La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

Maybe. Before that, though:




My journey through Konami's Castlevania Advance Collection is finally finished, and Aria of Sorrow is definitely the best out of the three.  It's an amazing evolution to see over the course of three years, to go from the archaic and dark-looking Circle of the Moon to this, a game that almost feels modern.  The collection of soul powers (nicked wholesale in its operation for Bloodstained), the actual interactions with NPCs, the voice samples, some actually fun tunes, the different weapons with noticeably different behaviours...  This is worlds away from that first game.  There's even a set-piece that made me go, 'Oh wow!'  (The build-up to the Legion boss fight.)

Compared to Harmony of Dissonance it is more mixed.  The lead character Soma isn't as nimble as Juste: the genius of having dodges on the shoulder buttons is gone.  He doesn't have a whip most of the time either.  HoD also benefits from not having the randomness that comes from the soul system, nor having to 'farm drops'.  (And AoS doesn't have the merchant.)  That said, AoS looks and sounds a bunch nicer, and doesn't have you travel the same castle layout twice.  Also, it's actually challenging.  Death killed me several times, appropriately.

There are still several issues with AoS that mark it out as an older game: having to shuffle souls around to navigate the long watery passages has big 'old version of OoT Water Temple/Iron Boots' energy, backtracking through the castle never feels quite as easy as it should, and there are a bunch of enemies/moments that are more annoying than challenging.  It's no great beauty either.  Nonetheless, a solid end to the trilogy.  A high 6/10.


As for Castlevania Advance Collection as a whole?  I think this is more than the sum of its parts: a real journey through history, at a point in time when one of the then-great developers was very quickly adapting to and evolving with the technology.  There are two decent games in here and one presumably playable one, especially if you like your retro; and I didn't even try Vampire's Kiss or look at the gallery. 7/10

BONUS - Melon Journey Bittersweet Memories:

Been waiting for Castlevania Advance Collection to go on a decent sale for awhile.

Hope we get Castlevania DS Collection at somepoint.

Two games recently


Played CT2 on Switch as got sent a code for it after talking to the publishers of A Space for The Unbound. Why on Switch was for handheld play, where this looks great on the OLED the colours like Riona hair really pops.

Then the sort of game being a VN, just works on a handheld as well, more so than on a TV.


I never even heard of Ravenlok till a week ago as Games Asylum himself in the discord for GA was talking about Redfall and how a better Xbox (timed maybe, also it's on Game Pass) exclusive coming out in the same week. He was right, it reviewed better by critics, and he gave Ravenlok a 7/10.  

I have to agree it is a 7/10 game, does nothing super well but nothing bad either and was the ideal game to play in between 18 hour Xenoblade 3 FR and Tears of the Kingdom.

Edit


I picked up SM3DW+BF finally about 2 weeks ago, took so long as I wasn't bothered about SM3DW as I own it on Wii U. Yet I've always wanted to play BF, was just waiting to pick up the collection for a good price just for that bit of content.

Have to say now it was very much worth picking up, as the whole vibes of BF really reminds me of Sunshine and I love Sunshine (GameCube, natch) which I always use more off. I think all of you part from maybe Balla, who was tad like me of not buying as played before, should be picking it up for a fun platforming time.

Ravenlok is a beautiful little adventure, although very simple as far as combat and puzzles go. It's clearly designed for 8-year old girls, and it feels a lot like the film Coraline. It's a good Sunday afternoon, chillout game.

I've beaten a few games recently, but don't really have much to say about them. As Dusk Falls is a wonderfully immersive drama that utilises the Hotel Dusk approach to animation, and it's one of the best things I've played that's modern, but I doubt I'll ever revisit it. If you liked Life is Strange or The Walking Dead, it's well worth playing. I've also been addicted to Vampire Survivors, a wickedly moreish rogue-lite/rogue-like/whatever the kids call it, that would be dangerous on Switch. You only use the left stick to move, but it's got a rhythm to its auto-attacks and gradually makes you feel very powerful as you destroy large waves of enemies. Dynasty Warriors meets Donut County. I have also been addicted to Mr Driller: Drill Land, which I believe was a Japanese GameCube exclusive back in the day. I've always sucked at Mr. Driller, but it still sinks its hooks into me which is a testament to its excellent design. You have to weigh up what you're drilling into and how the blocks above are affected, which when you pair with things to collect (such as air) and things to avoid (like spike blocks or rolling concrete balls) it's basically like playing Tetris with one hand and playing Dig Dug with the other. Whilst playing Puyo Puyo with your chin. It can be a bit much (for me anyway) but when you get a run going, it's brilliant.

