Last Game You Finished and Your Thoughts MKII

Dishonored is an amazing game

Now do a stealth no kills no powers run

Muss wrote:

Granny rags approves of this message

You mean Susan Sarandon?

OR wrote:

Dishonored is an amazing game

Now do a stealth no kills no powers run

Nah that'd be too mental, I still have the dlc to go back to though.

It certainly is mental, I tried to do so, but the first mission is awful as you don't have blink.

Axiom Verge



What an unusual game. The hype around it mentions that a), one guy programmed it all in his spare time, and b), the glitch gun enables you to mess with the environment. I took the latter to mean that it would be a constantly-used tool that would crack the game world wide open; it's not. There are numerous clever ways that Axi (my nickname for the game) plays with your expectations, though, and it's almost worth the price of admission to see how it subverts them. I got nearly 20 hours out of it and have 22% of the items left to get (dangit). Recommended BUT a bit fiddly and demands patience when you get stuck.

17/20

Crumpy Andy wrote:

It certainly is mental, I tried to do so, but the first mission is awful as you don't have blink.

It was my favourite playthrough, it actually becomes challenging (rather than you being a magical murder god) and is really fun. Unfortunately there is a single point where you /have/ to use blink, just once (climbing up to the palace from the boat), but other than that you can do the whole game without any powers. Which is really cool that that is even possible.

ZeroJones wrote:

Axiom Verge



What an unusual game. The hype around it mentions that a), one guy programmed it all in his spare time, and b), the glitch gun enables you to mess with the environment. I took the latter to mean that it would be a constantly-used tool that would crack the game world wide open; it's not. There are numerous clever ways that Axi (my nickname for the game) plays with your expectations, though, and it's almost worth the price of admission to see how it subverts them. I got nearly 20 hours out of it and have 22% of the items left to get (dangit). Recommended BUT a bit fiddly and demands patience when you get stuck.

17/20

Huzzah! Good to see you enjoyed it, what part did you think was fiddly?

I didn't think that Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer could be finished, but it very suddenly wrapped up after I completed what seems to be the final town project. I said in another thread that "for what it lacks in challenge and in ways to motivate the player, it's a well-produced game that you can get quite creative with, if you want to. It's a happy little game - that'll do". A full three days later, I stand my that statement.

Still, you can't shake the feeling that it's not worth the RRP. If this is re-released as part of the Nintendo Selects at some point next year (for around £15), then I'd suggest that everybody gives it a bash. It would have been even better if this was the Animal Crossing mobile game that's coming out next year though, or even a part of the Animal Crossing game that'll hopefully come out on NX. As a standalone 3DS game though, I'll say it's worth a 7/10, if you can find it for a decent, sub-fifteen quid price.

Firewatch is an interesting and refreshing game, but not one which I am particularly enamoured with.  People will use the somewhat derogatory term, walking simulator, to describe it - which is at least largely apt here. You play a middle aged bloke called Henry, who becomes a Fire ranger in Wyoming for personal reasons, and he'll amble around at a rather laborious jog most of the time. That tends to be fine though because the heart of the game is talking to your boss via walkie talkie, and the distance between the places you try to reach are typically distributed such that the couple can have a chinwag about a thing you spot, or the overarching plot, in order to keep you from only walking. Also, the game's lighting does an excellent job of conveying changes in time and mood as days progress. The effects are seamless enough that you're almost duped into not realising what the developers have done, you just accept them as reality.

The thing is though, for all the praise I've given it's pacing, the forest environment just isn't intimate enough for me. It works in terms of the narrative, and it looks very nice, but, being a realistic portrayal of a national park, there are precious few interesting things to find within the large - but not large - map. Walk em' up, Gone Home, has a small map, just a house, but it packs so much character into that house, with plenty for the player to see and/or miss their first time, waiting to be discovered if you look closely. Firewatch just isn't big enough for one to wander off and revel in the idea of getting lost and finding something new. Nor does it have the intricacy of a smaller level filled with goodies.

It's a shame, because other than changing your dialogue choices, there's no incentive to play this a second time. For me, the dialogue choices in games functions as a means for me to role-play a character. Having spent several hours as Henry, I know who he and I don't want to change him.

There's is also the ending which people tend to go,   Waa    about. I actually really like it.

you see:

In the end, while it's environment is absolutely integral to the story, and it is put to good use in terms of atmosphere building, it still seems a little jaded. Not big enough to explore, nor detailed enough to interrogate. There is a good story in Firewatch, and some of the themes brought  in the context of it's mechanical realism are done to a level typically unrealised in games. But for all of that my pervading sense was more apathetic than appreciative.

