Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

Combined with trying to do something different in giving you an underground hero and not quite sticking the landing, I'd say that covers it, yep.

I just finished Penguin Wars for the Switch. It’s a 2019 remake of an old arcade and Game Boy game from the 1980s, making this sentence the exact point in my write-up where you either stop reading or hopefully want to carry on through.

Battling against mixed teams of animals such as rabbits, pandas and hamsters, you try to whittle down health bars and knock each other out by rolling balls along a tabletop. Kind of like Pong meets Knockout City, the basics of the gameplay simply consist of your throwing dodgeballs, but each animal has their own unique speed, power and defence characteristics that make them harder to beat. You build up your own characters’ abilities by accepting challenges, winning lollipops to boost their stats and earning money to buy new balls and special attacks as well as to enter boss battles.

Penguin Wars is an extremely simple game that’s really easy to master – and almost too easy to outsmart to be honest. Yet it’s undeniably good, hectic fun. That core gameplay loop doesn’t really evolve as you play on, which admittedly makes the whole thing very repetitive. That doesn’t mean that it stops being entertaining though, as obstacles on the differently-themed tabletops and variations in the dodgeballs (like spikeballs, and bombs for example) mix things up enough so that you don’t feel you’re playing the exact same match, every match. The bright and colourful cel-shaded visuals and chaotic jazz soundtrack also help bring Penguin Wars into this generation. This remake was clearly developed by folk who have an appreciation of the original arcade game, yet also have the nous to know what appeals in neo-retro gaming today.

Pure arcade fun, Penguin Wars is easy for me to recommend. Retail copies look like they go for well over £40, but right now it’s 75% off at £2.97 on the eShop. For as cheap, instant, playable and addictive as Penguin Wars is, I think you should make time to squeeze this in between everything else that’s coming out in 2021. It would make for a great multiplayer game too. 8/10.

That looks like the sort of game that would be great to have around if it was back in 2019 and I was having groups of people over to my flat to play Switch. Reminds me of what I imagine Gangbeasts feels like to play.

Treesmurf wrote:

12 Minutes - 77 Production values seem good, but it'll be a little more style over substance.

Damn you Treesmurf as you're basically bang on as TM is good and clever, yet the execution of it all is what lets it down from being a very good game which I would give around 77 myself, maybe a tad higher than that, still something is lacking to make it a great game not just a good one.

I actually finished this a while ago, but it's time for...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations



It is the best of the trilogy. The first game is consistently good, but had some filler and pacing issues. The second game is wildly inconsistent, with some amazing highs and pretty bum lows. This game generally avoids issues with pacing and it never dips to the lows of its predecessor.

To summarise what's in each case:

• 1: Flashback! An old case where Phoenix is accused of a crime. You play as Mia Fey, and she seems to recognise one of the witnesses from somewhere.
  
• 2: A thief steals the sacred urn from the Fey clan (back back back again from the second game). There's a murder, and the introduction of a new prosecutor: Godot.
  
• 3: Phoenix is (poorly) impersonated by an attorney and Maggey Byrde, also from the second game, is found guilty. So you gotta fix that.
  
• 4: Flashback! Mia's first ever case, helping to explain the familiar face from the first case. It's Edgeworth's first ever trial too.
  
• 5: A big trip to a spiritual temple goes awry with a huge case involving the Fey clan and a few other familiar faces from this game and others in the series.
  

The use of flashbacks to incorporate Mia into the game is well done, and it changes the pacing up a bit as there are two cases where you play as her instead of Phoenix. There is a balanced amount of fan service as familiar faces from the other two games in the series reappear. There weren't many instances where the logic of the game was completely impenetrable. And none of the cases really felt like filler!

The best bit of the game would be the last case. It involves all your faves, and ties in to storylines from the rest of the trilogy, and has a sense of danger and urgency and loss. Plus the twists are all pretty good. It felt like a real high for the trilogy and a well-weaved story to end on that tied up a lot of loose ends and did all the characters justice.

I have to admit, though, that I though Godot was... fine. I was under the impression he would be an AMAZING antagonist, but his prosecution style more often than not boiled down to him saying "but can you PROVE that?", and while obviously Edgeworth and the von Karmas and so on all did that too, they at least came up with counterarguments, and much of the time it didn't feel like Godot did that. Plus, I didn't love his character arc in the final case.

