Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
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DeadpoolNegative
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DeadpoolNegative »

River City Ransom- Thirty years, thirty years this game has nestled itself in my head. This is the third time I've bought it- first on the original NES, then on the 3DS virtual console, and now on XBox One. For some bizarre reason I would love to know, the Double Dragon and Kunio Run Retro Brawler Bundle did not release on XBox One in the US, but six games from it did individually: RCR, Super Dodge Ball, Crash 'N' The Boys, and the first three Double Dragon games (I did wind up buying the bundle for the PS4 later). Even though the icons on the XBox One editions have the Double Dragon and Kunio Kun Retro Brawler Bundle logo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqpnRyfz_aY

It's still thrilling as hell for me to dash across River City punching out an entire school's worth of hooligans. I have sense memory of playing it. The one musical theme never goest old playing constantly in my head. The weird looking squat figures are cool as hell. I love shopping for all that stuff, boosting my stats, and wandering around River City, checking through every nook and cranny (even if they're aren't too many), just amazed at how big it is. In a way, you could say River City is the original Liberty City.

198X- This kickstarted game still hasn't come to the XBox One as promised, so I finally broke down and bought the PS4 version (the PS4 is shared in our household). I polished it off in less than an hour and a half, though I can't say I wasn't warned. But I enjoyed the short time I had with it, and even bought the soundtrack.

The Kid, a character of ambiguous gender (the voice performer does a good job threading that needle) is dealing with the loss of his father and increasing alienation from his mother and from school. Each level is a skillfully crafted level of a game you probably thought you played on the Genesis or SNES over 30 years ago. Or in the boardwalk arcades at Ocean City New Jersey. Ninjas, Street fighters, fast cars.

The further you get, a bit of a picture emerges. Brad Gallaway has insisted it may be a coming out story, but I dunno, it seems like what it's really about is the increasing division between the Kid and his mother. The final level is a weird first person dungeon level, and the more the Kid fights, the more you realize he's actually fighting not monsters or robots but he's fighting his mother. I gotta admit, i got caught up in the emotion at all. But then the kid says the story is just beginning, and it's all over, roll credits.

Essentially I've been playing a proof of concept?

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot- I have been watching the first season of DBZ recently, and I was also in the mood for a new open world to get lost in, so even though I've never been a huge fan I picked this up. I was a fan of Cyberconnect's Naruto games before they became so utterly, completely boring (the fourth Shippuden game is so dull I genuinely forgot I'd played four hours of in a free play weekend).

It does what it says on the tin, although it's not QUITE open world like, say, the first Ultimate Ninja Storm game- it's a bunch of huge sub worlds from a large map based on areas like West City, Capsule Corp, the wilds around Master Roshi, Goku, and Yamcha's places. There's not a whole lot to do in them except run around to grab orbs to unlock abilities. Orbs, orbs, so many orbs. There is street and bipedal robot racing courses, in fact there's a main mission where Chi-Chi forces Goku to get his license. They're not bad but they're kind of weird- in any case, it can be difficult to purse since making cards and robots and refining them cost so much money and it's hard to get money after the early sections of the game unless you use dragon Balls over and over again to ask for cash.

There are side quests, which are worth doing since they can unlike character emblems, which you can put on a massive community board to boost your stats in things like fighting, cooking, exploration, and earning money. And of course, they have pretty much every character you'd expect in a comprehensive retelling of the Dragon Ball Z Saga. It's fun to manage the stats, although not a lot of it is useful for anything except fighting.

And there's plenty of fighting- the game rewards strategizing or button mashing if you're an idiot like me. There's something extremely satisfying about slamming the b button a bazillion times as you tear into the hit points of Vegeta, Radditz, or Cell. And the moves you can pull are fantastic, although the battles can get repetitive after a while, especially if you're an idiot.

