Last game you DIDN'T finish and your thoughts

Balladeer wrote:

I've never played a Sonic game so can't comment on any of this, apart from: who is truly more Tory, Mario or Sonic?  On the one hand, in a world where everyone can jump super-high Mario doesn't have any special skills, so is more of a meritocratic hero than Sonic (who got where he was by winning the genetic lottery on speed); on the other hand, Mario spends his time propping up the monarchy, while Sonic tries to save less able animals from a despot.  

Sonic saves those dealt a lesser hand, but that's really more about him getting more social media likes than any sense of justice. He'll always stand right on the edge of a precarious cliff just to take that perfect instagram photo and refuses to acknowledge his social responsibilities as an influencer.

Mario got to where he is through fearless grit, hustle and determination, but I reckon he's one of those libertarians who thinks the system is fair and everyone else is just lazy. Luigi is the better brother, but I feel like he'll live to regret not challenging his brother's views and always feel dwarfed by the shadow of his own potential ):

So basically, they're all as bad as each other and we should vote for Wario because he'll drain the swamp of the Mushroom Kingdom elite.

EDIT BY WAY OF REPOST: Today we're taking much-loved indie darlings and shrugging our, which is to say my, shoulders at them.

ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST:

BUG FABLES: THE EVERLASTING SAPLING:

Hmm not sure what to think as Bug Fables was well received and likely the paper mario I want but you say it's fine.

Then again you say Ori is just fine, yet it's one of the best Metroidvanias I've played and one of the best games of this gen (this would be quite a few games but all the 9+ stuff) that not sure do I listen to you on Bug or what reviewer's are saying.

I think we've safely established that our tastes are very different Mas. BF isn't bad. I'd advise you go with the reviewers on this one.

Yeah and I think said recently coming harder to think of stuff to recommend you, even when I think it's something you'll like be it a RPG, quality Metroidvania or even a Platformer (Poor Lucky, it's going to be in here soon)

My biggest concern about that post Balla is that you've confined Yoku to the depths, that game is lovely and would probably be one of the best things you could play (as every brand putting out adverts is phrasing it) in these extraordinary times.

masofdas wrote:

Then again you say Ori is just fine, yet it's one of the best Metroidvanias I've played and one of the best games of this gen

I can totally understand people enjoying Ori and clicking with the game in a way that I didn't, but one of the best best games of this gen?! Different strokes, I guess...! Glad I was able to give you a bit of closure with Ori, Balla - it's easy to doubt myself when everyone still drools over it but having spent 8 hours with it and never falling in love, I'm pretty sure I was never going to. (Same excuse I used with my exes HAHA)

Treesmurf wrote:

My biggest concern about that post Balla is that you've confined Yoku to the depths, that game is lovely and would probably be one of the best things you could play (as every brand putting out adverts is phrasing it) in these extraordinary times.

I would definitely agree with this. I played through Yoku a couple of years ago when I wasn't in the best place and while I vaguely remember moments of frustration my overarching memory is that of a lovely, well-realised concept and adventure.

masofdas wrote:

(Poor Lucky, it's going to be in here soon)

Dare I ask, what's the forum opinion of New Super Lucky's Tale? I played the demo and it was pretty fun, but I don't think it'd ever be very high on my list of priorities.

Scullion gave it an 8/10 in Nintendo Life, it's a 3D exploratory platformer, and there aren't many other retail titles I'm interested in at the moment!

I covered Yoku here and you'll gather from the tone that I wasn't happy about dinghying (dunghying?) it.  There were things I loved (mostly the general happy feel!) but also things that got in their way - probably those frustrating moments Rum refers to. I can see myself going back to that before Bug Fables.

I might be a bit over enthusiastic saying Ori one of the best of this gen but it's certainly a 9/10+ game and I don't ever really consider many games to higher than that and I feel after both of you's thoughts on it, I got to big it up that others play as they might miss out on a quality game.

I think Lucky is a very good sort of 7/10 old school 3D platformer but like Treesumrf put

My biggest concern about that post Balla is that you've confined Yoku to the depths

I would just replace Yoku with Lucky in that sentence though for number of reasons even though it does what it's set out to do.

I am just immensely picky and drowning in games to be honest, and that's despite what I'd consider a dry year. For example, I just picked up Yooka-Laylee 2 because it was half price, and I already had seven other games or so in my frontlog. If I'd had fewer games to tackle either then or now I'd be playing more of both Yoku and Bug Fables - if this were the Wii U, I'd be playing more of Ori. I don't know how you multiplat gamers do it, basically!

