Last game you DIDN'T finish and your thoughts

Here's a list of all the games I've given up on since March, in order of giving up.  None of them are really big-ticket items, so I'm just going to group them all together.  

qomp2 - Kind of a Pong successor from Atari, 9/10 in Nintendo Life, and I actually kinda respect this.  You have two controls, speed up and change vertical direction.  Yes, only vertical.  It's quite clever and the boss I got to was relatively well designed, but I eventually got very frustrated with the 'only vertical' bit.  It feels like somebody here would like this though.  Maybe Cappa or Jim?

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean HD - What MonolithSoft did before Xenoblade, a relatively well-received action deckbuilding RPG on GameCube but shinier.  In theory all of those elements should add up to something I love, and I didn't mind it?  But, I really wasn't feeling 60h+ of it.  It's quite old-feeling, and the battling was average, and the main character's a bit of a berk.  Also when I tried to image search it Duckduckgo took me straight to porn, so there's that.

Penny's Big Breakaway - A 3D platformer squarely aimed at fans of Sonic and Billy Hatcher.  I am neither of those, and so found the combination of encouraging you to go at speed (to shake off the penguin guards, for example) and explore the levels a match made in hell.  I basically didn't like the way Penny handled at all, both she and the visual style felt squarely targeted at a source of nostalgia I just don't have.

Unicorn Overlord - 3/10 and whoever bought it for me was an idiot.

Megaton Musashi W: Wired - This is another, 'I don't hate it yet but I can't see 60h+ of this being fun'.  Level-5's lavishly presented return to the big leagues, this is a mech-battling RPG with a heavy emphasis on combing through loot for mech customisation that didn't excite me and felt like it would only become more of the experience further in.  Plus the story's the most generic shonen writing, and there are nasty bits of MMO in it (e.g. 'daily log-in rewards').

Tchia - And finally, this, today.  Another Ninty Life 9/10, I basically need to learn that however much I like her writing, Kate Gray and I have very different tastes.  This is a cosy-feeling indie BotW-alike with an admittedly neat transformation gimmick, with a really slow start that looks like sin on Switch.  I think this might be good elsewhere maybe?  Or if you're starved enough for games to push through the opening hours?  Which I am not.  Also: it was trying to be funny, and I didn't find it very funny.

Have some screenshots for your pleasure:

Spoiler:

It's not often a "didn't finish" sells me on a game but qomp2 sounds great and Penny's Big Breakaway sounds even more my kind of thing than I already thought. Tchia is gash though, I'm glad you agree.

And that's fine!  Like I said in LGYF not so long ago, if my précises help people make their mind up in either direction then that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. And qomp2 genuinely should be a recommendation to some people.  I basically threw a rage quit (combined with 'I've got too many games to play, I'm not wasting time on something that irks me') when I got stuck down a horizontal corridor with no way to go back for the umpteenth time, but up until then I genuinely thought there was a fair bit of good stuff in the game.  Somebody more patient than me ought to enjoy it, and you have a child.

Penny... eh.  Read Cappa's views about that one over mine.  Tchia had good ideas but the execution felt off, especially wrapped in the smallpox-ridden blanket that is its visuals on Switch.

Penny’s Big Breakaway has a demo on all the systems now, and it’s been on sale with a hefty discount a few times as well. Even in July I think I’m ready to call it my Game of the Year. Nothing else I’ve played in 2024 comes close and, looking ahead, nothing looks likely to either.

Three games, two of which I almost liked.

IT TAKES TWO (SWITCH):

WORLDLESS:

ANIMAL WELL:

I've heard that It Takes Two does subvert that expactation a bit, I think?

Maybe later on in the game, but we'd have had to play through several hours of Dr. Hakim to find out and that wasn't a sacrifice worth making.

Also (VERY minor spoilers):

I have been playing a few games the last couple of weeks:

Fuzzball

A free game that is just Bumper Balls from Mario Party, with some gimmicks thrown in on top. It's perfectly mediocre, and I'm glad I didn't pay for it, but you'll get a more refined, polished version of this in any Super Monkey Ball game that has Monkey Fight.

What the Dub

Drawful and Quiplash are family favourites, and this looked like a fun addition for multiplayer sessions that can also be played with grandparents. You get shown short clips from old B-movies and then a gap is left for you to replace the audio, by typing in the text and "text-to-speech" does the rest. It's good fun, but your time will vary depending on who is playing. With an 8-year old and a 12-year old, pretty much all answers revolved around farts, insults, and death. Enlightening stuff.

Humanity

I've been trying to hammer this out before my Game Pass expires, and I'll admit, it's a brilliant puzzler. Often described as Lemmings with a dog, it is bigger and more challenging than I expected. You start by laying down directional arrows on dioramas, but it moves on to jumps, block-pushing and even full-blown war between your guys and "the others". The mood is quite sterile and colourless; it's going for a futuristic Minority Report aesthetic, which looks great, but the music is particularly bad. Thankfully, it's ripe for a podcast in the background. It also feels like a quintessential PlayStation game, so playing it on an Xbox felt a bit odd. The style and the UI all scream Sony. I recommend this one, it is definitely worth grabbing in a sale.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

I played this for an hour or so, but was put off by the repetitive gameplay loop. I get that it's going for the Onimusha/PS2 brawler thing, and it's a good looking game, but the way it bombards the player with tutorials at the start really overwhelmed and confused me. I did the first section, and then uninstalled it.

I have the demo of Kumitsu-Gami downloaded but haven't played it yet. Its probably to my tastes as a specific genre of weeb.

I am interested in What the Dub, though, that might be fun with my family or something.

Kunitsu-Gami has a couple of very big fans in the Back Page Discord. This take offers some balance.

