Last Game You Finished And Your Thoughts V3.0

I have started Go Vacation and I'm unironically loving it

The snow park lets me free roam ski and snowboard around so I am entertained forever

I was quite harsh on it, and I blame having the flu on that. I've played Go Vacation every day since I stuck that review up, and I'm enjoying it a lot more. Pissing about on the Marine, Mountain, Snow and City Resorts is great fun.

It's pitched as a multiplayer mini-game collection, but it's actually a singelplayer free-roam exploration game. The number of secrets they packed in is wonderful - I'm really enjoying riding around looking for animals to photograph, secret areas, treasure chests and balloons. I've just unlocked the house building too which I am a sucker for!

gjones wrote:

Tekken 7

Tekken 7 is free this weekend on Xbox One. I've got two thoughts from this, first on Tekken 7 it does have a story mode which is maybe 2hrs long and outside of that the single player content is lacking.

I remember playing Tekken and beating arcade mode with each fighter which was about 8-10 fights and you'd get a movie at the end and you would unlock new fighters but in Tekken 7 the arcade mode is 5 fights which 2 of them are boss fights also you unlock nothing from this part from getting your offline rank up.

It also has no time attack or survival modes etc, nothing like that part from a Treasure Mode which basically is an online mode but offline as you play made up AI names which use customized fighters and have ranks like you would find online. Why it's called Treasure Mode is because you get a Treasure Chest after a fight which has gear into custom your favourite character (My Askua has a Bullet Club shirt).

The only other thing is if you did like the old Tekken movies after beating arcade mode, after you beat Story Mode you can play some special chapters for each of the characters in the game, however, these are only 1 fight each.

I've played Tekken 7 overall for 9hrs and unlocked all bar 5 achievements and done basically everything that there is to do offline and really I could have been done way before that, just I wanted the 90g for getting 50 Treasure Chests that the main thing like a lot of fighters is multiplayer and if you do have friends that have it or you think you're going to play a lot of ranked online then it plays very well, even if it doesn't look that great.

Compared to Virtua Fighter 5 which that gJones quote comes from Tekken 7 is leaps and bounds ahead of it but it's a game from 2017 and just doesn't compare to what you get from an Injustice.

My other thought isn't on the game but the free weekend it's cool to have and be able to get 800+ gamerscore but as I've got that much gamerscore, rinsed the single player, I can't see me buying the game as to why do I need to? That from a business standpoint the likes of Destiny makes so much sense as you're unlikely to beat in a weekend and is a continues game, this has even worked on me and I know some of you on Overwatch.

masofdas wrote:

I remember playing Tekken and beating arcade mode with each fighter which was about 8-10 fights and you'd get a movie at the end and you would unlock new fighters but in Tekken 7 the arcade mode is 5 fights which 2 of them are boss fights also you unlock nothing from this part from getting your offline rank up.

I think that's more a problem with modern fighters in general though. Everybody wants everything unlocked from the start, so it's rare to see a fighting game with unlockable fighters or stages, or even modes for that matter of fact. It's why I'm glad that SSBU seems to be going back to the older days and having a very limited starting roster as there's a real thrill in having new things unlock.

If it had a more robust story mode like an Injustice, you can get away with other modes not being there but that's not the case here.

Edit
I went and bought and watched #WarGames from Sam Barlow who was behind Her Story, let's just say it's not great but my full review is here.

82% completion, apparently, at just under 27h.

I'm not a fan of grim games on the whole.  Hollow Knight is astonishing grim, both in aesthetic and in subject matter (a dying ruined civilisation); but gets around it by making everybody cute bugs.  You can't be sad at cute bugs!  They're cute!

HK was described by our own O_R as the epitome of a Metroidvania, and I think that's about right.  It perfects a good few aspects of the genre.  It nails the controls (pun very much intended), making jumping accurate and combat mostly fun.  Your nail feels like it has a good amount of punch to it.  It gets the reward structure about right, with charms and NPCs providing incentive to veer off into literally uncharted territory.  The exploration is mostly good, with each area being different from the next.  It has a fun variety of enemies and bosses, a fair few of which are darn tough.  It's challenging, but never unfairly so.

The story takes a backseat mostly, unless you're one of those 'lore fiends', but it's decently told where it exists.  You'll want to find out what happened to Hallownest, and you'll get at least some idea.  The art style's nice, and the music's lovely.  It needs more extended soundtracks on YouTube, but I'll probably still try and do a music week thing.

