For context, I played this game after Nier: Automata, the second game in the series and which was developed by Platinum, compared to Nier Replicant/Gestalt which was done by Cavia originally, and the remaster is by ToyLogic. Given that the two games share a lot of their overall structure and mechanics, it's impossible for me not to compare them and this is of course the biggest bias I am bringing with me to the experience. It's clear that the remaster is trying to improve the presentation of the old Xbox 360 / PS3 game to match Automata a bit closer, but it's still ultimately the same game. Perhaps combat and animations are a bit improved, but enemies, bosses and so on are still closely based on what was in the original.
The biggest difference between the two is probably the fact that Nier visually tries to appear like a normal JRPG with a very calm and normal looking world. Our hero lives with his sister in their charming little house, next to a pond and garden with chicken running around. Outside there's children running around and it just is in every way a picturesque medevial village, and while we see some guards, the town gates are wide open and it's clear there's not much the people here are afraid of. While we do see some very varied environs, like he people of Facade (loved that section in the game when you first get to explore it), it's clear that the design was inspired by sterotypical JRPGs. In many ways then, Nier feels like a Yoko Taro take on a standard JRPG. A least initially. The second Act of the game changes this quite a bit, and gives us a hint about the slow march of destruction that no one seems to be able to escape. This does make for a pretty impressive tonal shift in the second half of the game.
As for the game being inspired by typical JRPGs, this includes the many quests that seem to openly mock the idea of taking on all and every quest and make it seems ridicilous. Tons of quests where you need to revisist virtually every map in the world, find hundreds of items and so on. Many of these quest givers are also openly stating that they are only abusing your helpfulness. Again, that feels a lot like Nier Automata in how it is almost antagonistic against the player.
(Story spoilers below)
As for the plot, I of course had some inklings coming in from Automata, about how it would deal with the end of humanity. The actual details were new to me, and the reveal the first time around does serve for a nice twist. We are essentially actively working towards the end of humanity all along, without knowing it. There are still a few details in the remaster I don't quite grasp, one of them being what exactly the role of Louise is as a Shade that does not feature a respective Replicant. I understand this was added to the remaster, and it overall does not seem to have much of a place in the plot. It does make for a neat boss fight, though.
(Story spoilers continue)
Nier also features the gimmick that you need to finish it multiple times to get the full story. I feel this in particular is a weakness of the first Nier. The second Route in Nier Automata gave a big perspective shift and felt in many ways like a fresh game again. In comparison, Route B adds virtually nothing knew, except that we get to understand the various Shade bosses that we fight. With a couple of them, it reveals that their intentions were not actually hostile, like the fight in the Junk Heap. Of course, this was also hinted at in the first Route, that maybe Shades aren't all that simple and a lot more human than we assume. Thus, having to invest hours and hours just get such a small morsel of new understand felt pretty weak. Then you have Endings C and D, which are possible after seeing the ending to Route B. Both of these extend the ending, and we get one more boss fight, namely against Kaine after she loses control. We can kill her (Ending C) giving us a bitter-sweet ending where our hero needs to accept that his choice was for the best or there is the choice of sacrificing our own existence (Ending D) which allows Kaine to come back, as full Replicant without any Shade possession. I found this ending to be silly: no one, not even Yonah remembers our protagonist, and everyone assumes it was Kaine who did everything all along. This is just silly. Yonah's personality and everything is so tightly woven around her brother, that in a world without him, she shoud be an entirely different person. But nope, everything just stays the same, sans our hero.
The remaster addresses this problem and adds an actual epilogue. It becomes a bit fantastical, but it still feels far better than any previous ending to me. This alone feels like the remaster was justified and actually improved on the original.
Overall, I would recommend Nier Replicant only to hardcore fans of Automata, and perhaps as a starting point to the series, since not coming in with the baggage of comparing it against Automata might help enjoy this game even more. I wasn't too hot on this the first couple routes, but I felt the epilogue actually redeemed quite a bit of it.
Not a bad game per-se, but after playing it for around 5 hours,I just feel like I am playing the same exact levels over and over again. It kinda doesn't help how the game feels completely disinterested in the kind of humour and writing that made the show so good. it's just full of vapid references. Remember that moment in the show? Remember this character from the show? There's nothing going on here, except references. And of course, I expected going in that it would mostly just live off of nostalgia, but I wasn't expecting how dead and eerlie abandoned the game just feels. None of the characters chats with you, there's no actual dialogue. It's all just tutorial message that tell you what to do to get the item you need.