I did pick up SM3DW+BF! It's still a great game even for me, it's just a great Wii U game reheated with an addition that's the worse for being in that Wii U game's engine.

Can you finish Vampire Survivors? From what I've seen of it I imagined that it didn't even have an end point, you just played it until your computer couldn't cope with the amount of things on screen and/or your brain dribbled out of your nose. I also sucked at Mr. Driller Drill Land, and so never moved past the demo. Definitely sounds like a bit much for me!

Coraline is a good shout for Ravenlok.

They might say I'm mad on my BotW and TotK views but I thought As Dusk Falls was the worst game I played in 2022. Okay I did play a few worse but I had no expectations for Pupperazzi where As Dusk Falls I did and it completely fell flat.

Yeah you can finish Vampire Survivors, the maps end at 30 mins and there are various criteria that need to be hit to unlock new stages and characters, all of which lead to a final stage. It's good, get on it.

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

Buskalilly wrote:

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

I got a game just like that, though to be honest I look at Vampire Survivors and gone that's not for me without even giving it a try.


Think Balla can have those preconceptions for Forspoken due to its reviews and lack of commercial success, yet here I am to say I loved Forspoken. Now I did play the demo ways back which I liked and why I got it for my birthday, and only just now decided to play the game on Sunday just gone.

Which since then been updates etc like games get now but oddly this week was a big one due to the DLC arriving (which I may even buy, depending on how much it costs outside the deluxe edition upgrade) that I did pick a great time to play the game.

I played in the performance mode, I did try the other two modes and the game did look better, yet this is the sort of game where you want that 60fps and I still think it looked great as graphics was a negative in reviews yet running around with Frey's parkour you don't really get to look at the scenery. Then in combat the particle effects which are a lot going on from you and the enemies look fantastic and is the combat in general.

The story is decent the issue is the dialogue where Frey likes to drop an F Bomb after every other word it feels (hear FFXVI might be like that as well due to going all GoT) though Cuff reminds me of Weiss from NieR and actually the game reminds me a lot of NieR.

I believe you can also now pick this up rather cheap for a PS5 exclusive and I feel it well worth a play as I enjoyed my 17.5hrs hours of my adventure, that it currently sits as my number 3 GOTY.

Edit did pick up


Which was £9.79, which I thought was a good price for the deluxe upgrade which it was also in is £25, so Square are pricing the mini soundtrack & mini art book at £15.21 which seems a lot. #

Anyway, it is more Forspoken that takes about 2.5hrs and adds to the story, which as I say I enjoyed the game and got with this over 20hrs from the game.

Double Post as I finished another game


I don't often recommend games to Buska compared to others on here, as our tastes are rather different, even if some crossover with the likes of Pokémon, Metal Gear and MonHan.  Yet here I am to say he should be giving Star Trek Resurgence a go when he has the opportunity at sub £25 price.

Why you may ask, well STR is a Telltale-like from Dramatic Labs who are made up of Ex-Telltale talent, making the similarities rather understandable. Over the 10+ hours, you play as Commander Jara Rydek and Petty Officer Carter Diaz, giving two different views on Starfleet as a First Officer and someone in the Lower Decks with regard to missions which play out like episodes of TNG.

And that is what STR is a season of TNG with an overarching story that actually takes place 16 years after an episode in season one of TNG. Dramatic Labs nailed the feel of TNG and everything about it in STR.

If this were a Telltale game would it be one of the best, most probably not and not ever will like they have to make choices along the way or that everyone seems to be raising the people's eyebrow when they talk among other weird graphical things.

Yet with all that said, this might be the best Star Trek game there is, or least certainly the best I've played.

Okay, I'm legit interested.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

Wrong: I'm writing it off based on it being described as having roguish aspects.  Unless that too is false, in which case, not wrong in fact.



Yep, we're rolling out the big bold title for this one.  It's got acclaim enough, being touted by many last year as the spiritual successor to Return of the Obra Dinn.  I can see why... but also, that's a bit much.

If you've not heard of Golden Idol, you play as some sort of omnipresent deity with the ability to rummage through everyone's belongings during or shortly after somebody's death.  (No prizes for guessing who's dying in the picture above.)  Your goal is to use the various words you pick up from examining each diorama-like set of scenes to fill in the gaps in an explanation of the events, like this.  (That's not the actual solution.)  It's more intuitive than it sounds.