Like I said, it's a faithful retelling of the entire Dragon Ball Z Saga. Using the Funimation dub, of course. I do think the early episodes of the series are kind of the peak, as the battle between Goku, Gohan, and Vegeta have such a great payoff. But the Cell saga kicks major ass too, with some pretty neat twists and great villains (of course, IRL Cell happened because Toriyama's editor kept complaining that the android villains were too boring). And then we get to the Majin Buu saga. And as anyone who watched the original series can tell you, the Majin Buu saga is unbearably long, and crushes some potentially great characters (Adult Gohan and Videl) under the gears of its endless the-bad-guy-is-finally-beaten-oh-wait-he-isn't narrative. I beat it last night with over thirty hours put in, and despite the fact that they try to get through it faster than the show did (though one of the few good moments that arc is reduced to a few lines of text) I wished I was chocolate by the end.

Still, playing those classic moments from the original series does have a real charge, and one moment in particular still brought me to tears even in game form. I hope Cyberconnect tries this with Naruto again. Or something else.

De Blob- Played the XBox One version of this game on GamePass- you play a cute blob bringing color back to the world. I liked the use of color combos and quests to solve in the worlds, but at around the halfway point it stops being fun and feels like a lot of busy work. There's just not a lot of variety in what you have to do (except at the end boss fight, which I thought was tense and creative).
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Continuing to explore Slay the Spire clones on Android.

Pirates Outlaws

It doesn't have as much going on in terms of deck building as Dungeon Tales, at least not yet, but there seems to be quite a bit more of this game behind either grind or IAPs. Still, the presentation is extremely appealing and it is entertaining to do short sessions sailing up the map having swashbuckling fights with other barnacled seafarers.

Rogue Adventure

Seemed like a nice one since it is a deck builder with pixel art, but it didn't really grab me yet. I will give it more of a chance at some point though as there seems to be quite some variety in terms of cards.

Nothing else as good as Dungeon Tales yet tbh.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

I've played about five or six hours of Metro Exodus now, and it's really good.

I thought the first two games were okay, not my favorites but I finished the first one and enjoyed it for what it was. I played a few hours of the second one, but it seemed like basically exactly the same game, and I was bored of wandering around tunnels and stuff. But this third game is much more interesting. You get a semi-open world, with a map and points of interest and sub missions and stuff. There doesn't appear to be a quest log, so it's not quite gone full RPG territory, but loads of upgrades to guns and equipment as well as realistic stuff like having to keep guns clean and having to keep the pressure level up on the pneumatic rifle etc.

But the biggest thing for me is that it seems to be leaning slightly less on all the supernatural stuff, which was the main turn off for me with the first two games. A lot more emphasis on clearing out baddie camps and human enemies.

Really enjoying it so far. One thing I've never seen anyone mention though is the load time. On my base PS4 it was over 3 minutes from the title screen to get in to my save game. That's ages when you're sat staring at a loading screen! Other than that though, it's just as spooky and atmospheric as other horror shooter games, and feels very immersive.
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

I have heard a lot about Metro Exodus this past thing week, I saw an article saying how it was the most under rated FPS of the generation. I was thinking of starting it on Game Pass but then saw it wasn't on there, I'm sure it used to be but must've been removed. Then I remembered it being the show pony for Ray Tracing, so with that in mind I'm going to pick up an Xbox copy and save it to play on Series X, which should also help with the loading times.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

I went back to mess around with Need for Speed Underground 2 lately, feeling the urge after finishing off the previous game not long ago. Just clearing up the last few unfinished career races for the sake of it. Before I was under the impression that once you finished the career there was no way to earn more money, but I discovered there is a way after all. If you choose a race from the event map you can go back and play old career races and finish up what you missed. But that doesn't give you money for winning, unless you restart the race once you load in to it, weirdly. I have a feeling this is an exploit however, and not intended, as it seemed to cause the game to crash fairly often, and once you finish a race like that, it dumps you back out in the open world, rather than back in the garage menu. But playing it right next to U1, it really does show how great the handling model in U2 is. The best feeling NFS game I've played. But on the other hand, I think I might prefer how the lighting looks in U1, at least on the cars. For some reason they look pretty dark in U2, and it's hard to pick out detail. Maybe they had to simplify the lighting model as a compromise with the introduction of the open world.