Case 5 spoilers:

Still, overall, I think the final case was my favourite.

Felt a bit uncomfortable with some bits of the third case, in which an exaggerated campy feminine man is the butt of the joke and there were a lot of lines where characters would say "is that a woman???". But I realise that a 15 year old game from Japan is not necessarily going to be super right on, and it's a series where a lot of the women are very 2D (literally and figuratively) too. Just something I noticed playing it in 2021, I guess.

Anyway, best game of the series, liked it a lot. Will play Ace Attorney Chronicles soon.

Yes. Yes yes yes. Yes. Agreed with the vast majority of that. If it hadn't been for the exaggerated campy feminine man T&T would be in my top ten games of all time, but he did sour the taste a fair bit. Makes you appreciate KC from Murder By Numbers.

I obviously disagree about Godot, and I think the Rule Of Cool allowed me to overlook any flaws in his reasoning in the last case. As for 'and can you prove that?', it's the sort of thing that only works because of the weird Japanese court system that definitely isn't American, but... I remember it working! If anything that makes him sound even more annoying, which is exactly what you want from a rival prosecutor.

Anyway, I've just started my replay of T&T (as in, finished case one - the culprit is so good), so I'll see if I like Godot less this time around.

masofdas wrote:

12 Minutes - 77 Production values seem good, but it'll be a little more style over substance.

Did you finish this already Mas!?

I've been working through it with my girlfriend and I can see why the reception is mixed. You do bumble around with the same grace as a prototype version of The Sims at times, but I don't think that is what'll really put some people off.

When you have a strict 12 minute timeloop, the pacing of the game is really going to live and die on the player's ability to make progress. Some rabbit holes feel like they go nowhere, and then they sort of do. When you put things together, it's really satisfying.

The problem I'm having with it right now, however, is that I don't think the game has quite got the endings right. I'm close to finishing this, but I'm always shouting at the TV "JUST SAY THIS YOU IDIOT" but the protagonist is a bit of a fruit cake.

Generally the game does do a really good job of subtly prompting players while also providing little environmental sound cues that you can use to keep track of time, but I guess the timeloop concept combined with it being a point and click will always leave you coming back to the - what was the developer thinking, conundrum.

I am enjoying it, and there is something to be said in favour of its claustrophobic environment, but I can't help but feel like I'd rather just re-watch Russian Doll.

Yep finished it why here, in the one sitting and as I seen reviews/let's plays (like a few loops) had idea on what to do.

Think it would work well as an actual film

There's a fuck tonne of films that deal with time travel/loops though so it wouldn't exactly be a fresh idea.

Sure it wouldn't be fresh but this is the one time I've played a story driven game and gone yeah I could have just watched that.

I'd never heard of Penguin Wars but it sounds fun.

Trials and Tribulations is great, bar some of the jokes at a certain character's expense, as you say, and Godot is the reason I started to drink coffee!

12 Minutes sounds a little frustrating.

masofdas wrote:

Sure it wouldn't be fresh but this is the one time I've played a story driven game and gone yeah I could have just watched that.

Ahh I see.

Buskalilly wrote:

12 Minutes sounds a little frustrating.

Bingo!

I finished this yesterday and the ending(s) are really disappointing.

Like I said before, it's a game with so much initial promise wherein you really feel like you are making progress through the mystery, gradually uncovering new information, trying things in different orders. It's honestly quite good. The small space you have to work within holds many layers, the lighting and soundtracks lay themselves really well to the thriller atmosphere, and the voice acting is pretty good. You'd expect that from a cast that includes the likes of Willem Defoe and while I wouldn't say that this is the best voice acting you'll ever find, all the characters are voiced really well.

But it's as the possibilities start to contract, as the game pushes you towards one of its actual endings, that all the seams come apart. It's frustrating that you can't reach through the fourth wall and just tell characters to say X. The relative lack of options as things contract undoes a lot of the voice acting, as you're left with a script that lacks imagination. There isn't much room for having the protagonist do something weird, or to lose their shit, or any of the other things you'd expect to find in a timeloop montage. You're always stuck at the same 12 minute tempo (with some mild variation if you trigger certain events early). And that's where you start to look at this game and question if the concept was really done justice.

