Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

And, like all superweapons, it eventually backfired on its wielder.

The main thing SS taught me is that a lot of stuff I thought I didn't like in Pokémon (bar random battles, very glad they're gone) is actually useful pacing. That includes caves and dungeons and them, but it also includes substantial and well-designed routes. SS had a couple of those, but not enough in hindsight.

Not a lot to say about SEGA AGES Space Harrier to be honest. A classic arcade game that's perfectly ported, but that's all it is. Apart from a couple of options for newcomers, they've not added anything new, really. It's another disappointing SEGA AGES Switch update; get it on 3DS with the stereoscopic 3D goodness. 6/10.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin (PSP)

I really liked this game. It's kind of hard to pinpoint why because I just enjoyed the whole experience. All the different parts of it mesh so well together and at times the gameplay is woven very nicely into the narrative. I also couldn't help but compare it very favourably to the later Persona games - but I want to make it clear that I still do like those ones and they are rather different to this one anyway. I may like this game more, but the other ones scratch a bit of a different itch - the comparisons I'm about to make aren't necessarily complaints about them.

First of all, there's something really appealing about the setting. There are a lot of different locations in the game, and most of them are not mandatory or hold much significance. Shops, healing spots, cafes. Each of them with their own set of NPCs, some of them being very unique, as well as your party members dotted around. And they all have something unique to say in relation to the environment and what point you are in the story.

I also like how being a Persona-user isn't some big secret like it is in later games, I suppose because the game's a direct continuation of the first one. And characters of the first game are casually just hanging around with an aged new look. I don't know, I guess I just found that to be refreshing.

And the dungeons are just actual buildings as opposed to some metaphysical world, which lends them a nice bit of variety in terms of their interior look. I like Persona 3 a lot but most of the dungeon in that is bland. Persona 4 is only a bit better - different designed walls but the structures are still strictly 1-block width corridors with the occasional bigger square rooms. Then obviously Persona 5 is a bit different with totally unique locations and I had a different issue with them - they felt too guided with frequent interruptions from the party. Mind you, I think the approach each game took has its merits.

To point out some of the issues with the dungeons in this game, later on they like to lay imperceptible traps on random tiles. You can avoid a lot of them by hugging the walls but some just seem unavoidable or go down paths that lead to empty chests. They'd feel like dick moves but the game is fairly easy so it feels like more of a clumsy attempt at balance.

Yeah, to my surprise the game was pretty easy and I didn't end up seeing a game over screen once, though one time I was very close to it, and at some points I did have to choose moves carefully to avoid it. Ideally encounters would be harder and not that frequent, but this game chose them to be very frequent and easy. Admittedly you can leave it on auto-battle a lot of the time, but the animations are cool and there fun things you can do like set up combo moves and negotiate with the demons. It's somewhat similar to how it would work in Persona 5 but with the neat addition of being able to get several party members involved in it at once for some interesting results.

In terms of characters, I can't quite say Innocent Sin is definitively better than the other games. Even taking out the social link stuff, I feel like there is more focus on them and an attempt at depth in the other games - and since those games are much longer there is just more time for it. But will say I did really like the characters here and that the quality of the characterisation is way more consistent. Not bogged down by anime tropeyness.

Then there's the length of the game. Obviously a lot of people like or even laud the length of the later games, but honestly for me it feels like the games outstay their welcome a bit and I wish the story wrapped up a bit sooner. Conceptually I like the length because it helps convey the feel of time passing as the games steadily progress through an academic year, but they feel a bit padded out.

I will say though that this game does not wrap up nearly as well as the others. I have kind of mixed feelings about the ending. I like that it's a bit different but, to put it ambiguously to avoid spoilers, it doesn't exactly provide the best closure. I know the game is 'part 1' of a duology but I don't think that's a good excuse. Still, it's okay, and the story still feels like a mostly complete experience.

A lot of the positive stuff I have to say about the game does apply to Persona 1 - which I gave up on maybe a third of the way through - but I think it improves on the game in most respects

Does P2 still incorporate the calendar system that the later games in the series use? I've always been interested in trying out P1 and P2 at some point because as much as I love the later entries, they all use the same formula in a way - social links, calendar, even stuff like Persona fusion. I'd like to play something within the Persona universe that feels quite different, and no, I don't mean Dancing All Night...