Even though I play a lot of indies etc if I was on a single system then would have played something like Bug Fables by now but it just gets added to the watchlist and likely missed because of that bigger game, and likely be playing Paper Mario instead of Ghost of Tsushima at the moment. Same with films or TV shows, likely many I've missed because only watching all the big thing's for the most part.

Balladeer wrote:

frontlog

This made me smile. Are these the games at the top of the backlog pile? Or more like Backlog 1 (games you're working through) and Backlog 2 (games you own, plan to work through, but probably won't)?

I guess? I tend to think of myself having a 'backlog' where there's a game, or a couple of games, that I'm playing almost to the exclusion of all other games. I don't have that at the moment. Instead I have a bunch of games I'm rotating through as the mood, or lack thereof, takes me. I guess you could say that I have a frontlog, Backlog 1 which is games that should be in the frontlog but in actuality I haven't played them in a good while (Transistor, Bloodstained, and Ni No Kuni), Backlog 2 which are games I do intend to get back to but they can wait or I'm getting other games out the way before I start them (SMM2's campaign, Yooka-Laylee 2), and maybe even Backlog 3 which are the games I'd play in the unlikely position that I cleared everything else out (Yoku, Bug Fables, Okami take 2)!

I have a simple comprehensible system. Simple and comprehensible.

Rum Rapture wrote:

masofdas wrote:

(Poor Lucky, it's going to be in here soon)

Dare I ask, what's the forum opinion of New Super Lucky's Tale? I played the demo and it was pretty fun, but I don't think it'd ever be very high on my list of priorities.

I liked it. It didn't have some of the old-school problems that Yooka-Laylee had.

I've got a huge frontlog.

Because there isn't a "Last specifically Retro game you didn't finish and your thoughts":

Have I ever bored you with this particular bit of old vidjagame nonsense? A quick Google suggests not. This is another game, like Gasp! and Return To Zork, which should be in a Gintendo article of "games that were probably shit but you can't stop thinking about at any time".

Absolutely fascinating idea for the time, and so much crammed into the memory that the 8 and 16 bit computers had then. Go round a galaxy, destroying your evil clones; you don't know where they are exactly, and there are over 50000 (procedurally-generated and randomly-assigned) planets, so you can't guess. Therefore, you need to talk to the aliens that inhabit said planets, get on their good side so they give you more information, repeat until done. To avoid the limitation of only being able to choose certain preset sentences, but also get round the logical issue of a 64K computer being able to decipher sentences, dialogue happens through a series of preset words, represented by icons. So, to introduce yourself, you'd press the "Me" and "Blood" buttons to add them to your sentence. On the fancy 16-bit versions, wach icon had a speech sound in a made up language as well.

However. It was absolutely fucking impossible, and the only thing I ever did as a kid was talk to the first alien, who requested you take him to another planet, take him to the planet, which he then decided was the wrong planet and promptly died of some kind of brain failure. Trying to come back at this with my clever grown-up logic... not much better. I saw a couple of other doods (also apparently if you don't load it from tape like I had to, you sometimes start off at a different place, with an alien that isn't a complete fucking idiot).

So I gave up an watched a walkthrough on YouTube. Absolutely fascinating to see someone actually get somewhere - all comments about this game are from people going "I didn't know what to do", and it does take about 6 hours to complete even when you know exactly how to proceed. Also "fascinating": this was made by a French software company, as the same computers were bit on the other side of the English Channel - I think that in general in continental Europe, yer Amstrads and Atari STs were adopted by an older demographic, rather than the educational/toys they were seen as in the UK. Firstly, it's very H.R.Gigery. Secondly, would 8 year old me have tried harder to progress if it meant SpAcE gEnIe TiTtIeS? It's fair to say that doesn't hold up very well.

Anyway. It's good and shit.
I was going to say 6/10 in the alien language, but can't find the sounds on the internet, and the icons would be 6/10, so that joke doesn't work.

Jimbob wrote:

However. It was absolutely fucking impossible, and the only thing I ever did as a kid was talk to the first alien, who requested you take him to another planet, take him to the planet, which he then decided was the wrong planet and promptly died of some kind of brain failure.

This made me laugh out loud, so you get a 10/10 for that review.

Buskalilly wrote:

I've got a huge frontlog.

10/10.


Edit: no way did Rum and I just make a 10/10 joke in two separate posts. I just look like I'm a patter thief now 

Jimbob wrote:

I've just read your review, thought 'that sounds a bit weird' and then watched a bit of a YouTube playthough. That's just melted my brain. What in Greek buggery is going on there? Even with your detailed description, I don't think I've ever understood a game less.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Buskalilly wrote:

I've got a huge frontlog.

10/10.