Will keep this game around to test my new PSU once it arrives (since for whatever reason this game (in an unlocked framerate) seems to crash my current one in minutes), but see no reason to continue playing this
I loved Black Mesa. I've had this for years and knew Xen was taking a long time to develop but I had no idea they were reimagining it. So I was very happy to have that as a surprise.
Decent beat 'm up with some creative ideas and of course lots of Roman enemies. The combat is fun, although rather repetitive because there are way too many sections where you need to beat waves of dozens of the same enemies. There's some platforming as well, which can be challenging because of the limited camera controls. Still, there are plenty of things to enjoy in order to finish the game.
Score: 7.4/10.
Finished Gears 5 - Hivebusters
Not as good as the original campaign, but still lots of fun to play thanks to the well designed combat areas and set pieces. I didn't like the characters, but there's a decent story and the visuals are amazing. Only a few hours long, but definitely worth playing when you liked Gears 5.
Finished this today. It is certainly one of a kind. I actually bought it back in 2019 the day it came out, but decided to wait for patches, then for voice acting, then for controller support...and then I just never found myself in the "mood" for it.
But few weeks back on twitter I stumbled upon this amazing Unreal 5 recreation of the game's starting room:
I liked the vibe of this so much that it just put me in that mood and I started playing it. Took me 69 hours, I did everything I could, that my character build let me do, with the only two tasks undone being "drink booze" and "smoke cigarettes". I wanted to play clean and sober no-nonsense Harry who tried to get better. Stats I chose were 5-3-2-2.
Now after finishing it, I watched the trailers and half the stuff in them, I never saw in my playthrough. The game is really variable based on character build, and another playthrough is warranted sometime in the future.
The soundtrack, voice acting, atmosphere and world building are 10/10.
Writing is almost too, eventhough I found it a bit pretentious in on occasion. But most characters are written and drawn (literally and figuratively) extremely well. There are dialogues in this game that took me like 90 minutes to get through and I was enthralled all the way. Kim Kitsuragi is definitely one of the all time greats. The central murder mystery and how it ties into the events in Martinaise, it was a joy to unravel. And the lore behind Pale and greater world, pretty fascinating.
Also liked how it really goes into detail of being a detective. Doing the autopsies, interrogating people, it is so detailed, exhaustive.
I experienced no bugs, crashes or glitches. But there is one issue that is annoying and related to Unity engine - the game has broken camera movement when running at 60/120hz - it is stuttery, which especially when playing with controller is supremely annoying. At 50/100hz the game is completely smooth, so I had to swith refresh rate before playing (created a shortcut via qres). I think console versions suffer from this too btw. Glad I can fix it on PC.
A promotional tie-in game for the Canadian YouTube music promotion channel MrSuicideSheep and the associated record label Seeking Blue. It's a pixel-art 2D-platformer with the MrSuicideSheep channel mascot as the main player character.
I found this game three years ago in the october 2021 Steam Next Fest and my summary back then was "slam dunk!". The final game is out now, and it's still a slam dunk (and it's still free of charge).
Tight controls, great looks, great sound, 2 hours of zero-filler-all-meat(*) platforming, seasoned with a sprinkle of exploration and served with a side of boss challenges, this is a free meal that everyone should enjoy. (*) or delicious meat-substitute for vegetarian ruminants and friends of ruminants
Paying ~10 USD gets you the game's original soundtrack as a bonus download.
4.5/5
Also finished Zipp's Cafe (The Wild Gentlemen, 2023)
A short visual novel combined with a casual cooking/barista mini-game that mostly serves as stop-gap / promotional vehicle for the upcoming sequel to Chicken Police, "Into The Hive!".
The artwork here is hand-drawn pixel art in cozy-warm colors instead of the black-and-white photorealism of Chicken Police - Paint it Red (an optional black-and-white filter can be applied however). The music is some of the most memorable themes from Paint it Red, but given a beats-to-study-and-relax-to treatment.
The story however, experienced in first person from the perspective of one of Paint it Red's side-characters, is not that special and not very long either - quite in line with what you would expect from the game's price tag.
Recommendable for Chicken Police fans (such as myself), anyone else probably need not bother.
Enjoyed it though I would say a lot of that is because of the nostalgia factor. Couldn't remember all of it but some sections were familiar and it reminded me of playing with chums at uni 20+ years ago.
Has a few issues in the modern gaming age...
Controls are clunky (used classic controls), lots of bumping into walls, falling off ledges, awkwardly manoeuvring around corners. Camera fights you a lot of the way. Combat is just rubbish.
