What game are you currently playing?

[Harkofthewaa]

Doing a self imposed challenge in Gran Turismo 2 as filler while I wait for the Nsane Trilogy to hit on Friday. Said challenge is me trying to beat the Gran Turismo World Cup and all the Special Events without using Japanese cars. Why? Because said cars make up about 75%ish of the roster. Making your options quite limited, especially early game. Now, I did have to buy a used car and beat the Sunday Cup to afford a car, but I'll just do Sunday Cup again and ignore that I did that. One can get all golds in the A License to get a usable starter car, but I don't have the time, patience, or skill.

[Austroid]

I finally, finally got a PS1 game that I always wanted to play since childhood, but never owned. (except on a demo disc)

I'm beyond happy to finally have a game that left a lasting impression on me as a kid; even if it was only the first few levels at the time. Sir Daniel Fortesque is one of my absolute favorite game characters!

[Mr Loopone]

Managed to play on two games (technically three but already mentioned the other). The first one was Shellshock 2. It was actually decent enough as in that it was functional until it got towards the mansion level then it started to show its problems big time. When the zombies, sorry I mean infected started to appear. The game had a problem with enemies teleporting behind you and getting killed by an enemy that you couldn't see that made it unfair but with dodgy shooting collision detection yet the enemies have no problems killing you. Now that's unfair. You are meant to kill them with headshots but it doesn't always trigger the right position so either they die in one hit or die in about 3/4 while they bum rush you to your death. Chapter 5 was just luck aka the stage that people online were stuck. Spent most of that level just running, then trial and error shooting them when you have to shoot them.

It's getting towards the point where I have to quit and sell the game. Chapter 6, as soon as you get the gun killed in 6 seconds every time. Tried shooting them, tried running away, tried using the knife, tried using different routes. Too many enemies and not enough bullets to go around. Most of the time, got killed and I don't even know what killed me.

Since I knew that I don't think that I'll ever beat the game, moved to Quake 4 and its a much better game. My first thought was that was this a HD original Xbox game but never was? Lack of subtitles, check. Dodgy facial expressions?  Check. Health packs? Yep. Basic backgrounds in cutscenes? Oh yes. It plays much better. Linear unlike the first game and old school mechanics but has elements that were common of that era such as the "story". For some reason, I kept thinking that this must be what the new Doom game plays like. As in fast paced when it comes to shooting. Outside the shooting, the movement was quite slow though.

[Danj86]

To play or not to play? What the hell kind of question is that??

Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle - Donkey Kong Adventure - Switch

Dusted off M+R to play the DK DLC and this has been the closest thing to video game content that I've actually been looking forward to. They was no change in my tone or anything, I just get visibly annoyed, the longer I have to wait for it. lol

It's been said by many that DK and Rabbid Cranky are over powered and I suppose they kind of need to be as you don't have any additional characters to choose from. Though I think I've been using them wrong as I have still been struggling with some of the missions. When I first started, I forgot about upgrading the characters. lol I haven't completed it all yet, you can see bonus content that you'll get access to at some point in the hub world. It was also nice that Expresso and Engarde got a representation as weapons, I forgot all about Expresso. XD

Also still has the same charming references, humour and...toilet humour that the rest of the game had.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice - 3DS

It's just suddenly hit me that I never completed Duel Destinies, but anyway...

I've just started the third Turnabout, although maybe nothing will happen. Maybe nobody will die and nobody will be put on trial? ...well...it'll be a different game if that happened. I guess I'm still being drawn in by the characters, the writing and the punny names. Though most of the puns go right over my head until maybe...several years later...? At first, I thought Rayfa was Maya. ^^;

De Blob - PS4

...Oh dear. I liked this game when I first played it on the Wii. But now I'm finding it rather dull and mostly annoying. I've done pretty much everything except get the 100% paint challenge in the last two stages. In every other stage, you can back track to the start and search for what you've missed but these last two? They both contain a point of no return and if you reach that point without painting everything, then you've failed before your anywhere near the end.

The game will tell you what things you've missed that require a paint job, but only after you've completed every challenge of that level and it takes about an hour to cover everything in paint, you've spent so much time trying to 100% the level, only to reach the end and be told you missed something that is back at the part of the level you can no longer access...…………………………...much rage is followed!!

