Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

It's definitely the character pool and aesthetics (including the quest flavour text, things like that) where AOC is at its best.

Where it lags behind other warriors games is the lack of opposing characters/factions. This shows up in the lack of alternate routes as well as the lack of variety in fighting "bosses" because there isn't that large character pool on the opposite side. It also doesn't ever really achieve the scale of other warriors games in feeling like battles, I think because the number of allied troops are so rare as to be almost non-existent. In other games you will not just see hordes of enemies, but hordes of your allied troops too.

I can't not read AOC as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I'd play that Hyrule Warriors game too.

The Pathless



Cracking game this! Originally got it for two reasons, new console hype and because of one clip I seen on Twitter where the protagonist was chasing down this huge beast at speed, very cool. Didn't know much else about the game, basic premise is the big bad has taken control of these gods and turned them in to evil gits and you have to go through the land to cleanse them all.

The majority of the game is spent traversing the world solving puzzles to get these stones that you use to restore the land, it's a very familiar setup but it does a few things differently. Firstly there's no map, you have to find these areas using an item that gives off an aura and finding your way around is pretty much done via different landmarks. Then when you wanna get around you need to be shooting the various targets with your bow for a speed boost (otherwise it'd be a bit slow).

Finally the main threat is the previously mentioned gods that travel in a vortex like thing that if you get caught in you have to sneak away in what's makes for a tense moment amidst the lovely areas. Once you've gathered enough stones you then want to head in to these vortexs to chase down the enemy (in the previously mentioned set pieces) before confronting them for a boss battle.

That's all the there is to it, it doesn't do much new but what it does do is really well put together, the world is a joy to navigate especially when moving around at speed and the boss battles are a great spectacle, like Shadow of the Colossus but good.

8/10

Treesmurf wrote:

The Pathless
Shadow of the Colossus but good.
8/10

Nice that this is a good version of a masterpiece, can't all be that standard and some times that fine.

Seriously though I had this pre-ordered for PS5 before my PS5

I do kid of course but it does have some similarities to SotC with the overall feeling it gave me when travelling to each area so I think you'd enjoy it when the time comes.

I'm hoping it's maybe a timed exclusive and I can just play on Xbox at somepoint but Annapurna are a odd publisher they have about 6 games coming with a mix of what system they're for & ones in the past have stayed exclusive where other's haven't.

I believe it's on mobile devices too but not sure if it'd work as well on those as shoulder buttons probably make the bow and arrow feel more satisfying.

Believe it's Apple, so that rules that out, maybe could play the PC version from the Epic store but sooner have on a console.

If it doesn't come to Xbox or Switch, by time I get a PS5 it be cheaper.

Double Post as I've finished a game


I was excited for The Medium when it was first shown (since learnt from Scullions review actually seen as Sadness back on Wii sort of) due to the serious Silent Hill vibes I got.

Now playing Medium that its biggest strength and weakness as it plays like it come from the PS2 era of Silent Hill 2, Fatal Frame II, Haunting Grounds, Clock Tower 3 (I might play this, again) and so on with it's fixed camera angles & tank-like controls (more fluid than back on PS2).

Medium does also lacks in the combat department and one of the achievements jokes about being a running sim, as this is much more about psychological horror than just jump scares or even Resident Evil 3 Remake which at points felt like COD.

And this has ACTUAL PUZZLES!

That for me it's hey you like Silent Hill but want it to look like a 2021 game Just I can see some going why I am playing what feels like a game from 2001. The story is also good which it needs to be in a game like this but won't be for everyone due to the subject matter, which Bloober Team does have some warnings at the start of the game.

Soundtrack is good which was expected from Arkadiusz Reikowskiand Akira Yamaoka. Then the other thing Medium is on Game Pass, which means if you sub what you got to lose (Going to talk about this on Pod of War Cast), sure most of you don't have an Xbox but something like The Medium along with Yakuza 3-5 on the same day and the Series S at £250 highlights the service.

Paper Mario: The Origami King

So I spoke about this a little bit in its own thread, but I shall talk about it in more depth here. Long and short of it: it could have been great, but it got in its own way too much.

I really wanted this to be great, having defended the developers trying new things when it was originally announced and we saw trailers for it. I've played most of the Paper Mario games - all of them apart from Sticker Star and Paper Jam (if that counts). TTYD is one of my favourite games ever, and Super Paper Mario has a special place in my heart for feeling genuinely innovative and having a good plot and OST, despite some gameplay missteps. The original N64 game is good, but I played it after TTYD so it felt like a proof of concept that its sequel improved on. Colour Splash was fun, if a bit soulless in comparison to the other games - it felt a bit fluffy and unmemorable compared to the other titles, but I liked it.

