something you can dip in and out for a half hour here & there then this isn't a bad buy.

Rating:

5 Grackler heads spinning in a bowl.

The_Jaster wrote:

Rating:

5 Grackler heads spinning in a bowl.

I need a more in-depth breakdown of your score, Jas.

Nah, Mighty Gunvolt Burst is one I've had my eye on after rattling through Blaster Master Zero. It may indeed be purchased soon!

Jay wrote:

I need a more in-depth breakdown of your score, Jas.

You asked for it.

Plot: It is a complete mystery how these Grackler heads came to be severed let alone be rotating effortlessly like a set of fidget spinners. [2]  

Gameplay: Someone sure had fun.  [8]

Sounds: Very squelchy. [10]

Lifespan: No more than 24 hours unless refrigerated. [24]

Graphics: Very graphic indeed. [10]

I see what you did there.