[Blueknight V2.0]

I'm currently on Shamar in Sonic Unleashed, next up is Eggmanland and the grand finale.

[Blueknight V2.0]

Finished Sonic Unleashed, now onto Ratchet & Clank PS2. The game that started it all.

[-Robin-]

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. Switch port.

 

I'll be upfront, this is probably my favorite RPG I've ever played. Not necessarily the best RPG I've played, but certainly the one I got really attached to, and one I feel needs to be played by everyone. The combat is very kinetic with the speed of the characters and the utility of the special moves (though with some button niggles (that can be remapped in the options, fair enough)), and it's a blast to just run through enemies, or just run right past them. It's linear for the most part, but with just enough optional content to let you take without it feeling hammered in. But honestly, the characters and story really sell it. It's got wonderful pacing, with all sorts of intrigue, sadness, triumph, and just pure heart to it, and the characters are an absolute delight to know and help out. It's got that Majora's Mask feel to it where you could just complete the story missions and continue on, but you are going to want to help out the people because you want to see them progress, with the rewards just being a bonus.

 

Very highly recommend, now I'm off to find the other 7 Ys games.

[Salamander]

Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers (3DS) - Highly recommended; see my more detailed breakdown here.

WarioWare Gold (3DS) (demo) - Did you know this game's Japanese subtitle is not "Gold," but "Gorgeous"?  Just a tasteful little detail to start things out.  As it happens, the last time I played a (new) WarioWare game would've been either Touched or a Twisted import, way back in the late 2000s; and when this game was announced, I realised quite out of the blue how much I had missed the franchise.  To be clear, a new Wario Land is the ideal; but a fresh WarioWare, a polished-up compilation of new and the best of old which draws on everything it can, is something which definitely has my interest.  The demo seals the deal.  Just the minigames on offer here run the gamut of every control style - button, touch, twist, with microphone being promised for the full game; and the ideas are as ludicrous and out-of-nowhere as ever, delivered at the customary rapid-fire rate which leaves you in a constant state of excited suspense.  But what really sells it is the packaging, that daringly almost-fourth-wall-breaking corporate parody, with Wario as a greedy thug out to con the general public out of a quick buck; it's astonishingly cathartic in its playful almost-honesty.  The fact that, on top of all this, they are for some reason including full voice acting, even for Wario, and it actually works - for the kind of game this is, it's actually stunning.  Go ahead, Wario.  Take my money.

Octopath Traveller (Switch) (demoes) - specifically, both the earlier demo featuring only Olberic and Primrose and the more recent three-hour preview of the final game and its eight protagonists.  Somewhere over the slow-burn promotion of this game, I went from ambivalent to really quite keen; the unprecedented visual style with its combination of just-retro-enough pixel art with bold and uncompromising lighting effects grabs the attention from the start, but going into the demoes, I was surprised and pleased to find that every character managed to transcend my expectations in a way, even if just a little.  Using pixel art in particular helped to communicate that nostalgic JRPG atmosphere in a way which, for instance, the same team's Bravely Default never quite achieved; but also like Bravely Default, the gameplay is just innovative enough to feel at once familiar and yet with still-to-be-revealed depths, with the Boost and Break systems balancing both player and enemy with great strengths and weaknesses.  What's also impressive is how ambitiously town- and NPC-heavy the game has to be; again, contrast to Bravely Default, which had about four towns in the first game, whereas this has eight towns just for starters and builds the character's headline powers around NPC interaction.  I didn't get far enough to try them out, but the job and secondary-job system has shades of Etrian Odyssey, another series I'm rather fond of...  I tried out every single character, and yet I definitely want to see more; to which end, I've saved a three-hour-complete file in which I started as Cyrus and headed west to acquire the companions who interested me most.  I'm looking forward to seeing where their journey takes them.

On 7/7/2018 at 6:56 PM, -Robin- said:

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. Switch port.

