Last game you finished and your thoughts

Me:

JAZZPUNK
Kinda short, but genuinely hillarious; plays on game (and pop culture) tropes without dragging you through the tedious bits. You can't really fail, so it's verging on not being a "game" as such, more like an interactive sketch. But it kept me amused during its brief playthrough. In fact I'd give it a
9/10

The Last of Us



First thing's first; this was definitely a fantastic experience which I would recommend to anyone, albeit a very grim and unpleasant one at times. It looks phenomenal, the environments swing from beautiful natural vistas to decrepit wastelands with aplomb and the characters are just right to dodge the uncanny valley but still be full of personality and emotion. A colossal achievement  that defines the PS3.

The plot, although most typical zombie apocalypse stuff, was well-written and full of brilliant character moments. Although Joel can be an asshole at times, it always feels natural and the player definitely goes on a journey with him. And Ellie was absolutely perfect; I really did feel compelled to protect her. And obviously the relationship between the two is what holds the game together. The ending, although morally vague, was spot-on, for my money. And the bit with the giraffe . . . it was ruined a bit for me, I must have had some dust or something in my eye. That's the only explanation.

So then . . . the gameplay. I've heard a lot of comparisons to Resident Evil 4 and certainly the games start off very similarly, with the player underpowered and just struggling to survive. And obviously the dynamic of protecting Ellie draws parallels with Ashley. However, as the two games progress they become very different. Whereas Resi gave you more and more tools, making you feel like a badass against the lesser enemies but adding scarier and scarier things to keep the tension at just the right level, TLoU is incredibly linear and, apart from a few surprisingly sparse sections of fighting the infected, it mostly plays out like a semi-stealthy cover shooter.

In fact, it did something which, if it was deliberate, was incredibly clever and impressive. It made me prefer the moments of peace to the combat. The environments were so real and occasionally beautiful, Ellie and Joel's interactions were so well written and the simple puzzle-solving was so sedate, I would have been quite happy with a whole game of just traversing an empty America. So when the violence did come, it felt genuinely unpleasant. It was difficult, tense and viciously gory.

The game is described by a lot of people as Survival Horror, although a lot of the time, it doesn't feel that way. There were a couple of panicky escape sequences and the stealth bits had some big jumps, but the horror mostly came from the world and the situations, in a more vaguely unpleasant sense than “it's dark and a monster is gonna jump out!” sort of horror. The scariest moment, for me, was a horrible boss fight between a little girl and a human villain.

Overall, I give it . . .

9/10
Must be played at least once by everybody, even if it is a bit linear and simplistic.

NEW THING! Game review poems on my stupid website.

Blimey, that was pretentious, wasn't it? But then again, it is a fucking poem.

Nice review & I liked that poem.

Good review, our you planning to play Bioshock Infinite which has the two characters pairing of Booker & Elizabeth which I preferred to TLoU.

I'm looking to pick up bioshoxk and infinite soon. Should I bother with 2?

Drunkalilly wrote:

I'm looking to pick up bioshoxk and infinite soon. Should I bother with 2?

Yes! I thought it was oddly maligned by the critics, I guess because it was a sequel that didn't really need to exist. It's still a really good game though. Mechnically it's a better game than the first and I enjoyed the story a lot. You can get it really cheap really easily too, so definitely give it a go.

I like 2 more than Infinite so it gets a thumbs up from me!

2 is okay and the DLC for it is really good, also it's cheap now but as it's not from Levine it's like having MGS without David Haytar. Sure Kiefer is fine but it's not quite the same.

I'll go back to the bioshock games one day, didn't like the idea of restarting the first when I lost my save data.

But Bioshock is one of the best game ever, it should be the next thing you play. It's only about 12hrs long as well.

.....having to restart any game is big pet peeve* of mine.

(Major psychotic fucking hatreds*)

I do understand the restarting it's one of the reasons I've not played xenoblade as I would have to start again as I've not got a clue where I am or where to go etc.

Restarting a game is absolutely brutal, whatever game you're playing. What happened to your bioshock, Jas?

My ps3 froze on an update & I couldn't get it into safe mode to recover so it at the time it was sent off for repair but it was just replaced with a new system so I lost all my saves, so bioshock was just one of a bunch of games that got left on the "not restarting that" pile.

Lucky when my launch PS3 died Sony wanted me to pay £150 for a new system.

SAVE THE DATE (PC) 9.5/10



I've been going on about this a lot, but this game was recommended to me by a friend and I really love it. The game is free to download, only takes 90 minutes or so to complete, but the experience was really memorable. It starts out as an innocuous dating sim, but then things start to get weird - your date, as it happens, is cursed to die in the most hilarious way at any given moment, and your job is to save her. Talking about the real jaw-dropping moment of this game is hard, because it relies on being unexpected and the last thing I want to do is ruin it for anyone, but suffice to say, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than it first appears. Anyway, here's a trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l48mTOowfE

Download here: http://paperdino.com/save-the-date/

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Just finished this, in terms of the end credits. I know there's still tons to do but I'll definitely come back to it when I've finished the billion other games I want to finish. Quality little videogame, I must say. Retro definitely know what they're doing, and if this is what they wanted to make then fair play to them. It was brilliant. Every level did something completely different and it was all perfectly calculated. Every time I died, it was my fault and I got a little further next time. (Apart from the final boss. That bastard can fuck off, he's given me a headache.)
It looks amazing, obviously. We all laughed at Iwata bragging about the apes' fur, but it does look nice. As does the lighting and the textures and all the little incidental details and the animation. Sublime.
Music is phenomenal. The final world had this really dramatic music that wouldn't have been out of place in a Zelda or Star Wars. And that forest fire level . . . damn!
10/10
Shows the NSMB series how to do a 2D platformer. Just imagine what Retro are gonna do when they're given a big, juicy Metroid adventure.
Did another poem too, although the sentiments in this one can be applied to a lot of good, hard games.

Lovely poem, Drunka.  I'm really glad you loved it, although 10/10 seems a bit high to me. Isn't the soundtrack just bloody amazing though?  (Again, apart from the final boss.)

He gives everything a high score lol

Yeah but I realised I keep giving things 9/10 and this is a cut above. That's why I'm not doing scores with my poem, just "recommended" or "not recommended". At the end of the day, im not onm and nobody's going to buy a game based on my score so I just say what I'm feeling at the point in time. Which is normally "that was great!"

I'm expecting at least 11/10 on the Drunkascale for MK8 and SSB4.  

Well being that they're multiplayer games that I'll probably never consider finished, I won't have to give them scores on here
Zelda U, X and the eventual Metroid will all get around 16/10.

I don't know I bought Sonic Lost World on what Cappa said. So one of you were to say something was a 10/10 I would definitely go check it out a bit more and even maybe buy.

Well I'd like to hope you'd read what I wrote, not just jump to the score!
Anyway, I stand by my 10. As far as side - scrolling platform games go, I don't think it could be better.

You not played Rayman Legends.