But it still has a nice sense of discovery and an interesting progression through the story. Its still a fun game all these years later. The graphic upgrade is nice enough and you can switch back to the original if you want to see what it looked like (at reduced frame rate).
Overall it was fun and worth the time re-visiting the game.
7 / 10 (mainly for nostalgia).
Maybe it’s just me in my old age, but I’m finding that I’m lukewarm on games at the start, and then I begin to enjoy them more once I’m better equipped/leveled up. That was my initial feeling on CP.
The combat starts off as pretty laughable. Punchout style bobbing and weaving as enemy monsters are more like actors that get into position before commencing their combat routines. Melee is a big focus. In the early goings, until near the end when I think having a few powered up guns is better. The gravity glove accessory made for a good bit of fun, sending enemies into spikes walks, fans, and grinding machines.
It gets more enjoyable the further you get.
Graphics and sound are solid. The environmental artists especially did a fantastic job. I’m told Sony aided with character models, and it shows. They look excellent.
I don’t want to give away any story bits, but basically you’re stuck on a galactic prison that becomes overrun with mutated monsters and have to escape. It’s a linear action game with some branching paths, which these days is pretty appealing if you’re tired of long winded 60hr open world games.
Upon finishing CP I’d score it a solid 7/10.
Now the Final Transmission DLC? Well, that really soured me on doing a New Game Plus, because it doesn’t count towards your New Game Plus. So two hours of gameplay that takes place right after the finish of the main game. Two hours of leveling up your weapons, as well as an additional weapon that is FUN AS HELL to use - and I can’t take it back to the campaign with me??!!!
I remember playing the original game on my first self-built PC (486 CPU @100MHz and 16MB RAM), so this remaster was an amazing nostalgic trip for me. The modern controls didn't work for me, but I got used to the tank controls somewhere in the second level. The camera can be extremely frustrating as soon as you're close to a wall, but the level design is brilliant and even today a blast to explore. Only exception for me is the mine level, which has too much needless backtracking and instant-death traps. Also my compliments to the devs for the excellent remaster. It runs and plays great on the Steam Deck.
Finished The Last Oricru (means last of the original crew, it is explained in the game)
This Czech storydriven soulslike has been in development for about 8 years by a tiny (like 10 people) team, I always thought it was insane what they were doing, this is never gonna come out! But then they got the backing of Deep Silver, which let them expand the team to about 30 people and actually ship the game. Final budget was 4 million euros. Me being a Czech, I saw some interviews with the lead developer over the years, always fun. Then the demo came out, I tried it and found it disastrous. Then the game itself came out, got some mediocre reviews and nobody bought it. But, in a futile attempt to revive the sales, developers kept patching it, eventually releasing Final Cut (heh, my second Final Cut in as many months), which polished things up further and added bit of new content.
And so I figured, what the hell, the game is 5 euros, I might as well try it properly.
And, well...I actually enjoyed it. It took me 25 hours to play through (which is good, it did not overstay its welcome).
It is janky in some aspects - the combat is somewhat janky (though I found Fromsoft's combat janky too..), facial animations are basically non-existent, user interface looks weirdly cheap, it uses bizzarely cheap looking font that makes it look like a placeholder.
On the other hand, I did not encounter any technical bugs and had only one crash (with lovely old school "fatal error" message).
By the way, the game has co-op (even in split screen) for the main campaign, although only one player makes dialogue decisions, the other plays as his hologram and helps in combat. I only played solo though.
Main protagonist (nicknamed Silver at the start of the game) sounds hilariously out of place, both with his actual voice actor and his character writing - but then during the game you find out his actual name is Jason Bunting, and, well, that explains it. He sounds exactly like someone called Jason Bunting would sound like. I actually kinda liked the guy by the end.
I was impressed by the story aspects of the game, to be honest. There are some big decisions to be made and the ending is heavily malleable by those, right down to fates of individual characters (all of whom get their own ending slide at the end, by the way - this was awesome and sorely missing from launch version of Baldur's Gate 3).
In my ending, Mr. Bunting
actually married the local alien Queen and became King, which I found hilariously leftfield. I also abolished slavery and ensured long lasting peace. I think I had the best possible ending, which makes me quite gratified because it was touch and go for a moment there (for several hours I thought I messed up one decision).
To sum up. Would I say that this is an objectively great, or even good game, that everyone into the soulslike genre will enjoy?
Probably not. It is definitely eurojank, and it requires acceptance of its shortcomings, stemming both from low budget and developer inexperience and some unusual taste. But I did have 25 hours of good fun with it, and am glad I gave it a chance.
