Last Game You Finished And Your Thoughts V3.0

ZeroJones wrote:

. Seriously, there's a weapon you can get for the top-down sections (interesting; reminded me of Legend Of The Mystical Ninja) that is basically an instant win gun in most situations.

Was that the wave beam that could fire through walls? I felt lost whenever I took damage and lost that gun!

JayMoyles wrote:

ZeroJones wrote:

. Seriously, there's a weapon you can get for the top-down sections (interesting; reminded me of Legend Of The Mystical Ninja) that is basically an instant win gun in most situations.

Was that the wave beam that could fire through walls? I felt lost whenever I took damage and lost that gun!

Yes, yes it was. An overwhelming weapon, particularly when the next one down was so short-range and slow to get going.

I know that Drunka's a big believer in judging a game as a whole, story and gameplay wrapped up into one big bundle.  GF makes that mighty tricky.  The story is tremendous; the gameplay atrocious.


Manny Calavera is that rare thing, a likeable protagonist.  Done so by making him both sarcastic and sympathetic.  He's looking for the girl he lost in a variety of colourful locales filled with great characters (and Glottis, his demon driver, who follows the age-old law that every videogame deuteragonist must be deeply irritating).  The dialogue is fully voice-acted, often funny, and filled with giggles.  The villains are of the pantomime variety, but suitably nasty, and meet good ol'-fashioned karmic ends.  They're all bunches of crude polygons, because it's a remaster, but that even adds some charm to proceedings.

Were this a visual novel, or a TV show, or whatever, I'd be singing its praises all but unreservedly.  But it's an adventure game.


You can, like most adventure games, solve most of the problems by a process of elimination.  Combine everything with everything else and see what sticks.  Oftentimes, the logic is obvious only to the developers, and that seems to be the only way.

Trouble is, Manny crawls around the large and serpentine environments.  There's often a crapload of backtracking involved.  It's dull and unfun.  I gave up trying to see things Lucasarts' way around Rubacava, the second quarter of the game, which is a huge town and a pain to traverse.  I reckoned I'd have more fun just enjoying the story.  So The Lady read a walkthrough and looked over my shoulder as Manny backtracked for the 45th time, and boggled at the solutions I was supposed to have come up with on my own.


It's my humble, unsubtle, and often wrong opinion that the story and gameplay of this game must be viewed separately.  The story and its trappings get an 8/10 or so; the gameplay a 2, and that's generous.  By averaging them, with a weighting towards story, I arrive at the score I think the game deserves:

That's a totally fair score - my opinion was higher, but probably boosted by nostalgia. It definitely hasn't aged well, and you can see the budget running out!

Balla, have you played Day of the Tentacle? It's a far - far - better put-together game. If you enjoyed the story bits of GF, DoTT is a true point-n-clicker without the primitive 3D pish. The puzzles are more logical as well, given most are (considering the subject) based in logical reality.

I have not, I shall flag it to The Lady as a possibility for our joint backlog. Although I think Thimbleweed Park will come next, probably.

I've finally beaten Sonic Mania on Switch this evening in handheld mode as to me that's the best place to play it. I did play briefly on the TV but didn't look as good, I, however, did find my first issue with the Switch playing this and that is the lack of a proper D-Pad on the Joy-Con.

Sonic Mania is a homage to the 16-Bit era Sonic's and a darn good job at that but those have that sense of nostalgia which this sort of does with the old stages but is still missing that slight something.

I'm not sure where I would place Mania amongst the 2D Sonics but if you enjoyed them, you will like this.

7.5/10

The Division (PS4)

Well, given it's an endless kinda game, I've finished the main missions and upgraded my base 100%. The new bonus missions that unlock are stupid hard and require 4 players really to have any chance of completing, but it takes a little while to match up with players for specific missions (the game is a year old so less people online).

That's not to say that there isn't an active community online. For the uninitiated, The Division is a realistic depiction of New York City that is fully open-world (no loading times) and missions are dotted across the city. These seamlessly start, which is impressive. Gameplay-wise, it's essentially Rainbow Six with an RPG levelling system integrated in to encourage grinding for better weaponry and gear. While the nature of missions is repetitive (save hostages, protect somebody, collect missing items while being shot at etc.) the constant rewards make it hard to put down. The main downside to this is that the enemies become bullet sponges - if you are facing tough enemies, they can take up to 100 shots to kill which is completely unrealistic, especially when they can kill you in 3 or 4.

The game is cheap now and well worth picking up if you want to experience something like Destiny without quite the same commitment. If you like Gears of War too, this isn't far off of that.

8.5/10

I did enjoy The Division for the most part but the gameplay loop/grind for loot got tiring after a while especially so with the bullet sponge enemies you mentioned & sadly this transferred to PVP too so if you didn't put the time in you'd be wrecked from higher leveled player who had which became annoying really fast.

The game would be miles better in my book if it was 2 - 3 shots for a kill as that would reward those with skillful aiming, imagine how much more scary but exciting the dark zone (The seamless PVP area for those who don't know) would be as well. You could pick and choose your engagements much easier too because stealth would be a valid tactic, but I guess all that would mean removing the rpg/loot element which is the core of the game and not give you much to fight for.