 

I'll be upfront, this is probably my favorite RPG I've ever played. Not necessarily the best RPG I've played, but certainly the one I got really attached to, and one I feel needs to be played by everyone. The combat is very kinetic with the speed of the characters and the utility of the special moves (though with some button niggles (that can be remapped in the options, fair enough)), and it's a blast to just run through enemies, or just run right past them. It's linear for the most part, but with just enough optional content to let you take without it feeling hammered in. But honestly, the characters and story really sell it. It's got wonderful pacing, with all sorts of intrigue, sadness, triumph, and just pure heart to it, and the characters are an absolute delight to know and help out. It's got that Majora's Mask feel to it where you could just complete the story missions and continue on, but you are going to want to help out the people because you want to see them progress, with the rewards just being a bonus.

 

Very highly recommend, now I'm off to find the other 7 Ys games.

Thanks for reviewing this game in particular.  I've been interested in it for a while, but wavering over reports of a high level of that nebulous quality called "anime," as well as the by-now notorious first-pass localisation.  I'll take a more serious look once the final text patches are out, scheduled for later this month.

[Mr Loopone]

After finishing off Quake 4 went towards NeverDead, that Konami-Rebellion game that was made when the 360 was getting closer to the end of its mainstream life. My first impressions were it looked good with the art style. Bright, vibrant, similar to Bulletstorm, Enslaved and Gears of War 3. Liked the two main characters, gruffy vampire demon hunter Bryce who was pretty much a Wolverine alike and the sassy female agent Maxmille. Controls seemed fine with the guns and the sword gameplay. So what stopped? Well there was a puzzle where I had to open a door. I electrocuted myself to become a rolling head because one of the gimmicks in the game is that your body parts can split themselves. Now there was an issue, rolled down the chute to the other side of the door. I couldn't shoot the gas canisters because even if your arms were connected, it wouldn't let you. The fully body couldn't fit in the chute. The other way just goes back to where you were. Couldn't jump very far. Looked everywhere to see if I was missing something. So I was literally stuck and gave up. It was in the first level too, very embarrassing.

Moved on to Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark that is pretty much one of the last Transformers games made. It wanted to be like the two High Moon Cybertron games and hearing the voices returning from those games gave me a smile (I really liked Starscream, Fred Tatasciore's Megatron who I prefer to Frank Welker's take on the character and of course Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime), the controls were close to how they were in those games however enemies seem to take more bullets this time. The game seemed pretty much rushed and lack of polish. The volume was pretty low and even had to turn it up especially on the voices. Some graphics looked better while some looked worse, even on the first Chapter where the beginning was fine but when it got towards the buildings some points it looked like a PS2 game. Heard that it recycled assets from 4 Transformers games, not sure whether its true but feels like it. Difficulty is all over the place with some parts being pretty hard like as an example on Chapter 2, Starscream has to go through 4 areas before activating the switch in the middle but those turrets took your life very quickly and they were very hard to see. Oh and be glad that it was made 4 years ago because it has loot boxes! They are free though unlike now. Only managed to get to Chapter 3 because of what I'm going to mention.

Best comparison is that it wanted to be Transformers Generations but ended up being Transformers Forces.

Then my 360 died... It comes up with a red light. No flashing lights, no 3 red rings (because it is a Slim model). All I did was to test a controller that I bought a couple of days ago. At the moment, can't play 200+ games including what I was playing on.

So I went onto my PS3 and played Saints Row the Third (the full version), a game that I was going to play last year but didn't have time. The first two Saints Row games, played as Joe Redifer because he was pretty simple to make especially in the first game where all I had to do was add a beard to the default character.

In the fictional story, he became the boss of the Saints/Ultor merger but was getting annoyed by the attention. After he had enough of the Saints, he moved onto doing videos and never talks about his previous life. Got a load of money, bought a bunch of import games and moved to the suburbs away from Stilwater. Was asked to be in the movie but was too busy playing Snatcher at the time.

This time though it needed someone wacky since the story is a lot more sillier, more movie like and some immaturity. Who better than a lookalike of Lupin the 3rd. Since it is the 3rd, the models outside of the main characters or default don't exactly look appealing so Lupin was chosen to take advantage and so that I can laugh at the goofy faces he makes. It even has his jacket! It's listed as Manhattan Style and default seems to be his current blue jacket.