Nope, it was introduced in P3. P2 progresses more like a traditional RPG. Maybe goes without saying but I don't exactly recommend Persona 1. I would check out the Persona 2s first and then try the first game if you're still curious. I feel like maybe going back to it myself at some point but the mechanics are messy and kind of bad in that game.

The dancing games are great Jay but may also like the two fighting games

I would like to play Persona, Persona 2: IS but they do cost a few quid physical on the PSP and yes I know I can get them digital along with Eternal Punishment just it's not quite the same as I know I can always just download don't see the rush.

I do have a PS1 Mini which has Revelations: Persona on it but I would think that has aged a lot in its original form over the remake on PSP.

Anyway


Emotional walking sim which has an easy plat and on VITA


Oldschool point and click adventure style game like a Myst not a Day of the Tentacle, again easy plat and on VITA but unlike Drowning this one of the first games out this year for the VITA.

Which did get me thinking, especially when I saw the 3DS got a new exclusive survival horror game on the eShop why that hasn't had some more games release on it as still has to be a few people using one.  The price however of the recent survival horror put me off as it's £20.

Then I guess if hardly anyone buying games on 3DS, got to charge that sort of price to make any money.


Finally went back to this in the collection on PS4. It looks great for a PS3 game at a higher resolution without a Pro patch along with of course playing fantastically.

I finished another game!

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order



Honestly, the early footage of this game did not have feeling optimistic about it. It looked like it was trying to emulate Souls and the Uncharted series and didn't look it was particularly excelling at either of them. In some ways, that still rings true even after finishing the game, but I still enjoyed my time with Cal Kestis and BD-1.

Let's get the rough stuff out of the way first. From a technical standpoint, this game is a bit of a mess. I experienced frequent texture pop-in, some rough stuttering and many, many occasions of janky animations. I had an enemy linked to a trophy refuse to spawn. I had enemies get caught on scenery which trivialised certain battles. I even ended up out of bounds at one point. Whilst some of these moments were amusing and harmless, a lot of them were frustrating and in some circumstances hampered my progress.

I also didn't get on with the combat. I couldn't help but compare it to Sekiro, which I think is a fair comparison considering Fallen Order shares a stamina system and an emphasis on parrying melee attacks to gain the upper hand in battles. It didn't have the same sense of satisfaction that Sekiro had, though. For example, if you land a direct blow in Sekiro, most enemies will be stunned and will riposte your next blow to signify that you need to back off. In Fallen Order, you'd break an enemy's guard and they'd just shrug off the resulting direct attack, damaging you instead. That didn't feel satisfying and led to most battles with challenging enemies feeling like a chore. Annoyingly, Cal would often fall over after taking a blow which left no time to heal up as there'd be a long animation of him clambering to his feet and the enemy would be on the attack again before you could heal up.

Traversing each level became a bit boring as the game went on, too. There was initially a real thrill in wall running to the next platform, sliding down an icy slope and avoiding rocks on the way down or swinging from vine to vine to progress, but by the game's end, you'll have slid down so many slopes and swung on so many vines that you'll be feeling a bit fatigued by all. I wish there was a bit more variety in the levels - most of the game was a bit linear. There was a big tomb environment with a central puzzle that you returned to and passed through on your way to solving it that was a real treat and I wish there was more of that in the game.

Still, despite all of my gripes, there were some really fun setpieces. Being chased by a TIE Fighter as you made your way through the branches of a towering tree on Kashyyyk was a blast and the game isn't shy about giving you plenty of moments like this. There's moments where you'll be mowing down squadrons of Stormtroopers and that's where the combat really shines. Against weaker grunts, the weaknesses of the combat system aren't as obvious and it's just fun being a Jedi, you know?

The story is really strong too. I really liked the characters in the game and the story wasn't afraid to just go off and do its own thing. Other Star Wars stories I've played have been too nervous to shy away from the main story beats, such as Starkiller being Darth Vader's secret apprentice in The Force Unleashed. This is mostly a quieter affair and deals with its own set of characters beyond one or two cameo appearances. I found myself invested in Cal's story and because it shied away for the most part from the big names in Star Wars, I didn't know how his journey was going to end and that was exciting.