What's less intuitive is the control scheme.  This is obviously a PC game brought over to Switch, but even for a PC title filling in the blanks feels needlessly fiddly.  Why can't I just drag and drop words into the slots?  Daft.  Otherwise (a couple of crashes aside, the game autosaves and doesn't take long to load) it works just fine on the hybrid, as you'd hope from a set of dioramas without particularly graphics-heavy visuals.  The visuals are... well they're definitely striking.  The ugly potato-faced folks add an air of the macabre grotesque to proceedings, without being so horrific that they put me off like Obra Dinn's death wails did; and the art is reflected in the characters, almost all of them terrible people.  You love to see them get screwed over.

I like detective games, and I liked playing detective here.  You use the clues to find the solutions to increasingly convoluted yet never unfair 'murders' (not all quite meet the description), and doing so is taxing in all the right ways - even if you can brute force a few of the solutions once you've got most of the pieces.  My main issue with the game is that there isn't enough of it.  There are 11 cases (14 with the first DLC), and solving them all probably took me around three hours.  The game costs £17, more with the DLC.  It's debatable value for money.  

Still though, with Lucas Pope working on Playdate games, if you want your detective fix there are worse places to get it than in 18th-century potato-faced Britain.  Obra Dinn comparisons maybe be overdone, but even if the game isn't quite golden, that's no reason to idle on it.

Balladeer wrote:

Still though, with Lucas Pope working on Playdate games, if you want your detective fix there are worse places to get it than in 18th-century potato-faced Britain.  Obra Dinn comparisons maybe be overdone, but even if the game isn't quite golden, that's no reason to idle on it.

Ah, Pope'll be back on normal game systems soon, don't worry
That pun though


A bit sneaky this, as some of these are not finished, but to avoid spamming, here's the
itch.io Charity Bundle or free game Showcase (while I waited for Zelda)
These are mostly games I actually chose to play first; after this, I'm going to be heading to the Random Number Generator and seeing what weird crap comes up

Brave Hero Yuusha EX - I played a turn-based RPG! Fantasy world, interpersed with a kid at school reading the story of the fantasy world and being illogically obsessed, kind of like when you're about 8 and see a boob. (Er, apparently). A bit tonally all over the place but charming in a basic SNES Dragon Quest kind of way. 4/6

Tallowmere - Roguelike action platformer where you... stab things to... er... I forget now. Looks like a Klik n Play game. zzzz/10

Mr. Mayor Tells Your Fortune Recounts a Story and Offers You Snacks - Not really a game, just a silly random anecdote generator. Luckily free, although was included in a charity bundle. But a silly bit of fun. Silly dialogue provided by Nintendo magazine prodigy Kate Gray. LOL/10

Furballs - A silly football game starring cartoon animals, for which you create your own nationality, accompanying flag and national anthem. Silly fun spoiled by absolutely incomprehensible controls. 3/5

Ynglet - Nifflas (of Knytt / Affordable Space Adventures fame) makes a game where you're a simple organism jumping around a bizarre simple organism town. Great fun if you like stuff with jumping trials e.g. Celeste / Super Meat Boy, with a very cute plinky-plonky aesthetic. Quite short, but maybe correctly so as the puzzle aspect doesn't outstay its welcome. 7/8

SkateBIRD - Choosing which species of bird you want to be is great - there are loads to choose from. Playing a slightly janky Tony Hawk clone is not. Cheep Cheep/Cheep Cheep Cheep Cheep Cheep

KIDS - Are games art? Are games fart. Yeah Alright Mate/10

Awesome Game - Nifflas again, this time teaming up with some schoolkids to ask them to come up with ideas and graphics for their very own videogame! Ruined by the fact that 9-year-old kids want the edgy shit they think is cool and for grown-ups. Should Be Seen And Not Heard/10

Button City - Very cute game about a fox moving to a new town and making friends in an arcade. Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic is wonderful, and really should be one by now. Game itself is a little too much of walking to the next line of dialogue (I ain't playing no Visual Novel fool); but the arcade games they've built into the world are very cute. Biggest problem was I lost the save file after having to restore my PC after the I installed the phone software my work uses in order to be more helpful and it had a cyber-attack like the next day. But... I can't entirely blame Button City for that, and I think I'm likely to re-install and try again soon. ?/? - Also just had a football-based sequel announced!

Previously covered, in what we'll call Part 0: The Hex (clever genre-hopping, bit edgy for its own good); Dogurai (like Ninja Gaiden with dogs on the GameBoy, a bit basic); Lenna's Inception (not a good advert for procedural generation); Celeste (Yes it was very good can we stop talking about it now); And Yet It Moves (Nice concept for a platformer with the rotato-potato, a bit frustrating to actually play though); Ollie and Bollie (very small cute game about fixing a park, probably most rewarding if played in co-op with a younger gamer); Spooky Ghosts Dot Com (Basic but compelling Metroidvania, don't think they know how music works though); Minit (Brilliant concept for a quick-fire adventure)

Haven't got much to add to either of those, part from I do want to see what Pope does with the Playdate hardware.


