Last game you DIDN'T finish and your thoughts

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OO OO OOH

gjones wrote:

Fair. Astral Chain is one game I wanted a Switch for so will pick it up at some point, but it's interesting that a lot of you dropped it. Just got a 100 hour RPG game to get out the way first.

For me it just had pacing and story issues but the excellent combat pushed me on to sticking with it to the end, so I wouldn't worry about some of us not finishing it as it's definitely worth a go.

The combat was decent still just everything else was muh and I mainly play games for story now.

It must be slim pickings on what games you can play then.

The_Jaster wrote:

It must be slim pickings on what games you can play then.

Technically, he shouldn't have been playing anything released after The Last Story.

Well I'm playing one soon with Last in the title.

masofdas wrote:

Well I'm playing one soon with Last in the title.

Truth

Re. Astral Chain, my view is heavily skewed by not enjoying pure action games. Buska mentions Bayo 1 as one of the best and I bounced right off that. For me, a game can't be all about combat unless it's a multiplayer fighter: it needs to have some form of pacing in between. The pacing in AC is widely viewed as bobbins, so it was never going to work out for me. I hope y'all play and love it though (and if anybody wants a copy for cheap and is happy giving me their address... ).

Balladeer wrote:

 For me, a game can't be all about combat unless it's a multiplayer fighter: it needs to have some form of pacing in between.

Interestingly, the pacing is one of the reasons I rate Bayonetta so highly. The sequel has more and bigger set-pieces, and the pacing suffers because of it. The first game is all action, but in various forms and tempos.

I don't want all games to be all action, the same as I don't want all movies to be. But when I go to an action movie, I want 90 - 150 minutes of carnage, with just enough plot and character to get me invested. If I wanted a thought-provoking art piece, I wouldn't be at my sixth cinema viewing of Transformers 4. Similarly, when I put Bayonetta into my machine, I don't want to stop doing karate on angels until I turn off the game.

I didn't mind AC's other bits, I actually liked the world and characters, but I think the game would have been better without them.

Yep, I'm... not much of a fan of action films either.

See, the reason this never fully computes in my head is that you're the number one "gameplay first, story and tone are secondary to the mechanics" guy, yet you don't like games that are all action and you won't truck with games that use interactivity in their storytelling or let their mechanics procedurally generate the story.

That's why he only plays Nintendo first party games, then that's a select few now as well

Buskalilly wrote:

See, the reason this never fully computes in my head is that you're the number one "gameplay first, story and tone are secondary to the mechanics" guy, yet you don't like games that are all action and you won't truck with games that use interactivity in their storytelling or let their mechanics procedurally generate the story.

It doesn't make much sense to me either. I think I'm actually number one 'exploration first' or 'discovery first' or 'level design first' guy. Looking at my top ten games of ever I'd say four of the top five have exploring the world as their number one appeal, while three and six emphasis writing (but also have great gameplay as befits their genres). Only three of my top ten are pure gameplay experiences.

I really need to know your Top 10 again I was thinking part from Celeste, that mainly stuff like Super Mario Galaxy which to me is a gameplay game.

Celeste just misses out actually!

Spoiler:

I'd still say mainly gameplay games with just great design with levels etc, as not are really focused on the story (2/10) and even though some pure gameplay ones those are games like racing where you don't need any story.

Feel that's where Bayonetta let's it down for you as you've not clicked with the story and it's a gameplay heavy game that you still need that bit of story to get you through, even if it's as simple as save the Princess.

Balla's Top 10 is real solid and begs the question - if we all listed our Top 10s, would there be crossover? Like a GNamer Venn diagram. I reckon my tastes are a mix of Cappa and Balla but it could be an interesting experiment.

I'm more than happy to update my Top 10 and do it properly but I'd likely would do one game per series sort of thing as a Top 10 which is half MGS and half Zelda would be a boring read.

There's a thread for that, GJones!

masofdas wrote:

I'd still say mainly gameplay games with just great design with levels etc, as not are really focused on the story (2/10) and even though some pure gameplay ones those are games like racing where you don't need any story.

