Last game you DIDN'T finish and your thoughts

I decided not to carry on with Pokémon Shield: The Crown Tundra yesterday.  It was right around my fifth or so crack at catching one of the new legendary Pokémon.  Catching legendary Pokémon has always been the least fun part of the game, and that's basically all the CT is - that, and fetch quests, and the Max Raid Den things that I've been playing through with the CPUs.  I could bang my head against a wall and have more fun than that, and come out of it smarter than them.

My problem is that the DLC in general has neglected all the things that I like about the series.  The new Pokémon to discover have been revealed prior to release, with a few exceptions.  The towns are gone, replaced with expanse that is occasionally pretty.  There are few trainer battles and few characters to get to know, no sense of building progression due to the open-world structure, and - again - a focus on catching legendaries in this one.  Finally, there's no feel of an epic adventure.  You're not saving the world, you're barrelling around an island.  I know that Drunka loved his bear adventure, but it needs higher stakes for me.

When the DLCs were announced I thought, 'This is the way to go!  This is much better than a third version or two!'  I still think that, but I didn't enjoy the way they went about it this time.

BONUS - Felix The Reaper:

Oh what on earth - they put Patrick through that? That sounds like "just the boring bits of a puzzle game"

I liked Felix but did also say it was the perfect Game Pass game when I wrote my review

I've still not picked up either of the Pokemon dlc. I know my girlfriend has enjoyed Tundra, getting involved with a load of discord based shiny hunting. I can't say I'm too fussed about that personally.

For me, in my totally unqualified opinion, it's the Bear pack that both most excites and disappoints me. I think, without starting a new game, the temptation would be to just pump it full of the roids you pick up during the main game, since it starts so much lower levelled than your crew.

I think adding a dlc focused on a new pokemon of a low level could work, but I'd like to see them really push the boat out with the formula. If the game is built around one mon, track a bunch of statistics you normally wouldn't. How many times it's fainted, how many times you fed it, how many roids you used. If it's a fighting type maybe it wants to win some sort of tournament, maybe that tournament involves tag matches, maybe track who you tagged with. Compile all these permutations into variable evolutions/stat growths/move sets. Make this bear special, do something risky and different, something that you could only do in a dlc. Give me more ways to interact with it and give me a buddy that's relatively unique to my playthrough.

Perhaps that's pushing the boat out too far, and obviously if I'd actually played the game maybe my opinion would be different. I'm just aware that my girlfriend's Kubfu is basically just riding the bench while it gets to a reasonable level and that's something I'd want to avoid.

Yeah, no. This is a poor Warriors game.

The Warriors series is often panned for being derivative, but at their best the soothing hack and slash is paired with some light tactical choices woven into a battle that unfolds with a few twists and turns. Sure, you're the irresistible force, you're Superman, but there is an element thought to your movements as you romp around the map. This is particularly evident in DW: 8, which has multiple success states, with the better (as in, the good ending style) victories requiring some thought.

None of that is really the case here. In Fire Emblem Warriors you can directly switch between several units during a battle. At first that seems like a cool change of pace, but what really ends up happening is that you end up having to micromanage the people you can switch between, constantly pointing them in the right direction because they don't stay put... or sometimes they do... they seem to do whatever you don't want them to without guidance. You give them orders by pressing the plus button and pointing characters to objectives on the map. It's not a great system. Sure, the older games had NPCs deterministically do the same thing over and over, but that scripting was what gave each battle a tailored feel. Here, everything is just a bit off kilter.  

The worst examples of this are a few battles which require you to shift between characters and capture an even number of forts from two different sides of the map as you gradually advance towards an objective. In co-op, this would probably work fine, you can each pick a side, but in single player it really doesn't. You have to make sure you capture a western fort almost at the same time as an eastern one. There's no ebb and flow to the fight, you just have to babysit your units' movements and switch between playable characters constantly. Time it wrong and you end up losing the battle. This drains the personality out of any map, rendering it little more than a DPS check with a timing window split across two portions of the battlefield.

As for the Fire Emblem stuff, it's not particularly interesting. There are level up character growths tacked into battles, which pop-up at the most inopportune moments. They aren't so bad at first but the more characters you get, the worse it becomes. Thankfully, you can turn it off. You also earn loot whenever you take out enemy generals, which can be used between battles to upgrade characters in what has to be one of the most irritating level up screens conceived. Every time you select something and pay for it (or choose not to) a character will chime in with the same line of dialogue. It wouldn't be so bad if you were only upgrading one character, but when you're managing a dozen it's farcically bad.

