Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[fantomena]

Retired


I think if I hadn't already tried Snowrunner I would have liked it better, but Snowrunner is better in every way. I mean, it's a cool game with great gameplay, but otherwise it feels super basic and "unfinished" in many ways. The map is very little colorfull and "boring", the objectives are super repetive, like there are a bunch of different maps and you do pretty much the same thing in every map, find watchtowers, get logs from different places to take back to some mills and that's it.

I tried Snowrunner: Arrr Edition back at launch and it's what Mudrunner wishes it was. If you haven't tried Snowrunner there's a high chance you will like Mudrunner a lot more.

I view Mudrunner basically as a prototype demo for Snowrunner.

 

[Stevey]

Dragon Age Inquisition..
Played it at release on Origin, didnt really like it.
Played through again on STEAM, did the main quest, did a bit of Jaws Of Hakkon DLC and Deep Roads DLC, had more than enough after 60 hours.
On a plus note it's made me re-install DA:O for another playthrough.

 

[Mivey]

I finished Tell Me Why on Gamepass.

This basically feels like "Life is Strange 3", and honestly, for all effects and purposes it might as well be that. I think it's been made by a different team within DONTNOD, and I can see how the design of each episode is actually different enough from how both LIS 1 and 2, in terms of UI and details like that. However it also very much tries to follow in the general "Telltale Cinematic Adventure Game" genre, so it's a different team that's making a very similar type of game.

The actual stories feels much shorter than the Life is Strange games. I think this is mostly due to the fact that 3 chatpers will ultimately tell a much more dense story than the usual 5. That being said, I ended up liking Tell Me Why much better than Life is Strange 2 (and I don't think Life is Strange 1 is worth being commented on ). Part of that is that I ended up liking the Ronan siblings much, much better than the siblings in LIF2, which I already liked a lot. Part of that is how this time both siblings get equal attention. You don't just play older brother, with a (lovable) brat of a younger brother to take care of. You have two young adults, who love each other, but each go through very difficult time due to their fucked up past. It's a much more mature story, in the sense that there really aren't any clear "bad" guys at all, whatsoever. Just people.

I really like this game's sensible take on transsexuality. It doesn't dramatise it, it doesn't make it into some weird thing. Tyler is just a man, and is accepted by everyone in the town, with some small awkwardness on part of the older adults. It's a very idealised story, but it's also not really the focus of the game. And I honestly love that. It makes it natural and normal, in a way that media just fucking should. We don't need to pander to the "concerns" and fears of fucking TERFs or backwards idiots.

[UWSL][UWSL]SPOILERS INCOMING (but strategically blurred, so you can still read it)[/UWSL][/UWSL]

The actual story around the mother is absolutely great, especially for avoiding the easy out of having a a clear boogie man. It's just bullshit confusion, leading to a terrible mistake. Life happens to be dumb and stupid like that, not everything has a great dramatic conclusion. Those silent moments after the twins realise the truth are great.


[UWSL][UWSL]SPOILERS ENDING (but strategically blurred, so you can still read it)[/UWSL][/UWSL]

I hear the more recent DONTNOD game, Twin Mirror is a bit of a dud. I hope everyone checks out Tell me Why, though. I assume it's from a different team, and it's such a great story. Also looks really great, and it ran very well, stayed at above 120, and near 144 FPS near always.


I rate this game 2 out of 2 crafty goblins.

 

[lashman]

It's a much more mature story, in the sense that there really aren't any clear "bad" guys at all, whatsoever. Just people.

yeah, exactly! i love it SO MUCH precisely because of that ... it's an absolutely amazing game!

glad you liked it as well

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Holy Potatoes We're in Space


This game borrows the basics of FTL but adds a lot more gameplay elements. Instead of being a rogue-like, there are 12 funny story missions, most of them being a parody of a popular movie. In each mission, you visit a random generated galaxy and you have a limited number of days to explore the planets a finish the mission objectives. While exploring the planets, you get both hostile encounters and story events where you can chose how to react. By doing so, you earn money and materials that you can use to upgrade your ship, weapons and crew.

The combat is turn-based, and works surprisingly well. There are lots of different weapons available, and the crew controlling the weapons decide what perks you get. Sadly the game becomes very easy once you understand the game mechanics and have a decent amount of upgrades; I didn't die once in the second half of the game, including the final boss fight. The combat also becomes rather repetitive once new available weapons are stronger versions of weapons you already have. I ended up using the same type of weapons throughout the last few missions. The game is fun enough to keep me interested until the end tho.

Score: 7.1/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finished Gears 5.
Very good looking game. The visuals were impressive. Gameplay wise its standard third person cover shooting but its well done. I would play for about an hour or two before getting a bit bored of the samey combat. Quite linear progression but its is well presented and a pretty ok story. I didnt know much of the Gears history but it didn't put me off. Sometimes you just need a mindless game to play and this was a good one. Steam says i took 13 hours on intermediate.
Id give it a 7 or 8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished Immortals: Fenyx Rising (PC - Ubisoft Connect+).

Maybe the year's biggest positive suprise for me. Didn't even realize the game was coming out this year, didn't care much about it at all, but my 1 month of Ubi+ ends the 8th december and it was suppose to be only used for Valhalla and Legion, both which I didn't like all that much, so I decided to try Immortals out after all.

Boy am I glad I did. The game is a ton of fun, lovely world, nice environments, really enjoyed exploring the world and quite fun combat. What I did not like is the art design and the look of characters and clothes/armors, got "mobile" game feeling off the art design and despite liking the story, the dialogue felt odd as it didn't seem like the devs knew if they were gonna tell a fun and "non-serious" story or a serious story. The game isn't very long which I liked. Far from as long as Valhalla which was too long. Did some side quests, so not too bad those quests either.

The game takes a ton of inspiration from Zelda in regards to that you can climbing anything, same stamina wheel, same type of dungeons which I liked here despite I miss the regular Zelda dungeons in BOTW too. The enemies were cool, the music was nice, the characters were cool. However it did not look nice enough to demand the hardware it requires from my PC.