I also played a bit of Spacelords today. Pretty awful and depressing experience honestly. This is not my kind of thing at all, being a F2P third-person shooter, but I've given this game three chances now, and it has left me thoroughly unimpressed each time. The reason I even bothered to give this is a go is because it's from MercurySteam, the developers of the Lords of Shadow games. So coming off replaying LoS2 again, I had these guys on my mind. I've always been disappointed with the way the studio went after that game. It showed they had a lot of potential, and could go on to make great stuff given the chance. But instead they put out this, trend-chasing, sloppy, overly monetised cash-grab. There's an alternate reality where these guys went down the road of Samus Returns, where they build on their strengths and become a solid mid-tier studio making atmospheric and stylish games. Instead we get this confusing mess, which seems like the only thing the studio wants to do from now on. Boring gunplay, terribly conveyed objectives, awful story that doesn't explains anything, grating characters, a mess of a UI full of confusing and unpleasant monetisation schemes, and a practically non-existent player base. I'd like to believe they have some secret other project that they're planning to announce any day now, but I'm not holding my breath. From what I've seen from interviews, and how seemingly successful this game has been for them (somehow), it looks like that's not happening.
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ReprobateGamer
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ReprobateGamer »

Scrustle wrote: October 16th, 2020, 8:01 pm ...

I also played a bit of Spacelords today. Pretty awful and depressing experience honestly. This is not my kind of thing at all, being a F2P third-person shooter, but I've given this game three chances now, and it has left me thoroughly unimpressed each time. The reason I even bothered to give this is a go is because it's from MercurySteam, the developers of the Lords of Shadow games. So coming off replaying LoS2 again, I had these guys on my mind. I've always been disappointed with the way the studio went after that game. It showed they had a lot of potential, and could go on to make great stuff given the chance. But instead they put out this, trend-chasing, sloppy, overly monetised cash-grab. There's an alternate reality where these guys went down the road of Samus Returns, where they build on their strengths and become a solid mid-tier studio making atmospheric and stylish games. Instead we get this confusing mess, which seems like the only thing the studio wants to do from now on. Boring gunplay, terribly conveyed objectives, awful story that doesn't explains anything, grating characters, a mess of a UI full of confusing and unpleasant monetisation schemes, and a practically non-existent player base. I'd like to believe they have some secret other project that they're planning to announce any day now, but I'm not holding my breath. From what I've seen from interviews, and how seemingly successful this game has been for them (somehow), it looks like that's not happening.
Have to say I'm in agreement with you here. I tried this game out in the beta when it was called something else (Broken Planet maybe?). I get the impression that the intent is Borderlands through a Gears of War filter but honestly nothing really in this game leapt out at me then, and it's continued in that vein. I haven't tried playing it alongside others so it may redeem itself there but as a single player game, there are other games that do this far better, or with more style.

I've been trying out Slayaway Camp this week. It's a sliding block puzzle game through the lens of an homage to horror films (particularly from the '80's) and a pseudo low res art style. You are the monster of the film and are attempting to kill the innocents and leave the level. There is a certain morbid fascination to see various iconic fatalties in this blocky art style but the gameplay loop is beginning to wane a half dozen levels in.

Last night I also started Afterparty. This is the same studio that brought out Oxenfree, a game that that absolutely captivated me. The game mechanics are similar in this but the story is vastly different. I'm an hour or two in - having reached the first main branching point - and I'm intrigued to see more of this bizarre world it's set in. But I'm not enthralled with it - I'm not as invested with Milo and Lola as I was with Alex at this point. Possibly the shadow of it's predecessor looms large ...
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Still going back to Dungeon Tales. It's really very more-ish. It has these challenges you can do that are great fun, some of them actually end up breaking the game in your favour. I may wait for Slay the Spire on Android (already on iOS) rather than get it on Switch, I like having thus kind of game on the phone so much.

Also started Meteorfall: Journeys. Another deck builder roguelike! This one has really great art. It's a bit like Adventure Time. In this one you choose one of six characters (knight, wizard, thief etc) and follow a set path through fights, rest stops, shops and etc. The combat is about drawing one card at a time and deciding whether to play or pass, all the while managing reserves of stamina. It's quite good as a casual game for doing 2-5 mins at a time and between the different characters there's a very decent amount of variety in what sort of builds and combat approaches are possible. It's also a fully paid game so no ads or IAPs. Really great.