Kunitsu-Gami was part of that mad week Xbox had like 5 day one releases on Game Pass (same week as the price increase), and tipped me to get a cheap Carbon Black Series S. I've still not played it, and feel talked about this before unless it's a down month even if the game is great, I'm not great at playing games in my sub, I'll soon be playing games like Astro Bot or ones that I know will be worse but as I bought them such as Dustborn then ohh Kunitsu-Gami still be there in 3 months time.  

Anyway


Concord wasn't a game I could have really finished anyway, and I do often use this thread to talk Football Manager. However, you may have guessed I'm here now and not when I'm level 100 with my Platinum Trophy, as yesterday Concord went offline and I just got my refund (that buy some indies now, shame Yars Rising got a 4/10 from EDGE, so not that one).

On Concord the game itself, I quite liked it the gameplay felt very Halo/Destiny you could tell the devs had worked on those games. I liked I just bought the game and got a "complete" package withy none of the f2p stuff other games seem to ended up having.

My issues weren't that this was Guardians of the Galaxy at home, how Concord took 8 years and something like Astro Bot took 4 years (I know they had the groundwork with previous games) to miss the boat of GOTG etc along with live service games such as Overwatch though people seem pretty keen on Deadlock and Marvel Rivals. And there was the whole certain section moaning some Alien characters used they/them (like maybe that's what they're species are anyway) and you could see everyone's pronouns.

No my issues were lack of modes as the game had 6 which really needed to be in a quick play type thing (moshpit on COD) where it would just put you in any of them, instead it was alwsy got to come out of this one go into this one then wait ages. Communication, you could tag enemies with the touchpad, but I would have liked an option to go let's go attack point A or I need healing or even some emotes that the characters have to give a wee bit more personality.  The game had no ranked mode, sure each game had a point of a win and get exp for rep, unlock new gear though I would have liked a competitive ranked mode where my goal would have been let's get into gold. On gear, it never said how to unlock any of it, at least tell me ohh to unlock this skin for IT-Z you need to get her to level 25.

Yeah, for me the core gameplay loop was great, just a lot of it around it wasn't fleshed out and people seemed to have issues with characters for whatever reason. When or IF, Concord will be back who knows but can tell you it's got a whole episode devoted to it on Secret Levels and people already trying to flog the physical copy (it's useless and can't remember people doing this for Babylon's Fall) and the DualSense for a pretty penny.

Balladeer wrote:

I've got a lot of respect for Animal Well.  There are definitely games I've finished this year that I think are worse than it.  But, "I think it's good" and "I like it" are different things.

Now I blimmin' well love Animal Well, and have just got to the credits. It's about to hit "obscure up its own arse puzzles" territory a la Tunic or The Witness, so am seeing if I can skim the surface of an FAQ, but I worked out what to do mostly myself, and I guess it was for me. Maybe it's just because that's how all the best videogames were before the NES made it to Britain and it's just my nostalgia, I dunno, but this was the sort of game I'd have dreamed of making - it's obscure and illogical and I love it. However, there was a bit of a wall of difficulty at the beginning, and, until they're not a threat, the big ol' animals are, so I can understand a feeling like this is just a load of nonsense put together to thwart you.

Spoily spoil:

masofdas wrote:

masofdas wrote:

Yeah, for me the core gameplay loop was great, just a lot of it around it wasn't fleshed out and people seemed to have issues with characters for whatever reason. When or IF, Concord will be back who knows but can tell you it's got a whole episode devoted to it on Secret Levels and people already trying to flog the physical copy (it's useless and can't remember people doing this for Babylon's Fall) and the DualSense for a pretty penny.

It literally looks like a South Asian bootleg ice-cream van illustration of Overwatch. Having, even at a professional level, put a lot of time into something that's clearly going to be a disappointment by the time it's finished, I do sympathise, but I do also have an Apu "What were you thinking?" with Concord, and the amount of oomph put into it.

Good job it was a low-risk gamble that Sony didn't really expect to come to anything!

oh

This is a quick round-up of 6/10 games I never really disliked, but that didn't seem like they were going anywhere I was excited about in a hurry and I had other things to get on with.  

Of the trio Lorelei and the Laser Eyes probably did the most I enjoyed, with some nice brainteasers and dripping in noir vibes.  It also made the cardinal sin of not giving you a "back" button in a menus-heavy game, and felt a bit up itself as a result.  Still, unlike the other two it made me feel things, even if some of those feelings were "leave the jumpscares alone cripes, that's not what I'm here for".  Star Ocean: The Second Story R was a JRPG that started off incredibly promising, with a nifty action battling system and some of the best aesthetics I've ever seen in the medium, but struggled against mediocre writing and 150 little bitty systems that didn't add up to much bar micromanaging.  Finally, Treesmurf favourite Splasher felt like the sort of smooth pacey 2D platformer a speedrunner would love.  Because I wasn't a speedrunner I found the checkpoints a little too far apart and the level gimmicks a smidge uninspired, and 2D platformers need something a bit flashier than anything here to keep me invested.  Sorry Tree.

If I'm gonna jump into one, do you recommend Lorelei or the boat one (I forgot the name).

Is that Obra Dinn? If so, for all that Lorelei has been getting GotY shouts in places, I reckon you'd prefer Obra Dinn. I reckon 99% of people would prefer Obra Dinn. That I'm in the 1% is purely down to being a wuss with a hyperactive visual imagination that really liked to paint those death gurgles and static images large in my own head. But you should pick up Obra Dinn instead.

Yes, I meant Obra Dinn. It's also set in Falmouth, my dad's hometown, so I reckon I'll get to it before too long.