Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


Completed all the campaigns and got 100% of the achievements.

Well I love the Age of Empires games but this one was always going to be the younger, lesser loved brother. Unless the other entries this game came out with waaay too much bugs, nowadays is playable but nowhere near the polished AoE 2 got. The setting is also imo less interesting

Other than that, the audio and graphic side of things are, as always with these definitive edition fantastic. Shotout to all the changes they did to the campaigns and native american factions, giving them proper names and making thoughful changes regarding native american culture.


Also:
 

bobnowhere

Careful Icarus
Sep 20, 2018
1,665
4,288
113
Game #5 - Donut County - Fun, short, little light puzzle game, swallow scenes with a moveable hole that grows as it consumes. A few puzzles but this is more of a story/experience than anything challenging. Achievements were broken for me PC gamepass so I got nothing, zero, zilch... ★★★★
 

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


This game wasn't worth it, it's pretty but.. that's it. Awful minigames, combat is ok but didn't click for me. Enemy design really mediocre aside from the bosses.

My friend lent me his save game with the skills and costumes unlocked so I could finish this quickly... The game is just not for me.
 

Virtual Ruminant

MetaMember
May 21, 2020
515
1,770
93
Finished Carto (Sunhead / Humble Games, 2020)

One of the more literal takes on a puzzle game - the main mechanic is finding and (re-)arranging pieces of the game map. Game tells you a little story while you do.

Pro:
  • Simple, but charming art direction - goes for both visuals and audio.
Con:
  • Some difficulty spikes in the puzzle design, had to consult a guide a couple of times.
  • The interesting game mechanic seems underutilized, I felt like there was a lot more potential in it. The game is over as soon as things start to get interesting. Perhaps there'll be a sequel?

One of those games that aren't really bad in any particular way, but I still won't even remember having played them in a couple of months.

3/5
 
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Arc

MetaMember
Sep 19, 2020
2,644
10,035
113
I finished Ghost of Tsushima. If you were to be reductive, it is a typical open world game. However, the game is completely carried on the back of its story and presentation. The story is simple, however the protgonists are likable and the pacing is good enough that I was constantly looking forward to what happens next. In terms of graphics, it isn't a technical beast, but the art style is gorgeous. Riding through an autumn field with falling leaves during a sunset looks phenominal. I'm not a huge fan of the samurai film genre, but you can tell a lot of love went into creating the game and its tone.

In terms of gameplay, it's a standard affair with story missions, side missions and optional content. The combat and stealth are serviceable, but nothing special. Most of the optional content isn't that interesting in that a lot of it is repeated, but it's fun to ride around and see new locales. The side quests consist of helping random NPCs and quest lines involving the side characters. Most of the side character storylines are interesting enough that I completed them, but I didn't bother getting 100%. I finished the main plot and a decent chunk of side content after 35 hours and was completely satisfied. This is in contrast to the last open world game I played, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, where I played for 60 hours and absolutely nothing was happening so I dropped the game in frustration.
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


Suprisingly good game, liked it a lot. Cute story, cool characters, good level design and nice music. What drags it down is that the gameplay is quite basic and the "puzzle/platform" sections are somewhat too easy. Game took me about 3 hours to finish. Still, a good game I recommend.

Score: 7.5/10
 
OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Finished Death Crown


I bought Death Crown because of it's charming visuals and wasn't disappointed; the game looks awesome with it's 1-bit graphics and cutscenes. Sadly, the gameplay is rather mediocre. There are only 3 types of building you can build, and once you figured out how this game works, the majority of missions plays out the same. Also, on the larger maps, the 1-bit graphics made it rather hard to see what's going on a crowded battlefield. Despite the repetitive gameplay, I still had fun with it and I hope there will be a sequel with more complex and varied gameplay.

Score: 6.8/10
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


Very cute little puzzle game about organizing different cats on an area of squares, you unlock new cats as the game goes. 70 puzzles, nice music and nice sounds ("meow") and great artstyle that fits the game tone well. Negative is that some of the puzzles are too much the same which made it quite repetive at times.

Score: 8/10
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


Took me 2 hours. Very fun game, you are controlling a magic eye by swiping the direction it flyes and you have to complete 6 worlds which have a bunch of short levels with different enemies and environments. Nice art style and fun gameplay, decent music. At times controlling the eye can be somewhat frustrating and some of the enmies are frustrating in how to defeat them. The last boss is especiually frustrative and hard. Overall I very much enoyed it.