I've read a handful of reviews now, some negative, and some very positive. I definitely feel like I lean somewhere in the middle. I don't want to take away from the opening salvo this game has because when it's good it's really good. I like playing games that try something different, but this comes nowhere near the persistent level of quality that "Her Story" or "Pony Island" have.

But the game's real problem, atop the it's frustrating contraction, is that the mystery that you uncover is actually incredibly cliched to the point of being, frankly, incredibly lazy.

My interpretation of the story:

I came away from 12 Minutes feeling a bit disappointed, which makes it hard to look back on the game with an abundance of positivity. A 7 feels too positive, but I know less than that is probably too harsh. It really did have its moments, and as much as I think the execution wound up being sloppy, and the overall narrative pretty lame, I do appreciate its stylistic ambition, voyeuristic camera angles, clever lighting, subtle environmental cues, and the clear desire to execute a satisfying timeloop game. So on reflection, I think a 7 is a pretty fair score but this is a game where your mileage will almost certainly vary! Tough to recommend buying it, but easy to recommend giving it a go if you have it on gamepass.

7/10

Oh no, that sounds like someone really wanted to make a film instead. Mind you, that spoiler in a spoiler sounds like a mistake people made in games 30 years ago.
I know you weren't entirely happy with Outer Wilds either Muss - but does it come out as the better timey-loopy game?

The guy behind the game sort did want to make a film or what I should say from the dev diaries wanted to make something that would been seen along film & other mediums as art.

Outer wilds wasn't for me, but it's definitely the better game. Its loops are and it's just really nice exploring it. I just think I don't find 3d exploration that engaging, which is why I bounced off it before I found everything out. But I can't fault the game for that and I could easily watch or listen to someone showing or telling what secrets the game has. I don't think I ever felt like the game was doing something arbitrary, I just didn't puzzle everything out.

I might try it again at some point.

Ah, I'm really nervous about trying Outer Wilds. I love 3D exploration, so long as there are some good mechanics to go along with it; and I like solving puzzles and feeling clever; but I really hate time limits in games. I'm still probably going to try it, I just worry that I won't 'get it'.

I am not going to try 12 Minutes.

Because I'll never play it and because I knew how much controversy it stirred up, I read up on the ending for 12 Minutes.

12 Minutes ending spoiler:

~



Buying it and finishing it in that brief window between the post-Olympics price drop and the trade-in price remaining high, here’s my thoughts on Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: The Official Video Game.

I reliably buy all the summer and winter video games. For me, that started right at the start - one of my first ever games was Olympic Gold (Barcelona 1992) on the Master System. I’m well experienced with these types of games and they’re always enjoyable enough for sure, yet in all honesty I can say the same broad and general things about Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 as I can about Olympic Gold, or, say, Athens 2004 on the PS2 and London 2012 on the 360. As you’d suspect, Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is a highly polished collection of sports minigames with a pleasant UI but it lacks substance and true longevity.

There’s good and not-so-good things that distinguish Olympic Games Toyko 2020 from it’s ancestors. I like that SEGA have gone for a really cartoony look and unrealistic feel with this game, and that’s highlighted by a create-a-character mode that’s really customisable and packed with humorous clothing, hat wear and face paint options. More importantly I enjoyed almost all of the events too, with many having a reasonable amount of depth considering that they’re not nearly as refined as the yearly sports franchise games. The back of the box promises “epic arcade sports action” and I think it successfully delivers on that. While the athletics events such as 100m Dash and Long Jump work the same way they always have, there’s nothing too mechanical or complicated about most of the other events. For example, BMX reminds me of Excitebike, Football reminds me of Super Sidekicks, and Boxing reminds me of Ready 2 Rumble. It’s mostly very approachable and arcade-minded stuff. Disappointingly, I didn’t have folk around to play local multiplayer with, but the online modes were decently populated and worked fairly well. I’d assume that it’s much better – and will have a much longer lifespan - with mates though.