Overall a very fun game. Happy I managed to finish it before my sub runs out.

Score: 8/10.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Just finished Unravel.

Loved it. Really nice little puzzle platformer. You are a ball of yarn/wool type character traversing 'memories' to collect little woolly badges to complete a scrap book of photos. Has a nice sombre feel with some lovely graphics. Great swinging mechanics. Some of the puzzle bits took a little bit of working out but nothing too hard. Enough variety in the levels with some interesting set pieces. Steam says it took 6 hours to finish. There are some hidden collectables in the levels of which i didnt get all.

Overall i really liked it. I think it was about a £5er in the last sale, definitely worth that price.

9/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finished Sea of Solitude

Its like a sort of walking sim that has some limited gamey stuff but for the most part its telling a story about mental health. You sail around a watery world with a few 'avoid the monster' sections and some platforming stuff.
It was ok, fairly short. I did think it dragged on a bit towards the end but i finished it in 2 sittings. Steam clocks me at 2.7 hrs.
Quite nice looking, nice art style. There are a few collectable things if you like that sort of stuff.

6.5/10

 

[Alextended]

Finished Kiwami 2. Good game. Overall as good as 0 I suppose so around 8/10. The fighting engine is better but it has a few really cheap bosses (but then you just go cheap yourself and use some OP weapon you saved up or have unlocked some ultimate Kiryu skill on top of too many health items to care, it's still not fun but at least it's not annoying to keep dying on them), it has a bit more open feel to the city exploration, much closer to Like a Dragon than 0, but a worse story imo. The character relationships don't really work in the time frame it spans so they feel forced and the way characters survive or die just to advance the plot struck me harder in this than others. Like, how can you fight a damn army, guns included, then have everyone at a standstill because the culript behind the whole thing appears alone, with a pistol, and they act like he has the upper hand and they can't do anything and he offs anyone and everyone as he sees fit? They just didn't make the circumstances believable. The overall story is not bad, the mysteries, the twists and turns, but the way it's presented and unfolds is. Perhaps on the PS2 original it was more understandable to fill in blanks by yourself and for cut scenes to differ much more to gameplay like this.

If Kiryu's story keeps getting worse like this maybe it's best we didn't get 3, 4, 5 and 6, we'll see. But hopefully they keep making action games like this, like Judgement or Fist of the North Star, instead of only continue with the JRPG stuff as in Like a Dragon (which is my GOTY but variety is the spice of life). They definitely need to find a way to keep interest in the action without cheap tactics that make it shallow with enemies that don't follow the rules your character adheres to in terms of how and when shit can be blocked and when you cause flinching or can use specials. They also shouldn't be scared of imposing limits in terms of food and weapons and items you can have at a time. You can hoard way too much to the point you only get any difficulty if you play while hoarding items and not even using them for the majority of the game (which is basically what I did without thinking it, then when encountering the cheap bosses I was miffed at first then I was like oh well, I got this OP shit to use, whatever). The Majima mini story, which I didn't like to play as much because his fighting style doesn't work for me, does restrict you in some ways and it's more properly challenging, like with how you can't overeat unlike with Kiryu so if you wanna heal you'll use up your healing items or deliberately go cheap yourself and wait way too long for the hunger gauge to empty again so you can eat normal food, which is you knowingly breaking the system at that point. You could still hoard actual healing items but I sent all my money to the sub story stuff it has so yeah.

Also, Love Virtual On with twin stick controls, though I still fail at like stage 5 or 6 on Normal, lol. Trying to 1cc it to know I'm doing better. These shots are from when Haruka wanted me to play, thankfully she was impressed with my efforts, because in Karaoke and Black Jack I totally failed, hah. More side quests and side objectives should use the arcade games, why can't Kiryu enter a Virtua Fighter 2 tournament or something, with actual "player" challengers? That'd be so rad, instead in 0 there's just that old fuck asking you to just get past stage 3 or whatever, like Haruka in this game I guess had a wins threshold to praise or pout.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Super fun game that uses it's concept of "hating golf" extremely well. Nice music and despite the basic gameplay almost every level has a twist and I loved the game because of that. Took me 6 hours to play through and there is a level editor, community levels, party mode and daily challenges too. Again, super fun game.

Score: 9/10

 

[Bonfires Down]

The Last of Us

I was actually ready to drop the game about 2/3 of the way through. While the dialogues were mostly good, the story felt disjointed and aimless and just there as padding because games apparently have to be X hours long (though I did think Bill is an interesting character). The gameplay wasn't much better as I'm not a stealth fan to begin with. And when a single enemy spotting you makes a dozen others come running it's just discouraging and I met most of the encounters with a sigh rather than with excitement. Moving ladders or giving Ellie a raft ride is cool once or twice but I don't need to do it more than that, and too much time is spent scavenging fairly mundane rooms. I feel like they would have been better off cutting half of this content.

Oh boy, it sounds horrible laying it out like that. But, the game completely redeems itself in the last third. Both the gameplay and the story come into their own and it almost feels like a different team took over. If an enemy spots you, it's rare that more than a handful others are alerted at a time and there are actual stakes in the narrative now. You now own enough weapons and gadgets to have options in how to approach enemies. The ending has some truly brave story beats for a game this expensive to produce and I've looked at a number of analysis videos now. Even if everything else was crap I might still have recommended the game because of how the story ends. I'm excited to see where it goes in Part II. But this is the internet so unfortunately I've already gotten spoiled on two major story beats.

8/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Sam & Max Save the World (remastered)


This is probably one of the best point & click games of this millennium. The characters, dialogs and story are SO good, even clicking on the most basic objects will make you smile. The absolute majority of the puzzles make sense, only a few of them are brainless trial and error (especially in episode 6).

