Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

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.

One of my great sadnesses in life is that I didn't play GSH until the Wii Virtual Console, meaning that Gunstar Super Heroes was already almost impossible to find. A shame. Anyway, this is a very good title.

Last night I finished what would be considered the story mode of dreams which has trophies etc but isn't its own menu or anything, nope it's just mixed in with the dreams you or I could have made.

That's the point really as everything in the story about Art, I could have made. Even if I wasn't looking at it like this a cool thing someone made, it's still a decent little campaign at around 3hrs that reminds me a bit of Sayonara Wild Hearts because even though everything has an overarching theme, it's that each level is a tad different to keep it all interesting.

Of course, this isn't the meat and potatoes of dreams that it also feels like Mortal Kombat 11 as even though that's got a story mode it isn't really what you're buying it for.

Same can be said for dreams you're buying because you either want to make cool things or to play cool things people have made, which is why I sort wish I'd bought it as a download or it was some sort of f2p app as I can see it being something you pop on now and again play an odd level then go play something else. Much how I'll watch something on YouTube then play a game.

Where having on disc and sure it's only a minute at the most makes it less pick up and play.

I've heard very good things about Dreams.  Not my sort of game, which eases the pain of it being unavailable to me.




As a history piece this game is more interesting than most to me.  I've played Link to the Past and I've played Ocarina of Time, and this feels a lot like a 'missing link' (stop it).  It's transparently from similar minds to LttP, in dungeon and overworld design; but the DNA of OoT is visible in the increased characterisation and the dungeon structure (get item halfway through, use to progress, defeat boss with).  That does mean that, as a game looked at in the light of today, and to someone who loved OoT but only tolerated LttP because he was young and had a guide, it fits in between the two quality-wise.

I'm not quite as damning about the game's structure as Cappa, but the dungeons are really hit-and-miss.  The last four take this almost literally (miss-hit-miss-hit), and it's not like the hits are great: they're bearable, but weaker than almost all the dungeons in following Zelda games.  The bosses are on the mediocre side as well, especially once you've unlocked the Colour Dungeon and picked the Red Mail: they fall apart quicker than Boris Johnson's statements under scrutiny.  In fact, that last half of the game is decidedly weaker than the first: there's minimal character interaction, weak dungeons, limited challenge, and the new parts of the overworld you explore are a bit dull.  Add the game's love of putting up one-way trips and making you backtrack a lot if you've made a mistake in taking them, and the actual gameplay side of things is... well, hit-and-miss.

The game saves itself on its aesthetics and, in its first half, the characters.  The parody nature of the Nintendo expies is nice, but it's people like Marin (who is an utter sweetie) and the ghost and the animals who make that first half so much better than the second.  Mostly Marin though.  They're helped in this regard by the lovely animation on the toy-like bodies.  I don't need to tell you how gorgeous this game is, right?  It might be the second-best-looking game on the machine after BotW, frame rate stutters notwithstanding, and that lends a real sense of atmosphere to Koholint that it wouldn't otherwise have.  There's also the anime-ish cut-scene at the beginning.  In addition, the animation did a lot to make me go a bit dewy-eyed at the ending, even though I knew exactly what was coming.

It's the aesthetics lifting the game from mediocrity to merely being mediocre for the series that make me strongly believe that I'd have resented this game if I'd tried to play it on the Game Boy.  It's the game being mediocre for the series despite the aesthetics that has made me think I don't want any more remasters from that era.

No thoughts on the music Balla? As a big videogame music fan I thought you would, LA is very notable for it. Tal Tal Heights is possibly the best theme in the series.

Hm, interesting. I don't actually remember much one way or the other. That is to say, I remember the general overworld theme, the general caves theme, the general house theme, and the general boss theme; and none of them made much of an impact on me one way or the other. Nothing else sunk in, apart from Ballad of the Wind Fish which is obviously beautiful, and Animal Village which I didn't think was as good as everyone said it was going to be.

Now that I'm listening to it, Tal Tal's pretty good. I don't think it helped that at that point in the game I was just trying to press through to the end. The Face Shrine was noticeable, too: oddly creepy.

Oh and of course the credits made me do a sniffle.

The problem with hearing the Tal Tal Heights theme in game is that because the area is so disjointed with caves, it's quite easy to not really listen to it through. Not sure your opinion on chiptune but the original is a complete jam (the remake loses a little bit of its urgency): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOo5yr76RJs

He makes it two in a row!