Edit: no way did Rum and I just make a 10/10 joke in two separate posts. I just look like I'm a patter thief now 

If we had kept the like and dislike buttons I'd be giving you a heavy dislike. Why are you so obsessed with me?

Rum wrote:

Jimbob wrote:

However. It was absolutely fucking impossible, and the only thing I ever did as a kid was talk to the first alien, who requested you take him to another planet, take him to the planet, which he then decided was the wrong planet and promptly died of some kind of brain failure.

This made me laugh out loud, so you get a 10/10 for that review.

And that's not even a joke! That's literally what happens. Although, thanks to the walkthrough, there is a twist to this. If it made any sense.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I've just read your review, thought 'that sounds a bit weird' and then watched a bit of a YouTube playthough. That's just melted my brain. What in Greek buggery is going on there? Even with your detailed description, I don't think I've ever understood a game less.

Uh-huh. There are 2 sequels which came out in the multimedia PC era and are apparently much more understandable. I've not looked into them yet, but the last game is even less decipherable... as it's only in French.

Jimbob wrote:

This is another game, like Gasp! and Return To Zork, which should be in a Gintendo article of "games that were probably shit but you can't stop thinking about at any time".

And I am still thinking about it - I've been trying to reinvent it in my head.

Two games: one good, one meh.

YOOKA-LAYLEE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE LAIR:

DEATH SQUARED:

I'm sorry you didn't get on with Death Squared. If I was playing it on my own I'd probably be bored shitless - I love a big puzzley adventure like e.g. The Witness, but I'd struggle to sit and play through several screens. However, the famerlee got together and played it in 4 player co-op - I think that has helped so far (but I totally agree about the "oh, that button kills you" trial and error - that shit should have disappeared in the 80s)

Fallout 4. It's weird to imagine a time where I was excited about this game. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas but at the time I didn't have the platform for it and life sort of got in the way. But as time went on I heard more and more bad things about it. Still, I was always a little bit curious so when I saw the game for £2 in a shop I thought why not give it a go.

Everything about it is just really lame. I hate the intro. It's the worst intro I've ever played out of all the Scrolls/Bethesda Fallouts. It's annoying how much of your character is predetermined. Like how you're in a heterosexual marriage. I honestly wouldn't mind Bethesda moving the series away from being about choice and defining your own character, towards something more story-focused and character-driven like Horizon Zero Dawn (which I didn't even really like), but they're so half-assed about it here. Your character is still very much an avatar but you have less control over what you say and decide than ever before. Not only are you strictly limited to 4 replies to each question/prompt but they only vaguely convey what your character might say a lot of the time.

I might still go back to the game but what made me stop playing for a while was the feeling I couldn't go off the beaten path that much. I just end up getting murdered. I was actually getting some enjoyment out of the game just exploring and scavenging and doing side missions, but then I run into a group of 'Raider Scum' in some area or as part of some quest and find myself struggling in a way I didn't with 3 or New Vegas. I am probably just bad, but I guess the game also expects me to faff around with modding my gear and maybe make the power suit a bit more sustainable but I really couldn't be bothered. Or I guess just continue with the main quest for a bit but I'd rather do that later.

Also I guess it's not fair to compare them exactly since I played 3 and New Vegas mostly on PC, but they play a lot nicer than Fallout 4 does on the PS4. Worse control scheme and I really feel the input delay.

From a combat standpoint, I thought FO4 was leaps and bounds ahead of FO3 and NV. The gunplay felt much more slick and I didn't feel like I needed to rely on VATS as much as a way to avoid the somewhat jankier shooting of the last-gen Fallout games. They also still managed to nail that same open world formula from FO3 and I genuinely enjoyed exploring the map. One of the DLC areas was a big throwback to Point Lookout (the best FO3 DLC, don't @ me) and I adored that too. Having said that...

Kriken wrote:

Not only are you strictly limited to 4 replies to each question/prompt but they only vaguely convey what your character might say a lot of the time.

...this is a huge problem for the game and indicative of one of its biggest flaws - its writing. As a whole, I really disliked the writing in FO4. Characters felt flatter (I only really enjoyed Nick Valentine and Kellogg) and the shift towards a fully voiced player character really drained the game of some of its more memorable dialogue moments. Things like rolling a low INT character in NV to see all the braindead responses, things like taking perks to unlock new dialogue options, things like your stats impacting how you could dictate the flow of a conversation... all of that was lost in lieu of the lame 4 button option. It could be boiled down to "earnest yes, sarcastic yes, no, more information please". That's literally it. A real shame.

Balladeer wrote:

strict rules.

I liked that

Cuck.