I also want to stress that the remaster is very well done. The new lightning engine improves the graphics a lot, and the quality of the dialogs and music is strongly increased. I'm very disappointed in the morons giving this remaster a negative review on Steam because the voice of Bosco was redone, and a few jokes are removed or replaced. In my opinion, the remaster is significantly better than the original in every way!

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Mivey]

Graven Demo

I played the Graven Demo for about 30 minutes, the first couple of quests and some experience with the games combat system.
Must say this is super rough, or just not a well designed game. You can literally escape most attack of monsters by strafing . Nothing clever even, any remotely circular motion will make you invicinble against the basic zombies that seem to make out the vast majority of the enemies. Spells feel completely useless in combat. You can marinade a zombie with your first fire attack as much as you want, won't do it any real damage. The game wants you to use melee, but it also really sucks at melee. Can't see myself buying this unless they really revamp most of the game. Also, I couldn't use potions to heal myself.
Feels pretty broken in its current state.
On the plus side, it let me pet a dog.

 

[Ge0force]

Retired Minion Masters


Minion Master is a combination between a card battle game and tower defense: each player has a tower with your minion master on top of it. Playing a card spawns a certain unit on a hand-picked position on the battlefield. This unit moves towards the enemy tower and attacks everything around them, including enemies coming from your opponent. Other cards contain spells like fireball or freeze, and the minion master has it's own attacks and perks as well.

To play a card you need mana, that slowly regenerates and can be stored up to 10 units. This makes your timing as important as the card you play: if your opponent launches a full scale attack and you're out of mana, you're in deep trouble. This combat system works really well and may even be the best I've ever played in a card-based game.

Sadly, there are two major issues with this game:

1) Your deck only exists of 9 cards, which strongly limits the tactical possibilities
2) The game is F2P, and like many F2P games, progression becomes really slow at some point unless you're willing to spend (lots of) money

Especially the latter made me retire from playing; as soon as I reached the gold league, the outcome of battles was mostly determined by the use of legendary cards instead of playing smart. While it's possible to buy packs with at least 1 legendary card, it's not possible to choose which card you'll get. This is pure gambling, and not something I spend my money on.

I had lots of fun with the game while it lasted tho, and it's F2P so go ahead and try it.

Score: 6.8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Wasteland 3 yesterday, it took me 45 hours according to Steam.

My overall impression is very positive. If you liked Wasteland 2, then you'll also like this. It feels much more polished, and streamlined. Going around the world, you can do all the things you did in Wasteland 2 easier, and with less resistance from the game. I hated Wastelands 2 dialogue system, for example, and Wasteland 3 replaces it with a very cut and dry text choice selection. It's also nice to have controller support from the get-go, it took a year or more for Wasteland 2 to get that.
My one issue with all that streamlining is that it make some of the weaknesses of the game a bit more obvious: the heavy focus on combat and how many of the skills, especially exploration skills aren't super interesting, aside from getting loot, which again is only useful in the combat. There's a lack of interesting side quests that aren't just about killing stuff. Mind you, I think this is absolutely true of Wasteland 2 as well, especially the second half of the game in California.
Still, I hope if inXile gets to make more Wasteland games under Microsoft, they do focus on the quest design more and let that be the focus of the game.

I really liked the main story of Wasteland 3. It's a nice moral quandary, a choice between extreme idealism or cold pragmatism, where there isn't any choice that is overall "perfect": no matter what you choose, you'll have to sacrifice something. It's nice to see some old characters from the first game appear as well.

Visually the game is really quite impressive compared with the previous game. The snowy landscape of Colorado is very convincing. You can tell they got some help by The Brotherhood, the developers of the Stasis and Beautiful Desolation games. I also liked the occasional music cues, some of the fights had some great songs, even if it sometimes felt random which battles were deemed important enough for their own custom song.


So yeah, great game for any fan for CRPGs, though it should be clear that this game is more heavily focused on combat rather than actual role playing (which btw isn't something that's strange or rare for CRPGs, consider Icewind Dale games, which were far more about combat compared with Baldur's Gate). I think inXile could still improve the overall formula quite a bit, and I hope they get to keep working on this franchise under Microsoft.
Speaking of Microsoft, it's kinda funny how, in a sense, they have united Interplay and Black Isle under one company again. Really looking forward to what both inXile and Obsidian will be doing in the years to come.

I rate this game: 1 out of 1 Desert Rangers stars

 

[AHA-Lambda]

A few more updates

Finished Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (PS4)

More single player CoD really, and I'm a fan of those for the most part. Not the best but certainly not among the worst CoD campaigns. Even for CoD though this is quite short. Quite glad to see the choice system from BlOps 2 come back but its not as fully featured unfortuantely.

Finished Spider-Man : Miles Morales (PS4)

Very simple, this is more spider-man, and that is not a bad thing at all

Finished Ghostbusters Remastered (PC, EGS)

Meh, the gameplay gets dull quite quickly in this, but the ghostbusters story is pretty solid and what most people will be playing this for. Sadly I'd rather this was a move or a tv series or such, not a game.

Finished Sniper Elite V2 (PC, Steam)


I've already played Sniper Elite 3 and 4 before this so to come back to this is quite surprising as you see how far the series has come.
The action still remains solid but the later entries are certainly better, with much larger and open levels, optional objectives, quicksave, and more stealth options.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Ghostbusters Remastered (PC, EGS)

Serendipitous coincidence there, since I also finished Ghostbusters - The Video Game (Terminal Reality/Atari, 2009), but the original 2009 release for Xbox 360 (through Xbox One backwards compatibility) and totally would have forgotten to post about it if your post hadn't reminded me.

I learned about this game when I bought my PS3 in 2009 and it was one of the two playable demos that came preloaded with the system (the other one was Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which I've been chipping away at since 2010, no joke). Only got it two years ago though, exactly one year before the remaster came out and two years before I could have got it for free on EGS ... anyway:

It's a third person action game with very light puzzle / exploration elements.