This game ties into the Steven Spielberg directed animated feature film "The Adventures of Tintin" and features the typical play-along-with-the-story mode and also a more abstract original mode with a minimal story framing, but a longer playtime and optional couch-coop.
Probably due to licensing issues, this game has been abandonware for a couple of years now, but works perfectly fine on modern machines without the need for mods or third-party patches and supports XInput-compatible game controllers out of the box.
The gameplay of the story mode is mostly side-scrolling platforming with light puzzling and light combat, but also has a few third-person driving and flying interludes. Once you get past the fact that the character models for Tintin and Haddock look even less like the characters from the graphic novels than they did in the feature film, the game is pretty fun and hits plenty of nostalgia notes for Tintin fans. The casual difficulty throughout avoids frustration and lets players focus on trying to get 100% completion with the optional secret collectibles on the first playthrough.
The real meat of the game however is the other, original mode called "Tintin and Haddock". The story here is minimal - Captain Haddock accidentally gets hit in the head and the game mode takes place in the dreams he's having while knocked out. The game designers ran with the creative license this scenario gave them and made a real fun ten hour puzzle platforming game with optional two-player coop that's wonderfully weird - during the course of the game you unlock more and more player characters (up to 6) and up to 8 different outfits for each. Every character has different special abilities and some collectibles in the levels can only be retrieved with a specific character and their special ability, thus providing some replay value (it's impossible to get every collectible on the first playthrough). Gamers who have played a lot of indie platformers in the last ten years or so won't find anything mind-blowing here, but at the time of release, this game-mode would have really stood out for its quirkyness. Perhaps this also explains the universally mediocre reviews of the game at the time - reviewers clearly had different sensibilities back then. I however cannot agree with them, I had a real blast with this game mode.
The game's artwork and art direction aren't exactly spectacular (the animated feature film was a lot more ambitious in that regard), but quite clearly made with a lot of love for the source material - and the fantastic music is made by none other than Christophe Heral, known from the Beyond Good & Evil and Rayman soundtracks.
When I started this game, I was prepared for mediocre tie-in shovelware, but I was pleasantly surprised - I spent 16 hours playing through both the story mode and the Tintin-and-Haddock mode and loved every minute of it.
A walking simulator with light puzzling that tries to combine some millennial nostalgia (Nokia mobile brick complete with 1-bit camera feature) with a bit of basic Finnish cultural edutainment (Finns love their summer cabins and saunas!) and a Kalevala-inspired spook-story. Has its moments, but lacks polish. Playtime is 2 hours max, the game is available on Steam and itch,io free of charge.
2.5/5
Finished Fire Tonight (Reptoid Games / Way Down Deep, 2021)
A short (90 minutes playtime) isometric exploration/puzzle game with the plot and scenario adapted almost verbatim from the song "Fire Tonight" by Information Society (which is not featured in the game however).
Set in 1990 (the same year the song was released), it goes hard for gen-x nostalgia, but the actual gameplay is very solid and polished (the camera that the player is able to freely swing around the whole scene in 360 degrees is especially cool). However, the game is so short that it feels like it barely even got started before it's over.
A puzzle game centered around painting that tells a bittersweet story of two painters that keep inspiring each other throughout their lives. Gorgeous artwork and animation, often presented as a full 360 degree scene that the player interacts with. The puzzling is casual and the playtime is short (~3 hours), but the quality of the presentation is so high and the storytelling is so mood-centric that this game lends itself to replays like a comfy anime does for rewatching.
Yet another Ubisoft early 2010s abandonware game (although its engine partially lives on in The Crew and The Crew 2, both of which are destined to become dead games sooner or later). Since this game hails from the era before online service games, you can still get yourself a used copy and enjoy it (except for the online multiplayer modes, the servers of which have been shut down in 2022).
I played the PC version, which runs reasonably well on modern PCs, but has a couple of quirks, so I ended up having to use Special K to inject support for borderless fullscreen and by way of doing that also gain support for vsynced frame rates other than 50. Once again, PCGamingWiki was an invaluable source of information for getting up and running in the minimal amount of time.
It's an action driving game, technically open-world, too, but at least as long as the story campaign is going and the player isn't dedicated to methodically cleaning out every optional mission icon, it feels pretty linear. You have to play two side missions to unlock a main mission, but all the side missions do tie into the main story somewhat and also feature recurring characters. The mission types are what you would expect in a driving game: Races, chases and escort missions. The latter are made possible by one of the game's unique features: The ability to instantly switch into the driver"s seat of any car driving around in the city at (almost) any point, and then use those cars to crash into enemy cars. There's also a set of unlockable extra missions that mimic car chase sequences from a variety of famous movies, like The Italian Job.