I have a dilemma when it comes to scoring games, which is thus.  Do I try and score a game based on how much I liked it, or how good I think it is?  It's a pertinent question for CQ2 because it's a singularly unambitious feeling game.  The mini-dungeons are decently enough designed and there's the odd effective pun, but the plot, aesthetics, writing, and combat strive no higher than 'pleasant'.  Based on this it feels like a 6/10 game through and through, with no real element trying to exceed that score.

HOWEVER.  I played it in co-op with The Lady and enjoyed it more than a lot of 'objectively' better games.  I played the ranged mage, The Lady played the fighter, and we had a good time.  She wandered blindly into the fray and I berated her for wandering blindly into the fray and then she wandered yet more blindly into a cactus just to show me.  We couldn't see what was actually going on a lot of the time, what with the chunky art and flying magical attacks, but we had a good laugh.   Isn't that what gaming's about, in the end?  

I think the real reason I'm dragging it down to the lower score is because it has a single-player mode, which is the default option, and you might be tempted to buy it for that.  Don't.  Your brain will atrophy.  It's good fun in co-op. though: it's the anti-Tropical Freeze.  But not as good.

Decided to go back to this today after not playing since about my birthday, and I finished almost right away today sort of by accident because I managed to find enough fuel to leave and go back to earth.

Which is sort of the main goal as you've crashed but whilst playing the story does become the focus. I can go back and so that if I wish, just I posted in the backlog thread that I've got a lot I want to play over this.

I would still recommend it as it cheap and fun enough as borderlands x metroidvania x no man's sky thing but maybe when you've got nothing else to play.

Just finished the Story Mode in Luigi's Mansion 3. Everybody else has completed this and reviewed it already with their own thoughts. Personally, I think this is the best in the series, by miles. It's one of the most inventive and imaginative games I've played yet on Switch, and certainly the most polished and visually-impressive. That said, I thought there were a few floors that were much weaker than most, and I really didn't enjoy the Polterkitty bits either. I'd have liked a bit more diversity in the ghost fighting too...and more ghosts to fight. However, I still massively enjoyed this. 8/10.

That is pretty much exactly what I think, apart from that you're being a bit harsh on poor old 2.

Anti-tropical freeze

Maybe I should play the cat quests

I finished the bizarre "The Last Federation" a few days ago. It's a game that's been out for several years now, but one which I'd never got around to playing until recently.

It's a genre buster. A turn-based, bullet hell, grand strategy diplomacy game. You play as the last Hydra in the galaxy, descendent of a despotic race that enslaved the other races until they rebelled. Your goal is to unite the galaxy by any means necessary, so that the crimes of the Hydra are not repeated.

Unfortunately, this is perhaps a lot more interesting than it sounds. You'll spend most of the game looking at most people's least favourite transformer: spreadsheets in disguise. Being a Crusader King's fan boy, I've spent ages playing spreadsheets in disguise, they can legitimately be super fun but the knack is in integrating the numbers into a world you care about. There's more than meets the eye in game's like CK2, with it's political intrigue and plethora of role playing shenanigans. The Last Federation doesn't have any of that. It's dry numbers all the way down, with nary a numberwang to be found.

That's not to say that there isn't an interesting puzzle to solve. Each playthrough different because of the different starting permutations and random events. The warlike races may steam roll the galaxy on one run, whereas the peaceful ones might unite early in another. Each game randomly populates the game's races with different planets and different space age ascension timeframes, changing the relative power of each individual faction every time as well as influencing their agenda. And of course, you as the great influence can tinker with all of this as you play, in the hopes of making a grand alliance. (Or not, a galaxy with one empire left is a legitimate "win" condition). You can research new tech with the various races, construct buildings on planets, assist in boosting their armadas or economies, or influence conflict across the galaxy. Each playthrough is less a campaign, and more a sandbox.

The sandbox puzzle the game gives you is challenging too, since the different empires are so diverse - from socialist barn owls to knock off Klingons and hardcore capitalist robots, all of whom have distinct diplomatic options for the Hydra to engage with - you'll have an extremely tough time uniting everyone. But there's just not enough jazz to make me want to try more than a couple of times.

