La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

That was quick or feels like it was a quick play through. It is one on my immediate backlog, as you'll see from August thread not a lot I'm picking up if at all till September that I should get around to it. If not least given my support, I guess.

It was a super-quick playthrough, couldn't tear myself away and I know the puzzle solutions already and it's a very easy game to binge. For a new player that's probably not the best way to go about it though. It's reasonably short and would probably benefit from being spread out over a few days. I think the pacing is spot on, but then I would think that wouldn't I.

Oatchi is a good boy in Pikmin 4 which is another fun Pikmin outing, that I rolled first credits after about 12 hrs, then after is a post-game (really a main mission but seen it talked as post-game) which added 6hrs on to my playtime.

Till the very end I was pretty high on it, but the last sort part was a ted meh and even though Oatchi is a nice new extra along with the camera angle, I still think Pikmin 3 is better. I say that but haven't played P3 since launch which is 10 years ago and the using the gamepad with a wiimote was neat.

If you like Pikmin, you'll like this, not a lot more to say.

I'm sure I'll have more to say

I don't recall Ghost Trick being all that long even when I first played it?

Hopefully you do, as really it's Pikmin that looks better with a new thing. Isn't bad as last one for me was ten years ago, that not like a COD or FIFA it's the same but looks a bit better each time.

HLTB has Ghost Trick at 12hrs, so feels Balla done that quickly. I say that, but I have just done Pikmin 4 in 18hrs over four days.

Arcade Paradise

If you’ve ever watched Eastenders and wondered how a laundrette stays in business in an age where everybody owns a washing machine, you’re in luck! Arcade Paradise lets you look after Dot Cotton’s establishment if it was ripped out of Albert Square and dropped in smalltown USA. While I initially mourned the loss of chatting to regulars like the Mitchells, finding out how Dirty Den got his nickname, and scraping Snickers stains out of Pat Butcher’s knickers - the early 90s Americana is hard not to admire and ultimately fall in love with. You’re some college dropout with an overbearing prick of a father, who has zero confidence in your abilities and ambition, frequently belittling your character as they maintain his long-suffering “laundromat”. You’re left with a few 80s arcade machines, and gradually introduce these into the business until you’re running a full-blown arcade with a couple of washing machines in it. I’ve now fully converted the laundrette and have nearly all the machines that the game offers you, but it’s very much a game about routine. You clean the floor of litter and gum, empty the coin “hoppers”, and load the washing machines, before also drying the customer’s clothes, checking your emails, and catching the bus home each night. It reminded me of Shenmue in that respect - embracing the mundane yet bathing in a sea of nostalgia as you do. It’s an effective premise and perhaps doesn’t lean into the 90s era as much as it could, but the storyline did manage to have a surprise or two in there. The arcade games are a mixed bag, essentially rip-offs of Pac-Man, Asteroids, Arkanoid, and OutRun but with worse controls. The Bubble Bobble one is ridiculously easy, whereas the Pong one is nigh-on impossible to even register a point against the AI. The Air Hockey game is liable to glitch, with pucks hovering off the table at some points, while the pool table game is embarrassing next to even the one in Yakuza games. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend time on each machine - I focused on the few good ones and made them popular by either playing them a lot or completing the various goals that are assigned. There are “achievements” for each arcade machine, but you can also play around with the cost of the machines too, to make them easier or harder, and cheaper or more expensive. It’s in the arcade management sim that I found myself enjoying Arcade Paradise most - a fantasy for anyone who loves the idea of an arcade still existing but doesn’t have the financial backing, business acumen, or motivation to go and bring one into existence themselves. Granted, it’s an idealistic version of the past, one that preceded even my old, wrinkly arse, and I pray that there is a sequel with 90s knockoffs next (because the SEGA era is better than the Atari one, natch).

It’s an addictive title that plays on nostalgia but feels a bit too janky in its execution to go down as an easy recommendation, outside of being a Game Pass game you smash through in a week.
7/10

I recently bought Arcade Paradise as it sounds very much my bag baby so I look forward to playing it some time this century.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom



I'm not going to go in to it much as I'm sure you've all read everyone else's thoughts, unsurprisingly after 210 hours I'm pretty confident in saying they managed to better BotW here. Buska put it well when he mentioned how you could play most of the game without overdoing it on the new mechanics which I think I did but the moments where I used them added a lot of compelling puzzle solving and sometimes prolonged moments of trial and error which never felt frustrating but rather satisfying when progress was made. What I'm left with now I've finished the story, besides plenty of enjoyable side content and areas to explore is a pretty comprehensive tool box to have some fun with, will I make a giant mech at some point? I'm sure as heck gonna try and I'll enjoy the inevitable failure.