The game's story has received much praise and I completely agree: This game could be made into an action movie today using most of the game's script (and if competently made I'm sure would be much more fun to watch than the abysmal Gran Turismo movie of 2023). SFPD officer John Tanner gets into an accident during a car chase and ends up in the hospital in a coma - and almost all of the game takes place inside John Tanner's head as he's dreaming about the news that the TV in his hospital room is playing. The game's cinematic aspirations are underlined by a fantastic cast of voice actors and hours worth of dialogue - and not just between the main characters, but also for the people in the passenger seats of the random cars that Tanner can switch into. There was hardly a minute in the 10 hours I spent playing this game where the player character wasn't having a fully voice-acted back-and-forth with an NPC.
The driving however is meh at best and sometimes outright terrible. Every car feels heavy, cumbersome and has implausible physics in some way or another and that is especially true for Tanner's signature Dodge Challenger that is used in a lot of the missions. The enemy driving AI is not particularly good either and especially towards the end of the game is outright allowed to cheat in order to ramp up the challenge, with some utterly ridiculous rubber-banding in races.
The soundtrack is all licensed music (and the probable reason for the game's abandonment by Ubisoft), and as usual for Ubisoft games with licensed music, the selection of tracks isn't great, with a few standout exceptions that are used in key moments of the story.
Probably better to watch than to actually play, except for hardcore driving game fans.
One of my main motivations for picking this up is I’m afraid of losing my chance when Teyon eventually loses the license. Hell, it’s probably the reason, along with the solid word of mouth.
Like everything else I play these days, I’m just not blown away in the early parts. Voice work is mediocre, and the graphics at times are…PS3 level. In the early goings your a chump with a pistol that shoots spitballs. Little grunt enemies like Robo- Spiders can pose a threat. The machines are taking over and…well they kinda did take over. You join the resistance and encounter some friends along the way making dialogue choices that possibly make them trust you. Play your cards right with a couple ladies and you can even get some sexy time.
Basic crafting system in place as well as straightforward leveling up system with skills to acquire. By the time I wrapped up the game I was almost fully jacked up.
Shooting feels solid with a mouse, although I would occasionally get stuck on the environment.
As the game progresses Terminators go from something to hide from to something you’re taking on once you’re using their weapons. I greatly appreciated how they’d catch fire as you damaged them. That’s why graphics were a mixed bag for me. Some things look great, while other environmental things like shelves and furniture looked poor.
There’s a nice smattering of side missions should you choose to do them, and a nice QoL feature is you automatically gain experience after completing them. You never need to travel back to the person that gave you the mission. They just complete and you move on.
Missions never seen very far and checkpoints are scattered well enough. There’s some hacking and lock picking involved. Lock picking is like Bethesda style with easy, medium, and hard locks. Forget that hard shit. I broke way too many lock picks trying to figure out the exact spot I needed to be. Hacking was a pretty enjoyable Frogger style mini-game. There’s also explosives and things to boost your abilities. Sound making devices to lure Terminators. I never bothered with any of it.
Last couple levels were pretty hyped up, so that raised my score a little. Well worth your time if you’re in the mood for a slower paced FPS adventure style game. It’s nothing mind blowing, but still enjoyable.
Just finished it. I have mixed feelings about it. First and foremost, I enjoyed the gameplay, for the most part, but some elements of it was kind of confusing, the combat did feel a bit repetive at times for me, but I mostly enjoyed it. Story was interesting and good, well the main story, but the pacing and story focus in the middle of the game was pretty mediocre. Felt a lot of just meaningless wandering around in somewhat open areas with no focus other than to follow some weird men in robes. The actual story itself was good, except for the ending, just all around confusing. The original game's story in The Forgotten Capital was great, not in this one, too "Kingdom Heartsy".
I did like that you could get to know the characters more in this game than in the original. What I did not like is the open areas in the game, the side activities, the requires mini games I had to play to progress the story, lots of fillers basically, just like Remake. So I decided to focus on the story and do the side activities, side quests and exploration when the PC version is out due to access to cheats and Cheat Engine (felt like some of the side activities was a time waste for me).
TLDR: Good main story until the ending, great graphics and music, good combat and good gameplay (for the most part), lots of fillers with mini games, side activities, side quests, an open world that looks great, but also feels quite empty that I felt wasn't needed. Will do more of all of that with the PC version.