So where does the bullet hell come in? Well, in the combat basically. In many battles it's you, and your trusty flagship against a bunch of enemy ships, turrets, and a whole hell of a lot of lasers. You unlock abilities as you play through the game and rediscover old Hydra tech, being able to scramble your own little fighters or launch nuke-like attacks, in addition to your 3 standard weapons. There's a balancing act each turn between how much energy you put into weapons, shields and thrusters and there is a reasonable variety of enemies to boot. But before the end of the campaign you'll feel like you've seen it all.

Overall The Last Federation is a wacky experiment, and one that I did enjoy tinkering with, but it's one heck of a marmite game which is difficult to recommend. Perhaps it's greatest failure is that unlike Footie Manager, or CK2, I just don't feel like I have any particularly interesting 'war stories to tell.' It's a game where a lot of stuff happens, there's always another intergalactic notification to read, but after a while you won't read them.

A spreadsheet sim you say? SOLD

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Anti-tropical freeze

Maybe I should play the cat quests

Glad you picked up on that. Is your ladyfriend into The Games OR? CQ2 might be a good one to do with her. CQ1 is single-player only, and on this evidence I couldn't in good conscience recommend it.

Didn't realise the first game wasn't co-op. I'm assuming there is not need to play 1 before 2?

There is not. Unless there's some grand overarching plotline that I'm missing, this story seems pretty independent.

The votes are in, or at least the only vote that matters is for the purpose of this post: this is the best Picross game there is.

That mostly relies on you being a fan of the Ace Attorney series, but if you aren't that, reggiewhatswrongwithyou.gif.  It's lofty praise indeed to say that any visual novel matches the series at its best for witty writing, snarky humour, and bad puns, all with the ability to turn on the drama without seeming either whiplashy or trite; yet MbN is up there, if not quite the series' equal.  Not bad work for an indie game that's trying to work in Picross puzzles.  The characters are strong, the mysteries are enjoyable, the subject matter is darker and more timely in places than AA dare go, the gay character's not so cringeworthily awful...  Ace Attorney stole the perfect excuse for denouements with its trials and without lawyers MbN can't quite match it there, but on all other planes the writing is very strong indeed.

The Picross...  I'm an old hand, I know all the tricks.  Having to go through a tutorial at the start was eye-rolly enough, but a lot of the puzzles felt trivial, and like they were getting in the way of a good story.  That's my problem, not the game's, but it was always there.  It's there in the title, heck.  The best (most challenging) bit was the hacking minigame, which has been patched to be easier!  The puzzles do start to ramp up at the end.

The presentation is belting throughout.  The sprites are lovely and expressive, in a manner similar to AA's simple animations before it went 3D.  (SCOUT in the fourth case is a highlight.)  The music is absolutely top notch and 2020 will do well to beat it: not surprising given that they got the AA composer in, and it shows.  The Picross music (tremendous jaunty tunes that had me humming along) can kill the mood created by the case sometimes, but given the make-up of the game, that this is perhaps the only significant example of mood whiplash is to its credit.

There's a sequel hook at the end of the game.  I'm well up for that.

Finished all the single player modes in BurgerTime Party!, the latest modernisation of the BurgerTime arcade game that’s coming up for forty years old. The recipe (aye) here is mostly the same as it was in the ‘80s, with a little bit more of a puzzle focus and with a wider variety of power-ups (coffee for speed, chillis for fire breath, all that bollocks). You’ll almost entirely know what you’re getting here if you’ve played a BurgerTime game before. That’s all right, as it’s still an entertaining game at it’s core. This version isn’t worth the £17.99 it’s supposed to retail for, but for its current 50% pricepoint, there’s yer dinner (aye). 7/10.

On another note, it turns out that Matthew Castle of NGamer fame reviewed this for Nintendo Life last year: http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/nintendo-switch/burgertime_party

The first Klonoa would probably feature in my personal Top 25 Games Of All Time, but I’d never really stuck in with it’s 2001 PlayStation 2 sequel, Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil. Basically being stuck in means I’ve had time to sort that out.