I also enjoyed the story more and the way the 3 stages of the world map interconnect with nearly every inch of it filled with something of interest is an astonishing feat, its an amazing achievement to outdo the best game of all time but this company always manages to do the unthinkable.

/10

I've heard great things about Arcade Paradise, great things that convince me it's not for me but great things nonetheless.

Treesmurf wrote:

the way the 3 stages of the world map interconnect with nearly every inch of it filled with something of interest is an astonishing feat

Also the Depths exist.

masofdas wrote:

HLTB has Ghost Trick at 12hrs, so feels Balla done that quickly.

Yep it's down on my Switch as '5 hours or more', i.e. not more than 10 hours. I did replay it in 2021, so I still remember the puzzle solutions pretty well. I'm definitely well on the lower end of playtimes.

A few days ago Venba launched on all the formats but is in Game Pass and how I played. It took just over 1.5hrs and got 660g, seems like an easy 1000g or Platinum, which if I had paid money for the game may have done a second play to get my £12 worth from it.

Venba it is a good little VN game with a cooking mini-game mixed in, and is something like Coffee Talk on the Switch a good place to play in portable. Just think you'll be one and done with it for the money, and you could get like a Oxenfree II instead, which is about 5hrs long.

Vennba does likely give a good account of an Indian family living in Canada due to the team behind it and I did enjoy.

Surpassing my expectations recently was Fast & Furious Spy Racers: Rise of SH1FT3R, a 2021 arcade racer that’s based on a Netflix cartoon and made by the folks who did the barely-remembered but often price-dropped Xenon Racer. Frequent cutscenes tell a story about your group of Spy Racers how you use paint-based gadgets to stop a criminal racing organisation. Park that though, they’re rubbish and badly voice acted. On the track however, this is a thoroughly competent racer that evokes faint memories of Blur on the PS3/360.

I particularly like that the AI is pretty competitive and that you’re actively encouraged to use the power-ups you gain by building up your energy bar through stylish driving. Without vehicle damage and with plenty of plain-to-see track shortcuts it’s deliberately simplistic for its intended audience; I’d have to imagine that it’s best enjoyed by pre-teens because Rise of SH1FT3R truthfully doesn’t have a lot of substance. The slight lack of speed and the sub-three hour campaign mode reduce its value and the overall score I’d award it, but I honestly found enough that’s good here to give it a light recommendation if it you see it cheap on the eShop or if it’s included in whichever of your PlayStation or Xbox subscriptions. 5/10.



Supermarket Shriek is decent budget buy that’s been reliably available for under a fiver on The Game Collection for a while now. The pun-based title highlights the kind of light comic relief that’s provided here. It’s a co-op racer where you control a man and a goat screaming in a shopping trolley around obstacle courses set in various high street stores. You manoeuvre your trolley with the screams of the man and the goat – pushing the L trigger moves your trolley to the left, R moves to the right and pressing both propels you straight ahead. It’s an amusing idea for a game and it’s made humourously, there’s lots of creativity to enjoy in that sense.

Yet I think the premise exhausted itself a while before I’d finished the main campaign, and that was compounded by lots of annoyance with the controls and frustration with the inconsistent difficulty. As the game reached its conclusion I thought the level of challenge was too intense for what Supermarket Shriek was trying to be. That challenge felt very artificial too, just as a way of prolonging the game’s length. I blasted through the first two thirds of it pretty quickly and I had a good time, but the last third took me much longer and just pissed me off. I played it on my tod though, and I can totally see how it would be a lot more fun with a second player. Mainly because of its cheap price and because it can be quite funny, I overall say it’s worth considering. 6/10.



Going back to his previous review on Page 12 of this very thread, Balladeer was absolutely right when he typed that Kaze and the Wild Masks “wants to be Donkey Kong Country really badly”. I’d say it’s closer to that than Freedom Planet is to Sonic The Hedgehog, and maybe even Yooka-Laylee is to Banjo-Kazooie. It’s properly Stars In Their Eyes, where Matthew Kelly is a giant ape with a tie and no trousers and Kaze performs the DK Rap.