Super Hexagon



Terry Cavanagh's twitch reaction rotate 'em up has fallen - well, I've survived over sixty seconds on the hardest difficulty available from the start, at least. It sounds simple: your ship is stuck to a hexagon and you have to change direction to avoid the walls that are falling towards you. However, it's hard. Really hard. You could comfortably have five hundred games of Super Hexagon in an hour and not get bored or disheartened. I've loved my time with it, as limited as it is, because it is pure game. The simplicity and the challenge combine brilliantly. If you haven't yet, I recommend giving it a go.

15/20

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit Of Justice



You've no idea how tempted I was to add 'Lords Of Shadow: Mirror Of Fate' to the game's title. Anyway, just cracked the final (non-DLC) case in the sixth AA lawyer 'em up and I am impressed. The most fun - and consistently so - set of cases in an Ace Attorney since Trials & Tribulations, I reckon. The same limitations that the series has always had are still around, though this year's new gimmick - the Divination Séance, during which the victim's final moments are relived - is a neat, if not earth shattering, addition to the fold. Arc-wise, it might be the sharpest and most exciting yet. Filled with enthusiasm to bring the Three Wise Men back together to complete the Ace Attorney Podcast trilogy!

16/20

Only 16/20??? This is worse than that time Castle gave SSBB 93%!

Yes, I'm really looking forward to chatting about the game, spoilers & all, with you two fine gents as well.  One of the best games in the series deserves one of the best podcasts!

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney



This wasn't my first time playing through this, but it must be nigh-on a decade since I played through it on the original DS. I did have some memory of the 5 cases, and very fond memories of the game generally, but my knowledge of the exact details were hazy. Solving the individual mysteries again was a blast. Getting to know the characters was like getting reacquainted with old friends.

I was quite surprised when I realised the magatama isn't in this game. Phoenix just assumes his clients are innocent, which does add a slightly sinister element to lines like "we'll just have to find someone to pin it on", but the writing does a good job of giving you believably innocent characters and encouraging player and Phoenix alike to always pursue The Truth.

Defence Lawyers in fiction are often portrayed as slimy, unscrupulous characters. They get baddies off doing prison time, unless they have some supernatural way to know their clients are innocent, like Daredevil, or they're fighting an obviously corrupt system, like Atticus Finch. I liked this portrayal of defence and prosecutor working together as two sides of the same coin, striving for justice.

Overall, this revisit just reminded me how bloody brilliant this game is. It has ups and downs, with some gags that don't hit and some dull stretches, and the interaction occasionally ground to a halt if I wasn't thinking along the exact same lines as Phoenix. I've gone into more detail about each case (12345) but overall, I just have to say it is brilliant. Up there with Holmes, Poirot and all the greater murder mysteries and procedurals, while actually rewarding you for keeping up with the detective like you always try to anyway. I think there's only one score I can give:

4/5

All this talk and text about PW:AA has got me wondering if I should download the original trilogy onto something (especially given that Apollo Justice is coming to iOS before the end of the year). Is it on to Justice For All immediately, Drunka, or are you going to give your text-tapping finger a rest?

I'm only doing one case a week, so I feel like I can go onto the next one without too much burnout. It's handy that every game starts with a short tutorial case to break things up a little.

...and you're in for a helluva tutorial case with Justice for All.

I suppose I should get cracking again with Spirit of Justice. Confession - I've not booted it up since starting Case Four! It's nothing against the case - I've hardly played enough of it to get an impression of the case - but I've just been spending my off-time playing Overwatch or MH4U as of late.

It's not a game but a demo of a game coming in January but I want to talk about it and as I've finished the demo then I think here is the best place to talk about it.

This is one for Jimbob from the name


Anyway on Thursday after bringing home PSVR, I started of watching some of the VR shorts which I will go into more on Gintendo / My YouTube channel as I thought it would be best to ease myself in VR and not go right onto Driveclub VR.

When I got to the (USA) demo disc I tried all the ones of games I don't own going from the first one to the last one, part from the Kitchen as I was hearing it's rather intense.

Yesterday doing the Podcast with EofGiz who hates horror games, I described what happens and he was like F%$K that now how people were talking about it that's what I thought I'd be saying during the demo (I do wonder if it will be in RE7 because if it isn't then it's not really a demo) but nope it just seems so obvious what's going to happen that I was just sat there and was like yeah cool, can't wait to play RE7 now.

Also how didn't people think this was Resident Evil in some-way when they first played as now playing it seems so obvious that it is RE7.

What happens in the demo as doubt many of you will try it but just in case you do want to see for yourself then I'm not spoiling to the general forum:

If you read that then yeah even though I wasn't like Oh God what's happening, I did enjoy it (Not sure if enjoy is the right word) and does make me more anticipated for Resident Evil 7.

Chase: Cold Case Investigations - Distant Memories



I think this came out at £6. If so, that works out at 15 minutes' gameplay per pound. Which is... hmm.