The voice acting is terrible, all the characters are flat, and the story is the an unimaginative and vapid waste of time which has the gall to repeat itself. There is a moment where the crew split up, opening two narrative paths that converge after 3 missions on either path. But all of those missions are doppelgangers. In path A you are mistaken for kidnappers and have a fight, then in mission 2 the same thing happens. Path B is identical but with different characters. I'm not expecting an Oscar performance, or a pultzer prize script, but it feels like this one was hammered out on the back of a napkin on a crap night out to a weatherspoons.

The game looks great, and some of the characters are quite fun to play as, mechanically. There are plenty of battles to be fought in the game, but I don't think I really enjoyed any of them. This Warriors title just does not have the ludicrous charm of the main series. It looks alright on the big screen but lacks everywhere else. If you're interested in a Warriors game, avoid this one and pick up DW: 8 or Hyrule Warriors.

4/10

Ooft, harsh - but not surprising. I get the impression that Fire Emblem's more about the tactics than the tale (especially given the start of Awakening that's the only bit of the series I've played), with FETH maybe being an exception.

Muss wrote:

I think adding a dlc focused on a new pokemon of a low level could work, but I'd like to see them really push the boat out with the formula. If the game is built around one mon, track a bunch of statistics you normally wouldn't. How many times it's fainted, how many times you fed it, how many roids you used. If it's a fighting type maybe it wants to win some sort of tournament, maybe that tournament involves tag matches, maybe track who you tagged with. Compile all these permutations into variable evolutions/stat growths/move sets. Make this bear special, do something risky and different, something that you could only do in a dlc. Give me more ways to interact with it and give me a buddy that's relatively unique to my playthrough.

That would've been great. I must admit I didn't care overmuch about Bear. The beauty spots bit was nice, but otherwise, yep I 'roided that little bear right up. One little change that would've made a world of difference would have been if they'd given it proper Pokémon noises, like Pikachu and Eevee.

Jimbob wrote:

Oh what on earth - they put Patrick through that? That sounds like "just the boring bits of a puzzle game"

The trappings did feel really good to be fair. Maybe they lied to him about what it would actually be like to play. The story's pretty divorced from the puzzles.

Balladeer wrote:

 I must admit I didn't care overmuch about Bear.  

Dead.
To.
Me.

Saw that coming. Did not disappoint. Er, unlike me I guess.

Seeing as I've played all the other games in the series, I thought I may as well download Bubsy: Paws on Fire! for the Nintendo Switch. In what must be the worst combination in gaming history, this is basically a Bubsy Bobcat version of Bit.Trip Runner. Truthfully, I think Bit.Trip Runner is one of the most overrated games of all time - it's the sort of nonsense that only rewards memorisation and dying to win. Paws on Fire isn't so severe with it's difficulty, but it requires the same standard of precision with your movement and how you use your momentum. Eh, I'd have preferred it if they'd just done a better version of the last Bubsy game. 

I reached a boss bottle about two thirds of the way through that I got stuck on. I watched a video on YouTube, realised that I'd need to remember about a hundred steps to beat the boss, and thought 'nah, you're alright'. Anyway, the game itself was overwhelmingly average up to that point. It was okayish entertainment for a couple of hours, but it doesn't need to be played and it didn't need to be made.

You could say they should've called it.................



Baws on Fire.

Worth the build-up.

I've never seen the sense in Bit.Trip Runner either. Episode 2 of The Back Page had regretting his 1-star score for the original, and having tried 2 I can't say that felt unjustified. 2 stars maybe, it looks prettier.

Ollie and Bollie: Outdoor Estate is one of those weird games I got from itch.io in that big charity bundle. It's (from what I've played of it) a really charming relaxing game where you do a small set of tasks to restore a garden estate: getting sheep back in a pen, fixing a shed, planting an orchard etc. The second character (Bollie?) has AI, but you can also plug in 2 controllers and have 2 peeps playing this. You also have to play it in one sitting I believe - albeit that may only be 20 minutes. It's a little thing that developers SokPop are renowned for making.

I realise that this is really nice, and probably a good thing for 2 people to play locally, and (unless there's some ironic gross event at the end) probably great for someone to play as a couple, or with a littl'n.

So, in order for me not to abuse the charity bundle and the DRM-avoidance of itch.io, if anyone wants me to send them my copy, I am happy to do so with the understanding that it won't be downloaded by me a second time.

probably lovely/10

Jimbob wrote:

I realise that this is really nice, and probably a good thing for 2 people to play locally, and (unless there's some ironic gross event at the end) probably great for someone to play as a couple, or with a littl'n.