Yet I think it’s a very decent imitator in all fairness. I thought the level design often flowed brilliantly, and it was usually very satisfying to complete stages while navigating for all its secrets and bonus areas. It’s visually really nice too, being one of these games where I don’t think the screenshots do it justice. The game’s main gimmick - mask transformations - meaningfully alters the gameplay as well, and while some are ideologically better than others you really can’t fault how they control. Yet the main argument against Kaze and the Wild Masks is its lack of originality. Stuck in that ‘’90s classics platformer style’, there’s nothing to experience here that isn’t a SNES-era idea that’s been mimicked loads of times by this point. The difficulty is unbalanced in both directions too, waving between being too easy and too hard for the majority of its playtime. I reached a end-of-zone boss where I thought to myself ‘bloody hell, this is a bit difficult for a mid-game boss’. I eventually beat it, and then the credits rolled! Aye, Kaze and the Wild Masks is a little bit short too.

For my £3.99 however I’m more than content. All in all, Kaze and the Wild Masks is a pretty good game that I recommend a lot more highly than Balladeer did in his 4/10 scudding. That said, I’d have probably liked a little more and would almost certainly have remembered it more fondly in a year’s time if it tried to be bolder and more distinctive from Donkey Kong Country. 7/10.

I'm not surprised that you liked Kaze more than I did Cappa, since you're much more of a platformer fan than I am, especially in 2D.  I would disagree on the visuals, but otherwise I can't argue with anything you've said, only the enthusiasm you place on it. I just think we emphasise different values.  I'd expect you to give most 2D platformers 2/10 more than me, and that's almost what you've done - and I'm guessing it didn't crash on you?

I've wishlisted Venba.  My worry, not that Mas will understand it, is that it's going to be a bit Florence.  Still, everywhere's singing its praises, so I might well give it a shot.

Balla's review of Kaze put me right off the game even at £4 maybe now I should have taken a punt on it.


Disney Illusion Island has turned out to be a massive surprise for me, as prerelease I would have likely passed on it but reviews have been on the positive side and helps the game is only £35 on a cart.

And those reviews are on the positive side for good reason, as DII is just a well-designed introductory Metroidvania which I brought up might be great for Smurf being CO-OP and on the more child-friendly, will say that last sort of section gets tough.

DII looks good, nice cutscenes, boss battles are clever with the whole no combat and all just makes a super game, which all will enjoy.

I would imagine your views on a story-lite 2D platformer with overly strong DKC ties might sit closer to my tastes than to Cappa's.  Anyway, Illusion is on my wishlist as a potential couch co-op game, glad you enjoyed it!




I finished the final DLC Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed today and I loved it.  It's 20-30 hours more Xenoblade 3 with a snappier pace and a heavy dose of nostalgia for the series.  If you've played Xenoblade 3 you'll know that that's great, and that should be enough to encourage you to pick it up.  It's definitely good value for money.  For more thoughts read my post in the XC3 thread.  If you haven't played Xenoblade 3, then a review of the DLC isn't going to convince you.  Read the last paragraph of this instead.  As DLC of much the same quality of the game it came from, it gets the same score.  9/10

BONUS! Another Tomorrow:

There's a bunch of stuff just up there that I wanna play I think - Disney Illusion Island, Kaze and the mask thingies, those are definitely my "thing" and I think even Venba even though it's not usually my "thing" it's always nice to have another way of experiencing someone else's culture.

But I do need to tell y'all about

Firstly the big problem: this game centres around an arcade, and the arcade games created within this game aren't that fun (the DDR-alike is incomprehensible). There are entire side-quests about challenging NPCs to said games, so completionists will struggle here; where the main event (a moba incongruously placed in an 8-player arcade cabinet) is required for the main story, just grin and bear it. And outside of that, most of the gameplay is walking to the next NPC and talking to them.
However, I found myself coming back to this, and miss the world now that I've finished playing in it. The game has a lovely Saturday-morning cartoon aesthetic*, and the dialogue in the story is very light-hearted and often silly; there are a couple of surprisingly serious moments, but they do provide a big emotional impact, as opposed to feeling out of place, or ham-fisted David Cage-esque YOU HAVE TO FEEL SAD NOW. The interactivity of travelling around town and catching up with people does just enough to steer it away from Visual Novel territory also.
Of all things, the announced sequel is about football, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm legit keeping an eye out for this now. And if an animated version of this turned up on yer kids' channels, I think the youth would have a nice time watching it.