Score:: 8/10
 
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Virtual Ruminant

MetaMember
May 21, 2020
515
1,770
93
Finished The Raven Remastered (King Art / THQ Nordic, 2018)

A murder-mystery point-and-click adventure with a bit of a heist twist. Originally released as an episodic game split over three episodes in 2013, published by The Adventure Company.

Pro:
  • Struggling to list anything here. It's mostly bug-free, I guess!?
  • Voice-acting performances aren't exactly stellar, but competent enough, and there's a lot of them. At least this game doesn't make you read a lot.
Con:
  • Boring, for the most part predictable story that really falls apart towards the end, uninteresting characters, glacial pace, sluggish controls, uninspired puzzle design. It's a point-and-click adventure from Germany, the only genre of video games that's reliably more terrible than RPGs from Japan.
  • Unlike Call of the Sea, this game does not avoid character and facial animation and pays the price - the results cover the whole range from bland to outright bad.
Got this game for free on Xbox (Games with Gold) and since Microsoft had a promotion going that converted gamerscore to rewards points, I played it for an easy 1000 Gs. That's pretty much the only reason I can think of for playing this game, too, easy achievements.

2/5
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


Love the design of the levels in the game and the puzzles are quite smart. What I didn't like is the pacing of the game, it felt too slow for it's own good and ity feels like there are just 3-5 sounds in the game which was quite annoying at times. The story was also quite confusing and didn't really understand it all.

Score: 7.5/10
 
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Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


I played the vanilla version back in the day on my 360 and oh boy, I really outgrew this game. It's not that it's a bad game by any means but the whole big armor aesthetic, heaven, hell with a thin coat of edginess eh, not for me anymore.

Gameplay wise it's still enjoyable, managed to beat the hardest difficulty without too much trouble and you have a meaty amount of skills and weapons to use so it's still worth it if you are a fan of the genre.
 
OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Finished Jedi: Fallen Order


I had my doubt about this game during the first few hours, because it looked like a cheap Uncharted + Dark Souls hybrid. But luckily it became much more than that. The level design of the later planets you visit is excellent, especially the red planet and the forest. The game also keeps introducing new abilities and game mechanics to you, keeping things interesting until the very end. And last but not least, the laser sword duels with some of the bosses are truly excellent! Well done Respawn, I'm looking forward to the sequel that you guys are hopefully working on.

Score: 8.4/10
 

Virtual Ruminant

MetaMember
May 21, 2020
515
1,770
93
Finished Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus, 2020)

While the game's promotional material makes it out as a "cozy management game about dying", it isn't really. Spiritfarer is an interesting mix of genres - light RPG elements, light base-building / management, light platforming action, open-world-(map) exploration and lots of mini-games around crafting and resource-gathering. But at its core, it's an adventure with a story to tell and a point or two to make - and the resulting emotional impact is like a ton of bricks to the face. It's about dying after all.

Pro:
  • The art direction is a a continuation and refinement of the style of Thunder Lotus' previous game, Sundered - but with a couple extra sugar cubes, so most of the time, it's all very cute. Super charming, I was in love right from the beginning.
  • Also returning from Sundered is composer Max LL, who delivers at least half of the soul of this game with his amazing soundtrack. Built around two themes, the music carries the game and the player from emotional highs to lows and back again with a plethora of arrangements and melodies that might prove unforgettable.
  • The game quickly gets the player into a pretty busy loop of base(=boat)-and-resource-management, exploration, questing and of course, all of the crafting mini-games and it doesn't take long before that "oh let me just do this one more thing, and this one and this one" flow kicks in that makes the hours fly by.
  • The story of the player character and the various main NPCs is itself a puzzle that is told through little bits of conversation and the whole drama of it creeps in very, very subtly, but by the time you get to carry out your titular job of Spiritfarer a couple of times, the game has transformed itself from a cutesy time-sink to something a lot more profound. A very ambitious piece of video game direction - and it works devastatingly well.
Con:
  • The game tries to balance leaving the player a lot of freedom by throwing them into a non-linear open world with carefully placed progress gates, skill gates and copious tutorialization, but it still is possible for the player to accidentally put a little too much - or too little - onto their plate and that will sabotage the game's pace somewhat.
  • A couple of the mini-games could use better tutorials - I only discovered halfway through the game that a couple of them were a lot less inefficient and time-consuming for crafting resources than I first assumed. The general principle for many of the mini-games is that you can put a whole bunch of resources in and "process" them in batches. For a pretty long time, I thought they all worked on one piece of material at a time only.
  • By the time my base(=boat) was nearing completion, the game had trouble keeping up the 60 frames per second - a little irritating, considering I was playing it on the most powerful video game console money could buy in 2017. Prospective buyers on Xbox One S/X (not Series S/X!) and PS4/Pro take note. That said, it didn't really matter or degrade my experience in any way, but I couldn't help notice either.