Pro:

• This video game is the last 'canonical' extension of the movies out there, so if you're into the world building aspect of those goofy comedies from the 80s, this game delivers and it delivers pretty well - albeit slightly too conservative for my taste, since it quite carefully introduces almost nothing and nobody new and instead just expands on and extends characters, events and places from Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2.
• Lots of content: A single player campaign, co-op and competitive multiplayer modes. However, the co-op "campaign" is in fact not the single-player campaign, but just a playlist of dedicated co-op multiplayer maps. Also noteworthy: The multiplayer modes are still exclusive to the original PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and never appeared in either the original PC release or the 2019 remaster on any platform. The servers are still up and running!
• Voice-acting done by all the original actors from the movies.
• Lots of original orchestral score music straight from the movies (mostly the first one).
• Lots of good and pretty long animated cut-scenes.
• Really lovely mission hub - the old fire station from the first movie. It fills up with collectibles from the campaign as you're playing it, there's an answer machine on the first floor that fills up with funny messages as the campaign goes on, there's the ghost containment apparatus in the basement that fills up as you go, etc., etc., so you always have something to check on between missions.
• The actual gameplay tries very hard to be authentically about the action from the movies - you shoot with proton packs, catch ghosts in little portable traps that look like toasters on wheels and scan the environment with PKE meters. However, and this is where we get to the

Con:

• As true to the films as the gameplay mechanics are, they are finicky and can get quite annoying on any difficulty higher than easy. Thankfully I caught on to this pretty early and restarted the campaign on the lowest difficulty and that way, the game was enjoyable again.
• The framerate of the Xbox 360 version is abysmal by today's standards - consistently below 30 fps - and the backwards compatible version has no enhancements, regardless of what model of Xbox One you're playing on.
• It's an Xbox 360 game from the late 00s, so it has every type of annoying achievement you can imagine - including lots of multiplayer ones. Don't expect to 100% this one.

As you can tell, I enjoyed this one a lot, but the technical flaws are impossible to ignore, so I can recommend this particular version of the game to enthusiasts only.

3/5

 

[bobnowhere]

70. Halo 4 - A return to more interesting story telling, heartbreaking at times. More interesting mechanics and level design and a whole new enemy and weapon type. Does do the whole defend an area a bit too much. ★★★★

71. Doom Eternal - Not sure if I like that much. The changes from the 2016 version are quite stark, annoying jump/moving systems, weird level design and a very glass cannon protagonist. Great soundtrack but a nonsensical story. You never feel like Doom Guy, but his slightly useless understudy.★★★

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Gears 5


This is the first Gears game I played since the original Gears of War, which I didn't like very much back then. I hated the cover-based gameplay and "bad-ass" characters, and except for the train level, it was a rather forgettable experience for me.

When Gears 5 was cheap during the Steam sales, I decided to give the series another chance. And oh boy, am I glad that I did, because I ended up enjoying the game much more than I expected!

First of all, I loved playing a Kait. She's so much more "human" than the characters from the original game, and I really felt with her during the story. And while the cover-based play style still isn't my favorite, I got used to it after the first act and even enjoyed it during the rest of the game. The pace of the game was perfect for me, and the level design and set pieces are excellent, especially in act 4 which is a masterpiece from start to end!

I also liked the addition of Jack, a small drone that can help you in many ways: stunning enemies, fetching ammo, raising a protective shield and even brainwash enemies to make them fight on your side. In combination with the wide variety of battle arena's, this prevented the game becoming too repetitive for me.

Last but not least, the graphics are truly stunning! And the game runs smooth on my older GTX1660Ti. Very recommended!

Score: 8.9/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Fe (Zoink! / Electronic Arts, 2018). Played on Xbox One.

A stylish 3D platformer with light stealth elements.

Pro:

• Interesting art style, combined with nice animation, music / ambience. The game's overall mood is what kept me playing.
• No filler content - at least as far as the main game is concerned, see below.

Con:

• Mechanically, it's all new paint on a rusty old frame. The game says you (a small fantasy woodland creature) "sing" with the other animals, but what that really means is finding the right spot on the controller trigger to hold in order to either activate a guide NPC or unlock a new ability. Worse, half of the "abilities" aren't even abilities, but just unlocks for various boost-pads (which in this game look like pretty flowers).
• While the main game gets in and out quickly, which I appreciated, the collectibles are right back to the traditional 3D platformer collectathon overload. Even though the developer made and published their own collectibles guide, I don't think I'll bother 100%-ing this.
• Towards the end of the game, the lack of precision and predictability of the controls gets a little annoying and ruined the flow of the finale for me somewhat.

Not a bad game at all, mostly due to the lovely art direction, but nothing to write home about either. From all the single player games in the EA Originals line, this and Sea of Solitude are probably the weakest ones.

3/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

 

[bobnowhere]

Virtual Ruminant I quite liked Sea of Solitude, loved the Unravels but Fe bounced off me hard.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Mørkredd (Hyper Games / Aspyr, 2020)

Played solo on Xbox One.

This game is designed to be either a single player twin-stick puzzler somewhat similar to Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons or a coop game for two controllers and one screen (i.e. couch-coop only). Each thumb stick controls a character, the characters push a giant, glowing ball through levels where most of the time the only illumination comes from that ball - and stepping into the shadows is deadly. The ball has simulated inertia and weight, the shadows are dynamic and physically accurate-ish.

Pro:

• Really striking art direction on this one, with the dark, dungeon-like levels and great droning, reverb-heavy ambient soundtrack this game pulls you in immediately with tons of atmosphere.
• The control concept is not entirely new and unique anymore at this point, but still rare enough to feel really fresh. The game makes good use of that novelty and balances classic dungeon-crawler puzzle mechanics with the specific challenge of the controls / coop gameplay to keep the player(s) in the flow. There is a button to quickly switch around which thumbstick controls which character in single-player mode, the game has lots and lots of checkpoints and is very generous in unlocking them, so frustration with the unusual controls is minimized.
• The (mostly inferred) story you're puzzling through is strange and surprising from start to finish.