Referring to any recent new-machine releases, Jim?

It looks nice enough, that game; but I'm guessing we'd need multiple computer-compatible controllers, as opposed to the (checks notes) none we have. (Then again, Muss' talk about getting Pro Controllers working with a computer intrigues me, but I'm guessing it would only work for one at a time?)

You can also play on the keyboard for one player. I don't know if that helps!

I was having a New Year's clear out of my tiny suffocating flat, and I decided it was finally time to say good-bye to the space-sink that is/was Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 1: Variety Kit.  It was a sad farewell, but the fact was I was never going to finish it.  I did the bug and half the fishing rod when it first came out, and haven't had a desire to build it or anything else since.  It's the sort of thing I'd have been all over as a child, and that's not insulting it: it's genuinely a great idea that I don't have the fondness, time, or space for any more.  A shame.


Also, in the latest episode of Balla and Mas Shouldn't Recommend Each Other Games Ever (But Mas Should Still Get Sakuna So I Can Talk to Somebody About It):

TRANSISTOR:

All I can say is I know it's different but don't bother downloading Hades even after it places highly in the vote and looking at its scores elsewhere.

Fret not, Mas, I had no intention of doing so. No. 1 Roguelike Superhater, me.

...but after what I just said, is he subtly trying to nudge me into buying it???

Balla, just don't play games that don't have a story, or which put story above gameplay, or which aren't like the ones you remember, or which aren't new, or which have multiple options, or which are too linear, and you'll be fine.

I played Transistor a while back and dropped it after an hour or two, can't really remember what the issue was but I'm willing to try it again after Hades is so blooming brilliant. That being said Hades had me hooked almost straight away so that might be a sign of things not to come.

Transistor is good, but I don't think it's anywhere near as good as Hades, so I'd say you're alright with Hades.

I've also heard a handful of stories of folk who aren't fans of the rogue lite/like genre and have fell in love with Hades.

Transistor is a game I bounced off after an hour of play. Partly because my laptop chugged whilst playing it, but also it felt text-heavy without the great writing needed to keep my interest. Might revisit on PS4 one day.



I've been playing some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Now, Christmas 2002 was all about this game, everyone at school was on it and for good reason. It felt like GTA3 but the story was MUCH better, the 80s aesthetic was great for sending up American excess, and the introduction of motorbikes felt revolutionary. The amount of hours I'd spend doing wheelies and stoppies, trying to squeeze a dirtbike up a stairway to get on roofs, or just the pure joy of weaving in and out of traffic before inevitably clipping a lamppost and dying - it was majestic.

Playing it now though, is another matter entirely. Without using cheats, it's brutally hard! I'm avoiding cheats as I believe it affects the trophy system, but because in 2002-2003 everybody used cheats in GTA games, I think it masked a somewhat flawed videogame. The combat system is atrocious by modern-day standards, involving waywardly throwing fists hoping they connect and having to lock-on to shoot a target, meaning you have to kill one enemy then move to the next one. I'll still play it but I very much doubt I'll finish it - this was the era of zero checkpoints remember. The missions where you have to drive to another island and if you die, you have to do the full mission again from the start...

Kind of regret revisiting it as it's tainted my memory a bit - this was probably my favourite GTA. The motorbikes are still great fun, mind.

Remember guys Balla wasn't keen on Bastion either so out of 4 the Supergiant games, he's played and not been keen on two of them. They've all been critically acclaimed as well, so Hades isn't a fluke of a surprise its great in a genre Balla was seems to hate.

That on paper he would not be a fan

Yeh, I should point out that I'm not trying to convince him to buy it especially as it looks like his mind is made up but I just feel that you can never truly rule out the possibility of liking a game even if it's in a genre you don't normally play.

I really enjoyed Transistor. It works really well with a good set of headphones. I think it's guilty of Supergiant's pre-Hades phase, where the soundtrack, art, and voice acting do much more heavy lifting than the actual game mechanics. I thought Transistor's battle system was quite innovative and fluid, so it's mechanics are pretty good, certainly better than Pyre's. Have not played Bastian so wouldn't know about it.

Transistor is worth revisiting for who finished and enjoyed Hades, but Hades is a God tier game in my book; an easy 10/10.

As for Vice City, that was my first GTA game and the one I remember most fondly. I couldn't possibly play it without cheats though!