Hades on the go too, when I get time for the switch. Still cracking, obviously.
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stvnorman
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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After 20 hours I’ve now unlocked everything Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 on Switch has to offer, but I’ll be back before long because it’s a Castlevania masterpiece! That meant Star Wars: Squadrons could stop taking a backseat, and I’ve played through most of the story mode and some online modes. It’s also fantastic, and while I’ll never be any good at the multiplayer, I do at least know how to power drift in space now...

Speaking of which, I’ve also put at least 20 hours into arcade Power Drift on 3DS. It’s far more luck-based and chaotic than its Out Run and Super Hang-On forbears, but it’s got the same sense of speed and a lot more up and down and around (albeit at the cost of feeling a bit less polished). I’ve beaten all five sets of tracks now, but, also like its forbears, won’t be stopping any time soon. What I’d give for a Switch version though!

And I’m about 7 hours into Secret of Mana on SNES Classic. It still looks great and the gameplay hasn’t aged enough to spoil things, but it’s getting a bit grindy now and I reckon I might have seen enough.

I have got over another Mario Sunshine hump on GameCube though, and am enjoying that again for now. Finally, I gave PS+ freebie Need for Speed Payback a couple of hours, but it’s not really for me when I’ve for Burnout Paradise installed already.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

Super Bomberman R Online (Stadia)

This needs to be released on the other formats as soon as possible as it is absolutely incredible. I thought it would be a simple 64 players down to 1 battle royale but it is so much more. The game starts with 16 grids with 4 players in. After 90 seconds play you lose 4 grids and if yours is one of the ones going you need to move to another screen asap, in that time you cannot hurt each other. You get two lives and that feels fair and works well.

The other thing with it being a konami game is that there are plenty of licensed characters on there. I used Solid Snake (voiced by actual David Hayter) who can turn invisible. Other characters are from Silent Hill, Gradius etc and have different skills.
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countstex
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by countstex »

Back once again with Frost Punk, now that I realised the PC version is also on GamePass so I can mouse and keyboard the thing. I mean it works fine on controller really, but I just prefer that sort of game sitting in my office. Having my first real go at Endless mode on the easiest option and seem to actually have improved since last I played!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

I was playing Crash Bandicoot 4 and was enjoying it initially but have now stopped playing it and sold it on as the difficulty became too frustrating to me. I know these games are hard but it got to the point that I just thought to myself "Am I having fun with this game?" and the answer was no so I didn't see the point in forcing myself through it.
So I then started playing Ratchet and Clank after it had been in my backlog for a while and I must say I think it is in my top 3 PS4 exclusives and I can't believe it isn't talked about much in such discussions. It looks like a Pixar film and controls wonderfully, it is so much fun. Lots of fun weapons and gadgets, I quite taken aback by how much I'm enjoying it and I might go for the platinum and it seems attainable. The script is even quite funny.
Someone on Twitter made a good point to me in that Tools of Destruction is the only previous entry I have played in a series with many entries, so maybe the formula is still quite fresh to me relative to others who might've played them all so this game might just be more of the same. I'm going to see if I can get a copy of the PS VIta original trilogy, shame it's ridiculously rare.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Angry_Kurt wrote: October 20th, 2020, 9:51 am I'm going to see if I can get a copy of the PS VIta original trilogy, shame it's ridiculously rare.
I know you can get the PS1 classics on Vita as I have the first one, but there was some hoo-ha about it and I'm not sure they're still available. I didn't realise there was a trilogy pack though. Are the the PS1 games or did they actually release that recent remaster pack for Vita? The N-Sane collection or something was it?
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

So it's just called Ratchet and Clank Trilogy and are ports of the first 3 games, although I'm not sure if you're referring to Crash Bandicoot which had the N'Sane trilogy remaster released on current gen, but you can also download the PS One classic versions of those games on Vita.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Oh sorry yeah, I missed you were talking about R&C there!