Con:

• I like lean games where no minute feels wasted, but this one really felt like another hour or more should have been in it. The game encourages players to get in a flow and move forward quickly, and most people will likely be done in 3 hours tops. Why isn't there more? Ah - because there is. In a day-1-DLC called "Ode", which will set you back another 5 Dollars US (MSRP), and which is not on Game Pass either.
• Part of the challenge of the twin-stick mechanic comes from the fact that your brain will trip over itself trying to keep track which thumb controls which character on screen. Personally, I felt tickled by it and had a lot of fun, and the devs tried to make the control scheme as accessible as they could (see above in the Pro section) but I could still see people getting very annoyed by it.

This is a great little game that has pulled itself right into my top five games of the year at almost the last minute. However, I played it on my current 1-buck-Game-Pass trial and no matter how much content there might be in the aforementioned "Ode" DLC, the current price of USD/EUR 25 for main game + DLC (the bundle is called "Ra Edition") seems a bit much. On Steam the bundle is discounted to 20 bucks, which is better, but I'd say the sweet spot here starts at 15 or less.

Regardless, for me it's a

5/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


The story was a bit uninteresting and confusing at first, but during the second act it got better. I also found it funny that the side jobs was much better than most of the main jobs to me. Panam and Judys storylines were fantastic. The city and environments were really beautiful and the characters are perhaps the best I've seen in any game, the voice acting were also great and like many others it seems, I fell in love with Panam.

My ending

Left Night City as V with Panam and the rest of the Aldelcados

So Im very happy with the ending I got.

My negatives for the game is a lot of bugs, nothing game breaking thanksfully, but some still annoyign enough to reload save. Optimization could have been better, but my PC was powerful enough to handle the game well.

I was dissapointed by the lack of interactivity in the city and overall, how much seems to be "static", the loot system was boring, the skill system was confusing and the street cred system was "meh". Didn't particularly like the gunplay, especially at the start, but it grew a bit on me. I don't understand the point of the gig jobs, they should just have put them under the other side jobs and I didn't care for the epistrophy missions of whatevr they were called about finding Del's cars in the city, neither did I care for any of the races as I didn't like how the driving was handles, felt like I was driving on ice too much. The different "chips" implants you could get for V was cool though, like getting double jump.

I also didn't see much at all of the "sandbox" gameplay CDPR promised and the RPG mechanics. Looked like all the dialogue options gave the same consequences and the only story related consequences came towards the very end or happened if you didn't complete certain side jobs storylines.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[Jav]

Finished

Dark Souls Prepare To Die Edition... Am I one of the cool kids yet? The setting and atmosphere are good, I have no complaints about the game being hard (I knew what I was getting into) but man some of the areas like the demon ruins were booooring, don't @ me lol.

7/10

 

[Jav]

Finished


I think I got this as a gift, it's ok, I like the backstory and it's kinda cozy but sadly it doesn't take long until you realize the gameplay doesn't matter and you can just pass the days doing nothing with no consequence, it's short tho so should be ok if you look for something out of the ordinary.

6/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished The Touryst (Shin'en, 2019), played on Xbox One

A 3D puzzle-platformer with a strong exploration slant and some classic adventure game elements. Most people probably think of Minecraft first when they see screenshots of this game, but in fact the game is pretty much the easy-going, chilled-out cousin of Fez. It features nearly all of the same unique elements of Fez in some form or another, but is more accessible - easier puzzles, more intuitive controls, shorter overall game time.

Pro:

• I tend use the word "tight" a lot when describing games that are either smoothly designed, control well or just have great performance and this game ticks every one of those three check-boxes. Super-tight game. Just a joy to play.
• The voxel-based world and characters are just super-cute, and matched with some really nice lighting and great sound that mixes fake-bit videogamey music with very nice ambience FX, the game had me hooked within the first minute. The game also uses an artificially narrow depth-of-field on the camera to simulate a tilt-shift-photography look, giving it a really unique visual feel that isn't immediately apparent when looking at still screenshots, but is really neat to look at as soon as you move the camera. Moreover, besides looking cool, the game makes creative use of this feature to hide a couple of puzzle solutions in plain sight.
• The roughly 4-5 hours of gameplay are nicely filler-free, the various side-questish/collectible parts of the game are, for the most part, nicely wrapped into the main mystery.

Con:

• The game features an arcade with 80s-style games with an optional goal of beating the high-score, but two of the three arcade machines are kind of weak and annoying. The reason I'm even mentioning these is because I genuinely can't think of anything else that I didn't like about the game. And even this arcade is not a complete miss: One of the three cabinets is a really, really good imitation of the coin-op classic Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh which I enjoyed so much, I wish there was a standalone version of it.

Another late addition to my highlights of the year. Really, really great little game - too bad it's only available on the Microsoft platform (Xbox One / Windows 10) and Nintendo Switch right now, with no plans of further ports / releases announced.

5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

 

[Jav]

Finished:


Fun metroidvania, i really like the aesthetic and the Dia de los muertos style, the game is just light-hearted and kinda dumb fun but doesn't overstay its welcome, liked it enough to get 100% achievements.

8/10

Also finished:


Hack n' slash indie game, the gimmick is the choose your own adventure thing in which every time you beat a level you can choose different paths, sadly it kinda wears out relatively fast and soon you can know all the ''main'' paths. It's fun enough to play until the true ending tho.

6.5/10

 

[Alextended]

Finished Cyberpunk and also went back to check out a few different endings (most are naff imo, just there to show you have choices, and some drag on too long, we'd get the point with less of that tbh, I have a few more different choices to make but dread going back, it took me like half a day just to try different choices from my last save already). Maybe they do this to somewhat hide that you basically decide most of it at the end and much like push a button for this or that almost, but it's pretty transparent regardless. I think it's a 7/10 at best game, but still I finished it, so.