SRt3rd does have a different vibe compared to the first two games, even the presentation is completely different. If it wasn't an open world GTA styled game, it would have been a different series all together. Luckily the gameplay still holds up, good shooting mechanics, good driving controls, even good on foot and camera. I prefer these controls to the GTA series because they are smoother and more responsive.

[BlueFlare]

Now that I'm almost done with Sonic Mania Plus , I decided to hop back into Bad Company 2. It is now 8 years old and still fairly well populated on PC which is amazing. To me it has been the best online shooter and Battlefield to this day. It has good weapons, tighter (but very well sized) maps compared to 3, 4 and BF1 and so makes for better squad play. Also it is visually more pleasing and better  looking to me than the newer games.   I really hope DICE will make BC3 happen some day.

[Blueknight V2.0]

I took a break from Ratchet & Clank 2 to play Spyro Year of the Dragon, took me a few days but I managed to finish it at 113%. Now I'm back to Ratchet & Clank 2.

[Hectopascal]

Tonight I will be playing Sonic Mania. But now I've played several games, and one of my favorite games is Rocket League. Currently, I have a Gold 1 rank and I've never been better, but I still enjoy the game a lot.
Besides, I really like to trade crates and items on forums and fb
Yesterday I bought Rocket League items, exactly the ones I dreamed about.
Titanium White Apex, Dueling Dragons and Fire God Black Market decal :-)
I also saw Rocket Leauge items and the Expensive Rocket League items.
Generally I like to trade Rocket League items and Rocket League Crates.
buy rocket league items on this site https://deitems.com/

[Mr Loopone]

Got a cheap 360 Slim with a dodgy disc drive (as a temporary thing) and was going to finish off that Transformers game but it was scratching the disc. It's one of those late 360 games where you install the game and still uses the disc drive as a security check.

So I thought, what's a cheap, common 360 game? Done the Halos and Gears of War a few years back so that was out of the picture. Wasn't in the mood for a racing game at the moment so that ruled Forza 2/3 and Project Gotham Racing 4 even though I was tempted on the latter. Ruled out Assassin's Creed 3 because it was an open world game. Did briefly thought of Tiger Woods PGA Golf 12 or 14 but maybe another time. It was a choice between Just Cause and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Chose GRAW because I just done an open world game so a 3rd tactical shooter might be a bit different and did like its sequel on the PS3, plus its an early game where the entire game gets installed to the hard drive without using the disc drive apart from an ID check.

As for GRAW, well I like its gameplay and the graphics are good for an early 360 title, still decent enough today. Controls decently. Didn't like that there were no subtitles and forced vibration, both common in 2006. Story is typical. It's the difficulty that is getting me. Despite that health bar, you really only have 4 hit points for your health and some enemies can one shot you, random too. Cover doesn't always help either as your teammates might move out and get shot themselves. Some parts of the game such as the mansion where you get no help and the last mission that I was on where you had to babysit some tanks, I had to play as mechanically as I could. As in played robotically, getting close to accuracy that is tricky with the controller and quick, remembering the enemies (but sometimes is randomised like with the tanks, sometimes you get a tank enemy other times you don't) and hoping that I shoot them before they shoot me. Took an hour and a half for the latter. Still not done yet. At least its still easier than Ghost Recon 1 where you move 3 feet and get shot, Game Over no matter what.

[Lamperouge]

Mega Man X Legacy Collection for the PS4 and Octopath Traveler on my Switch.

I've been a HUGE X fan ever since I was a wee lad and X1, X2, and X4 have held up quite well. X3 is somewhat enjoyable, but it's got a pretty horrid soundtrack and the level design is lacking. Not a fan of the amount of backtracking, either.

Octopath is good so far and I adore the visuals and music, but the story so far is giving me little reason to care too much about these characters. That being said, I've only completed Chapter 1 for every traveler and a couple of Chapter 2's, so that's always subject to change.

[BlueFlare]

I really want to try out Octopath Traveler but haven't got myself a Switch yet. I'm building my team for Pokemon Platinum league atm. I have Torterra, Vaporeon, Luxray, Gliscor / Staraptor, Houndoom and Gallade / Garchomp. 

