La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

masofdas wrote:

I let you off though Buska, you're not like that Andy though hates everything be it Dread, Journey or BotW, such a crump.

Bet he has parties in his garden.

I've got no idea what I was meant to put here, just saw it at the top of the page this.

Crumpy Andy wrote:

I don't hate BOTW mate, I just don't think it's the best Zelda

What is your favourite Zelda then? (Can't remember if you ever mentioned it or not amongst all the BotW chat)

Crumpy Andy wrote:

Right lads, what did I miss with Dread? It's the only game on the list Balla just posted that I don't really care for. Did everyone love it before they went and did a 100% collectible clean up? It's the only one on the list I've not 100%'d (apart from Alwa's Legacy as I've never heard of it), but that's because I just found the main playthrough kind of boring/not fun to navigate.

I liked the proper bosses (fuck the EMMIs) in Dread but almost every moment outside of that felt like a slog.

Some people have answered this, but seeing as I put the list together:

• Samus feels by far the best out of those Metroidvania characters to control.  She moves really well and powers up at a pleasing rate.  I'd say that's half the battle for a good Metroidvania.
  
• I thought the pacing and the gentle shepherding through the world was nicely done.  I never got annoyingly lost, but I didn't feel the designer's hand pushing me in a certain direction much either.
  
• Nice chunky combat.  You say yourself that the bosses were top, and I agree.
  
• I actually liked the cut-scenes and plot stuff a fair deal, especially the one bit where Samus goes berserk right near the end.
  
• As Jay said, minimal invisible block problems - even if I did look at a walkthrough to find a room hidden by exactly those that didn't show up on my map for the 100%.
  
• It's a Nintendo game, and a new Metroid at that, that's probably going to carry some extra weight with several here.  If nothing else, the hand of corporate Nintendo means that production values were much higher than some on this list.

There's also the fact that apart from the original Prime, I don't think I've played and finished anything that I think is a really amazing Metroidvania.  The rest of the list were all 8/10s or below.  Yoku irritated the heck out of me with its movement at times; Monster Boy had some painfully generic design, and sometimes felt like it really wanted to be a 2D platformer and was only being a Metroidvania begrudgingly; Hollow Knight had some grievances with checkpointing and I didn't like the world so much; Guacamelee's platforming was sometimes a slog and its obstacles were painfully unimaginative (different coloured blocks!); Iconoclasts... how long you got?  And so on.  Dread, while very good, didn't have to be amazing to top my list.

Crumpy Andy wrote:

I don't hate BOTW mate, I just don't think it's the best Zelda

It's not the best Zelda, it's the best game.

I enjoyed Dread but by the end of it I wasn't as high on it as most others here, it's one of the better games of the year for sure but I'd probably put Hollow Knight and Guacamelee above it personally in the Metroidvania stakes.

I'm playing through Metroid Dread myself, and I'll be coming back to a lot of these posts whenever I get round to sharing my own thoughts. Interesting thoughts.

~



Gearshifters is the first game I’ve completed this year. Releasing as a full-priced retail game to absolutely no publicity or fanfare last autumn, I reckoned that Gearshifters had “BOXING DAY SALES” written all over it. Come 26th December, I picked it up for half the price and battered through it over the New Year.

Gearshifters’ premise isn’t what makes it stand out. Set in an uncivilised future where gangs run the streets, you control a hired driver and work your way across various routes to deliver high-value materials while bringing all these syndicates down. The story is unimaginative and narrated dully, but it doesn’t really get in the way of the gameplay – and it’s this gameplay that’s exactly what makes Gearshifters stand out. It’s not directly comparable to anything I’ve played before, so it’s tricky to describe. My best approximation is that Gearshifters is like a cross between SpyHunter and R-Type, with some modern-day roguelike mechanics thrown in. These include level and enemy layouts that change on each playthrough of each stage and zone, and permanent ability upgrades that help make Gearshifters more accessible than, well, SpyHunter or R-Type.