I alternated between controller and mkb but mostly stuck with mkb though it makes driving so much worse, driving isn't the core of the gameplay even if there's quite a bit at times (though I guess you can always fast travel with the transit system if you don't care about things like the racing gigs). It took me 40 hours before trying the different choices though I also left it running and took calls/did other stuff so it was probably closer to 35. I ignored almost all gigs unless they popped nearby and I felt like checking out some loot and just did the main story and some of the big side stuff (romanced Panam btw). Not deliberately or anything mind you, just what I felt like doing organically as I played through and in the end saw that I barely did any of the gigs.

My dude was level 23 with most of his implant slots empty and evenly upgraded skills by the end but still the game was easy (on normal), I can't imagine being even more powerful even if there's level scaling going on so that it throws more of the advanced dudes at you with all that super speed and auto dodge stuff some did by the end of it (the quick hacking skills wrecked them anyway). I was basically wallhacking all over the place, getting headshots through walls while they took cover so I was often killing higher level guys that dropped loot I couldn't use for 10-15 more levels so I just dismantled it all, mostly at the side stuff, perhaps the main story scales more or is just lower level to begin with, I dunno without testing that aspect further and for now I don't really care to go back. I don't have any serious issues with the basic controls and combat, it's way better than The Witcher 3 for sure, I guess it's easier to get shooting right. It's pretty plain in feel and AI reactions etc., not unlike Bethesda games (so a huge improvement from The Witcher 3 in that aspect as well, though hardly amazing still). I enjoyed sneaking around certain areas that were designed well enough for that to feel good with the amount of enemies, patrols, distraction/hackable objects/routes, etc. Action combat reminds me of the Borderlands simple feel the most, though not with those high enemy numbers/damage sponges.

I think it would have been way better as a finely tuned more condensed of the greatest moments 15 hour per playthrough Deus Ex alike than this open world RPG/GTA stuff (the original Deus Ex that is, which just took you to areas of interest the story demanded and had them all meticulously designed to accomodate its gameplay and story goals rather than have a whole city where most stuff are naff and repetitive and you might as well be playing it like Borderlands just going through the motions of shoot and loot and only the big story areas are well designed in a similar way). More focused and balanced in gameplay and story. Maybe even like Syndicate (the FPS) instead of an RPG at all. The story in the end is V and Johnny's story with Mass Effect-esque branching paths and other minor variations, not a fully open create your unique character/live your cyberpunk life thing (which Bethesda does better most of the time, even while having a main story as much as I dislike those broken games of theirs, they can hook you). The bosses weren't anything to write home about but they showed up at the better designed levels and advanced the story and such so they were cool moments overall. Though often enough bugs ruined the impact of cut scenes with my character showing up bald instead of normal or general equipment style weirdness where it tried to force some stuff but failed.

Anyway, it's not a trainwreck on PC but I'm disappointed still. Yakuza: Like a Dragon still the GOTY by a wide margin.

 

[Jav]

Finished


So, any rating I give to this game will be completely blinded by my nostalgia, again, I like the setting, the ost and the kinda noir feeling but man is this game infuriating, there are a couple of sections I don't know how can you beat it without a guide or at least looking for some help online, maybe I'm dumb

Anyways, Double Fine at its finest.

The kid in me asks me to give this game 8/10, thanks for the memories.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC, Steam)


I laid out some of my more specific thoughts before on the main thread, but in short I really enjoyed this; the characters and story are great, and I love the world and setting (but that was a near given, I've always loved cyberpunk aesthetic)

I do have 2 rather specific bug bears though:

1) unlike witcher 3, you really don't need to experience side quests to level up your character, and if you want to you can mainline the game very easily in fact. Reason I mention this is that it's a habit of mine to play main content first and then side content, whereas how Witcher 3 handled it I felt like I experienced more of the wider world than I did with Cyberpunk.
Now don't get me wrong I spent many more hours with Witcher 3, and this point is more of a specific foible on me really.

2) my biggest knock though is that the combat is fairly braindead and doesn't demand much from the player. You have so many options on how to handle encounters, but it all feels a little hollow when no matter the situation your big assault rifle can just handle anything.
As long as you equip higher armour and higher DPS weapons you barely need bother with developing your character.

All that said though I still really enjoyed my time with it though, I just think expectations may have bit me; was hoping for top 5 GOTY out of this and its more likely to be top 10 if you catch my meaning.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished


I think I got this as a gift, it's ok, I like the backstory and it's kinda cozy but sadly it doesn't take long until you realize the gameplay doesn't matter and you can just pass the days doing nothing with no consequence, it's short tho so should be ok if you look for something out of the ordinary.

6/10

Finished this as well last night, and I agree with your review: the story is great and the music and art are beautiful, but the gameplay is plain boring and it doesn't matter at all what you're doing. Walking around in an empty desert at the speed of a snail was even very frustrating for me. A score of 5.5/10 is all this game gets from me.

 

[Jav]

Finished (actually re-finished)


This is kinda cheating since I beated it for the first time some time ago and I did this second run with my overpowered character from the first.

Again, a game were I can clearly see its flaws but I can't help but like it.

The story feels rushed, really rushed, most of the characters are just background noise and some areas can feel empty.

BUT the combat is just so much fun, skills, weapons, you have to learn the pattern and weaknesses of each monter and the ability from monsters and yourself to climb/jump terrain is great. I'll probably play it again to do the speedrun mode.

The story and setting have some potential but sadly it's just over before things speed up, I just hope that the next one improves these aspects of the game.

8/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Fantastic game, great story, great characters and good relationships between them, great music and great world building. Overall a fantastic journey. My negatives are that the textures often made it hard to see where I can go and where I can climb and jump. Also the button mapping for Xbox controller and keyboard was bad, but I did get used to it. The gameplay felt outdated (I mean the game is from 1998 after all), but I did use some cheats to make it more fun.