Is the gameplay, such as it is, good? Yes, if you're prepared to adjust. Fans of the Hotel Dusk games will go into this hoping for more, but they've cut out the pacing around the hotel/flats and the puzzles. Instead you have pure interrogation and investigating crime scene photos. I liked the other stuff, it paced the adventures better, but what remains is fine.

The characters are good, though - both they and the translation get better as you go through the 1.5h of 'gameplay'. Not quite Kyle Hyde standards, but the lead detective goes from objectionable twerp to likeable enough. The aesthetics and sound are pure HD, and are the better for it.

The game ends with one investigation solved, but that raises more questions than it answers. This is definitely meant to be an episodic game, so I'm inclined to recommend everyone else wait until other episodes come out, hopefully at a bundle price. Certainly this game on its own didn't deserve a thread.

5/10

Monster Hunter Generations

I mean. Kinda. Got the credits in singleplayer. I'm 100+ hours in, there's undoubtedly more singleplayer content to get through, plus endless multiplayer fun to be had.

10/10
I'll have more to say, on ginny, towards the end of the year

masofdas wrote:

It's not a game but a demo of a game coming in January but I want to talk about it and as I've finished the demo then I think here is the best place to talk about it.

This is one for Jimbob from the name

Spoiler:

Yeah, but what's the kitchen like?

ZombiU
Or "what happens now we've voted Brexit"

Some games are "meh". Some games are both brilliant and crap. This game... I don't really know what my opinion is. The central gameplay concept is good; playing as a different person for each "life", with your previous person - should you not blow yourself up with a mine - becoming a VIP of the shambling hordes. And the two screen thing is almost not a gimmick (even though there's still a brief pause in your head as you work out when you use the controls and when you use the touchscreen). However, there are a few cheap cheaty cheats (your scanner lets you know where zombies are; however, when there's a set piece in which you enter a code into a door in real time? Surprise zombies appear! Even though you knew something was up and checked your scanner before hand!) Nor, despite the CCTV letting you know where you can go and get extra resources from areas you've visited, it's not worth the effort, and you end up battling through to your current objective in waves of attrition. However, later quests do get more interesting, making you actively hunt out areas you were gear-gated from previously, as opposed to linear earlier tasks that end up as he afore-mentioned cheap set pieces. The thing they did with the ending doesn't work though.
Also - the over-enthusiastic mad man running a weird show in London? King Boris.

Review-o-score: 6/8

@Jimbob you don't really have time to look at the decor but I would say old rotten what was white cupboards with wooden work tops.

Both of Microsoft's premiere series Halo and Gears, I've been a fan from day one as at the time both with their first games did something rather new. Since then Halo has had countless games and after the passing of the torch from Bungie to 343 it's gone downhill with 4&5 being the worst of the numbered Halo's and the consoles Halo's as well.

I'm not saying their bad games but they don't have that Bungie magic. Now we come to Gears of War originally from Cliffy B and his team at Epic, who sold what was a Microsoft exclusive to Microsoft to do what they wish with.

It got handed over to Black Tusk who was working on a game which got cancelled and the studio got renamed The Coalition AKA The Gears of War team, headed up by Rod Ferguson who was director on Gears at Epic.

Both Halo and Gears then have followed a similar path but do we get a similar outcome, well sort of. Gears of War 4 is a better game than Halo 4 & 5 but as of Gears of war game, it is the weakest (I've not played Judgement, but may do so soon) of the core titles.

This is for many reasons like the new characters, none of them are really likeable:

JD sounds like a Nathan Fillion impersonator doing his impersonation of Nathan Drake and the quips aren't funny and just don't work.

Kait is the new female character which made a big deal about at E3 with aww we've got Laura Bailey voicing her and the story is about her, which it is but I never felt invested in it all as I don't care about you.

Del he's just there.

Those are the 3 main ones, with others tagging along sometimes. Next is due the main enemy at the start, who are bland robots which don't have the same impact as the Locust trying to destroy the human race.

The gameplay, the gunplay and that is fine but the go down a corridor with well set out cover to shoot some dudes then walk a bit to do it again, gets old quick as we've done it 3 times before in a more meaningful way as we cared about the characters and what was happening that we wanted to push forward now I'm like whatever.  

The ending though is rather decent and actually makes me sort of excited for Gears of War 5 to see how it plays out but it took 8+hrs for me to care and then I only really care about Kait.

Also some unanswered questions as well which might be answered in a novel or something but would be nice to know.

Horde mode is still fun and Multiplayer is much the same just its now has loot boxes and perks.

Gears of War 4 gets a 343/490

Aww that's a shame. I really enjoyed the first three Gears games, particularly the first two. Even completed the first on Insane. They do feel like games that belong to last-gen (as does Halo) and while I'm interested in playing Gears 4, I'm in no rush. Hearing mixed things about it which is what I took from your write up.