[Salamander]

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Switch) - Highly recommended; see my more detailed breakdown here.

Rime (Switch) - This is a beautiful game with a tragedy at its heart... the tragedy of its own technical limitations.  But we'll come to that.  What I was looking for was a game where I could solve puzzles on an island, and this is one of the names that came up among Switch games.  It's difficult to generically classify; it has puzzle elements, open-world elements, platforming elements, walking simulator elements...  I understand it's a project which somewhat shifted in direction during development, and perhaps it shows, for I'm not sure it necessarily serves or is served by its various genres all that well.  The open-world aspect is limited, relatively cosy areas which technically have room for exploration and non-linearity but which ultimately reveal actually very little choice, just a lot of empty space and obtusely-hidden collectibles; despite going into the game for this aspect, I actually found that my favourite world was the entirely linear third one.  The platforming is rudimentary, and the game seems to foreground it more to highlight the prettiness of its scenery than for the sake of its actual gameplay.  The puzzles, too, are generally on the simple side, but disguised with more platforming and pretty scenery; which isn't to say that they don't have occasional flashes of brilliance.  Any of these aspects seem like they might have been better if they had been brought to the fore, at the expense of the others.

In the end, the biggest victor and biggest slice of the pie goes to the experience and general sense of exploring a world which encodes a cryptic story.  I don't necessarily mind that; it's a beautiful world, well-designed, and I am fond of a story which is fundamentally very simple but takes its few symbols and magnifies them and builds them into the general design, the literal and figurative architecture.  It was a world I enjoyed my time in.  And a good thing too - because anyone even slightly pickier than me would have put this down earlier on, because here's the catch: This is not a game which should have been on the Switch.  I don't blame that on the console itself so much as on the developers; they shouldn't have attempted to bring a game to the console if they couldn't do it well.  Handheld mode is, frankly, a mess; blatantly stuttery graphics, textures which rearrange themselves before your eyes, laggy menus.  Strangely, it's not even consistently bad; the fourth world, a rainslick necropolis which looked to me fairly graphically intensive, actually ran almost perfectly.  Well, I tolerated that, because I'm a pretty lenient person and I was enjoying the experience nonetheless.

...But.  There is an unforgiveable sin among technical limitations; and what finally killed the game for me was a nasty tendency to eat my save file.  I would just load up the game, and everything I did would be gone, and it would be as if I was starting it for the first time again.  Now, the first time this happened, I actually gave it the benefit of the doubt, because it was literally only the second time I had turned the game on, and I experimented with saving and quitting and turning off my Switch and so on, and I couldn't reproduce the fault; it saved fine.  Could I have absentmindedly selected the New Game option...?  I doubted it, but I soldiered on regardless, and managed to play a good few hours through much of the rest of the game over multiple days, with no problems.  And then it hit again: Turned the game on, save gone, it just booted me straight into a new game.  A video walkthrough subsequently showed that I was literally five minutes from the end.  Further research then indicated that this was an obscure but not unprecedented issue with the game's Switch version.  I didn't restart it.  Yes, Rime is a beautiful game... but it shouldn't have been on the Switch.

Escape Trick: 35 Fateful Enigmas (Switch) - When will I learn?  Those Flash practitioners of the escape-the-room genre, they had years of practice and countless peers to learn from, and what bloomed there were geniuses of the escape game like Neutral, Kotorinosu, and Gatamari, who produced works of stunning ambition, brilliance, logic.  But off Flash, and on console?  Hopeless mediocrity.  Even the Zero Escape games I can only call unmemorable when it comes to the escape segments; they had no passion.  But even so, I gave this title the benefit of the doubt.  Mediocrity, shovelware...  If I'd merely been paying for that, I suppose I could have lived with it.  But oh, no.  What we have here are some of the worst escape games I have ever played.