Now I wait for the Remake to hit PC. Im trying not to cave in despite that I have a PS4 Pro.

Score: 9/10

 

[Mivey]

I quit Close To The Sun.

When I first heard about this game a year ago (or more?) I remember being excited about the idea of BioShock inspired indie game. It was clear visually that it's what it was going for. What I didn't expect is how the game's connection to Bioshock is just window dressing. Where Bioshock is a heavily watered down immersive sim, this game is barely interactive. You just walk around and click on things. No combat, no complex interactions with the environment. And on top of that, the game doesn't have a real save system. For the smaller chapters, you literally have to complete them in one sitting, if you quit, you have to repeat it all. The larger ones have a kind of checkpoint system. I discovered this since during the game's first stealth segment, I got stuck and had to restart the chapter, where I was surprised to see that I only lost about 20 minutes or so (lucky me).

I must say, I really don't like this games setting. It's literally just "what if Bioshock, but Nikola Tesla?" which isn't just an uncreative idea, it also feels just pointlessly aggressive towards Nikola Tesla. Whereas the ideas of Ayn Rand, which Bioshock was invoking, were disgusting and at the same time reflective of our modern idea of ultracharged capitalism, Nikola Tesla was a great inventor who had some wacky ideas that didn't pan out and he died old and lonely in a shitty flat in New York City. That's supposed to be your great maniacal villain? Maybe it's just me, but it just pisses me of a bit.

Can't imagine going back to this, especially the idea of this game doing "stealth", combined with literally no save game mechanics.

 

[Jav]

Couple of short ones before Christmas:

Finished,


I enjoyed it, it's very short (you can beat it in like an hour) and it really feels like it was a mobile game.

But what can I say, I'm a sucker for cute games and this let me a warm feeling after playing it.

8/10, probably buy it on sale due to length tho.


Finished:


Also really short, a couple of hours, fun little game about sucking things into your hole (lmao, nice way to put it ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

Fun for a short burst and some silly dialogues.

7/10


Finished:


Look... it was a gift okay? Don't look me like that!

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

I quit Unto the End (2 Ton / Big Sugar, 2020) on Xbox One.

Self-described "challenging combat adventure game in the style of a cinematic platformer", this is a 2D platformer/swordfighting-game with intentionally imprecise controls, an over-complicated combat-system and a player character who can not only get stabbed, be crushed or fall to his death, he can also receive injuries and bleed to death minutes later if you can't manage to get to a rest point to heal up.

In addition to that, the game spends about 60% in mostly dark caves and the other 40% in a mostly monochrome snow landscape and - once you have learned all the locations of traps and figured out the finicky combat - can be beaten in less than 1.5 hours (a fact I researched on YouTube).

I quit after roughly 30 minutes. Some people will like this game because it's hard and requires learning the dungeons and the combat system if you want to beat it, but even to those I would not recommend this game for anything above USD 5.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Twin Mirror (PC)

Super short game, like 4 hours, the first 2 hours was boring, dull, uninteresting and badly paced (got better paced and more interesting during the last 2 hours) with a plot Ive seen tons of times before with a dude coming back to his old small town for some reason even though he is reluctant to coming back. His buddy has died, funeral, something feels odd, trying to connect the dots of why his buddy died while connecting with his old friends and foes again. "Meh" graphic and music, gameplay that involved looking at objects, finding clues and solving stuff with something that reminds me off BBC Sherlocks mind palace (BBCs Sherlock is one of me faves), just far less interesting. Okay ending.

Game felt shallow, lacked depth, should have used more time with the characters.

Basically;

Score: 5/10.

Will I buy it once it's out on Steam? Yes, but at a discount, not at full price.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Children of Morta


Excellent hybrid between aRPG and rogue-like. All areas are procedural generated and the game is packed with (story) events, keeping things interesting from start to end. Being able to use all characters with a unique class, and upgrading them to boost other characters is really amazing. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.1/10

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Finished Twin Mirror (PC)

Super short game, like 4 hours, the first 2 hours was boring, dull, uninteresting and badly paced (got better paced and more interesting during the last 2 hours) with a plot Ive seen tons of times before with a dude coming back to his old small town for some reason even though he is reluctant to coming back. His buddy has died, funeral, something feels odd, trying to connect the dots of why his buddy died while connecting with his old friends and foes again. "Meh" graphic and music, gameplay that involved looking at objects, finding clues and solving stuff with something that reminds me off BBC Sherlocks mind palace (BBCs Sherlock is one of me faves), just far less interesting. Okay ending.

Game felt shallow, lacked depth, should have used more time with the characters.

Basically;

Score: 5/10.

Will I buy it once it's out on Steam? Yes, but at a discount, not at full price.

Why bother buying it tbh?

 

[Futaleufu]

Sherlock Holmes The Devil's Daughter is a decent game, although I think I liked the previous games better

 

[bobnowhere]

Finished:


72. Darq DLC Levels - Beautiful art as always, mind bending puzzles and completely free if you own the main game! ★★★★

73. Morkredd - Navigate a beautiful and deadly journey though rivers, mountains, deserts and the like where the light you bring with you is your only saving grace. Co-op or play as both characters at the same time. Works a lot like Brothers, one stick for each character and separate interact buttons. ★★★★ 1/2

74 . Call of the Sea - Beautifully designed island set in the south pacific. Good puzzles that demand a bit of though and exploration before you can solve them. The story is heavily and bluntly foreshadowed though, you know the eventual outcome chapters before the main character. Movement and ladder climbing is painfully slow at times. ★★★ 1/2

 

[Joe Spangle]

Jurassic World Evolution


Well, not quite finished it but i played the main game a couple of years ago and so recently picked up the dlc which ive pretty much done.