I’d say the worst thing about Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is that it doesn’t teach you all of each event’s controls until you’ve unlocked them as ‘tips’. Why these useful-to-know game mechanics are blocked off and restricted behind repeated tries (failures) baffles me, especially when all these extra tips make the difference between achieving “Beautiful Gold, So-So Silver and Shameful Bronze”. On that topic, Olympic Games 2020 is a far more competitive and therefore difficult Olympics video game than anything I’ve played in recent memory, certainly in 3D times. Events are separated into three heats which get progressively harder, but the spike in challenge between semi-finals and finals is immense. When I say I finished this game, that’s to say that I got on the podium in all eighteen events – I honestly think a gold medal is near-impossible in some of the athletics events.

I think the developer’s choice of events is strange too. It’s smart that Baseball and Sports Climbing are represented for the first time, but Skateboarding and Surfing (the other new Olympic disciplines) don’t make their debut. On a similar accord, where’s Javelin, Weight Lifting and Diving? It’s not an ungenerous total, but there was scope for more than eighteen events.

Overall, I felt that Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 was intuitive and entertaining. Most sports are decently refined and the quality in events generally ranges from good to great. Whether it’s for the £20 I paid for it or for the £1 it’ll inevitably cost in all your local charity shops by the time Paris 2024 rolls around, I recommend picking up Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 as one of the best examples of its genre. 7/10.

Not much to add to the Olympics, I knew you'd like it, though.


Finished P2 last night, but today went for a few more achievements that I could get without turning the game into let's go collect all the things. P2 is a darn good game, that shame I missed the first and that for someone like Jim had to wait & back a sequel.

As the core platformer, artstyle, story and humour all top-notch in a game where the MS budget could be seen, which gives me great for Double Fine's next game if given free rein with a budget.

Really, if you remotely like platformers, then you got to give this a go as it be one of the best you'll play this year (Ratchet maybe?) in the genre and games in general.

The Big Con come out today this 90s set game which has an art style like Doug I want to say. As you can guess from the game's title, you are planning a big con or are you? To save your video store, by pickpocketing & doing some dodgy things along the way to what is essentially Vegas.

It's a fun little game that I played this afternoon as I'm typing this now you can guess it is short which is fine in between Psychonauts 2 and Scarlet Nexus.

I'll be giving Psychonauts a try this week, but for now I finished...



To me this is the quintessential Focus Interactive game: frustratingly close to being genuinely good but falling just short.

A Plague Tale sets its stage during the Black Death and the inquisitions, which quickly sees the incredibly clean rural France our protagonist comes from turn to shit. Although medieval themes are explored a lot in games, you don't typically see a strong emphasis on pestilence. But that's an aspect that serves this game really well because it gives rise to the ominous and almost omnipresent rats which infest the game. The rats are repelled by light, and so many of the puzzles involve you manipulating fire to try and drive the rats away from where you need to go. Within that there is a good mixture of claustrophobic sections that require careful footing, and broader sequences where apocalyptic numbers of rats explode from the ground. The way the horde swarm, scurry, and dart away from the light after venturing too close is visually impressive. There's thousands of the things on screen but not a technical hitch to speak of, and the way their beady eyes lock onto you is a little unnerving.

That being said, it is generally quite clear what you have to do so the rats are oftentimes more window-dressing than legitimate threat. I personally don't mind this at all though because one of the things that this game really has going for it is a pretty decent rhythm. Sure, the puzzles get repetitive over time, but you'll likely find yourself making a good amount of progress through the game each time you play it. There are 17 chapters in the game in all, and I found myself wanting to do just one more on multiple occasions. Still, there were also times where I wanted to put it away. This is a sneaking game at heart, but it's incredibly linear. Linearity in and of itself isn't a problem, but the sections where you're hiding from human guards really drag because they're just so incredibly stupid. You'll be chucking rocks at things to make distractions, whereupon guards will stand and gamp at the floor for ages while you shuffle by. The sneaking, while functional, lacks any sort of flair and it's all compounded by areas that are so small that the whole affair feels daft. What's worse is that some chapters end with either a chase sequence or a boss fight, which makes all that sneaking around feel a little arbitrary. And the boss fights, geez Louise, they aren't good. Apart from the last one they're derivative, clunky, and would be better off not in the game at all.