This might seem odd, but I felt strongly reminded of Haven while playing this.

You would not make that connection when looking at screenshots of both those games, but they have so much in common - the wild mix of genres and mechanics, the dramedy for a story (with comedy ultimately winning out in Haven's case and tragedy in Spiritfarer's), all held together and anchored by the busywork of domestic maintenance. Haven is about love and life. Spiritfarer is about memories and death.

Both are brilliant examples of how games can successfully carry timeless artistic reflections on the human condition and not be interactive movies or walking simulators - apparently you just have to mix and match some of the best elements of the last 30 years of game design, fit them to a story and - voilà - art emerges.

Another new all-time favorite and another

5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.
 
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Avern

MetaMember
May 14, 2020
370
1,239
93
Finished Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition

It was my first time with the game, and wow that was a hell of a ride!

Torment's reputation preceded it for me, and I had this impression of it as a kind of stuffy, philosophy-heavy game. Further, I've had a lot of trouble getting into other Infinity Engine games, having bounced of BG, BG2, and The Temple of Elemental Evil. So I was a little worried coming into this that it would be a ponderous, navel-gazing experience with a bunch of inaccessible combat.

I was so wrong. First, it's the only of these DnD derived games I've played that is actually accommodating to a new player, with a huge chunk of the early game being really easy and simple for me to get my bearings.

Second, thanks to lots of well-placed humor, a bizarre setting that constantly keeps you guessing, and absolutely killer plot twists, the story ends up being riveting. It's not stuffy, it's fun! Honestly, at the moment, I don't have a lot more to say about it. It's so dense, and even now, several hours after finishing it, I feel like I've barely managed to start unpacking it all. There's just so much going on, but I found it noteworthy how much the game does to make it pleasant to absorb everything it throws at you. I can see why people are calling Disco Elysium a spiritual successor, because just like Disco, Torment made it fun to tackle big ideas.

It wasn't perfect. The combat wasn't interesting, and at its worst (Curst Prison), it turned into a miserable grind. I also ran into some spots where it was too hard to tell how to progress, and wound up having to look things up. I also found it irritating how the game would occasionally punish you for behaving like a typical RPG busybody protagonist, but seemed to want you to behave like one in other spots. There were also a decent number of places where the game wasn't quite as reactive as I wish it was, with my dialog options failing to account for important actions I'd taken prior. But these issues were small potatoes given how strong the central narrative was.

So yeah, it's real good. Lived up to the hype, I'd say. :coffee-blob:
 
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sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
Dec 8, 2018
610
1,411
93
Somewhere else
Finished.


A short (10 levels or so) and fun FPS. It's more Painkiller than Doom. It's a bit limited when it comes to enemy variety and weapons.


Retired.


I quit the game after chapter 4. The "puzzles" are boring. The story is boring.
The controls are bad if you have to play with KB as there are no mouse controls.
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


I really enjoyed the game, found it much better than Blair Witch, not as good as Observer though. I found the story to be very interesting, the world building was great, level design was good, ending was kinda abruptive and the characters were decent. I do wish it was better optimized, but didn't have much problem with the framerate. I liked the 2-worlds part of the game where the game is split up into 2 worlds. I wish there were more things to interact with though.

Score: 8/10.
 
OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Retired Distance


Distance is an incredible survival racer with amazing graphics, a great soundtrack and a very cool campaign. But it's also a very difficult game. I never managed to master the jumping from one track piece to another rotated one. I finished the first campaign with lots of trail and error, but gave up during the second campaign because I couldn't do the jumps. The arcade tracks are made by the community and some of them are really cool, but again I had trouble landing on other track pieces after jumping. No doubt many of you have better skills than me. ;)

Score: 6.9/10
 

Bonfires Down

Junior Member
Nov 18, 2019
258
742
93


I went to play this again for the first time in 20 years or so. I've previously ranked SotN high among my favorite games but... I don't think I can stick to that anymore. I feel like the main issue is the lack of interesting abilites, at least during the first sections of the game. Can't remember whether it gets better later on. Anyway, as a result a lot of your time is spent just running/dashing and slashing through the same areas. This is the case in most Igavanias, but in the sequels you would get a plethora of abilities to experiment with which would stop things from getting too repetitive.

I also feel like the castle design isn't the best. There are plenty of long corridors without good shortcuts and just a few warp points which makes backtracking more frustrating than in other metroidvanias.

There's also the fact that exploring new areas is one of the main strengths of SotN. While I don't remember details, I do remember the general layout and look of the castle which does make it less exciting than the first time around.

So what does hold up? The controls are still among the most precise and satisfying in any 2D game. Alucard is still impressively well animated and the game looks great in general. The music is good. And exploring new areas and enemies is still fun.

I've explored about 70% of the castle and while I might go back later on, I feel like I'm done playing this for the moment. Playing Bloodstained was decisively a more enjoyable experience for me.
 
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Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


I... liked it more than I expected? I've always heard that this was the worst one and I was prepared for the worst and.. it was okay? Sure the setting is the same as the first one and it's kind of weird that some of the characters that appear here didn't get mentioned in the first one but I liked the story, the whole relationship between the characters is very emotional and the new guns are cool.

If you like the first one is more of the same, for good or bad. The Minerva's Den DLC is also great, but at the time I went there I was getting a little tired of the formula.
 

sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
Dec 8, 2018
610
1,411
93
Somewhere else
Finished


I... liked it more than I expected? I've always heard that this was the worst one and I was prepared for the worst and.. it was okay? Sure the setting is the same as the first one and it's kind of weird that some of the characters that appear here didn't get mentioned in the first one but I liked the story, the whole relationship between the characters is very emotional and the new guns are cool.

If you like the first one is more of the same, for good or bad. The Minerva's Den DLC is also great, but at the time I went there I was getting a little tired of the formula.
I do not like Bioshock 2, but it is still better than Bioshock Infinite.
 
OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Finished Unravel


Definitely one of the most beautiful games I've ever played! The physics-based puzzles are mostly very clever, and despite becoming a bit repetitive, the unique atmosphere of the game world kept me playing until the end. Very recommended!

Score: 8.0/10
 
OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Finished Sea of Solitude


Very artful and unique game about a girl who's chasing the monsters in her head. The gameplay is very basic; most of the time you're just walking or sailing to the spot the game tells you to go, and sometimes you have to avoid getting caught by monsters. But the wonderful dialogs and artistic nature of the game kept me going till the end. Definitely worth playing!

Score: 7.6/10
 

Phoenix RISING

A phoenix always RISES!
Apr 23, 2019
1,418
1,959
113
40
Ann Arbor, MI
www.geeksundergrace.com
XCOM: Enemy Unknown 8/10
XCOM2: 8/10


Both games start off with more things to do than you can keep up with, but then get long in the tooth by throwing missions at you that you have to grind or the game will get more difficult because you didn't like busywork.

I think the game(s) assume that lots of your ppl will die, so they need stuff to do to gain exp. But then they throw veterans at you and spec ops that they can do to keep up. I played XCOM on commander difficulty and only once lost someone I really cared about (the first Skirmisher somehow only had 12 HP when my sharpshooter was 1-shotting secpods. Wut?).

Tetris Effect (VR) 9/10.

Tetris + an outstanding OST that captures a good portion of worldly sounds without coming off as Orientalist (the Indigenous American song is my favorite) + great thematic visuals.

Pyre 7.5

So I rekt my entire gameplay experience by liberating my favorite character, Jodi, in the first rite, and I never enjoyed the game quite the same after that.

Losing a sendoff match also triggered my sore loser uh, problem. So without my favorite character and salt, I ended up focusing on winning at the cost of the narrative. Ironically, I made a sacrificial choice at the end, but my perception of the game was already ruined.

Great aesthetic, music, etc.