Origami King tries to do too much. The elephant in the room: the fucking battle system. It feels completely like a case of innovating because they can and not because they should. People didn't like the sticker system, but in Colour Splash I never actively disliked the battles even if the stickers made them feel a bit inconsequential. Many of you know how Origami King's system works or have an idea of it, but basically: you stand in the centre of several rows of rings. You can move these rings round and round, or move a cross-section from one side to the other. You have a limited number of moves and time in which you need to move enemies into an arrangement that allows you to jump on them or hammer them. If you move them into a good arrangement, your attack power increases. It's a puzzle you have to solve every time. With bosses, they're in the centre and you have to work out routes to them via particular spaces that activate powerful attacks, or have treasure chests that reveal items, that kind of thing.

But... why? Why bother? Actually lining enemies up can be a pain in the arse if you can't visualise how it's supposed to go together, and you get penalised for it if you fail to do it properly because your attack then isn't as strong. You can pay your audience of Toads to help out and do the first move to get you going, which I ended up doing every time because I didn't really enjoy doing the puzzle, and you get so many coins that you always break even or make a profit when you get coins at the end of a battle anyway. The timed jumps and hammer swings of the series are there, but play second fiddle to the moving enemies around aspect. And the boss fights! I ended up looking up solutions every time because even if you can work out approximately what you're supposed to do, phases change, or my train of thought didn't follow the logic of the game, so I couldn't quite work out how to pull off what it wanted me to do, and I didn't want to prolong having to move those TITTING RINGS AROUND.

Battle system aside, the game itself was still fun enough. It lent heavily into the papercraft aesthetic which actually worked nicely - paper mache enemies, the 'legion of stationery' bosses which somehow had lots of personality despite no faces, unfolding cardboard parts of the scenery - and the script had some great moments (like Toads shouting 'nightmare fuel!' in the background of a boss fight, or characters just being very self aware - I took lots of screenshots of bits that made me laugh). The OST was great - I might post some in the music thread - this was a favourite.

Somehow though it just didn't feel as meaty as other games in the series. There were a lot of quite empty open expanses (the desert and the sea sections were particular offenders) and there weren't many main characters that I got attached to - just lots of Toads in various roles (although they had plenty of funny lines). Olivia (your origami partner who accompanies you through the game) was good, but even then her dialogue sometimes erred too close to "I'm a character whose function is plot exposition".

I don't mean to shit on it too much, but it is my least favourite Paper Mario game so far, and I don't think it would've been if it weren't for the bum bum battle system. Maybe one day we'll finally get that TTYD-beater and Balla and I can then die happy (possibly in some kind of Nintendo nerd blood pact).



"God I wish it had just been a bit different" out of ten

Ah yes, that well known dancefloor demon, a (checks notes) hole punch. The game did some interesting things, I'll give it that - but yep, still waiting for TTYDHD or for the staff to cotton onto the fact that you need something that only battles can give you for there to be any point to them.

NINTENDO NERD BLOOD PACT

The face off against the Dancefloor Demon was one of the most well built moments of the game, one of the tensest moments of my gaming last year and I played TLoU II.

I'll do Spyro 2 & 3 together since I polished them both off last week.

I prefer these quite a lot over the remaster of the original because they do a lot of what Spyro games really excel at: light exploration.

Of course this doesn't weigh in at the same level as what you'll find in a Mario Oddssey, but the early Spyro worlds in both games are fun to explore. There's a bit of a challenge, but not enough to frustrate despite the fact that the Switch port doesn't run all that well. I felt like 2 & 3 ran better than the original but that could just be my eyes adapting to the rough edges over time.

That sense of humour that I wrote about for the first game is very much alive in Spyro 2, but significantly more refined. There's lots of nice Looney Tunes esque cut scenes between each level and it feels like the team really found their stride with the personality that the enemies exude. Spyro 3 doesn't get this quite as tightly as the Spyro 2, but it does make up for it with lots of fun mini games.