I think Gearshifters has a smart idea behind it, and it ends up being pretty good fun. As well as performing flawlessly on Switch, Gearshifters’ power-up system lets you customise your vehicle in a number of interesting ways that are critical for successfully taking down those rival factions. Picking up schematics from your defeated enemies lets you earn new primary and secondary weapons. They also unlock new ways to for you to make improvements to your cars wheels, gears, handling, durability and braking. Through each run my car became stronger and better equipped to face everything else on Gearshifters’ roads. Blitzing through Gearshifters with a fully souped-up war machine while taking down the inventively-designed bosses was really satisfying. To get to that point relied on steady progression, and I think it’s well judged in Gearshifters. Games like a roguelike nature are usually quite off-putting to me, feeling like a lot of effort for little in return. Gearshifters, however, strikes a sensible balance between being challenging and having you ‘learn by failure’ while being rewarding and not demanding too much from the player. All this can make Gearshifters a very enjoyable and exciting game to play.

For all its qualities though, Gearshifters was obviously made on a small scale and with an even tinier budget. It means that it’s all a bit lacking in variety, with each stage and zone looking and playing almost exactly the same. There’s cosmetic differences of course, but they’re mostly minor palette swaps that don’t influence the gameplay. You wind up seeing most of what Gearshifters has to offer pretty quickly, and it doesn’t really feel like it’s able to realise it’s potential. Also, most of the enemies have samey attack patterns that I feel are just a bit too ruthless in standard play. I said that Gearshifters was well-balanced, and that’s true…but only after I stabilised the game’s Usability settings and turned the enemy damage down by 50%. There’s no chance I’d have completed it otherwise. I also find it strange that the Collector’s Edition of Gearshifters comes bundled with it’s soundtrack, as it’s not memorable at all.

Where anybody else would fit this niche and obscure car-orientated horizontally scrolling shmup into their rotation of games, I don’t know. But it’s good entertainment, and worth your while if you’re prepared to step outside your usual gaming comfort zone. 7/10.

I hadn't heard anything about it. I looked up a few screens after reading your review, and I'm really surprised that it had a full-price boxed release. Maybe it's not fair, but I can't imagine many people laying down top dollar for that kind of thing these days.

PlayStation and Switch often get stuff like that physical, you want to see some of things already on PS5.

I've had access to the game for awhile but not bothered downloading, might do that now.

Nah, Gearshifters can’t really compete with the other full-price boxed releases. It’s an odd instance were the small ambitions of the developer don’t seem to match the big ambitions of the publisher. Maybe it’ll find more of an audience at a more natural price point, perhaps at that £10-£15 sweetspot that’s only really inhabited by Balan Wonderworld and those code in a box games.

I got done with it in about five hours and I traded it in for a five quid profit, which was grand.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I also find it strange that the Collector’s Edition of Gearshifters comes bundled with it’s soundtrack, as it’s not memorable at all.

I'd imagine the devs were probably asked by their publisher to whip up a collector's edition and it's likely much cheaper to burn a CD with your in-game tunes than it is to produce an artbook or some other related tat you usually get in these collector's editions.

This came out of nowhere for me.  I only remembered to look for it in the Boxing Day sales because it made Nintendo Life's 'hidden gems of 2021' article, and 'hidden gem' is right.  It's really really good.

I described Beast Breaker elsewhere as a mix of pool, Breakout, and an RPG, and that doesn't really help at all.  In its simplest form, you ping your mouse around the arena, hitting the beast, trying to avoid landing in the pink zone at the end of your turn because therein lies a wall of pain.  That's really not the half of it though.  You have four different moves and a special bar; the beast has a bunch of regrowing scales that protect its vulnerable pink cores; you can choose from four weapon types and large numbers of weapons in each, all of which give different special moves; there's a fog-of-war strategy section before battle in which you and the beast race to gear up, like Evolve but not shut down; the beast is only ever a few turns from escaping and losing you the battle/a life; oh, and there's a story and characterisation to be had.