A step back from the first game which I liked a lot. The environments here are the same from the first game, feels like the devs basically took the first game, then put new quests and characters and some new weapons and stuff and called it a day. The game lacks focus, story is boring, most of the time you are not told exactly where to go and what you need to do and you are left using a bad map to find out. Zombies keeps respawning and everything looks the same so I often felt "wait, I was just here moments ago".
A big letdown from the first game, did 2-3 main quests and quit. No fun.
Finished
Not as good as What the Golf, but still fun. Very short (less than 2 hours to complete the game + all cheevos). There are different chapters/zones and each contains a bunch of levels. The main problem is that the game is not as variated as What the Golf. Still had decent fun with it.
Lovely 2D platformer with tight controls, good level design and great colorful graphics. There's a central town with lots of people to talk to, and you visit six islands with a unique theme, a new abilities and well-designed dungeons. The game is lots of fun and has a decent learning curve from very easy on the first island to rather hard in the final dungeon.
Only thing I didn't like is that to access the dungeon on an island, you need to find a certain item on one of the islands you already visited. This often involves talking to everyone on the central island to get hints, and then searching every corner of a particular island. This is rather time-consuming than fun, and often even frustrating because the map of each island is split in several smaller maps that you can't see unless you're actually there. I hope the sequels of this game fixed this, because everything else is so much fun!
Score: 7.9/10
Finished Marvel's Midnight Suns
A new Fireaxis game with Marvel heroes and turn-based gameplay; I couldn't be more excited when I started Midnight Suns. And yes, I was very impressed the first few hours because the game looks great, there's an open-world part to explore and the combat is really good. I really enjoyed every fight and it is amazing to be able to pick the heroes you want to use, each with their own unique abilities.
But what bothered me a lot is everything else: there's WAY too much useless talking and running around between the combat missions. Talking to my favorite heroes was great in Guardians of the Galaxy because this game only had like 15 missions. Midnight Suns has over 60 missions. I found much of the dialogues rather boring, hanging out with the heroes even more boring (a book club, really?) and exploring the open world also boring because all there is to do is running around while finding objects and activating stuff. A few clever puzzles would have made it so much more fun, but it's just fetch quests and opening doors.
Then why didn't you skip all this filler stuff you may ask? Answer: because it actually impacts the combat. Raising the friendship level with heroes unlocks the most powerful combo's and legendary abilities available in the game. Training with the heroes gives them perks in combat. The boring ops missions has upgraded combat cards as a reward. And everything you do generates essence and money which you need to upgrade your combat deck.
All this bloat started to annoy me after a few hours, because I was spending more time on it than in actual combat. I ended up skipping most of the dialogs and cutscenes because of this, which saved me a lot of time but also made me miss most of the story. Please Fireaxis, more action and less talking next time.
Score: 7.8/10 (because the combat is REALLY good.)
Finished Valiant Hearts: Coming Home (Ubisoft Connect - PC)
A good game and good sequel. The .exe actually says "ValiantHearts2". You follow some of the same characters form the first game and some new ones and their journey through the 1st world war. Basic gameplay (you mostly pick up items you find on the road and use them to progress), it's a 2D side scroller with great art style. Story is decent and somewhat emotional. It's 2 hours long with 3 chapters and you can go back to find collectibles.
It saddens me how Ubisoft killed the game on PC and consoles with Ubisoft Connect exclusivity and no marketing. Hopefully a Steam release can push it a bit.
Finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft Connect - PC)
Pretty good metroidvania with a decent story that does get predictable and too "world ending" towards the end. Nice graphic style, fun combat, fun plattforming and gameplay. It does get repetive and monotonous at times, but the different upgrades and abilities helps with the variation. I like that the devs innovated with the "memory shards" elements, that allows you to take a picture of the place you are standing on, which puts that picture on the map to see later what it looks like. For example, a passage or a chest that you can't open there and then, take a picture of the room/pace and that picture will be places on the map so it's easier to remember where it was.
However, the level design is still somewhat standard metroidvania design, as in, apart from the memory shards element, pretty much everything has been done before which is why the game often felt a bit repetive and monotonous. However, the game itself is still very solid, engaging and fun.
Will definetly pick it up on Steam to explore more of the areas I didn't bother to discover with the Uplay version.
When I finished the first game, I was surprised to read about a sequel that was in development. I had seen some trailers about the Outcast games, but I always figured it was just a remake, it had completely slipped past me that there was a second game on the way.