But let's back off a bit.  Structurally, ET35FE comprises two games: The Escape From The Sealed Room: The 16 Riddles Of The Beginning, and The Escape From The Sealed Room 2: The 19 Erased Memories.  16 Riddles first tasks you with completing eight different escapes in a linear sequence; this then unlocks seven alternative versions of those stages, escaping from and locating a particular hidden element within will open the final stage.  19 Memories, by contrast, has a pseudo-branching-paths system, where the first four levels all branch off into multiple paths - but those branches only unlock after getting other endings in the game, rather than being freely accessible, and in fact are only themselves available again from alternative versions of those original stages.  To put it another way, there are about twelve levels total in the game which are effectively counted twice; but it's hard to call them hard versions, remixes, or even simple asset recycles, as quite often they feature entirely fresh puzzles or indeed swiftly transition to entirely new rooms within a single level.  I'll say this for the game, it definitely gives you plenty of bang for your buck (it might have been better if they didn't).  To complete my notes on structure, the two games, 16 Riddles and 19 Memories, do have plots.  Those plots are separate and don't relate to each other, though both end up gesturing in the same direction; and they are also not even a little bit good.  16 Riddles's plot feels very much like an excuse to string together a bunch of originally unrelated rooms, and goes in a rather strange direction at the midway point; the final level for one brief shining moment towards the end promises to make sense of everything, but then proceeds to make even less sense than before and ends on an unresolved cliffhanger.  19 Memories has a more elaborate plot with multiple characters interacting, but the reveals fail to make even a lick of sense and read very much like somebody played Zero Escape, failed to understand it, and then decided to rip it off anyway; the final ending also feels bizarrely abrupt and inconclusive.  (I have heard that, after completing the last level, there is another ending which can be gained by revisiting an earlier level; but as I don't know which earlier level, and am thoroughly jaded with the whole game, I honestly haven't the patience to try and find it out.)  The localisation is mostly adequate, but of inconsistent quality; one level might throw out the colloquialism "nerdsplain," while another uses obvious literal translations like "an absolute existence"; text on in-game graphics is machine-translated and fails to match text box narration.

Which brings us to visuals and gameplay.  The visuals are, at best, adequate; locations are always interesting to look at, at least, and there is surprisingly little asset recycling - but visuals can also be unnecessarily cluttered, muddy and vague, or, as the locales get stranger, flat-out uncommunicative of what they're meant to represent and how you're meant to interact with them; though it's difficult to say if this is more of a graphical problem or a gameplay one.  Gameplay is the big sticking-point, though, for as the games go on, the puzzles have a tendency to grow increasingly opaque and illogical; one I particularly remember is a clock-based maths puzzle which requires you to ignore how both clocks and maths work.  Later levels are bizarrely unyielding of any indication of your actual objective, the victory state of the increasingly large-scale room-shifting puzzles you're asked to take on.  Beyond a certain point, these aren't even escape-the-room games any more; more like point-and-click adventure games of a particularly cruel bent.  This would be less of a problem if there were only some kind of hint system; but there is no hint system, which for a console escape game is an absolute must.  Otherwise, if you get stuck, all you can do is go and look on the Internet; and while that felt appropriate in the old days of community-based solving of Flash escape games, that was because you were already on the Internet (and some of those had hint systems anyway!).  The result is that you just end up going through the game with a video walkthrough open (I had to dig through Japanese stream archives for some of the later levels), reconstructing the logic of whatever answer the walkthrough inputs whenever you happen to get stuck (which is sometimes more interesting than the actual puzzle).  Sometimes I felt this was being unfair to the game; but there were plenty of instances of solutions I can't imagine arriving at through anything other than trial-and-error or pixel-hunting.  The real killer, though, is the game's molasses-slow interface.  Going through your inventory, interacting with items or changing camera views, are languorous; and while there are, correctly, no glowing hotspot indicators, text boxes will frequently linger on-screen and completely null your button-presses until they go away, meaning that searching for hotspots can have long seconds of iteration time between each individual click.  Item combination is context-specific rather than having a "combine" button or just letting you use one item on another, like every other escape game in existence.  The comparative cheapness of online Flash games is actually an asset when it comes to gameplay speed; if you want your gameplay slower, you have to make it correspondingly easier and more obvious so the player never feels they're wasting their time if they're stuck.