I have to speak about the game's ending, so major spoilers ahead and honestly, if you ever have any intention of playing this, do NOT read the box below because it'll ruin what was arguably the best bit of the game in my eyes:

Heavy Fallen Order Ending Spoilers:

I think there's a lot to like here - I've not even really touched on the Metroidvania elements, which made the post game collectable hunt to be most entertaining. But, the hit or miss combat and the massive levels of jank let the game down in my book. If you can forgive the jank and if you play on a lower difficulty setting so the flaws in the combat system aren't apparent, this is probably an 8/10. But, based on my playthrough... 7.

I've also finished another game, not one I was really planning to but on Xbox nearly every weekend they do a free weekend and it's normally Halo MCC or Overwatch basically something multiplayer.

Well this weekend was Wreckfest and



Zombieland is a £34 game on XBL and has a retail release (it's 3hrs long as well), I know I just played some worse games such as Drowning but that was £4 in comparison this is way worse.

The positives I guess are that it's a top-down like that recent Contra Rogue Corps if you want that style of game then this might be better and the other positive is nice to see a movie licensed game which just isn't on mobile.

Then again we got a Jumanji and Terminator games last year as well which both look way better, also doubt those are 3hrs long.

I've actually heard promising things about that terminator one, need to take a proper look.

I've got hee-haw to say about Star Wars, sorry.

~



After giving it pelters in another thread, I grew to like Super Crush KO. Think Graceful Explosion Machine meets the combat of Viewtiful Joe and the gunplay of Bayonetta, that’s what Super Crush KO essentially is. Granted, it’s not as good as any of those - in fact, it lacking in innovation, levels, challenge and particularly in variety. However, it’s appealingly put together, proving to be quite distinctive and actually fairly addictive. It runs very smoothly and flows quite well, and I think it’s got a lot of potential as a high-score attack sort of game. It could be worth checking out, if you moderate your expectations more than I did. I expected it to be at least an 8, but 7/10 still isn't bad at all.

Jim Sterling had a good little preview thing of Terminator recently.

Super Crush KO is one I'll keep on my radar as sounds interesting enough.


Kentucky Route Zero is something I've had my eye on for a good while, now I'm not sure when I did hear about it as I'm sure a few acts were out but also they were years apart.

That I was always planning to play it in one go and now Act V is done, 7 years after the first, with the complete game also made it to console which is my preferred place to play, I may have played on PC if I really had to.

Now I'm not sure if it was good or not though, I played the main game and all the side stories yesterday in one sitting of about 9hrs. Which is a good sign that as I wanted to know what happened to these characters but it was also really boring reading all that text.

Yes, this is a text adventure as I can't remember puzzles like you would get in a Lucasarts game and KRZ has no voice acting or anything which makes it feel to me really different to a Telltale game, if you tried to compare to either of those.

I'm not sure beyond Muss who'd I'd recommend it to on here maybe Drunka and Jay (If you like weird stuff such as Oxenfree, Her Story, Doki Doki Literature Club, Disco Elysium) as it's such an odd game which is rather American in sort of folklore sort of way, especially with the music.

I would say though Act III is the best and had a WOW moment

DKC Returns. Got to it after finishing the SNES trilogy and wow, what a game. So masterfully made with some amazing spectacle. Tough too - especially since I didn't realise until near the end that you can buy an extra heart slot. Though to be honest I'm kind of glad I overlooked it and it wouldn't have helped in a lot of segments anyway.

For whatever reason when I first played it a couple of years ago I didn't really take to it. I guess maybe playing it after the original DKC games made me appreciate more. It is a very different game but some key elements are brought over and there is a lot of fan service in the visuals and a soundtrack that is largely (very solid) remixes of DKC1 tracks.

As for which version I played, I got close to the end on the Wii version, then decided to start playing the 3DS version while I was away from home. Was pretty put off by the frame rate at first - it's like 20-30fps compared to a rock solid 60 on Wii - but I got used to it and is pretty much the same game but with more levels, and I did want to check out those new levels anyway.

Eager to try out Tropical Freeze now but also other platformers I haven't gotten around to yet like some of the Raymans and Impossible Lair later on.

TF is better IMO, so do give it a go.  How did you find ol' Kong to control?  I always found his weighty movement to be the worst part of playing the recent Kong games.  On another topic, The Lady's interested in KR0, so we might play that together.

