Jon Cheetham wrote: ↑January 9th, 2020, 6:58 am
Damn that is a shame you didn't get a fuller experience, BaileyBoy. I have to say though, sounds like you should be a speedrunner! Nice job noticing that.
Magical_Isopod, that sounds rough. Some configurations of enemies can be real puzzlers, I can't remember the layout for the prison but it's a shame you bounced off the game so soon. There's always sprinting madly past, of course...
Like I said, it's 3 for $10. I'm sure it'll wind up back in my collection eventually, if not simply as a third game to justify the purchase of two others. I wish I could bring every one of you to my local Microplay, the front is a full game store, and the back is a massive movie rental library with a game space for tournaments and tabletop RPGs. I love it.
Also, I just pulled the trigger on Yooka-Laylee on Switch, so I'll probably hop right on that one this weekend. Saw a sudden $10 price cut on Amazon, so I had to go for it. Just cashed a pension settlement cheque, so I figured I'd reward myself for starting a new job and all that. So I'll stream that this weekend... Maybe something else too. My games are normally half picked by whoever wants to watch my stream any given day, so I never commit.
Jon Cheetham wrote: ↑January 9th, 2020, 6:58 am
Damn that is a shame you didn't get a fuller experience, BaileyBoy. I have to say though, sounds like you should be a speedrunner! Nice job noticing that.
Magical_Isopod, that sounds rough. Some configurations of enemies can be real puzzlers, I can't remember the layout for the prison but it's a shame you bounced off the game so soon. There's always sprinting madly past, of course...
Like I said, it's 3 for $10. I'm sure it'll wind up back in my collection eventually, if not simply as a third game to justify the purchase of two others. I wish I could bring every one of you to my local Microplay, the front is a full game store, and the back is a massive movie rental library with a game space for tournaments and tabletop RPGs. I love it.
Nice place eh. Sounds like my kind of field trip!
Just played the first bit of The Messenger, purely because I heard the amazing music for it on the most recent Sound of Play. Luckily I had it free from the Epic Store. Pretty fun, and running around to that Hills of Destiny song is just fantastic. I am very bad at 2D games though.
I think this has been mislabelled to a large extent, with the Dark Souls stuff. To me, it's much more like Monster Hunter (or at least the Monster Hunter we had in our imaginations when we heard the fans proselytising about it in the years prior to MonHunWorld). You fight lots of lesser monsters as well as the big bads, but essentially the game is about preparing for encounters - get your stamina and health regens, get your defensive and offensive buffs, whether through magic or physical application, choose your weapons and skills and approach, and have at it. Of course, prior to all that, you have to acquire the skills from trainers, learn the recipes for cooking and alchemy, collect the ingredients for the recipes by hunting and gathering, make a pilgrimage to unlock magic use, craft decent armour, kill select beasts to get better gear, and so on and so forth. All this takes place in a large open world, with four biomes where you even have to dress appropriately to deal with the cold or the sun.
It also has co-op (2-person, I think), so you can team up and hunt together.
I have played probably 30 hours at this stage and haven't started the main quest. I haven't even fought an enemy of note (you can run away) as I am stuck in a loop of planning my loadouts and skills (fail to prepare, prepare to fail!). I haven't decided how good the combat is yet, as I have been button mashing my way through fights and I need to change that shortly.
Typically for a session, I'm sitting down and planning an objective (get this armour, clear out this enemy fort), executing the plan and getting back to base. Money is extremely tight - you know the gameplay of the first hour of most RPGs where you are weak and trying to scrimp and save the 40 gold to buy that greataxe you saw that will change everything? The whole game is like that.
A big drawback for some people will be that there is no fast travel - you have to walk or run everywhere. This ties in with the main theme of the game, in that you need to gather berries, fish, resources etc as you go along, so it makes sense, but could lead to some inventory angst if your potion ingredients are in City A and you are in City B on a different map. It also sets up some interesting choices - do I choose the skill path that gives me more stamina/health, or do I go for the one that gives me 20% more movement speed? There are seven or eight major skill trees, and you can mix and match from any three of those.
Overall, it's a very deliberate, plan and execute -type RPG. It's been a long, long time since I enjoyed the genre, so I am delighted with it.
Just to deal with the Dark Souls thing - yes, you only have one save, and it's a stamina-based combat system, and there are some other superficial similarities, but there is no real penalty for dying (in fact you can be rewarded with an item/skill in some cases), enemies stay dead so if you die halfway through a dungeon, those guys are still dead when you go back and you don't have to fight them again, you can fight with your backpack on so you don't need to go back and get it if you die, etc.
Still, it's a big step to recommend this to someone. If you are a deliberate player who has loads of time to play the game, and the above sounds appealing in some way, then I'd say go ahead. Be aware that the game is far from triple-A standard, but is nevertheless one of the most intriguing RPGs of the last ten years. I have no idea if I'll finish it - there is a possibility of burnout as I haven't even started the story yet, but I'm enjoying it immensely.