You see, the reason why this game is built about the sneaky sneaks is that you play as a 15ish year-old who cares for her 4-7 year old brother. There are some story beats, such as the first time you use your sling to kill or you sic some rats on a guard, that try to make that sound like a big deal but by the end of the game you'll be killing with about the impunity of Nathan Drake. But the children you play as are a bigger problem than the killing they do later on. Over the course of the game pretty much every adult you come across will die, but the children will prevail... and recruit more children who also manage to unlock the arcane secrets of alchemy that their parents and guardians never could. It's a big clash with the otherwise grim plague. You'll see a lot of horrible things as you play through the game, but there's always a sense that everything is going to be completely fine in the end and that really detracts from the story the setting is working so hard to tell.

There's a big fantasy element infused with the historical setting, whereby the plague is actually some sort of blood property of a chosen one who can control rats. Therefore the inquisition want this blood so that they can control the plague, anointing the leader a saint in the process. All of this turns one of the most catastrophic events that ever hit Europe into a young-adult, chosen-one, skip past all the dumbass adults. And I'm honestly hot sure why Focus chose to do that. The game is an 18 so it's aimed at adults, and yet we have this bizarre take. Still, it's a surprisingly good looking game. Indoor and outdoor environments are done really well. I wouldn't say it's as good looking as some of the big titles, but considering the team behind this game is really small, the work here is very impressive. I did find that I needed to adjust the brightness quite a few times, never quite finding that sweet spot that just worked for the whole game, but that might just be my TV. The soundtrack behind the game is pretty good, albeit not massively memorable, and I think the voice acting is good as well, albeit let down by the silly plot.

In the end, A Plague Tale is a good game that shoots itself in the foot a little too often. It's got some really good ideas but they're mixed in with some pointless boss fights, some reductive stealth sections, and other baffling decisions. If you like horror or stealth then this is probably something you'll enjoy. The middle third of the game is a really good play, with a nice mixture of rat puzzles and guard bits that aren't super reductive. It's just that the opening third is a bit weak, and the final third drags.

7/10.

Glad you played A Plague Tale as I thought it was an excellent game, now I did have low expectations when I played because Focus Interactive along with being horror & stealth that I may rate it higher than I should. I get what you mean about the killing same happens in the Tomb Raider re-reboot, and of course you being up Drake wonder what can be done to fix these need to gameplay in the game, so let it be you kill people.

Still, I'm excited about the sequel.

Ratchet isn't a platformer so I think it's safe to give the title to Psychonauts.



Greak: Memories of Azur

The turnaround from me seeing this game to deciding I wanted it was very quick, first of all it's incredibly nice to look at, then I tried the demo and it was fun enough to give it a shot. You start the game as Greak, a young boy looking for his brother and sister, the story is set in a dying land known as Azur with all sorts of monsters and an enemy tribe to deal with and soon enough Greak finds himself with a small group of people looking to build an airship to leave the cursed lands.

From there on you'll explore the area for items you need to help the settlement whilst also looking for your siblings. The game is a side scroller with some standard combat and puzzle solving, eventually you go from controlling just Greak to all three siblings where you can switch between them or even control all 3 at once, it's here where this game both thrives and fails. The differences in the characters mean you'll have to use each one to solve puzzles which are enjoyable and varied, the downside of having 3 characters to look after is when it comes to combat it's quite difficult to look after all of them at once, especially in boss battles, I even found myself leaving characters behind on occasion so I wouldn't have to worry about them getting hurt but this isn't always an option.

By the end of it I definitely enjoyed it but I couldn't help feel there was more that could be done and more that could be refined to push it on to be something really special, they did really well with how it looks and the setting but it's held back by little parts of the gameplay that didn't quite work, it even has a grappling hook which in most games is an automatic win but annoyingly it doesn't work consistently. If they made a sequel I'd be all in very easily once again but only because I'd expect them to build on what they've made here and make it a little more reliable and interesting. I'd recommend giving the demo a try and if you like what you play the full game is more of the same in a good way, just be prepared for a few moments of frustration.

7/10

Treesmurf wrote:

Ratchet isn't a platformer so I think it's safe to give the title to Psychonauts.

It absolutely is

...just not particularly good at the actual platforming!

But anyway Psychonauts clearly has nothing on Balan

Balan is a banger won't have a bad word said about it.

Someone's been listening to Matthew Castle about Ratchet.