The Messenger 7.0


Good NES/Genesis Ninja Gaiden homage that I nearly "retired" until the BIG GAMEPLAY TWIST. The shopkeeper had me laughing out loud about how much I was messing with that chest, so great writing there. But this is a ninja game existing in the same universe of games like Sekiro and Mark of the Ninja. You're going to have to bring more to the table than nostalgia.

Besides, the item you get after collecting all the McGuffins isn't even worth the trouble.

Fat chance trying to get me to play that NG+ content.
Finished Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus, 2020)

While the game's promotional material makes it out as a "cozy management game about dying", it isn't really. Spiritfarer is an interesting mix of genres - light RPG elements, light base-building / management, light platforming action, open-world-(map) exploration and lots of mini-games around crafting and resource-gathering. But at its core, it's an adventure with a story to tell and a point or two to make - and the resulting emotional impact is like a ton of bricks to the face. It's about dying after all.

Pro:
  • The art direction is a a continuation and refinement of the style of Thunder Lotus' previous game, Sundered - but with a couple extra sugar cubes, so most of the time, it's all very cute. Super charming, I was in love right from the beginning.
  • Also returning from Sundered is composer Max LL, who delivers at least half of the soul of this game with his amazing soundtrack. Built around two themes, the music carries the game and the player from emotional highs to lows and back again with a plethora of arrangements and melodies that might prove unforgettable.
  • The game quickly gets the player into a pretty busy loop of base(=boat)-and-resource-management, exploration, questing and of course, all of the crafting mini-games and it doesn't take long before that "oh let me just do this one more thing, and this one and this one" flow kicks in that makes the hours fly by.
  • The story of the player character and the various main NPCs is itself a puzzle that is told through little bits of conversation and the whole drama of it creeps in very, very subtly, but by the time you get to carry out your titular job of Spiritfarer a couple of times, the game has transformed itself from a cutesy time-sink to something a lot more profound. A very ambitious piece of video game direction - and it works devastatingly well.
Con:
  • The game tries to balance leaving the player a lot of freedom by throwing them into a non-linear open world with carefully placed progress gates, skill gates and copious tutorialization, but it still is possible for the player to accidentally put a little too much - or too little - onto their plate and that will sabotage the game's pace somewhat.
  • A couple of the mini-games could use better tutorials - I only discovered halfway through the game that a couple of them were a lot less inefficient and time-consuming for crafting resources than I first assumed. The general principle for many of the mini-games is that you can put a whole bunch of resources in and "process" them in batches. For a pretty long time, I thought they all worked on one piece of material at a time only.
  • By the time my base(=boat) was nearing completion, the game had trouble keeping up the 60 frames per second - a little irritating, considering I was playing it on the most powerful video game console money could buy in 2016. Prospective buyers on Xbox One S/X (not Series S/X!) and PS4/Pro take note. That said, it didn't really matter or degrade my experience in any way, but I couldn't help notice either.

This might seem odd, but I felt strongly reminded of Haven while playing this.

You would not make that connection when looking at screenshots of both those games, but they have so much in common - the wild mix of genres and mechanics, the dramedy for a story (with comedy ultimately winning out in Haven's case and tragedy in Spiritfarer's), all held together and anchored by the busywork of domestic maintenance. Haven is about love and life. Spiritfarer is about memories and death.

Both are brilliant examples of how games can successfully carry timeless artistic reflections on the human condition and not be interactive movies or walking simulators - apparently you just have to mix and match some of the best elements of the last 30 years of game design, fit them to a story and - voilà - art emerges.

Another new all-time favorite and another

5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.
I agree with your review, and I would add,

I am frustrated with the fact that I cannot keep some of my spirits on the boat for longer so they can help out. Simultaneously, I know that this is an intentional mechanic—progress is locked behind you helping spirits find solace/contentment in the end of their life, and you, as a Spiritfarer, evolve as you help them evolve. You make progress when they are ready to go. Otherwise, you can't upgrade your boat so that you have a full crew of folks stuck in purgatory.

I came to this realization last night when
I was glad the widowed opossum was ready to go because she became a burden, but I didn't want to let Summer go, but I can't upgrade my boat to complete quests without that flower you get for "releasing" them.
 
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sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
Dec 8, 2018
610
1,411
93
Somewhere else
Finished.