Jon Cheetham wrote: ↑January 9th, 2020, 1:20 pm
Just played the first bit of The Messenger, purely because I heard the amazing music for it on the most recent Sound of Play. Luckily I had it free from the Epic Store. Pretty fun, and running around to that Hills of Destiny song is just fantastic. I am very bad at 2D games though.
That infographic is pure stupidity. They state that after a few hours they had learnt nothing.... just some basic mechanics.
Isn’t that something?
Idiot.
Surely that's meant to be a joke. Nobody can possibly really think a game under 99 hours in length is only worth playing if you can get it for free. Blatant trolling.
Honestly, I find it real hard to justify buying anything over like 20 hours these days. Like, I never much liked Persona, but Persona 5 being a 100 hour game pretty much guarantees I'll never play it. I appreciate the idea of value for money, but when so much of the length of many of these games is just difficulty spikes and grind walls, it's like... I'd rather have a short game with no BS than a long one that doesn't respect my time.
Should note: some of my favourite games of the last few years have been long ones (Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Ys VIII among them), but those games were really not padded. Their length was reasonable given the consistent quality of the experience. But then you have something like Persona 3 where you get maybe 1 hour of interesting plot for every 10 of randomly generated dungeon crawling? Big yikes for me.
Come on guys, lighten up. At least he has a methodology.
In his defence, I looked up some more recent reviews to see if he classifies every game by hours played (he doesn’t) and he seems to have refined the review process a bit.
But anything less than 500 hours now, I’m waiting for a discount.
One of these days I'm going to share my definitive video game quality categorisation system and nothing will ever be the same again. I'm just waiting for the right moment.
Stanshall wrote: ↑January 10th, 2020, 9:55 pm
One of these days I'm going to share my definitive video game quality categorisation system and nothing will ever be the same again. I'm just waiting for the right moment.
Bruh, if I made a rubric it's be something like:
- Does it give me a bizarre sense of euphoria I can't find in real life?
- Does it have anything to say, or is it just wasting my time?
- Is the music and sound design good?
- Is it visually interesting?
- Is it a work of art, or a soulless product?
- How many hours are worthless filler?
- Is it fun, or otherwise intellectually engaging?
- Does it have a story that absolutely captivates me?
- Is it worth what I paid for it?
And I couldn't even really make a firm set of rules, because there are games I love that fail most of those checks. Many, many intangibles at play here.
Simonsloth wrote: ↑January 10th, 2020, 5:47 pm
I’ve been playing God of War. It is excellent
I got it for Christmas. Didn't grab me until I got to the lake but it is fantastic. It's hub and spoke design rather than open world but I love exploring all the nooks and crannies which I wouldn't quite do in an open-worlder. Really got a good feel from the combat too. I probably won't even finish it before the podcast release because I do not want to rush this.
Octopath Traveler is still my commuting game. God, battles can drag in this. Apart from that it suits my commute more than playing at home.
I'm also high score chasing on Pac Man Championship Edition DX over on the Community Gaming forum.
A wonderful YouTube wormhole led me to Super Hang On for the Spectrum which led me to the same game on sale at £1.10 for PS3, and I can’t stop playing it! Still a great looking thrill ride but much harder than I remember when I used to hammer the Atari ST version!
Also continuing with the first Spyro on the PS4 Reignited Trilogy, and just completed a stinker of a level (Tree Tops). I really hope that’s the last of the stupid supercharge so I can get back to enjoying it again!
Now getting to stage five fairly consistently on The Ninja Saviors for Switch. Great game but wasn’t so happy to see what seems to be the first boss back again at the start of the level and even harder this time.
To alleviate all that frustration, I’m still loving Demon’s Tilt (when my son lets me on his Xbox) and am racking up some nice 100 million plus scores now. My new game of the year 2019!
And finally, I’m on the last level of Yoshi’s Island second world on SNES for Switch. It really is a joy to play, and how it looks makes me smile every time I load it up, but it’s not grabbed me like Super Mario World did, and I’ve no great desire to 100% it like I did that.
I've been playing Mega Man X, the SNES game, on my Switch.
I've got a two word review: It's bollocks.
I was really excited to play these games, but this is just cheap death after cheap death. I've got past the prologue stage and have attempted the first proper stage, the one with the Octopus thing several times. I've yet to meet the said Octopus though, because it's so ridiculously difficult to get that far. There are times where its literally impossible to avoid taking damage - that's poor game design. There is no duck button, which coupled with the fact you can only shoot dead ahead, means there are multiple times enemies come at you which you can neither dodge nor shoot. There is a larger enemy in the underwater bit which sucks you towards it, and you're fighting on a tiny platform surrounded by insta-death spikes.
Its just not fun. It looks lovely, sounds great, controls reasonably well. It's just shite actually playing it.
Shame.
EDIT: I know I'm wrong, by the way. Top scores across the board vs my opinion doesn't really say much about what I think about the game. And I'm going to keep trying...
I'm sure it'll wind up back in my collection eventually, if not simply as a third game to justify the purchase of two others. I wish I could bring every one of you to my local Microplay, the front is a full game store, and the back is a massive movie rental library with a game space for tournaments and tabletop RPGs. I love it.