I can't say I paid much attention to the story until the final third of the game, but the writing is pretty good.  Engaging, amusing, inclusive, and never holds up the fighting for too long.  That's good, because the battling is the most addictive stuff I've played on Switch.  Because the beast is only ever a few turns away from 'rampaging' off into Gameoverville, and you need to keep destroying well-protected pink weak spots to delay it, there's a sense that the battle could go awry at any moment.  Just one more turn!  Just one more turn so that I can be sure I'm on top!  Except you never are, so: just a few more turns!  Suddenly an hour's gone past and The Lady's suggesting I go to bed.

The battling might (would) get samey after a while, except there's a cornucopia of different weapons and they all play differently.  Not only does your playstyle with a sword and shield differ completely from a bow playstyle, but two different bows need largely varying approaches as well.  That's before I touch on the pre-battle strategy, and how what goodies you've come away with vary your approach again...  Also it's pretty, out of battle anyway, and the music is nice.  I particularly like how the same tune shifts instrumentation depending on the room in your base house you're in.

Apparently it's doubtful whether I even like games, so it's only right that I list Beast Breaker's flaws.  The in-battle art has a bit of a 'free Newgrounds game' vibe to it, which cheapens the effect.  The strategy sections feel overly dependant on luck sometimes.  Around the middle of the game you're drowned in weapon parts, all of them upgradable, and it feels a bit too much when I just want to smack foes with the flying hammer.  I'm still not sure what the 'Renown' experience points actually do, if anything.  (According to the devs on Twitter 'more things unlock'...  Can't say I noticed.)  The big flaw that stops me giving the game a 9/10 became obvious in the final battle: up 'til then I'd been trying new weapons every time to boost Renown, but going back to my favourite hammer made the boss almost trivial.  I was a misclick away from absolutely roflstomping its final phase, because the hammer was so effective and it felt like any other beast I'd bashed already.  That's the big flaw: if you seek out variety from different weapons Beast Breaker will reward you, but if you stick with the same ones it's in big danger of feeling quite samey.

I do advise that you try out those weapons though, because if you do there's a large amount of entertainment here.  It feels like I played it for 15-20 hours, and I loved almost all of it.  Beast Breaker may only really do one thing, but it gives you hundreds of different ways to do that one thing and - crucially - that one thing is a lot of fun.

I must admit, the art did put me off when I looked into the game after seeing some chatter about it here. Like you said, it really does smack of a Flash game from the mid 2000s. Is it any better in motion in-battle?

The art?  I didn't notice it much to be honest, apart from Skipper running in at the beginning.  After that point I was too busy working out angles, picking moves, and sweating as the beast's countdown ticked over to worry about the art style.  It doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, which is both the kindest I can be about it and all it needed to do really.

Couple of other points: the devs clarified that Renown opens up more quests, which definitely needed that to be more obvious in-game; and I've completely mis-estimated the time I spent on it. According to my Switch timer, it's more like 35 hours! It didn't feel like that long at all, which I think speaks to the quality of the gameplay.

That's always a good thing when the runtime doesn't drag at any point - my time spent on Mario Super Picross is close to 80 hours, but it doesn't feel like I've played it for that long.

I do need some shorter games in my life soon though considering I'm just wrapping up the likely 70+ hour Persona 5 Strikers and my next game is the probably quite long Yakuza 3, so might be one for a sale! Actually, a demo for this sort of game would go down a treat to sell on-the-fencers like me.

What you need, Moyles, is to get yer damn votes in.

I've been at it all day between quiet spells at work.

Check your inbox now, they're done.

I think I randomly added Beast Breaker to my wishlist after seeing some good words about it the same day I seen you playing it for the first time so I'm well up for giving it a try, especially being priced at a nice even £10.



Super Magbot

Super Magbot is a platformer without a jump button, instead traversal is achieved by using magnets to either repel or attract. It's a simple concept that it gets a fair bit of mileage as different types of magnets or obstacles are introduced as you make your way through each of the game's 4 worlds.