And don't get me started on the gimmicks.  There are reviews for this game which states that it fails to innovate as it goes on.  If only.  This is one of the most gimmick-laden escape games I've ever come across, and only gets fonder and fonder of them.  19 Memories leans heavily on touch-and-drag mechanics, which have no on-screen indication whatsoever, and occasionally require you to interact with objects which don't even look like they should be possible to manipulate.  Would that that was the worst of it.  In a slow game with a particularly lazy save-reload cycle, the levels become inordinately fond of death failure states which reset you back to the beginning - often time-limit-based, too, with time passing even while you're in menus.  But those are just the generalities, not the specifics.  What kind of person looks at an escape game and says to themself, "You know what this needs?  A minecart section."  A whole minigame just to pick things up because you're piloting a submarine now.  Slider puzzles where you can't let two objects in particular touch or else you'll die, but you can't tell which they are until you've played halfway through the puzzle.  And, the one which killed any chance I could give this game a halfway positive review, the nadir of multi-gimmick pile-ups: Playing a slow-paced grabber minigame to grind randomly-generated resources to defer a time-limit-based failure state.

Flash games perfected the escape game years ago.  What's your excuse, Escape Trick?

Sonic Mania Plus (Switch) - In progress.  I don't think anyone on this site needs me to review this game - but my take?  For me, this is the second coming of S3&K.  It's absolute comfort food, so much fun and strangely relaxing to play even at the most intense speeds or through treacherous platforming.  I'm glad I had to hold off until the Plus update to buy it; the area transition cutscenes, even when reliant on the Phantom Ruby, are absolute joys of animation that really liven up the whole experience.

WarioWare Gold (3DS) - In progress.  I'd imagined this would be a relatively quick game to play, but I foolishly vowed, out of a deep affection for this series, to 100% it - all target scores on minigames, that sort of thing.  A foolish mistake - this game is packed with content, countless microgames and weird additional gimmicks and special missions and so on.  It's fantastic, to be clear; the microgames are fun, hectic, hilarious to look at, and the goofy story cutscenes are fun and help to give the characters life.  But this'll be a long-former, I think.

[GenghisConn3]

Currently playing Resident Evil 2 on my PS1 and Smash Bros 4 on my Wii U, I've only got Claire's B scenario to go. Actually screwed up a playthrough of Claire B by saving in caution status just before the final battle with Mr X, no health pick ups in that area whatsoever and I ended up using all the healing items from the item box in the lab. So yeah, had to start over. IIRC, I'm at the part where you have to go into the basement for the first time. Tbh I think I prefer RE1 to RE2 though I am still enjoying my time with RE2.

[Hectopascal]

I started playing PUBG, a very addictive and realistic game in BattleRotyal mode, I do not have to describe it. In my opinion, the price is a little too high, but it promises to be hundreds of hours of fun :-)
And I'm still playing in Rocket League, I'm addicted to RL ^^
What I like the most is that Psyonix is constantly developing the game, sometimes he will add a new map - and very often add new crates and items

[KHCast]

I’ve gotten re sucked into World of Final Fantasy. (Funny cause everyone else is getting back into Pokemon Go.) strangely, going back and trying to complete the boards and beat all the secret stuff motivated me to continue seeing what else the game offers as a single player game. I fought one of the secret bosses and got his prism, and now currently trying to beat the secret stages. It’s great fun, but man, it stinks that there’s only one save slot. I get it’s because of the online multiplayer stuff, but still.:/

 

Oh and saints row 4. Fucking love this game 

[Austroid]

I got the Resident Evil remake Wii port the other day, and went in head first as Chris; not realizing he made the game artificially tougher. Hours later I rage quit, then found out Jill has more pros for beginners. The only other RE game I played is 4 so I'm trying to get out of the "shoot everything" mentality lol. It definitely a different experience so far compared to RE4.

Also got Codename S.T.E.A.M. at Gamestop a few weeks ago for a measly 5 bucks! I haven't started playing yet but it'll happen eventually lol.

[Mr Loopone]

Was playing and fully completed Just Cause. As for the game itself, I did like the idea of the game but it really needed an extra couple of months in development to make it REALLY GOOD. Controls and graphics were for a 2006 game actually quite good bearing in mind that it was made for the original Xbox in mind (and still good on the 360 too), its an open world game where at the time they looked a bit rubbishy due to the scale/nature of the genre but this one has a massive scale and didn't feel flat like most that were out there. Liked that it had subtitles even.

