La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

What was good? Fun to check out a PS2 game that I had missed back in day

What was less good? Some aspects have aged

What was bobbins? Sly 2 isn't on PSN yet

Would I recommend it? Yep, it's on Plus Premium or like £8 which seems good for a PS2 port with some new things like rewind and trophies


What was good? Loads the story, voice acting, graphics, cinematography in what is an excellent video game experience  

What was less good? Some of the puzzles are super easy, like move an orb from one end to another

What was bobbins? Not bobbins for me but you could argue not a lot of "gameplay" and could just watch it

Would I recommend it? Yeah, one of the best things I've played this year


What was good? Fun video game to play between these other two

What was less good? Short, I did do all the quests for achievements which may have got me to 4hrs

What was bobbins? Fetch quests

Would I recommend it? At the moment can see Balla being all over this and he does like UGG as well, yet think if it's £15+ and you don't want to use a service then, maybe wait for a sale


What was good? Has Scottish VO being in an Oil Rig of Scotland and can have Gaelic menus/subs etc

What was less good? I knew it was a walking sim going into it being from Chinese Room, yet it was really lacking something

What was bobbins? Kittle Kitty 4hrs felt short, the 4hrs here felt long as f'ck

Would I recommend it? I paid money for this for a physical PS5 copy which I can flog which I'm doing as I've finished the game but for most ya, if you want to check it out it is on Game Pass otherwise just skip it

I can't comment on the quality of Sly as a game, but 8 quid for a PS2 game and 60 for a Gamecube game is a good reminder that Nintendo are good at squeezing money out of their content - take that as a positive or negative at your own discretion.

Well Sly is just a port but just had a BG&E that's more than a remaster not quite a remake for £18 compared to £50 (sure that's RRP for TTYD etc) and be interesting see what Capcom want for Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.

I would argue not being immediately disappointed by Sly 2 is a pretty nice treat, I loved Sly 1, but 2 is a very different game that doesn't hold up as well.

Ohh no but do want play the PS2 Trilogy now mind, also when you play them last not to know 2 doesn't hold up etc?

When the PS3 collection launched

In 2009, AKA 15 years ago.

If Sly 2 didn't hold up 15 years ago when it was just 5 years old, what's it going to be like as a 20 year old game

Edit
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster which I mentioned above somewhere is £40 and looks like a decent upgrade into the RE engine, so better than a port of a port that's £50 on Switch this January.

"What took you so long?"

According to the Tunic thread, I started this game at launch on Switch in September 2022.  There then followed almost two years of on-off affection and ambivalence.  A cold-feeling hard-as-nails poor-in-handheld game isn't my preferred diet these days, and while I enjoyed it when I started it up I was rarely in the mood to do so.  It took a Back Page Discord Tunic month in June (Junic) to complete a journey I'd long expected would end here: with me loving it.

Even when I was struggling to play it I always respected Tunic.  I loved the world design: diorama-like and chunky with a side of dreaminess.  (The slightly smudgy Switch visuals actually feed into that dreamlike quality.)  I liked the world and enemy design.  I liked the ambient music.  I liked the combat, preferring clunky rolling sword fox to (say) the slicker crow of Death's Door.  But: the harsh difficulty, everything in the inscrutable language, no benevolent NPCs except for a terrifying shopkeeper.  Tunic isn't a friendly game, which often put me off playing it: it seemed cold and heartless.  Meanwhile the manual, its big innovation, seemed like a useless gimmick driven by nostalgia.

How wrong I was - about that last part, at least.  The latter part of the game completely recasts the manual, from gimmick to masterstroke.  Genuinely an all-timer of a gaming idea.  That latter part also offers some comprehension to the language, and introduces some more characters.  Turns out the game has a heart, it's just buried under layers of armour.  It's still flawed, and many of those flaws are to do with that armour - losing items consumed before a death, for instance, or the huge cheap-feeling difficulty spikes that are several of the bosses.  Although, there's often a way to avoid much of the challenge...

Is it really only me and Jim who played and loved this?  Here, in this forum filled with Zelda and Souls fans?  Time for some of the rest of you to play it, I reckon.  What took you so long?


(Winter lost me the entirety of this review by standing on the keyboard, so I typed it up all over again.  Tunic deserves it.)