By the way, have you ever played the Sly Cooper games? Similar sort of thing, and available on Vita. I think there's a collection of the PS2 games, but the Vita exclusive one is really good too. Then there's the Jak and Daxter games on Vita as well. It was a great console for 3D platformers thinking about it.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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First win on Bomberman R which was an amazing feeling. This game just takes me back to playing Snes Super Bomberman for far too many hours.

Fallguys season 2 is on most days in my house thanks to my obsessed 4 year old. He can do every event bar slime climb. Highly stressful having to get the 10 crowns to get the Sonic outfit. The new games are really good.
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Finally got around to giving Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver a proper go. I'm playing the Dreamcast version through an emulator, and so far it seems to be working well. I think I'm about halfway through at the moment, and I'm kind of ambivalent about it. I think I appreciate what it's trying to do, but it's held back by technical limitations from achieving what it's aiming for. I do like the setting though. it being this mixture of a fantasy post-apocalypse, Gothic, and cosmic horror is pretty cool. One thing I liked was how the bosses you fight are these hulking grotesque abominations, who used to be noble vampires, but twisted beyond recognition over centuries of being mutated by their unholy power. And the dialogue is great as well. It has a great verbose, almost poetic quality to it, but without being too rambling and hard to follow. I really like that main musical theme too. It's interesting that the whole soundtrack is like variations on that one theme, although I find most times there isn't much to each track to tap in to what makes the full piece so good.

I'm not very impressed with how the game actually feels to play though. Controls are really clunky and stiff, as one would expect from a game of this age I suppose. It makes combat really clumsy, and sometimes I'll just run past enemies rather than fight them. The idea of enemies being immortal vampires, meaning you have to use the environment or pick up nearby weapons to impale them to finish them off is kind of interesting I suppose, but it can be a pain in practice. Outside of combat, there isn't really much to the gameplay. Some light platforming that is often a struggle thanks to the controls, or some really slow block puzzles. The world can be hard to navigate too, despite being small and simple. But the problem is the blank geometry and low draw distance make it hard to get your bearings and recognise where you are or what's ahead. At least the Dreamcast version has slightly longer draw distance, which is why I went with this version, but it's still an issue. Also the simplistic graphics mean that the game struggles to create the atmosphere it's clearly going for as well.

A lot of these flaws are understandable just from the period the game is from, but I'm not sure I'm willing to let it slide that much when Ocarina of Time came out around the same point, and didn't have most of these issues. Maybe it's hard to compare what at the time was one of the biggest and most polished AAA games at the time to what I'm guessing was more of a mid-tier production from a smaller western studio in a time when that side of the industry was still lagging behind Japan, but eh. It is what it is. I do plan to move on to the later games in the series after this, and hopefully they can improve. From what I've seen, it looks like the graphics to take a big jump up at least.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

Alex79uk wrote: October 20th, 2020, 2:55 pm Oh sorry yeah, I missed you were talking about R&C there!

By the way, have you ever played the Sly Cooper games? Similar sort of thing, and available on Vita. I think there's a collection of the PS2 games, but the Vita exclusive one is really good too. Then there's the Jak and Daxter games on Vita as well. It was a great console for 3D platformers thinking about it.
Yeah, I played the Vita Sly Cooper but not either the Sky Cooper trilogy or Jak and Daxter trilogy on Vita. Didn’t play the PS2 versions either so they’re on my list of vita games to play. As I say though, they seem to be quite expensive on eBay.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Loving Judgment so far, but the soundtrack is brilliant! Not on Spotify which is a shame, as its way better than the generic rock of the Yakuza games. Nice smooth jazz, babbbby. The kind of music you sit in a smoky bar, sipping whisky (yuk!) to, pondering a case.

:lol:



My only irritation with the game so far - Search mode is annoying. I've spent ten minutes trying to find a key in a security office with no luck. It's so pointlessly frustrating!

EDIT: Finally! It's just a 'click on every single thing until you find the one we want you to click on. In order'!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

So Pacman Battle Royale appeared as a demo on Stadia last night:



Playing this after Bomberman is a bit of a comedown as it isn't anywhere as good. It plays as well as a Pacman game does but there doesn't seem to be enough to make it stand out as the last man standing. I've finished 2nd without realising.
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