So what are the big issues then? There are two things that really really annoyed me about the game, the dodgy collision detection and the physics, the former really brings the game down a lot. There are side missions that are literally broken due to it where you can't destroy buildings or land on tankers. Walking/driving up hills is hit and miss since you do that quite a bit. Physics really affects the cars since they get stuck easily and not very good to drive either since all it takes is one bit of scenery. Only way that you can win most races is using the gyrocopter since it gives a bit of air control but there are two where its not a good idea. One is the air race that was pretty annoying and had to use I think either a plane or a fast helicopter to complete since the gyrocopter wasn't fast enough. The other was one on a buggy where the default vehicle was fine.

Oh and tanks. Blooming tanks. There are 4 military bases in the game where they are the hardest due to them. Remember the issues that I mentioned? It means get anywhere within 20 seconds of walking distance and they will kill you. To describe it is fire, knockback, move a few millimetres, fire, knockback, move a few millimetres, fire, dead all within about 5 seconds. It's not like that when you have control of them...

There was also a lot of repetition as well when it comes to takeovers and the same voice clips, "Alto, this is the police", "Stop, policia", "Halt, policia".

Due to that my hand has been bad, couldn't play much games after that. So I thought of trying Bomberman Act Zero. Heard that it was bad, the Sonic 06 of the Bomberman series, etc. Had to try it for myself and my verdict? It is bad? Not as bad as I thought but I won't class it as a finished game that's for damn sure. Unlike Sonic 06 where it is a buggy and broken mess but at least it has content, Bomberman Act Zero felt like one that was barely started. Like a pre-alpha tech demo that Konami and Hudson made in a few weeks. The maze graphics weren't too bad and the controls were fine but the characters are ugly (not because it is a redesign, because it really is ugly), the AI seems basic and got killed on a level but died after all the opponents were defeated, Game Over. Once you have played one level, you literally have played them all with no variation. At least old Bomberman did have variation in terms of maze design and the look of them every so often. Played for 10 minutes and had enough, I no longer have the game.

[shdowhunt60]

9 hours ago, Austroid said:

I got the Resident Evil remake Wii port the other day, and went in head first as Chris; not realizing he made the game artificially tougher. Hours later I rage quit, then found out Jill has more pros for beginners. The only other RE game I played is 4 so I'm trying to get out of the "shoot everything" mentality lol. It definitely a different experience so far compared to RE4.

Also got Codename S.T.E.A.M. at Gamestop a few weeks ago for a measly 5 bucks! I haven't started playing yet but it'll happen eventually lol.

OG Resident Evil is a game that suffers from telegraph issues. It's one of those games though that definitely gets better on subsequent playthroughs, and Chris's game all of a sudden means much more when you're having to factor small keys and inventory into route optimization.

Personally it's one of those reasons why I consider the original Resident Evil trilogy to be rather misunderstood, and something that took time for me to really figure out when I first tried the games out a few years back.

[BlueFlare]

On 7/30/2018 at 8:55 PM, BlueFlare said:

I really want to try out Octopath Traveler but haven't got myself a Switch yet. I'm building my team for Pokemon Platinum league atm. I have Torterra, Vaporeon, Luxray, Gliscor / Staraptor, Houndoom and Gallade / Garchomp. 

So I did beat Platinum league on my first go. Also, finally done with 3DS Zeldas and sold them. Now I'm planning on getting back to Halo trilogy and itching to play some RPG. 

[BrettyBoy]

Been playing CS: GO for PC lately.

[Mr Loopone]

Have been playing TMNT (the Ubisoft one) on the 360 and its been a decent game, I liked it. The gameplay is pretty much inspired by Prince of Persia: Sands of Time that is a fantastic game with its platforming and parkour (since its the same developers) however the game is a lot less polished than that with so many times where I kept dying due to bugs such as going to a different direction, under/overshooting jumps/parkour and the collision detection is a bit off. Combat is fine, nothing fancy but did the job. There were some performance issues like at one point it had pretty bad slowdown and camera at some points of the game was quite bad, getting stuck even.