Having played that game now, I am both surprised and maybe a bit disappointed by it. On the surface, Outcast is an amazing achievement. I have to assume Appeal Studios is still a small studio, surely going by their credits they can't have been more than 80 people, probably less since I think that number included many people from THQ. And despite this fairly small size by modern dev standards, they created a huge world with a ton of unique vistas and a lot of verticality. In terms of its world design, this game lives up to the original and remaster in every way, even surpassing it easily.
What falls far short, however, is the quest design. The game starts fairly strong, in the first town you visit there's a couple of quest chains that feel like something from the first game: simple tasks, often fetch quests, that don't take up much time and advance the plot and help you get to understand this society and your role in it. Great stuff. The game then gradually opens up, new quests require you to visit other parts of the world and so naturally exploration takes over a big part of the game. This open up the second half, which ends with you having visited all areas. It's from then on that the game starts to drag. Clearly Appeal Studios just ran out of ideas how to keep the player occupied. This leads to a ton of quests where you just collect tons of items for no reason. Bring me 10 of this, 20 of this, and so on. While the studio tries its best to make these activities unique, the repetition that this introduced, especially when you want to complete quests to their highest degree, is just tedious.
The story is on the one hand much better than the first one, simply because it's there. I think a lot of fans will have rose-tinted glasses about this, but as someone with zero nostalgia about the franchise, who only discovered it in January, I can openly say that Outcast 1 had barely any story. There be bad quantum disaster on Earth, you go to parallel universe to fix it, you defeat big bad guy there, the end. The only thing that made it interesting was discovering the world of Adelpha in the process. And Outcast 2 is pretty similar. The plot is very by the numbers and trite. The big exception is that Appeal Studios wanted to have a big dramatic ending, about trying to negotiate peace and all that, and it really did not work for me. Everything is super rushed, it feels like a film where every second scene is missing and you just get to see an early draft of it. Feels unfinished and raw.
Overall, a bit of a mixed reception. I liked parts of it, it's a beautiful game, but it also doesn't quite capture the magic of the first one. I didn't mention combat much, because while it isn't bad, the game just repeats things too much for it to stick in my mind to much. Combat in Outcast 2 is competent, but forgetable. The game as a whole I would describe the other way around: incompetent, but memorable.
Decided to install and finally play this game. What a ride. The controls were so weird at the beginning, but after 30 minutes it's normal. Major props to Suda and Grasshopper for making their games available on modern platforms. Wish that happened more often.
It was an 8/10 to me. I liked it a lot,
Just finished Baldur's Gate 3 last night. As my first CRPG, I'm not really sure how to rate it. It was excellent overall, even though it fell off a lot in the last act and the ending was a bit anticlimactic. I didn't enjoy the big final battle at all. But overall, I spent well over 100 hours on a game with absolute no filler whatsoever. It's interesting how this game has an overwhelming amount of stuff to do, but none of it feels like the Ubisoft style checklist map marker chasing. When I was clearing out areas of enemies, it was always for a reason related to the story, never just because there were enemies here and I kill enemies. It's almost mind boggling how they were able to do this. Making sure you talk to NPCs and examining everything in the environment always paid off. The companions and side characters are fantastic, but that's all been said by better reviewers.
I remember this being a big hit when it dropped in 2019 in this community. I hadn't played anything from Spiders at this point, though I knew they were a small European company aiming to make a BioWare style narrative focused RPG, with Mars War Log being the first big game that caught my attention.
Having now played all their big RPGS, like Mars War Logs, Bound by Flame, Technomancer and now Greedfall, it is impressive to see how this developer has been growing with each game and Greedfall is in many ways their biggest achievement. In sheer graphical fidelity of its landscapes, in particular the wilderness areas of Teer Fradee they have in my view even surpassed what BioWare achieved in its latest medieval RPG, Dragon Age Inquisition. That said, it's still very clear that their games are made on a budget and this reflects the scope and complexity of their games very much. The game world is very static, and indeed most of the players interactions consists in walking from A to B, usually following some arbitrary markers. I wonder if taking inspiration from modern BioWare really is the best way to go here, but that's maybe another topic.
The setting is clearly inspired by European colonial history. In this world there are three great powers: one a religious empire modelled on Catholic Church, the other a more secular country, looking like early Islamic countries but with a focus on science and exploration (at whatever cost) and finally our group, which is a merchant congregation, ruled by rich trading families where our hero is essentially lower nobility and works as a diplomat. These powers are struggling with a disease, their fictional version of the black death and seek to find a cure in the island of Teer Fradee, discovered just decades earlier and in the stages of early colonisation by all three powers. The natives are of course not too happy with these foreigners trying to take their land.