This is great. Just like the first game, Klonoa 2 fantastically detailed, imaginative and colourful, with loads of cleverness in its design and puzzles, and charm in its audio and aesthetics. It’s very nicely assembled, with strange level design that makes sense to the scale of the adventure, a natural difficulty curve and cel-shaded graphics that were probably the best they had ever been done in gaming before The Wind Waker came out two years later. The soundtrack is equally thoughtful, switching between being poppy and upbeat in the easier early levels to becoming a lot more grandiose and melancholy when you go into the bigger, more challenging levels with names like ‘The Sad Kingdom’ and ‘Mirror of Mazes’. I know most half-decent games do that, but it’s done masterfully here - it really draws you in to Klonoa 2. Some of the tunes are outstanding, and well worth listening to when I post them in the Nontendo music thread. All this comes together to make for an atmosphere that – Celeste aside – I can’t remember any other 2D platformer having. I’ll remember Klonoa 2 for a long time.

It’s not difficult to see why Klonoa 2 has a Metacritic score of 91. This was probably the dog’s bollocks back in the day. However, nineteen years later, its drawbacks are much clearer. The story is added on pish. The cutscenes last too long. The bosses feel out of place are largely pretty uninteresting. Also, it does that thing that loads of platformers did back in the early 2000s, which is adopt that philosophy of ‘bigger is better’. Banjo-Tooie did it much worse than this, but all the same, I’d have quite liked the levels to be a bit more streamlined. There’s eighteen of them, many taking about twenty minutes or more to finish. That’s hefty going.

I’ve actually got the same feeling about Klonoa 2 as I do with Super Mario Galaxy 2. It’s absolutely brilliant in so many ways, but it just doesn’t have the impact of it’s prequel. In its own right though, it remains excellent. 8/10.

Ooh, Klonoa 2 is great! I really love the series, and 2 is deservedly highly praised.

Have you played the wii remake or the GBA games? Empire of Dreams is a personal favourite

Read your review and thought I don't have many PS2 games, I'll see how much Klonoa 2 is and if it's under a tenner I might get. It's £40 now, that's way too much for a PS2 game for me.


Not a game but DLC, you may have seen Square is having a sale on all formats and the Definitive Edition Upgrade or what is now the season pass was down to a fiver which added 7 new tombs/missions which took about an hour each to finish.

7hrs more of decent game for £5 isn't bad especially the nightmare mission.


Picked Florence up yesterday on the eShop along with a few other bits, I've played it before on mobile and it's my favourite mobile game of all-time (okay maybe Snake if I had a proper think) but it's a game meant for mobile ported to Switch.

In the past, I've tried likes of Bury Me, My Love and I don't think it translated well. Yet Florence feels like a game made for Switch, I used the sticks when it made sense and the touchscreen when brushing my teeth etc

Now I'm playing a Lite that on the big screen might feel odd and that is how I tried to play likes of Bury Me, My Love. Still, Florence is fantastic and now I played on Switch it will likely join Animal Crossing in going into my Top 10 Switch games.


Panzer Dragoon Remake is an odd beast as we know it's getting some patches soon for music and photo mode along with a few other bits but I feel the core won't change if you get later on.

What has changed since this was released on Saturn, umm not a lot? It does have a modern control scheme if you will where you use the right stick to aim and triggers to fire, this felt wrong to me. Now, this might be because I'm on the Lite and it's smaller but I've played FPS games on my VITA which is smaller again.

That I'm thinking they just suck and you need to use classic controls, which makes it even more like a SEGA Saturn game part from it looks better, just. I jest as it does look better but I found the picture to be rather blurry and everything to be a bit bland even though if you were to look at screenshots it's nice and colourful. Maybe this can be improved when it arrives on other systems and the framerate maybe can be 60fps instead of 30fps.

It's such a hard game to recommend as I did enjoy my 2hrs with it, yes 2hrs which was expected due to it being a Saturn game. Yet if I look at it's nearest rival Star Fox those avg about 2.5hrs each (Not counting Adventure or Command), have the same plot most times and are more expensive then this.

That I if you willing bought Star Fox 64/Assault/Zero or something for £40 then this is better in my opinion then all of those.

Even if it lacks replay value or something like online leaderboards to make high scores worth chasing. I said what they can improve with this, if not here maybe with Zwei.

Basically if you go in expecting a SEGA Saturn game you'll have a great time.

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Ooh, Klonoa 2 is great! I really love the series, and 2 is deservedly highly praised.

Have you played the wii remake or the GBA games? Empire of Dreams is a personal favourite

Yeah, I've got the Wii remake and all three GBA games. I've got them all but the Wonderswan game, even that GBA RPG and the Beach Volleyball game on the PlayStation. I really like the series too!

I wasn't mad for Empire of Dreams to be honest - https://www.gnamer.com/t208-klonoa-empire-of-dreams?highlight=klonoa .