Only said yesterday that I bought this as I liked the art-style but didn't know when I would get to it but when I saw it was a hour long, I hopped right to it.

This is a mobile game which has been ported to Switch and does use the touchscreen if you wish along with likely being twice as expensive at £4.99.

You can also tell it was made for mobile as it must have 20 save points and the map isn't huge, which is viewed isometrically as you solve puzzles looking for parts to fix your ship.

I enjoyed it and for a mobile game it is really good and polished but it is on a hybrid system then again it's £5.

This gets a ZeroJones / 10

That looks cute as hell, colour me intrigued!

I played through Semispheres, if anyone's interested. It was alright.

Huh. Won't play Pan-Pan then; might play Semispheres?

Jimbob wrote:

Huh. Won't play Pan-Pan then; might play Semispheres?

Is it because I said it was a ZeroJones / 10, it just seems like a game he would really enjoyed based on his mobile games he's played recently. If you like those like he does, then you should check it out.

Metroid: Samus Returns



Samus came back, so she did, with a remake of the Game Boy title Metroid II. Much expanded, with the vaunted addition of the parry mechanic, much of M:SR is filled with good intentions. The execution lacks a bit, though: I've already mentioned in the game's thread that I think having the Circle Pad on movement duty is not a great choice. In the heat of battle it's too easy to push it in slightly the wrong direction and not get the input you thought you would. The D-pad, meanwhile, is used to select between your four new Aeion powers (once you have 'em, of course). Using these adds strategy to the game, which is nice. Collecting all Samus's power-ups is as satisfying as ever.

late game, super spoilery:

I can't wholeheartedly recommend this as much as I would like to be able to, sadly, though it is another good game in the 3DS's twilight years.

15/20

Bypassing the Metroid review (sorry Zero) I don't think I want to play any game on my mobile, and I think it worries me a bit how similar it looks to that "experience".

Same and why I'm annoyed Thatgamecompany's, SKY is on iOS urghh as one I don't own Apple stuff and it's on mobile if it gets ported to Droid.

I've missed the boat on this chat, but:

Jimbob wrote:

[Re: Balla's Grim Fandango Post] That's a totally fair score - my opinion was higher, but probably boosted by nostalgia. It definitely hasn't aged well, and you can see the budget running out!

Balla, have you played Day of the Tentacle? It's a far - far - better put-together game. If you enjoyed the story bits of GF, DoTT is a true point-n-clicker without the primitive 3D pish. The puzzles are more logical as well, given most are (considering the subject) based in logical reality.

I'm no fan of the point and click adventure games but Day of the Tentacle is very good. I'm in agreement with Balla too over Grim Fandango. Charming story, naff game. You can, however, see why it was so influential and why it was so revered. It suffers the same problem as Half Life 2 does for me. There are good ideas, but I played it so far removed from its original release date that it just didn't really feel all that good. Plus I thought the atmosphere was lost once you were beyond the opening segments so there was nothing to make me come back and finish the thing.

DotT it sounds like it had better be, then, after Thimbleweed Park. Which it sounds like you should probably have a shot at as well, sir!

SteamWorld Dig 2



Dig's gameplay with some of the sensibilities of the brilliant Heist, and no procedural generation. What could go wrong? Well, some of the issues that plagued the original rear their ugly heads; the main one is the repetitive nature of the dig 'em up gameplay, particularly if your axe isn't very powerful. The music is slightly weedy too. Even so, it's a much bigger, brighter adventure with far more to see and do than the original. Just be prepared to dig, dig, dig for victory.

16/20

Bloody 'ell that was fast! All this talk about big games being unmanageable, sir, yet I reckon at your pace you could finish BotW in a month. (Not 100%, but all Divine Beasts and that.)

Much like the original SWD, I couldn't stop playing. Jo stayed over at her parents' last night, so I literally played it until I beat it. The chances of me playing BotW in a fulfilling way and beating it in a month are slight at best. But I will try.

HALO REACH



In the last couple of weeks before he went to Uni, my brother played through my whole collection of Halo games, sometimes with me and sometimes alone, even watching all the films and that. Finally, on our last day living together, we sat and played through Halo Reach, the only one I'd not played.

It looked great, it had excellent shooty action. I missed the Chief, and it suffered from the usual problems that plague prequels, but the melancholic tone was well done and man, Rogue One really did rip this game off.

My favourite moment was in the level where we flew from building to building in a helicopter and had to go into a nightclub called Club Erera. We were straight on the puns - I think the Covenant have made a serious errera, is this game set in 2500, I want to know the Errera, I'm gonna keep making these jokes for ever and everra - and they've just gotten worse and worse and more contrived since. We had dinner at the Carvererary, he's gone to Universereraty, and so on. Good times.

Ohh Reach the last great Halo game

BotW is only 25 hrs long

masofdas wrote:

Ohh Reach the last great Halo game

The last one that's great, probably, but I still enjoyed the hell out of 4 & 5 for what they were.

Metroid: Samus Re-returns: The returning

This is what we call a banger & right up there with the best 3ds games, once I clear some more of my current backlog of games I will return to do fusion mode & maybe even attempt some *speed runs.    

End game spoilers:

*Not guaranteed to be that speedy

So happy that you've loved it, Jas. Roll on The Metroid Prime Four!