On yet another topic, following this post I finished the Hat in Time DLC!  Or, well, I only played the 'Seal' part of Seal the Deal because I'm not a masochist: it's really charming ('Egg' ), but is a bit short on its own and a couple of the new Time Pieces (one a Rift) are a bit annoying.  Nyakuza Metro is probably marginally better, with its explorathon nature, solid ambience, and some vaguely new mechanics.  Sadly the writing took a bit of a hit in this one, and the final 'battle' was a bit anti-climactic.  7/10s for both of them, but one of them will suit you better than the other.

While it was lovely to have more Hat in Time to play, I'm now done with that and will be very happy to get on with some other games!  I'd take more DLC though...

I kind of liked the weightyness, suits the character and makes it feel distinct from other platformers. And you can go so far and fast straight away from rolling and then jumping. Its great.

Gylt is the first game I've finished on Stadia, mainly as Destiny 2 even though it has a story mode, I imported my character over which I had already done the base campaign.

With the other games sort of being similar or I'm not that bothered about playing such as Tomb Raider as I've played before, where Gylt is a brand new single player game exclusive (It might be timed) to Stadia from Tequila Works.

The reason, why I'm only talking about it now, is because it was £30 that I do get due to it being an exclusive on a platform with such a small install base. Now this month however it was one of the two "free" Pro games, meaning I was definitely playing it now.

Basically it's a darker Luigi's Mansion or a lighter Alan Wake over a 6hr or so story and it's decent, it's also made me use my Stadia and mess around with other games on it.

It's not quite the killer app of a Halo or BotW, yet it is better than a lot of launch games, just if it comes to PS4, Switch etc if it is just timed I hope it's around £19.99.

That looks pretty cute, but - you've not told us much about the game!

Kriken wrote:

I kind of liked the weightyness, suits the character and makes it feel distinct from other platformers. And you can go so far and fast straight away from rolling and then jumping. Its great.

Glad it works for you! I just remember putting it up against RLegends which came out at the same time and felt great to control.

Like I said a lot like Luigi's Mansion or Alan Wake, instead of a mansion it's a school, which you fight monsters with a flashlight and solve simple puzzles.


I picked up MK11 up in a Stadia sale with all the DLC, so played as Joker and will go back to it when Spawn arrives. But for now, I've done the story mode, a bunch of towers etc and it;'s a top tier fighting game as I've got a lot of hours out of it from playing single player.

MK11 is the business. I really enjoyed it, but I wish I could have spent more time playing it online against folks. Do you know if it has cross-play?

It doesn't which is a shame as I can find kasual games but not group or king of the hill or anything like that.

MK11 is a big reason I got back into trying 1 on 1 fighting games again, oddly though I'm not into fighting randoms online as much as you just don't get that same feeling as you would in a local match not to mention if you aren't putting in the time you'll likely end up facing against a person that does and matches like those are never fun.

I played a few ranked matches to get the trophy for it - got the plat for MK11, you see - and that was alright, but I find I have the most fun just playing with mates on fighting games online.

No prizes for guessing what made me go back for a playthrough of 3D Gunstar Heroes on the 3DS. It's an updated version of the Mega Drive original, with first-rate stereoscopic 3D and modes where you swap weapons whenever you like and start with more health. Any way you play it, Gunstar Heroes is an absolute goddamn classic. 9/10.

Aren't all fighting games 1 on 1 part from SMASH as you don't really have more than one fighter on screen of your team even in Marvel v Capcom.

Anyway going off topic there but do you have Street Fighter V, as me and Jay were on about getting back into that?

Ohh I am number 1 in THE WORLD for achievements for Mortal Kombat 11 on Stadia.

masofdas wrote:

Aren't all fighting games 1 on 1 part from SMASH as you don't really have more than one fighter on screen of your team even in Marvel v Capcom.

ARMS has three and four player modes.

Quote :

Ohh I am number 1 in THE WORLD for achievements for Mortal Kombat 11 on Stadia.

Noice!

I forgot about ARMS just like Nintendo

I'm also 13th overall for achievements for Stadia in the world and wouldn't be hard to catch up the number 1, who's only really number 1 because they've played Assassin's Creed, Metro Exodus and RAGE 2 basically if Stadia had more games I want to play then I could become Number 1.