Perhaps 'gameplay' is the wrong word: I'm really thinking of 'mechanics' there, and separating out the pure experience of controlling a character from the world I control a character around.  MK8D is still fun on an oval course; Smash is still fun on a flat platform; Meteos has no level design to speak of, unless you count level widths varying.  You could meanwhile make a passable, perhaps even good, pure action game based on Zelda's controls, with no world and with just combat; or, taking a step closer to reality, narrow Twilight Princess down to just its dungeons, BotW to just its shrines.  They'd be very different games and wouldn't make my top 50, let alone ten. (Well, a collection of TP dungeons might scrape in.)

You still got to have all the parts, and the games in your 10 and what describing now as well that going back to Bayonetta it's got all of them like these but only one standout where you need the rest to also be stand out to some degree.

Like Bayo gameplay might be a 10 but level design a 5, where you'd I think prefer if were both 7's.

masofdas wrote:

You still got to have all the parts, and the games in your 10 and what describing now as well that going back to Bayonetta it's got all of them like these but only one standout where you need the rest to also be stand out to some degree.

Like Bayo gameplay might be a 10 but level design a 5, where you'd I think prefer if were both 7's.

I mean, Bayonetta also has stand-out writing, visual design and music. And the level design is perfect for what it needs to be.

Yeah and you know I like it.

I'm talking about someone like Balla and from his what he needs from a game, still think it's getting harder to recommend him something as I look at the recent RPG chat which most have a decent critical consensus, yet most seem to be muh to him.

Buskalilly wrote:

I mean, Bayonetta also has stand-out writing, visual design and music. And the level design is perfect for what it needs to be.

I mean, I guess the writing depends whether you like 'endearingly cheesy', right? And the music whether you like game tunes with lyrics, and the visual design whether you like the art style it done had. I'm actually about to try and analyse why I liked the only pure-ish action game I'm down as liking, and I reckon aesthetics will play a big part. Likewise Bayo's probably contributed to how I felt about that.

masofdas wrote:

Like Bayo gameplay might be a 10 but level design a 5, where you'd I think prefer if were both 7's.

I genuinely don't know what you could change about the level design in Bayonetta. I found it a lot more palatable than the DMC games, at least.

Football, Tactics & Glory is somewhere on the underutilised spectrum between Subotteo and Football Manager... and it's actually pretty good.

In a nutshell, it's essentially a very light footy manager game spliced together with a turn-based board game come match day. There's most of the managerial features you'd expect; player stats and traits, basic transfer market, youth programme, training schedules, and of course a series of different leagues with promotion, relegation and *European cup qualifications*. All of these work just about fine, nothing to write home about other than doing just enough to keep you interested in the game's overworld.

On the pitch, you'll generally get 3 actions per turn, wherein you can move command your dudes to do all the good stuff, moving, shooting, tackling someone from behind. Everything (except uncontested short passes or dribbling in open space) succeeds or fails based on probability checks governed by stats, of which there are only 5. Defence, Control, Passing, Shooting, Goalkeeping. This keeps things nice and simple, but players have different skills - some are good at long passes or headers - and it's there in the intersection between raw stats and the myriad of skills in the game which will see you tinkering with formations to give your boys the best shot at beating another team.

There's lots of customisation, so you can change the number of turns in a match for example, but a lot of the games will tend towards being low scoring affairs - although I guess that's pretty realistic. I asterisked the European Cup. One of the fun features is that you can completely overhaul a load of the leagues with custom teams, or download the leagues of other players. There's no Italian league in my world, it's been replaced by the Pokémon League.

This game came out a couple of years ago but the people behind it keep releasing free updates which is nice, but none of that has addressed the ultimate issue with the game. Players don't really have personalities, and while there are numerous skills there aren't enough to really make different players feel special. So chances are you'll have seen most of what the game has to offer before you've won much (if like me you start with a custom made bottom dwelling team).


That being said, you can whizz through seasons super fast by simming as much as you want and the game is on sale quite often. I spent somewhere between 5 to 10 pounds on it and had a good time with this weird little genre fusion. 7/10