Flaws!  It has some.  1) I found myself having to resort to walkthroughs to find some of the more obscure discoveries: because of the way the map only fills in once you've found the room in many places, areas that are blocked off behind breakable walls are all but impossible to find otherwise.  That feels cheap.  2) So too do the bosses where the nearest bench/save point is several rooms/enemies away.  3) Finally, it still is quite grim, both in aesthetics and subject matter.  The ending is likewise.  Colour palettes are often quite muted apart from splotches of orange blood. (Yes I realise that picture above has a flash of purple light, shush.)

Still.  It's good.  It's very good.  I might even try the really hard post-ending content, it's that good.

Balladeer wrote:

Flaws!  It has some.  1) I found myself having to resort to walkthroughs to find some of the more obscure discoveries: because of the way the map only fills in once you've found the room in many places, areas that are blocked off behind breakable walls are all but impossible to find otherwise.  That feels cheap.  2) So too do the bosses where the nearest bench/save point is several rooms/enemies away.  3) Finally, it still is quite grim, both in aesthetics and subject matter.  The ending is likewise.  Colour palettes are often quite muted apart from splotches of orange blood.

This paragraph confirms to me that you're going to fucking hate Dark Souls.

I think the part about secret walls feeling cheap is a bit unfair - if you're using a walkthrough then you've lost that feeling of discovery. Imagine finding the entrance to The Hive or Kingdom's Edge organically by noticing the cracks in the wall or some light shining through? It'd only enhance the wonder of exploration in Hollow Knight. It pays to pay attention to the surroundings.

Your point about the ending is a tricky one to delve into without getting into spoilery territory, but all I'll say is that you're not done yet...

Ending:

I figured about DS. I guessed about the muted palettes: does it have the same problem with its bonfires?

I've got no desire to go around peering at every bloody wall in the vicinity for cracks of light. I couldn't even see the cracks of light, I'll be honest. I can only imagine what that felt like, because exploration turned to frustration long before I looked up the entrance to The Hive. Of course it's [REDACTED], how silly of me not to notice it there!

The ones you have to ground-pound through I don't mind so much, because you get the audio cue when you walk over them (which you'll most likely do). The ones in the walls, though, are bad and they should feel bad.

Spoiler:

Yeah, some of the bonfires in DS1 are spaced pretty far apart. I'd actually say Hollow Knight is kinder in that aspect.

I mean I’ll probably still try it...

The Hive is hidden but the game gives you good hints. There is a grub marked in the hive on the map, so you know there is an area there - there is then an easy to find area at the top of the hive that you can see more of the hive-proper from, but can't reach. Then its just a matter of exploring that corner looking for the entrance, because you know it must be there somewhere. The existence of the bee enemies outside of the hive help to assure you're in the right area.

There are some hidden parts you basically need a guide for, although I don't think the hive is one of them. The path of pain on the other hand... I haven't even done it because I didn't know anything about it until I'd finished the game already.

With the Hollow Knight bench treks, I think there are benches practically next to almost every boss. There are a few that have benches you can miss, so you end up trekking further than you need to from a more distant bench.

I actually saw both of those, so I knew the entrance was around somewhere!

As for the bench, the march through to the ground pound-giving boss is, I maintain, still a pain in the proverbial. To be fair it's the main annoying one, but the... eh... the one where you fight three of them earlier on, and then fight the fourth? Anyway, that had a spiky bit to get through every time I'd rather not have to experience. And Essence is too precious to waste!

Beyond: Two Souls Press X to Self-Harm is the most facile, voyeuristic, phlegm ever slapped onto a blu-ray. Birds literally fly upside-down over it because it's not worth shitting on. If you ever see a copy, consider yourself morally obligated to throw it down the gullet of the nearest active volcano, which is coincidentally where I'm off to.

0/10

Not a fan then

I'm surprised you played it after Heavy Rain and not being keen on that. I remember when I played Beyond likes of Andy who didn't mind Heavy Rain told me to avoid Beyond and most would say it's the worst game of Mr Cage's as someone who's played them, I would say it is but I've not played Nomad Soul for years & it may have aged horribly.

I still enjoyed my time with it though.

Dragon Quest Builders

Finally seen the end credits to this after having it on the go for a few months and boy was it well worth the time. To my knowledge the only other GNamer to pick it up was Zero and this needs to change because I had a lot of fun with this. On the surface it's basically Minecraft with a Dragon Quest skin but that wouldn't really do it justice, there's just so much character to this.

