La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

I will play Kirby at some point, but it's weird seeing how everyone talks about it. This is Kirby, right?!

Oh oh oh but


RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN
This! This is brilliant! How the fuck do you make a game like this with all the passage of time and continuity and stuff? Brilliant. This is really what I want in video games. To explore things and work stuff out. I just wanted to keep going and see other bits, even with all the "everybody's dead Dave" vibes. Just so bloody clever.

Very important ranking system 75th/787

Jimbob wrote:

I will play Kirby at some point, but it's weird seeing how everyone talks about it. This is Kirby, right?!

I feel like Kirby stopped being just Kirby, if it ever was, with Epic Yarn being an all-timer. Then it started doing cosmic horror on a regular basis.

Sigh, Obra Dinn. If I'd been reading your review before trying it I'd be feeling... well, how I felt before trying it. 'Ooh that sounds really interesting, might be my sort of thing, I love exploring and feeling clever.' Give me another game in the same style with less gruesome death please.




I finally finished Deltarune Chapter 2 over the weekend. I'd actually finished the final boss ages ago, but it was a struggle getting The Lady to sit down and see the game through. She's meant to like games with writing in. Anyway, it's more Deltarune, which is in turn more Undertale. Good music, well-written, fun battles, pacify enemies instead of muderalising them. I didn't actually like the villain so much this time around (they speak in Internet slang and memes which... eh), and the final fight was a bit of a gimmick, and the usually excellent secret boss music left me cold. All of this just means it's a 7/10 instead of an 8. It's still good.

Obra Dinn might be the sort of game I try if I'm really wanting to step outside my comfort zone. On the other hand, arcade football games~!

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Blew the full-time whistle on Golazo!, an entertaining but imbalanced arcade-like kickabout. In a genre that’s hideously underrepresented on the world’s most popular console (after the Nintendo 64, natch), I think this is about as good and accomplished an option as you can get. The presentation is quite nice, passing and shooting feels smooth, and the speed and uncomplicated controls suit the nature of kind of game that Golazo! aspires to be. It doesn’t take itself or the sport of football too seriously, and it’s got quite a happy and bouncy atmosphere around it.

That said, it’s got a handful of drawbacks. The main thing I dislike is that it doesn’t play by the rules. There’s only seven players in each time, and there’s no fouls, offsides or yellow and red cards. That was grand in Red Card Soccer twenty years ago, but in Golazo! it really doesn’t feel fair. Your computer opponents – and especially their goalkeepers – feel way too overpowered, and feel much too comfortable in dealing with everything that you can possibly aim at them. Tackles, world-class saves and unfathomable gymnastics are no issue at all for Golazo!’s CPU. It’s the total opposite for your own defenders and goalkeepers, they’re just hopeless.

I also think that that game’s audio is pretty weak. The music during the gameplay is faint and unmemorable, the crowd’s sound effects might as well have been left out, and the minimalist commentary feels really unenthusiastic and phoned-in. I can take or leave the game’s cel-shaded visual design, but the audio is a big part of all the best arcade-esque games that I can think of. Golazo!’s sound engineers seem to have missed the point there.

Golazo! is all right. I got it for 80% off, for something like £2.29. I’d say that the gameplay is somewhat comparable to the quality you’d find in a minigame on something like Super Monkey Ball 2, or on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. The upcoming Mario Strikers will make Galazo! feel a bit irrelevant once that comes out, but until then I think it’s a decent shout if you’re wanting a football game for your Switch. 6/10.

If Strikers hadn't been announced, I'd have wondered if that game were worth it for multiplayer, but as it stands I don't think I'll partake.

I need to play it a bit more before fully recommending it but Super Arcade Football seemed a fairly decent kickabout & is usually always on sale.

It's been relatively well received, so some of you may have considered picking up or wishlisting Kaze and the Wild Masks.  And hey, if you think that 2D platforming peaked with the Donkey Kong Country games you probably should!  Kaze wants to be Donkey Kong Country really badly - specifically, DKC2 with Dixie.  Sometimes it's painful how much it wants to be DKC2.  There's Kaze's ear-powered hovering move, slingshots that replace barrel cannons, power-ups that give you a max of one extra hit, collecting K-A-Z-E every level, Wild Masks that are basically Donkey Kong's animal friends in a different guise, and the big one for me: high difficulty with sparse checkpoints.