Finally got around to finishing this, I think a lot of you will hate it as it is old school survival horror more on the side of psychological-horror ala Silent Hill where it is more about atmosphere, story, puzzles that are get X to open Y that gives you Z that lets you pass through W, then blasting enemies.

I could see Jas liking and if Luke gave it the time, maybe even could do a deep a look at the story.


Finally, finished World Tour which took way longer than I thought even doing bond level to 100 and enough side-quests for the trophy. Still pretty fun, but I prefer the way MK does the story mode with the main characters all part of it all then this, though will say preferred over Granblue with its RPG mode.

Have messed around in some other modes, yet I think I'm done with SF6 now.

I need to get back to Signalis at some point as I did like the first few hours I played of it.

Jimbob wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Still though, with Lucas Pope working on Playdate games, if you want your detective fix there are worse places to get it than in 18th-century potato-faced Britain.  Obra Dinn comparisons maybe be overdone, but even if the game isn't quite golden, that's no reason to idle on it.

Ah, Pope'll be back on normal game systems soon, don't worry
That pun though

Have you played it Jim? Feels like your cup of tea.

Loving those scores. I give my own pun a LOL/10.

masofdas wrote:

Have messed around in some other modes, yet I think I'm done with SF6 now.

Not until I tan your arse at it online.

Have to do that in MK1 now

Balladeer wrote:

Jimbob wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Still though, with Lucas Pope working on Playdate games, if you want your detective fix there are worse places to get it than in 18th-century potato-faced Britain.  Obra Dinn comparisons maybe be overdone, but even if the game isn't quite golden, that's no reason to idle on it.

Ah, Pope'll be back on normal game systems soon, don't worry
That pun though

Have you played it Jim?  Feels like your cup of tea.

I have not - but will keep an eye out for it in sales etc. (which tends to be the only time I purchase something that isn't 100% PLAY RIGHT NOW).
I probably should add something else where to make this reply post more worthwhile. Er... woozle-wuzzle

Classic Jim.

Beaten a couple of games recently:

Dirt 5



I was a big fan of Dirt 4, with its arcade-y rally driving capturing the adrenaline-fuelled sprint against a timer, perhaps better than anything else I've played outside of the arcade. But 5 was a cooler experience, and I never liked the tone of it all. In 4, you had a co-driver and it felt like you were genuinely improving, with every corner feeling like a big deal. I took it serious and wanted to tackle every event until I had ticked off all the challenges. In 5, you've got some DJ Stryker fella talking to you as if this professional motorsport is Need for Speed. I get that it was going for a festival vibe, a la Forza Horizon 4, but it just clashed too much for me to believe any of it. There's some podcast story going on, but I just ignored all that and did the races. I also thought the racing was weaker, and none of the events seemed to last longer than five minutes. At least it was challenging (4 quickly became too easy). There's plenty of customisation options and cars to unlock, but I've never been arsed about that in rally games - if the driving feels right and you get that rush as you drift round a corner perfectly, most of that is window dressing. And I think Dirt 5 emphasised the window dressing more than the actual driving. It's still a good game, but left me disappointed.
7/10

House Flipper



I actually rate this higher than Power Wash Simulator. Perfect podcast game, but it's twice as therapeutic because not only are you cleaning and tidying delapidated properties, you get to decorate and furnish them however you like too! There is some auction system in here whereby if you make a house more family-oriented then the family will bid higher than the nutjob craving a mancave, but I don't think it really works. I tidied up Joey and Chandler's flat from Friends (I assume it was licensed) and then sold it to some pensioners. With the giant crate from Series 4 in it. It does have a good sense of humour to it, much like PowerWash Simulator you can do up a property on the moon, or even a castle. Initially there's a job system, where you go to properties and tidy them up for money, then they become more elaborate where you are knocking down walls, and tiling bathrooms. It's all very tangible and the sounds are on point, but I'm not sure it would be everyone's cup of tea. You kind of need it as a palate cleanser, a secondary game that you dip in and out of. I really enjoyed it.
8/10

I’ve always been meaning to get round to one of the Dirt games, they sound like my sort of thing. You make the fourth one sound even more like my sort of thing, I’ll keep an eye out for a PS4 copy in the second-hand shops.