I like it. Its not a complex simulator / builder but it has enough to keep you interested. It runs really well on my system, looks very nice. Great controller support which i appreciate being a comfy coucher. There is a fair amount of thought in some of the mechanics. The basic premise is fairly simplistic, you send expeditions off to find fossils and then research them to increase genomes to then build viable dinosaurs. You then have to keep said dinosaurs happy by tweaking their habitats and social groups. There is a very light themepark management side, attract guests to the park by building amenities and of course new interesting dinosaurs.

It does get pretty repetitive but there are the main campaigns to get through which offer a bit of a story. Most things are done by just waiting for counters to finish. It needs a time fast forward button i think so you can move things along a bit.

Otherwise i liked it. DLC is alright, more of the same really. Could be better but for me it was enjoyable enough to make some dinos.

7.5/10

 

[fantomena]

Why bother buying it tbh?

I wanna own all Dontnod games.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Call of the Sea (Out of the Blue / Raw Fury, 2020) on Xbox One.

This is an aim-and-tap/look-and-click (i.e. free-moving first-person) adventure game made in Unreal Engine, set on a fictional island in Polynesia in the 1930s. It features mostly Myst-style puzzles - translating symbols from one set to another, finding combinations, using them to operate obscure devices and mechanisms to unlock progress. Along the way, you discover a story about your missing husband, the island and ultimately, yourself.

Pro:

• Top-notch presentation - beautiful modelling, animation, lighting, it's really incredible to see what a team of roughly ten people can create these days. This is one of those games where aspiring digital artists hoping to work on games at some point should invest in the digital artbook.
• A huge part of the game is the voice-over narration and internal monologue of the player character and video game voice acting veteran Cissy Jones nails the performance from start to finish. And you get to hear her perform "Dear Old Pal of Mine" in a duet accompanied by piano in the end credits.
• The puzzle design is completely logical and requires no wild leaps of imagination or guess-work. The game also eschews an inventory-system, which streamlines the problem-solving further and also helpfully keeps (almost) all relevant information you might want to look up again while working on a puzzle in a virtual journal you can pull up (almost) any time. I was able to make nice, quick progress that matched the pace of exploration very well. Once or twice I feel that a little more play-testing could have shaved off a rough edge of one or two puzzles (I had to consult a guide twice and both times it turns out the error was me misunderstanding a clue), but in a 6 hour adventure game, that's a superb quota.

Con:

• Coming back to the fact that this game was made by a team of roughly ten people: While what you see in this game is consistently high-quality, it's also quite apparent what you aren't seeing in order to keep that level of quality - and that is other characters, except in 2D artwork found in notes, photos, etc. The result is that the island seems somewhat empty - no people, no wildlife. Towards the end there's the occasional animated sea-creature, but that's it. Makes you wonder what first-person adventure games of this style could look like, if there were any budgets above indie-tier available for their production.
• The story works nicely about three quarters of the way, then trips itself up in order to deliver an additional twist, which I felt was unconvincing, and a choice of two alternate endings, which both end up feeling somewhat unsatisfactory.

Had good fun with this one. It's a perfect Game Pass game, since it's short enough to finish in one month even for weekend/after-work gamers (such as myself) and the genre-inherent lack of replay incentive also doesn't matter there. For classic retail, I feel like the sweet spot for this game starts at 50% off the current MSRP (USD 20).

3.5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

 

[Stevey]

G String.

Some good bits in there, but far too many "the floor is lava" bits, spent way too long not knowing where the hell I'm supposed to be going and the ending was awful.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Not much to say than the story was interesting and gameplay weird as hell. The whole game is weird as hell with some really fascinating and amazing images.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Fun game, better than expected. Really liked the art style, made the game look great to me. Fun story, great animated cutscenes and fun dialogue and a pretty decent beat'em up. Also enjoyed the minigames between the levels. My negatives are that some of the levels are far too long for it's own good, the fighting animations are good, but somewhat too long and the platform sections are fun, but still too long. Basically the game is fun, but get's dragged out too much for it to become annoying and boring, escpecielly the fighting parts, too many waves often.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Completed Carrion (Phobia Game Studio / Devolver Digital, 2020).

Self-describing as a "reverse horror-game", this is a genre-subverting 2D-platformer in which you control the mutant monster escaping the fortified military science lab - every human is an enemy. All the usual genre-staples are still to be found here, upgrading, finding new abilities, exploration, secret items, but it's all pretty fresh thanks to that inverted perspective. The concept reminded me of an old favorite of mine that did a similar thing, Warp.

Pro:

• It's hard to keep a ranking in your head, such is the mass of retro-styled pixel art 2D platformers these days, but this one is up there with the best, particularly the player character, i.e. the hideous mutant monster, is amazingly well done.
• Controls precisely, runs smoothly and has no filler content, the tight triple.
• Really user-friendly level design - I found every missable item without needing to consult a guide and got 100% of the achievements on my first playthough.

Con:

• No negatives that I can think of - since I played this game on Game Pass, even the price was right.

An almost perfect 5 hour romp. Great game from start to finish. Game Pass subscribers must not miss out on this one right now, everyone else might want to wait for a 50% or better discount to get the hours-per-buck ratio at least closer to 1:1.

5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here, here, here and here.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

I gave up on Hellblade - Senua's Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017)

According to the IGN walkthrough I'm about 80% through the game, but I can't go on with this slog. The game is ostensibly about a death march the troubled player character embarks on and the developers did a very good job of making it feel that way, too.

The reason I even made it this far is that the game looks and sounds incredible. It effortlessly shifts from photorealistic, post-card or indeed poster-ready graphics to psychedelic horror vistas and back, the head of the title character, which you get to see in close up often, is still the best facial animation to date ever seen in a video game by my estimation and the music and soundscapes are on the level to make the whole package work. That, and the interesting puzzle sections of the game.

The fighting though is slow, clumsy and hard and it only gets worse and worse the further you get into the game and it wore me down - apparently this is the intended effect, so fair enough. Add to that the story, which is a grating, grimdark potpourri of Norse-mythology-infused nonsense that I couldn't stand for most of the time I played. It's all very Metal. And that so isn't me.