Quite Pleasant Really/10


*I am sorry for writing "aesthetic"

I got sent a code for Stray Gods on Xbox, which I have to mention first. With that said, I've not gone and put at like 6th on my list of what I've played this year (copying an idea from Cappa) but 36th out of 45th things (I've counted XC3:FR for instance).

With that out of the way, Stray Gods is not really an RPG, it is more of an adventure visual novel game as you're not walking around like in Life is Strange but get stills where you select dialogue options like a VN as the main character Grace played by Laura Bailey.

Those choices then play out in song or a musical from Austin Wintory, as you get these power of a muse from the Greek gods/legends, and you'll meet others like Apollo played by Troy Baker, Calliope by Ashley Johnson and Asterion by Rahul Kohli as you try to clear your name of murder.

The plot and style of the game is really similar to Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, which I recently played just I feel Stray Gods just does everything better than Harmony and out of the two I'd be recommending.

If you're going to play Kaze, and Jim you'll probably get more out of it than I did or than Mas would, do yourself a favour and play it off Switch.  I think Cappa's very lucky if he didn't hit any bugs that didn't require a full restart, given that I had about five in my playthrough.

Button City looks like my sort of cute!  I am however a completionist so will probably give it a pass, and given that I'm a completionist who doesn't like replays I'll do the same with Stray Gods.  The Lady though is right in there due to the writing talent, has one of the Dragon Age lads on board I believe.  Once again though Mas, you've kind of buried the lede here, with one line on what you do/don't like.

I've only played it the once as that's my story of Grace, and playing again to me be doing for the sake of it.

What did I Bury?

Balla wrote:

you've kind of buried the lede here

Lede?

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is very much a paint by numbers Triple A 3rd person action adventure games, which launched with bugs and still has them now, with the game crashing on me around four times and frame rate tanking in certain areas.

Games like this is why were seeing the stuff around BGIII at the moment, with it being an AAA game that just works. I did of course stick to Star Wars as I wouldn't be here typing about it, as when it does work and you get those Star Wars story beats it is good.

I'm glad I didn't pay £70rrp for it, I got it £47 (Trade + £12 cash) and just sold for £33 that I think is fair for the game.


A Short Hike recent came to Xbox via Game Pass, and thought why not give it a play again. I was a tad worried it would be an Untitled Goose situation, and yeah it does lose a little playing it on a TV over handheld as felt so right on Switch with those chunky pixels.

Part from that really, it's still a fun game and I found things I didn't before, likely heading up the peak a different way this time.

I recently beat A Short Hike too, and thought it was charming if throwaway. It felt like 10% of a game, so I'm glad I didn't pay for it. Maybe I missed the point?

Personally I'd say yes and no.  I loved it less than some people because the game was too short.  I don't think the runtime gave all its ideas full time to bloom.  That said, what I thought was in there made for a great experience: 'less than some people' was still an 8/10 in my book.

masofdas wrote:

I've only played it the once as that's my story of Grace, and playing again to me be doing for the sake of it.

What did I Bury?

Yes but we both know my brain doesn't work like that.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bury_the_lede  Maybe that's slightly unfair since we're less likely to know about how Stray Gods works than we are a Mario game, but I still feel like we could've done with more than one paragraph of how you actually feel about it!  What was good?  What was less good?  What was bobbins?  That's what I'm interested in anyway.

I liked A Short Hike because it was so small. Played the whole game on a train up to Hokkaido.

What was good? The atmosphere and how the story is told via story book narration. The graphics I did play on the Series X, but the environments were really impressive. Music that sets the tone of what is happening. Neat little puzzles that make it a step-up of A Short Hike, but below Jedi of how much game it is and the sort of thing I wanted at the moment.

What was less good? That "human" characters don't look great. It's not very original was Little Nightmares x Brothers without the CO-OP.  

What was bobbins? Not a lot.