The trouble for Kaze is that a new bar has been set for tough platformers.  Y'all know which game I'm talking about.  It's a game that can throw lots of memory-requiring sequences at you because its hero (or maybe heroine ) feels so good to control and because you're rarely more than ten seconds away from where you died.  This is the standard I expect from my hard games, especially when memorisation is almost required, and Kaze has a fair few of those moments.  I eventually turned on casual mode, but that doesn't help as much as you'd think: the extra checkpoints aren't that frequent, and they don't apply to the boss battles, which have to be beaten in one go.  

If I was chomping at the bit to see what was behind the next roadblock then it would have been an easier sell, and the later Donkey Kong Country games had several temptations in their gameplay and aesthetics to encourage this. I wasn't.  Kaze is pretty enough for a spritey game, but has a largely forgettable soundtrack, not much in the way of set-pieces (that haven't been done before, better, in ooh I dunno games starring a big monkey), and average level design.  All of this lowered the incentive to press on through the frustration.  

I did finish Kaze in the end, though, and found it a completely average experience.  That's what I would be scoring it as, if it wasn't for the fact that it crashed five times over my 5-10h playtime.  Happily I never lost much progress, but for such a simple game, that's unforgivable.  So I would say, even if you do think that 2D platforming peaked with the Donkey Kong Country games, you should get Kaze on another more stable platform.  The rest of us can steer clear without fear of missing out. 4/10

I've had Kaze on my radar for a while as DKC2 is the best DKC game and homage to that sounds great, but I've never wanted to pay £25-30 for it and never been the right time for it to be on sale.

Your review doesn't make it sound too good, that my thinking was see if it comes a Stadia Pro game (as only so many games on Stadia that eventually has to be in Pro) or on sale on that as I've got £8 in credit to use on something, or Game Pass.



LEGO Skywalker is the first LEGO game I've played in a while, and only really got excited about this one because of the rebootness of it with the new over the shoulder camera, combat etc.

It is a fun game, however much like Balla with Kaze I played on Switch and I had the game crash on me a few times which from I can see is a common thing with the Switch version. One review mentioned they couldn't finish EPII meaning no way to even play EPIII.

Then stuff like pop in etc is pretty bad, that I would say play elsewhere if you can, as the core game is fun, and it even makes the sequel trilogy tolerable.

Hey, I've been pessimistic about platformers before. If you love DKC2 you might like Kaze, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Grim if not entirely unsurprising news about Star Wars' performance. It's getting to the 'I'd love a Switch Pro' point.

I finished Slipstream, a sometimes exciting but often unsurprising arcade racer that markets itself as being “inspired by the visuals, music, games and cars from the late 80s and early 90s’. It’s got that right – these influences flow through every single aspect of Slipstream’s DNA.

Usually I don’t mind this. 2018’s Horizon Chase Turbo did the exact same thing with 1992’s Top Gear on the SNES, and so did Hotshot Racing with Virtua Racing. Yet Slipstream badly lacks a personality of its own. Thing is, Slipstream is essentially a composite of mechanics that you’ll have experienced loads of times in games over the last thirty-odd years. Unlike Horizon Chase Turbo and Hotshot Racing, Slipstream doesn’t add a modern angle to arcade racing in any way.

It’s a better game than Hotshot Racing though, and it’s mostly good honest fun. Although difficult to master and off-putting at first, Slipstream's drifting and slipstreaming is well-executed for sure. It’s easy to appreciate Slipstream artistically too, with the scaling and rotating effects being a real strength of the game. I’ve got no complaints about the speed, the framerate or the amount of content either. For £7.99, this is good stuff. However, the track design can be a bit punishing, meaning that finishing in first place oftentimes relies on the abuse of the game's rewind function after you crash into the scenery. To me, that feels like a half-hearted way of counter measuring the game’s difficulty. Similarly out of place is Slipstream’s unmemorable electronic synthwave soundtrack. Too mellow for my liking, it doesn’t get the blood pumping like tunes from this sort of game definitely should.