You start out with a bog standard voice telling you it's your destiny to save the world, really cliche stuff but once you move on to the main formula of the game and start meeting new characters it quickly gets fun and addictive. You're tasked with rebuilding a town to it's formula glory whilst simultaneously keeping enemies at bay and trying to rid the world of these big monsters. From here on out your ever increasing cast of fellow townsfolk will give you various missions, build this, find this, defeat this monster and with each task you find your town starting to take shape to the point that you slowly shift focus from getting through the missions to spend half an hour creating the perfect kitchen, which will later get destroyed by a monster attack...

The best part of this might sound silly but about 10 hours in you'll face the boss that's been troubling your town and when defeated you're then given the chance to move on to a new area where you start the whole process again. The timing is good enough that it starts to feel fresh again with new items and enemies introduced and you find yourself once again knuckling down and striving to save the locals and their world.

Outside of playing through the story there's a free build mode if you just want to play a nice looking Minecraft, a battle arena mode if you fancy just taking on some enemies and end of chapter stats with special missions to complete if you want to go back and play through a chapter again so there's replayability there. It's hard to explain quite why I enjoyed this so much, everything is just so well put together and hits all the right notes, a solid recommendation from me.

(A very high) 9 out of 10

Glad you enjoyed it Smurf! Me, I just... don't like creative games much. Sorry. It does seem more linear and objective-based than yer Minecrafts and the like, but it still isn't for me, I don't think.

Muss wrote:

Beyond: Two Souls Press X to Self-Harm

So what did you think of it then? Did you like it?

Your round up of Builders is giving me Dark Cloud vibes in that you build up each area before moving to the next. I might just give DQB a look based off that as I really dig that whole concept.

Balladeer wrote:

Muss wrote:

Beyond: Two Souls Press X to Self-Harm

So what did you think of it then?  Did you like it?

Genuinely the worst game I've ever played. Frenchy Bird is a masterpiece in comparison.

On a happier note, I'd like to pick up Dragon Quest Builders now. I was interested before, but I'm even more interested thanks to Smurf.

Aye, I played the demo of DQB a while back on ps4 and quite liked it......not sure why I didn't pick it up in the end though.

If it helps it never seems to rise above £30 in shops, it's easy to pick up and play after a long break and another game that just feels perfect for the Switch.

That does sound like a good Switch recipe, and it's also for that reason that I think my girlfriend would also enjoy playing this too: something you can do in bursts, in longer sessions, or after a long lay-off.

Speaking of playing games with a partner:



I'm bewildered this got a physical release, even more so than I am it's price (£7.72 on amazon). This feels like it should just be a free app because there hasn't been an awful lot of effort going into this. It's a multiple-choice 2-6 player quiz game and instead of using a controller players use their phones just like the Jackbox Party Pack games... except they also have to download a bloated app that lets you take a silly picture of yourself. Each round players get to a choice of three power-ups to mess with an opponent. There are only 4 different ones, but players further behind may get the option to select a double power-up which, predictably, gives two active effects simultaneously. There are also 2 bonus rounds that the game explains to you the exact same way every single time you play.

Despite being a colourful game, KiP ends up a dreary affair. Each round players get to vote for 1 of 4 categories, or "categories" because they're really all variations on the same theme. For example one round we could pick from: North American People, American Dress, American Entertainment, or North American Culture. The game then spent the next three or four questions going on about various American centric questions before it got bored and moved onto music for a few rounds. I'd rather they just gut the voting completely and force a question if the choices are so vacuous, or, you know, they could give you actual categories to vote from like every quiz show ever.

I'm not really sure what the target audience is either. You'd think it's a game to play with kids since some of the questions and answers are almost insultingly simple. But then it asks you about Opera or something. It also penalises players who answer slower, so I'm not really sure it'd make a good game to crack out with younger ones. There are no difficulty settings, no way of setting it to ask from particular categories only from the start, or even any settings at all, which makes the whole thing uneven.

Ultimately KiP is fine for what it is right now, a free game with PS+ which you could enjoy a round or two with a partner, and probably enjoy much more with a group of people. But there are lots of electronic quiz or party games that are actually really good, and plenty of non-electronic games that are also really good. So there's not much reason to go for this unless you've nothing else to hand.

But if you own a playstation you either definitely do or you might want to see a doctor.

3/10

Games that use mobile phones seem to be the in thing at the minute so the assumption was likely it should be popular with the Jackbox crowd, Sony themselves really seems to be pushing it so there's bound to be a few quick cash ins.

Sent from Topic'it App

Hidden Agenda is a playlink (phone) game that I really liked and Erica (not sure what's happened to it) I like the look of, both seem to use it in a decent way.

I played DQ Builders back on Vita and yes it is a brilliant game