BONUS!  Is it another 6/10 visual novel!?:

I've played Tunic obv, but the overwhelming thought I had was how much I preferred Deaths Door, it was fine like, but never exciting

I did go through the thread to check my me-and-Jim take, hence "played and loved". The two games are obviously comparable but felt like very different beasts:

• Death's Door's a Zeldalike game that looks like a Soulslike, Tunic's a Soulslike that looks like a Zeldalike.  
  
• Very different aesthetics and feels.  I enjoyed the moments of levity in DD but they felt like they clashed with the overall tone.  Tunic commits to the bit but the bit feels quite cold to start with.
  
• Tunic obviously has the puzzle stuff.  I think it's actually an excellent puzzler layered on top of a good Soulslike - the Soulslike bit alone I'd probably rate similarly to Death's Door.
  
• Tunic has maps.

The far more interesting game for some reason is in a spoiler tag for reasons.

I'd agree with "more interesting" actually. Not as good, definitely more niche, and not quite a recommendation from me - but more interesting, yes. (Although I would say Tunic's puzzle layer makes it more "interesting" than it may look!)

Ah, I took played and loved to mean you can't play and not love it, in a weird, but probably very me angle on life

I think the thing for me is that I love good puzzles, but I don't remember them ever feeling particular challenging except the golden path, and that felt more like a big ol' serving of homework than a laugh. I think I just hate the idea of having the use anything other than the controller to try and solve puzzles. The real world is too cruel a place to be writing or drawing or whatever.

I normally object to anything that would make me use pen and paper to emulate anything a game should do naturally these days, e.g. maps.  However it felt so absolutely fitting with Tunic's later puzzles that I thought it thoroughly enhanced the experience.  Make of that what you will.

EA Sports PGA Tour (2023)

Sorry Neo Turf Masters, but there might be a new king in town. I recently completed the Career mode on EA's latest golf game, and it's a real return to form for the golf sim. I liked the Rory McIlroy game EA released in 2015, but this is much better. The first thing I noticed was just how beautiful the courses are. Presentation is always top-tier with EA games, but special mention must go to the commentary on this. It does end up repeating itself after tens of hours of gameplay, but given the nature of golf, you can just put a podcast or some music on instead. It just had good vibes; perfect for a cosy Sunday afternoon lying on the sofa.

The core gameplay of golf games have been mastered for years now, and this allows you to use the button-click method, or the "pull back the left stick, then push forward on it" method (I think this was used in Tiger Woods?). I went for the latter, and once you nail it, it's very satisfying and much more immersive than the button method. The game is initially pretty difficult, as your lowly character scrapes together respectable scores, but the secret sauce to success is to play every hole. By default, probably because players have less time/attention, the game is set to "Quick Play" where you play a few holes of each round. Golf tournaments run for four days (a round a day), so you end up playing about 18 holes across the four days. If you play it in "Full" mode, and do all 72 holes of each tournament, it makes it much easier. Not only because it gives you more opportunity and control over your score, you actually learn the courses.  

Importantly, you can play local multiplayer with four players. My daughters and partner all had a lot of fun with this, despite it being a "serious" golf game. There's some silliness in the single player mode, where you can visual effects to your golf swing (lightning, smoke) and you can do similar with the ball, but it would have been nice to see some other things to unlock. I've not explored the DLC or Deluxe Edition, but there's enough content here to keep you occupied for 100 hours. It also looks like the game just continues, so now I'm on Season 2 and can go back through and try to win the tournaments I didn't initially.

It's not a perfect game, far from it. Like any modern game, it contains glitches that can be frustrating. You have a checklist of "quests" to tick off as you work through the various tournaments on offer, but they don't always get picked up. I blitzed through The Open with a -32 final score, yet the "Win the Open with a score of -10 or less" remains unticked. Very rarely, the camera will get stuck inside a bush. I created a female character, but the commentators sometimes refer to her as a 'he'. These are minor quibbles when the game is this enjoyable.

If you like Everybody's Golf or the Tiger Woods games and want a nice meaty career mode to sink into, this is highly recommended.

9/10

I don't know why, but some combination of the graphical style, the buffness of your golfer there and the little topknot made me think I was looking at a sidequest in one of the Yakuza games. Golf's got to be in one of those, right?