Slipstream doesn’t achieve the same perfect balancing that your quintessential genre classics such as OutRun, Super Hang On and Power Drift do, and that’s why I’d recommend those three SEGA 3D Classics on 3DS before I’d recommend Slipstream. But it’s overall a good effort, impressively made by just one guy, and it’s absolutely worth considering if you’re even half as interested in these types of games as I am. A high 6/10.

Nice wee review. I'll probably get this when it's on sale/have nothing else to play.

Cheers. Looking into Slipstream a bit more, it sounds like it’s developer is simply keen to get more people playing his game. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Slipstream reduced again and again in eShop sales. Wait for it by all means, but ironically I think it’s full £7.99 price is a pretty good deal anyway.

Aye no real complaints at it's normal price as if a games idea interests me then sub ten is more than a good starting point.

When I saw BT was coming to console, and that it had won some awards like best Canadian game, that sort of thing, so I wish listed it. Then, when it arrived on Switch, it went on sale right away after release to like £1.79, and I feel I paid about 14p for it as I used some gold points.

I feel there is a reason BT was £1.79, as it's not very good at all, I may even go as far as saying worse than Chocobo GP, then one was a £1.79 indie the other a possible £40 game from Square Enix.

BT is like throw back to PS1 era point and click adventure games, then a few other things mixed in like FF menus, cutscenes which remind me of Heart of Darkness all together in just a weird game, which all of you should avoid.

I say that maybe that was the issue I had it is a weird old school game, which maybe a Jimbob would like, I doubt it though.

I don't think anybody was going to buy it anyway on here Mas, awards or not!



Nobody Saves the World could be this year's Beast Breaker, and I mean that in a great way.  NStW has a bit more pedigree than the mouse pinball adventure, being from the Guacamelee and Severed lot; but I didn't have a clue about this before it got 9/10 in Nintendo Life, and it turned out to be a super-pleasant surprise.

NStW is an open-world action-adventure, which isn't a genre commonly associated with the indie space but Drinkbox pulls it off and then some.  You play a grey fleshcreature who must save the world from blah blah blah.  The story and writing aren't the point of this really, although Drinkbox manage a few funnies as expected: they just provide an excuse for you to transform into a bunch of weird and wonderful fighters.  Each transformation plays noticeably differently, which is nice.  Then you get the ability to cross-pollinate the skills from the best of them, which is really nice.  Mix and match parts to create the ultimate warrior, from [REDACTED] to [NO SERIOUSLY THIS IS THE BEST BIT OF THE GAME I DON'T WANT TO SPOIL THINGS].  

What do you do with your ultimate warrior?  Well, you solve quests.  Some are given by NPCs, and have some faint puzzly aspects regarding your transformations.  There are a couple of inspired moments, and a touching love scene.  Other quests encourage you to try out your full range of transformations, and yet others send you into dungeons.  The dungeons are the weakest aspect of the game: they're procgen and it shows.  I don't think the first one even is procgen, but like all the others it was a generic slog through narrow passageways, from fight to fight to fight.  The fighting is fun: the enemies and varied and well-designed, and I had a great time tailoring my endlessly varied arsenal to smite them.  Their environments are just missing inspiration.  Some puzzles would have been dandy.  Oh, and more unique bosses.  All but the final boss are just Regular Enemies But Bigger And With Backup.

Quickfire round!  The visuals: clean and crisp.  I prefer Guacamelee but it all looks nice enough.  The audio: there.  Inoffensive, but never really impresses.  The lifespan: decent.  I spent 20 hours, completing all quests, and had a lot of fun.  And you can play co-op!  Definitely local, probably online too?  

I'm probably going to give co-op a go, once the game's had a chance to fade from my memory.  I had a really good time with NStW's transformations, and can see myself enjoying them a second time around.  Honestly, I wait years to play a procgen game I actually like, and then play two in one year.  Will wonders never cease?

Wait you liked another procgen game?

I gave Hades a 7/10!  That's liking. And actually (unlike in NStW where it's noticeable in a negative way) I didn't mind the procgen in Hades.