I really liked this setup and Spiders takes great advantage of it. Pretty much all horrors and forms of abuse that stem from colonialism is there, and as a diplomat you are given plenty of options of how to deal with it. Do you revel in it, do you fight against it? Do you risk pissing of precious allies just to help some natives? Good stuff
Combat was a bit of a disappointment. I wanted to play as a mage, and you are pretty much just given 2 spells throughout most of the game. There's a couple more you can unlock very late, but they don't really change the rhythm of the game much. Magic feels like an afterthought.
Overall, a good game and an impressive step forward in Spiders endeavour to copy post-KOTOR BioWare games. I will keep an eye on the upcoming Greedfall 2. Would be interesting to see Spiders "grow up" and do more than just attempt at making the games another studio was making 15 years ago.
Someone suggested "play as if trying avoid 'horror movie character cliches' and the characters will live." Devs ensured this internal logic remains consistent with clues, reports etc. You are rewarded for paying attention!
Plot was nicely paced, filled with great branching choices. The actors were told to play stereotypes and the acted very nicely. Very well done visuals (facial animation blew my mind in 2015) and great OST from Dead Space composer Jason Graves.
Nice use of PS4 motion controls + touchpad too.
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[SPOILER THOUGHTS]
- My playthrough - Saved Sam and Chris.
(Last played 3 months ago before now playing through to ending, so my judgement is clouded).
I loved the way Josh went from a dick to genuinely great character (based on choices of course).
Love how genre changed from Slasher to supernatural to psych ward horror to monster hunt. It kept the story so fresh. And pacing wasn't bad either.
Butterfly effect mechanic is such a good cloak to over its choice-consequences system. Beats out Telltale's approach easily.
Finished No More Heroes
Game is kinda trashy, not going to lie. I remember playing it way back on the wii, but ragequit at the Shinobu fight. This time I managed to beat her and the entire game. Felt like some character development happened in me.
Anyway, it's alright, but far from the kinda brilliant Killer7. I think it's like a 6.5/10
As for the port, thankfully the only problem I personally had was that the game crashed if you tried to skip the results screen. I just don't touch it and wait for it to tell you to press the A button and it worked fine. But I saw a ton of people complaining about how broken the game is, so that sucks.
As far as PC port is concerned, it is really one of the best ports ever, I cannot think of anything to nitpick. Zero crashes, bugs or framedrops.
It is significantly longer than the first game. I ignored the tabletop game machine strike, melee arenas and hunting grounds, otherwise I did a complete set of everything (all sidequests, collectibles..) and it came out to a good 90 hours without the expansion (first game took 65 hours, including Frozen Wilds).
It's cute that they made Burning Shores after Frozen Wilds, heh.
Design-wise it is Ubisoft open world game through and through, but more competent, in some aspects (dialogue and cutscenes, sidequest writing) significantly ahead of Zero Dawn. But few things annoyed me a bit here (unnecessary amount of weapons/traps/ammunition and all kinds of junk, it's quite bloated...and finding upgrade components doesn't entertain me either) and I also have a few reservations about the story, even if it wasn't bad (but really it only started to get really interesting towards the end when
Tilda is on the scene, it's a shame that they had to make her a demented end boss again... such a waste of Carrie-Anne Moss should be criminal).
Ending credits were a nice touch, I love when developers put some care into them - it just makes ending more satisfying.
Anyway, now onward to LA and after Deacon Starkiller.
Nice short puzzle game focused on growing plants by finding clues in the environment. Visuals are lovely, its a pretty game. Some of the puzzles are fairly cryptic, you have to piece things together from bits that you find in the environment and really read each bit of information. Only gripe was that you cant inspect the clues from your book, you have to run back to their location which caused a bit of backtracking. You can use the Steam overlay to take screenshots but as a controller user this wasn't really ideal for me. Its fairly short, took me about 4 hours to finish. Other than that I liked the game and would recommend.
Finished it a while ago, but haven't really had time to write until now. I liked it. The story was interesting, the world was interesting, combat and gameplay was decent fun. You play as a person who hunt ghosts and decides to banish them or "free" them and you are left up with choices than decided the ending. Main negatives are that it takes too long time to get from A to B and you travel a lot. Main combat can quickly become repetive and overall the games could have needed some general variation with weapons, enemies, combat etc.
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