It's all presented via pixelated single screen stages which makes it easy to have a quick go but also perfect for "just one more stage" kinda play sessions that last for the next hour. It's difficult, I found myself starting to get a little frustrated by the second world when trying to get all the collectables and by the third world I was struggling just to get through to the finish. I managed to offset this by using the rather generous assist options though so I was able to enjoy it and see it through to the finish whilst it still felt satisfying to get through to the end of a stage.

There's still more to it if I choose to as well with harder bonus stages unlocked after each world as well as leaderboards for each individual level so in terms of value I'd say it's worth a look if you like challenging 2D platformers.

7/10

Is it bad that 'pixellated rock-hard 2D platformer' still makes me a bit sniffy, even after Celeste?  It still feels like the 'I have no idea what to make, only time and money' of indie games to me, which is probably totally unfair. At least it sounds like that one had an interesting gimmick.

Finished a few days ago, it is a free short spinoff off VA-11 Hall-A set in a school so a tad different as you don't make drinks clearly.


SMTV turned out to be just fine, like I've gone from Persona what once was just a spin-ff to SMT, maybe if I have done it SMT to Persona my thoughts might be different. As whilst playing, quite a few times I thought ahh it's going to that like Persona just a tad more moody but turned out nope, just keep on going from point to point.

I do think people like Balla, Rum etc will still like it but is certainly one for fans of the JRPG genre.

I will check out a SMT at some point as I want to compare and contrast with Pokemon, Digimon, MHStories and so on.

Tempted by that Va11-HALLa kids, I liked the original.

Monster Rancher is on Switch, get on that in the Monster Catching genre (Also Folklore if you have the means).

I was thinking about Monster Rancher, yeah! I remember seeing it around back in the day.

(looks sideways at SMT5)

(remembers that in addition to PokéLegends he also has Digimon Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory to play, and that both will probably be more fun than SMT5)

(continues to pretend SMT5 doesn't exist for a while)

There’s Metroid Dread finito. Handily, Balladeer’s post from a couple of week ago sums up my thoughts quite succinctly:

Balladeer wrote:

[*]Samus feels by far the best out of those Metroidvania characters to control.  She moves really well and powers up at a pleasing rate.  I'd say that's half the battle for a good Metroidvania.
[*]I thought the pacing and the gentle shepherding through the world was nicely done.  I never got annoyingly lost, but I didn't feel the designer's hand pushing me in a certain direction much either.
[*]Nice chunky combat.  You say yourself that the bosses were top, and I agree.
[*]I actually liked the cut-scenes and plot stuff a fair deal, especially the one bit where Samus goes berserk right near the end.

[*]

Looking back, I felt that Dread was an entertaining and very well-crafted game, but it’s not one of Nintendo’s landmark titles in any way, shape or form. It’s been pointed out as a one of the Switch’s elite games, but I’m definitely not convinced. I don’t think it’s on the level of Super Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Breath of the Wild – and there’s plenty of other stuff I rate more than it too. Metroid Dread was good, for sure. But not that good.

I’d have likely enjoyed Dread that bit more if I’d been able to spend longer playing as the fully-equipped Samus, and if there was more variety with how you go about those EMMI encounters. I also felt that the drama and tension was overall just a bit lacking. Moments where I felt the game lived up to its exciting Dread title were fairly fleeting. Much of the time, I thought the soundtrack didn’t do much to create that atmosphere either. Everything else – the world, the weapons, the designs and the gameplay – was really good though. The controls are especially fantastic, just masterfully done.

As far as being the first Metroid I’ve completed goes, it was a rewarding experience. I’m glad I’ve played it, I’ll look back on really positively. Yet it’s not made me clamour to go back and try Fusion, Zero Mission or any of the others. I’m happy to be done with Metroid until the next one. 8/10.

I'm still working my way through that there Metroid Dread, and just got to a "plot" bit, which was a nice surprise.
But also

I should really like it as it's a weird meta-commentary puzzle thing instead of an FPS or something, but this is too artsy even for me. It's sort of an interactive video about social... something... issues. But I wasn't sure I got it, so I looked up an interview, where the designers say it's important that everyone can take away their own interpretation. Er, no, finish your story off J. J. Abrams.

536/782 on the JBIndex