In the early going of both 2 & 3 there are plenty of fun little oddities to get stuck into. Flying levels, odd runner like sections, and so on. All of this meshes nicely with the core game. Fun, despite their general jankyness. However later, as the difficulty increases, these sections become less enjoyable. Compounding this is the game's irritatingly long loading times that, as in the first game, discourage you from doing tricky minigames (or tricky jumps and things in traditional levels). Part of the problem as well, for Spyro 3, is the extra playable characters. They're mostly alright, but some of their stages or mini games are just flat out bad. Bentley the Yeti is so slow, and the camera is tight to his shoulders, that both moving around and seeing is an absolute chore. Worse still, the deeper into the game you get, the worse the minigames become. This is because the difficulty increments to a level beyond which you can tolerate the general wonkyness of the controls, making the game a bit frustrating. It's one thing to have a random skateboarding section that doesn't really have any consequences, and another to have a time limit tighter than a ducks bottom within which to find an insane amount of stuff.

That being said, you can get through most of both games without having to digress into the rubbish minigames so it isn't so bad (although in 3 you definitely have to muddy your feet with some nonsense). It's just a shame that, as with the Spyro 1 remaster, the developer was dead faithful to the originals. I would have liked to see a more modern camera, more player assists, or more refined controls for the rougher sections of the game.

But all told even without that, there's a really good game here in both 2 and 3. 2 is more streamlined but has some difficult boss battles. 3 has more fluff and more exploration but a weaker end game and some unavoidable minigames. For anyone with an interest in mascot platformers, even with the rough edges, the trilogy as a whole is a recommend. I'd say I really enjoyed the first three quarters of each game before I found things deteriorating a bit. That's still a healthy portion of game that I really liked though. Just avoid the switch version if possible as I hear the other versions run much smoother.

8/10

The hole punch was fucking horrifying Balla, you don't even know.

This very well could have gone in bum reviews


I bought Caretaker yesterday in the sale for £1.67 as it's an easy 1000g also its bad as that image is how dark the game really is, which is trying to make it scary but more like to hide the environment and any detail.

In what becomes a walking sim with some jump scares nothing else that can be done 15mins also unlike most walking sims or stuff such as Journey you still get some sort of story this tells you nothing.

It's going to be hard to top as worst game I play in 2021 and could easily be put in my 10 worst games list.

Cyber-Shadow

If you're a fan of Shinobi or Ninja Gaiden then you'll very likely really enjoy this.

I thought the checkpoint system started out pretty fair but got a little ridiculous about half way through (from chapter 5) but that aside the controls are nice and precise & you unlock new abilities to play about with fairly quick & once you get the dash the movement is so much fun. All of the boss fights are top notch as well so this is an easy recommend if you are after an action platformer that will last you about 5 to 10 hours.

This is the one from Yacht Club, isn't it? I'm tempted but, y'know, time . . .

Yep, it's published by Yacht club but mainly developed by one guy who goes by MekaSkull.

Oh, what do you know. I'd assumed this was the full follow-up to the mighty Shovel Knight.

It's on Game Pass and I do like Shinobi or Ninja Gaiden, just I'm a tad bored of these retro style indie games.

I'm bored of that NEStalgia style too. It's an excuse for developers to cheap out, I can't think of any game other than Shovel Knight where it adds character or value to the game. 

I'll likely get Cyber Shadow at some point, because of the comparisons to Shinobi. What's put me off now is the comparisons to Ninja Gaiden. I don't think Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden are as alike as most people say, and while I really like the former, the latter is a stupidly difficult waste of effort.

Yeah I don't blame folk for being bored of these style of indie games but I like having them there either as a palate cleanser after a much bigger game or as something else to play alongside a bigger release. Also on the comparison thing the dev himself said in an interview that is main influences were the NES games Shadow of the Ninja and Batman.

I think I might only have played Shovel Knight and The Messenger (first part) in that style of NES-aping action platformer. Safe to say it hasn't worked for me so far! From what I can see, at least Cyber Shadow looks a fair bit nicer than either.

The_Jaster wrote:

Yeah I don't blame folk for being bored of these style of indie games but I like having them there either as a palate cleanser after a much bigger game or as something else to play alongside a bigger release. Also on the comparison thing the dev himself said in an interview that is main influences were the NES games Shadow of the Ninja and Batman.

I'm the opposite to this in the sense that I mostly play games that last five hours or under, but occasionally I'll fire into something much bigger. That the dev drew inspiration from Shadow of the Ninja and Batman is good to read though, they're both really good NES games

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I'm bored of that NEStalgia style too. It's an excuse for developers to cheap out, I can't think of any game other than Shovel Knight where it adds character or value to the game.

Alwa's Awakening (and Alwa's Legacy for the SNES counterpart) spring to mind - Awakening is incredibly NES design faithful and actually really good.