That's just a generic screenshot I grabbed off Google, although it does give me Gareth Bale vibes.

There was a decent golf game in Kiwami 2, although I was never that good at it. You got points for aiming nearest to the pin/hole. I mainly remember it for walking out of a round at the golf centre and getting into a fight in the lobby. In that sense, it offered realism even EA couldn't.

The idea of a Quick Play mode in the PGA game appeals to me a lot, but I’ve never especially enjoyed 2K’s gaming representation of sports. I think I’ll go see if there’s a downloadable PS4 demo on the PlayStation store. Yet for me and my tastes I think I’d be better off sticking with Neo Turf Masters, Everybody’s Golf, Mario Golf and my usual.

Also, cheers for highlighting that Sly Raccoon is out on PS4 - I downloaded that and plan to start playing it once I've cleared Paper Mario: TTYD off my plate. 

Not for you, I don't think Cappa but much like the Starfy talk elsewhere, PSN have added Jeanne D'Arc which was never released in the EU (Ghosthunter on PS2 also been added which never got released in NA), is £60+ on PSP for American copy (I do own and feel paid like £20 for it) and for some reason this versions emulation is almost a remaster levels like it's way better than the other PSP games added.

Which is great to see in the Plus service or being able to just buy it for £8.

I polished off the Elden Ring DLC this morning before work. I liked it! Really beautiful areas to explore, interesting twists on elements of the lore, a nice mechanic to make exploring and levelling up relevant even for my end-game character.

I heard a lot of talk about how tough this DLC was. For me, apart from the final boss taking me a couple of hours, it wasn't that bad really. I know part of that was because I went into it excited to explore and buffed my character a lot, and I've heard people complain that it lends itself to a specific build of character- which happens to be what I play. Max strength, big sword, the rest of my stats all in endurance and vitality.

Anyway, it's really good but I would love to see From do something a bit different - give me a city where people live and talk to me, give me factions that can actually like me instead of attacking me on sight even though there's a dragon. I dunno. Even if their next gamer is just Elden Ring 2 I'm sure I'll rip my pants open with my thrill.

I'm on the final stretch (I think) myself, also I've properly took my time so I can drink everything in and explore fully. The new weapons for me have been a real highlight & I think they might give me the push to do two full base game play through's to see the other endings for the plat.

Lots of games from me since Still Wakes the Deep.

Good VO, story is fine, it's a £20 walking-sim which takes an hour but is on Game Pass.


3rd person narrative driven action adventure game with a good story, which I liked by investing why ghosts still around, but combat is the weakest part of the game. Still, it's good maybe wait for it on a service or around £30.


One of my favourite games of all-time, which I've spoken about a few places on here. BG&E still holds up, 21 years later and now to wait even more years for BG&E2.


Think Flower with weird bugsnax animals, which isn't as good as Flower then you get Flock another fine for Game Pass but if I paid £20 or whatever it costs might be more down on it.


I got a code for this one.

EOS was on my radar as I liked Beyond the Frame a lot, like I have in my Top 30 Switch list and I have played it on PC. EOS is much the same instead of a painting based point and click puzzle game, you've got a photography based point and click adventure game with handrawn art (sure the facts sheet said that) style which work well enough in this cosy game. I say cosy, yet the story goes to a less cosy place.

Super Mario RPG

Been poking away at this for a couple of months with other games in between. It was fairly fun, straightforward RPG stuff with a few gags and nice visuals and musics. It didn't do what Square originally intended and make me more interested in playing other JRPGs. This was about as long as I want to spend on an RPG that isn't also a monster-raising game, and the extra interactivity in battles and little platforming puzzles was a big help in me enjoying this. That said, I can see why neither Paper Mario nor Mario and Luigi went back to the Isometric viewpoint, it does not lend itself to platforming.
Geno doesn't belong anywhere near Smash though. Insanity.

The Switch’s release schedule for the rest of the year doesn’t have a lot in store for me, so I’m quite geared up to make time for a “fairly fun, straightforward RPG with a few gags and nice visuals and musics”.
 
I know I’ve asked this before, but how long does Super Mario RPG last? I think I was told it was about eight hours long but that doesn’t seem right, that seems a bit short for a remastered 1995 SNES game that was supposed to cost £50 last year.