~



Are there any gamers on the GNamer Forum old enough to have heard of The Legend of Zelda? Quietly the Japanese multinational video game company Nintendo released a new entry into this relatively unheralded franchise earlier this year, called The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Enough of that. Let me tell you: Tears of the Kingdom is the best Zelda game ever. Better than Breath of the Wild, better than Ocarina of Time – even better than that Legend of Zelda Zone DLC from the Sonic game on the Wii U. Tears of the Kingdom is one of those truly special games that you want to stand up and applaud, it’s a nigh-on faultless masterpiece. While keeping that amazing open-world gameplay and it’s distinctive mechanics I think it improves on Breath of the Wild in every other realistic way it can. I really liked the Divine Beasts before but for me the more traditional temples/dungeons have never been done better than they have been here. On the whole, I thought the Rito, Goron, Zora and Gerudo Regional Phenomena quests were absolutely brilliant, and the whole march to the endgame is a masterful build to a spectacular crescendo. The Gloom adds an exciting threat and heightens the challenge in a way that just didn’t exist in Breath of the Wild, when you could just pause your game and scran twenty Raw Meat steaks to refill your health and somehow not get food poisoning. The new abilities are the dog’s bollocks too. I never got tired of solving all sorts of puzzles with these and exploiting my resources to maneuver around the land. To Ascend, Recall, Fuse and especially to use the Ultrahand – they’re all game-changers, and quickly became instinctive. It felt like there was this really hard-to-describe harmony between myself, the Switch Pro Controller and the game’s environment, it was just a totally immersive experience that I couldn’t wait to sit down with during every spare moment. Plus: it’s right enough that I used the now-patched duplication glitch in the past, but in all honesty that just streamlined my experience and let me focus on the game’s strengths and most enjoyable aspects. I still played the game with loads of freedom and endless possibilities, albeit I bent the rules a bit.

I reached the credits with seventy six shrines completed, nineteen hearts gained and my armour half-upgraded, and that probably isn’t scratching the surface. There’s loads of locations I didn’t visit, hundreds of seeds I didn’t find, and there’s probably loads of weapons and enemies that I didn’t encounter either. I didn’t even upgrade my battery at all, I didn’t know how!

After sixty-odd hours it’s time for me to move onto other games so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll look back on Tears of the Kingdom as pure genius, and as an all-time classic. 10/10.

Can't believe you, the Cappuccino Kid, spelled 'bollocks' wrong. Of all people.

Cracking write-up though, they say brevity is the soul of wit and you've incredibly managed to keep a description of an enormous game to three-ish paragraphs. Brief playtime too, sixty hours! I won't manage to keep either as brief I suspect, and I think you benefit from both. Top drawer.

Talking about another long-running series


FFXVI is a strange game as it does stray away from FF in terms of a JRPG but still gives me as someone with a very mixed FF history (which you can see elsewhere) still gave me FF things like characters, story which XVI does do very well in a Game of Thrones like setting.

Why it strays away is because the combat is actiony like a not great Devil May Cry which makes sense as the XVI combat director worked on DMC which is fine in a game like XVI. As I wasn't expecting DMC, where as I say the story and characters of XVI is what I was looking for, and in that regard Clive & the gang are great.

With the game being so new, and I know bunch playing it, don't really want to touch more on the story due to spoilers of my GOTY (currently, and gone into Top 100 at like 97).

masofdas wrote:

I'm currently playing VN Harmony, which was a timed exclusive on Switch and even featured in a Direct-thing.

Though I'm playing on PS4/5 as it was cheaper, though might work better as handheld game. Looking at the trophies it has 5 acts, which I'm halfway through Act 3, that thoughts will come soon in Last Game thread.

Currently say not that positive on it.

It got better when I wrote that I was 4hrs into the game and on Act 3 Chapter 2, with the game having 5 Acts in total (I would even say like a bit of bonus one in between two of them) with three chapters each.

The last two acts are pretty good, and I do like the game has nice visuals especially the cutscenes, music from Lena Raine, representation and all that, but I just don't think the story the most important part in a VN is all that.

And the person on here that mostly likely like it the most Balla will hate the game is basically just all choices, which at the start didn't seem to make much difference as you could do stuff then have two choices at the end of an Act anyway.  This does change at the end where I could only make one choice from my previous actions from three possible endings (more than three but some are variations) that due to this I can't recommend it to Balla and no one else really unless super cheap and curious being Don't Nod that now I don't think are all that as LiS is the only great game I've played from them.

A new GameBoy game which is on STEAM etc (also a GBC cart) but is the Evercade game of the month and is a fun little platformer that takes about 40mins to finish, one that Capa and Jim would enjoy.