~

That's interesting to read about Panzer Dragoon Remake. It sounds quite underwhelming altogether.

Lost Words came out Friday for Stadia as a timed exclusive for a whole year, that by the time any of you can play it as can't see you's going out of your way to play now, you will have forgotten about these thoughts.

If you don't forget then Lost Words is sort of a simple platformer version of Child of Light, I would say it's aimed towards a younger audience even if the game's story deals with death.

You can't fail, the puzzles are rather easy which use a storybook with words in to manipulate the world around you and the platforming is super floaty which does seem to make that easy as well.

I'm making this sound not great, just I feel it's not aimed at me even though I do think the story is well told and the soundtrack is nice, it is aimed at kids (I feel around the 10-year-old mark) and that's all it needs to be.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Ooh, Klonoa 2 is great! I really love the series, and 2 is deservedly highly praised.

Have you played the wii remake or the GBA games? Empire of Dreams is a personal favourite

Yeah, I've got the Wii remake and all three GBA games. I've got them all but the Wonderswan game, even that GBA RPG and the Beach Volleyball game on the PlayStation. I really like the series too!

I wasn't mad for Empire of Dreams to be honest - https://www.gnamer.com/t208-klonoa-empire-of-dreams?highlight=klonoa .

~

That's interesting to read about Panzer Dragoon Remake. It sounds quite underwhelming altogether.

I'm jealous! I think the other 2 GBA games never came out in europe - one was in the US, the other Japan only? I did have beach volleyball at one point, it's one of 2 games I've ever traded in, and I've regretted it ever since One day I'll reacquire it!

None of the rest of you care about this, but maybe you should.  I definitely think it's up there with Sword/Shield as far as monster adventures go.  It's a bit clunkier, and the monsters aren't as good and you don't develop as great an attachment to them; but the plot is miles better, dark in places and always impactful.  The characters are a bit better too, and the DigiFarm has the same appeal as the Bravely series' Streetpass towns.  It has ambition, and 'heart' however nebulous that sounds, where SS felt phoned in in places.  It's probably just down to it having had proper development time, and its faults are due to it not having had seven entries beforehand.

Is it better than Sword/Shield?  For most of my playthrough I thought so.  I think what brings it just a touch below is the difficulty: if you play it on Normal it feels piss-easy, but Hard has a couple of monstrous difficulty spikes that put OR off and had me scrambling to tone it down (again, to piss-easy).  Pokémon at least knew what difficult setting it wanted to be (piss-easy), and it's this solidity that just made me prefer it.  

I think Digimon's a good companion piece, though.  Cappa wouldn't like it mind: it feels more 'JRPG'.  It's definitely got a more substantial main quest, although I'll be having a break before I play the second game on the cart.

I played a bit of that on PS4, just never back to it and I think I traded it in towards something but seemed alright like a step-down from some JRPG's but not as bad as some.

Guess your 7/10 makes sense.


If you remember I wasn't the biggest fan of last years Res Evil 2 Remake, it felt a bit soulless to me. Anyway now we have Res Evil 3 Remake which I still picked up as I'm a big fan of the Classic RE3 which I could just about speed-run'ish if I wanted to as I played it so much on PS1.

That a remake was always going to be exciting for RE3, well here we are and it's really disappointing the game has gone almost pure Action-Horror, sure the Classic RE3 was more action then RE2 but with almost no puzzles basically it's just shooting the zombie and follow the set path.

That it's super-liner, nemesis isn't scary at all and it's super short my playtime was 3.5hrs (My Xbox will say different because paused to have dinner, load old saves etc). Now Classic RE3 was short anyway but loads seem to be cut like the Clock Tower in this, it might just be me but Capcom added stuff to RE2 where this seems rushed.

I might be a tad harsh on it as what is there is mechanically sound, looks good, controls well just it's short and as a long time fan, I'm wondering where things are.

Remember this is also a full retail game, you could argue due to how it's set up with achievements/trophies along with the installs that it's two games as RE3 and Resistance are two individual installs with each having it's own achievement/trophies list. Which is the difference to RE2 where you got the two campaigns, here you get single-player and multiplayer for the RRP.

I personally didn't even bother installing Resistance and I think I'd sooner play Gun Survivor again, then that.

Basically good job I'm not giving scores in the Fantasy Critic as I might be sabotaging myself.