I think I’m ready to share some thoughts on Bird Alone. It tells a story about you, befriending a lonely parrot. Becoming best friends, you share the parrot’s real-time happy days and it’s sad ones too. Sometimes the parrot just wants to chitchat with you about life in general. Sometimes they’ll just want to make music with you, or create art. On other days, the conversation might go deeper, discussing sensitive topics that Bird Alone is very forthright in making you aware of. Maybe the parrot won’t want to talk to you at all.

I don’t want to say too much about Bird Alone. I’ll say this though: amusingly written but thoughtfully reflective and quite poignant at the same time, I encourage you to at least give it’s free iOS/Android trail a go before making your mind up if it’s worth £2.99 for the full ‘game’. You might wind up thinking that it’s sub-Tamagotchi nonsense. Or like me, you might find something more to it. 8/10.

I kinda wish I'd just read the score and nothing more because that sounds like something I could really like but I don't know if I'll be analysing it a bit more now, not your fault of course, that's just how my brain works with some games, either way I think I'm well up for that.

Nobody Saves the World is another one I'm well up for, I liked the sound of this when it first released but annoyingly wasn't available and since then I think I've just been too busy to play it, sometime eventually.

Based on what you've/Cappa's said, Bird Alone reminds me of Fujitsu's Fin Fin on Teo the Magic Planet on PC back when I was a kid, but more emotional.  Maybe a little too demanding of patience for me... still, damn I'm tempted.  Except, it reads like it'll make me cry, and I'm not sure I'm here for that.

TICK TOCK - A TALE FOR TWO:

I'll say that approached Bird Alone with that same sort of trepidation, and I came out of it unscathed. I enjoyed it more than anything else.

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Lots has already been typed about Kirby and the Forgotten Land in this thread, but bollocks to it - I’ll chip in with my thoughts now that it's been a couple of weeks since I’ve finished it. Anybody who sees my taste in games, recognises that I typically enjoy anything from the Kirby series and knows that I call 3D platformers my favourite type of game will be totally unsurprised to learn that I thought Kirby and the Forgotten Land was utterly fantastic. I’m very confident that there’s very little else on the Switch that’s got the amount of imagination, playability and finesse that this does.

Sure, I’d have liked the game to have done a little more with the mouthful mode mechanics. I think there’s too few copy abilities as well. Every other aspect of Kirby and the Forgotten Land is first-class though. The controls are sublime, the visuals are outstanding on the console, the music is superlative and the gameplay remained consistently great fun throughout its whole duration. There’s nothing too complicated at all with this, it’s just an altogether excellently crafted video game. 9/10.

Oddly talked about Kaze and might play if it becomes a Stadia Pro game, well it's one of the four May games, still not sure when I'll get to it though just now I can.


Well as I said in the games thread, could only see a few of us playing this which Andy has on PS4 and Balla has started, but I've got a feeling it will end up in the last game didn't finish thread. I'm unsure if Rum has got it or not, or will get it.

Which he should as 13S likely will be the best game I play this year (not best 2022 game though) like Nier Replicant was in 2021.

Much like Nier might be the right games at the right time, or more along the lines, I was exited for 13S for years as it did look lt was going to be one of the last big VITA games, which you know always getting my hyped.  

Meaning I was always going to go into 13S with a positive attitude, yet we've all played a game that hasn't lived up to hype that I'm glad 13S did with its unique Vanillaware art-style, way of telling its plot with the main 13 characters and combat.

The last part is why 13S won't be for everyone, as the RTS Combat I found fine just not that exciting or a whole lot of it. With the core of the game being the more visual novel aspect of playing as one of the 13 characters, then interacting with others, watching a cutscene etc.

Just as I say, how it's told and well done is why it such an amazing game.

The characters need to get a damn sight better from their humble beginnings to make the game 'amazing', I'll say that bloody much.

As Cappa says, I'm unsurprised that he liked Kirby a fair bit more than I did. There are definitely aspects of that write-up that I feel are overblown (I struggled to remember a single tune from the 'superlative music', for example), but for as big a fan of 3D platformers and Kirby games as yer man is, it must be heaven indeed.

Balladeer wrote:

The characters need to get a damn sight better from their humble beginnings to make the game 'amazing', I'll say that bloody much.  

Guess 89 on Meta isn't amazing, ohh whos cares about scores

I'm trying to work out if you're making fun of your own take on BotW here.

He's at the point he might as well own being that wrong about something.