A surprisingly a very good game that I may even go as far to say a 2023 hidden gem, amongst the Tears and Baluder's of this world. I did play via Game Pass, but I believe Bramble is £25 physical for PS5, PS4, Switch, Xbox and I would say maybe pick it up and finish it then keep or trade it in after its 5-hour runtime.

Edit

What was good? Art style. Very French. Studio Ghibli-like

What was less good? Very French

What was bobbins? Controls, would be better on an M+K or maybe Switch has touchscreen support for a lot of pointing & clicking.


What was good? VO, Music

What was less good? Story

What was bobbins? The rest of it, think this now the second-worst game I've played this year.

That's more like it!  ...what was 'the rest of it' with Maquette?

masofdas wrote:

What was less good? Very French

Mas didn't vote for Brexit for this!



Cassette Beasts doesn't start well, which is in keeping with the IP it apes at least I guess.  You find yourself in a new world, being attended to by a dully written NPC with some truly annoying voice barks.  It turns out you've washed up on the shores of New Wirral, a kind of 'in-between place' that feels strange and empty due to its in-between nature.  The visuals are all very 5th-gen. Pokémon without adding much new.  The 'Pokémon Centre' (a café) has bad music with bad lyrics, including swearing that seems only to exist to make the game pointlessly mature.  You set off on a quest with this dull NPC (sigh) to investigate strange occurrences, with your tiny stamina meeting restricting your dash, and learn your first navigational move - a glide that serves to show how bad platforming is in a 5th-gen. Pokémon visual setup.  Combined with some truly egregious stuttering when this game first released on Switch, it's not a good first impression at all.

Then you fight the first boss and it's all uphill from there.

The main bosses, 'Archangels', are excellent.  Truly out-of-place designs in the 5th-gen. Pokémon world.  If that's where the battle system really comes to life, though, it's still grand everywhere else - it may not have quite the depth of Pokémon, but the system of buffs and debuffs that governs type advantages is almost as deep in its own way.  The monsters too don't quite have the depth or the appeal of Pokémon, but there are still plenty of top-quality designs and a rich vein of pun names that point to the very British development team.  (Nevermort ticks both boxes, Jay would love it.)  There are Gym Leader replacements too, that are both more tactical and better AI-wise than Pokémon's versions.  That's before we get to the huge number of possible two-monster fusions.  If the fusions don't quite feel as powerful or as mechanically entertaining as they should be, they're still very cool and entertainingly daft.

Most of the other aspects improve from that grim beginning as well.  You're not really here for the writing, but initial companion Kayleigh is one of the worse characters, with Meredith forming a high point.  (The Archangels have their moments too.)  The strange emptiness of New Wirral is kind of the point, and leads to a world that feels substantially different from Unova or what have you.  The stamina meter extends as you play, the visuals come to life a bit more in the battles, and the music with lyrics is a rarity in the overworld - most often it appears in battles, and when it does it slaps.  I'll post some examples in the right place.  

If there's an area that the game never manages to perfect, it's the navigation of its world.  The bad platforming isn't required a lot, but when it is it continues to be bad - this game isn't at its best when outside battles.  The navigation problems extend to the paucity of fast travel points (the devs must have thought they were so clever having the boss locations double-up as fast travel points until they tried playing with them), and to the fact that overworld checkpoints are few and far between - you can easily lose minutes of progress if you fall into a battle you're underlevelled for, which is easy in an open-world game.  No quick restart functionality exacerbates this, as do the long loading times and stuttering when you lose your dash.  Oh yes, the truly egregious stuff might still have been patched out but the performance still suffers.  Maybe we all need to give TPC a bit of slack for their attempts to get open-world Pokémon that looks nicer than 5th-gen. running on Switch?  Self included.

At the same time though, Cassette Beasts is a breath of fresh air: it's the first serious Pokémon competitor I've played, and just about does enough different to Pokémon to be valid in its own right.  This is a small team working on their second game, so hiccoughs can and should be excused to some extent.  Is Cassette Beasts the best Pokémon game on Switch?  No.  Don't be silly.  Legends Arceus exists.  However, I would say that Cassette Beasts is better than both SwSh and SV.  It's been a while, but TPC has finally been beaten at its own game.

BONUS! Venba:

The rest of it is gameplay, puzzles, controls, art basically the whole game is pants.

CB I should give a play, think it's even on Game Pass but I've tried other Pokémon-likes in the past and they're never as good as the real thing.