4/10

A short (2-3 hours) horror walking simulator with a confusing and badly told story and a abrupt ending. The predecessor Conarium was much better.
You get nice and detailed enviroments, badly animated characters in cutscenes, some easy puzzles and mini-games. The hacking mini-games are the worst i have ever encountered. There are also a Resident Evil style mini-game and a fps style mini game. Good thing is, they patched the game with a option to skip these mini-games.

Get it only if it is under 10 Euro.
 
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fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (PS4 Pro)

Fun game, gorgeus game in many levels and each level is very varieted with a okay-ish story and decent characters. Some levers were too long for their own good, but I really liked that there wer e2 difficulty modes, one called "modern" which gave Crash unlimited lives so I didn't have to worry about dying a lot, there were also many checkpoints. There were some extra levels in the game that invovled playing other characters that showed the main levels in another characters perspective, the first portion of the levels were you play as not-Crash were new, but the other portion pushes you to replay a portion of the level you alredy have played with Crash which demotivated me. There's a lot of collectibles in the game and some of them were to extreme to care about, like finding all flashback tapes which gave you other smaller levels to play as.

If the game get's a PC release I will try more collectibles, but otherwise Im done.

Score: 8/10.
 
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AHA-Lambda

MetaMember
Oct 9, 2018
2,811
7,247
113
Dropped Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order (Xbox, EA Play)

it’s essentially Star Wars Uncharted with diet coke Dark Souls combat, it’s nothing special but it is serviceable. Story itself is pretty ho hum.
But at the end of the day, quite simply, I’d had my fill of the game long before the end of its running time (I’d made it to Kashyyk for the second time fwiw), and I felt I could be using my time in something else.

Dropped Perfect Dark (Xbox, Game Pass)

This is going to be heretical I’m sure of it but I dropped this like hot rocks.
Combat was brain dead simple due to the generous auto aim, but key issue for me was the objectives; it was so confusing knowing what to do, and it just led to a lot of wandering around and fighting with controls that aren’t explained

[UWSL]I died near the end of the second level and had to do redo it but then couldn’t replicate one of the objectives I pulled off before (not sure why, either I was lost or couldn’t find the NPC) but then I gave up[/UWSL]
 
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OP
Ge0force

Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
3,982
13,792
113
Belgium
Retired NFS Heat


Not a bad game, but not great either. The story is trash, the handling could have been a lot better - especially the drifting - and the cops chasing you during night races is really annoying. Soundtrack is awful. Fun for a few hours, recommended using EA Play instead of paying the ridiculous price of €69.99 for this game.

Score: 6.1/10
 

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


''A man without pork bun, is never whole man''

Combat is fun, story is ok mostly cliches and references to older movies. I like the Hong Kong setting more than your run of the mill american city.

The city is not populated enough, I guess this edition kinda patches that up having all the dlc but i found the side activities not that fun, doesn't compare to other games of the genre. Shooting isn't that great either, I prefer to stick to close combat.

As a remaster tho... isn't that great either, barely any graphic or audio improvements, but given is the only version you can buy nowadays, you can't really compare with the original.

It's ok, but i wouldn't recommend 100% it since the side content isn't worth it.
 

sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
Dec 8, 2018
610
1,411
93
Somewhere else
Finished


''A man without pork bun, is never whole man''

Combat is fun, story is ok mostly cliches and references to older movies. I like the Hong Kong setting more than your run of the mill american city.

The city is not populated enough, I guess this edition kinda patches that up having all the dlc but i found the side activities not that fun, doesn't compare to other games of the genre. Shooting isn't that great either, I prefer to stick to close combat.

As a remaster tho... isn't that great either, barely any graphic or audio improvements, but given is the only version you can buy nowadays, you can't really compare with the original.

It's ok, but i wouldn't recommend 100% it since the side content isn't worth it.
What game? I can only see
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Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


Holy shit this was great. Metroidvania games arent exactly my prefered genre but this was amazing (and sometimes infuriating)

I loved the music, the art, the designs. It could be the best game I've played in the genre (although Cave Story holds a special place in my heart)

I know I'm late to the party but play this if you can!
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
2,417
8,223
113
Finished Nuts.


Overall i liked it. Fairly simple walking sim type game with a bit of a game play element where you set up cameras to track the routes of squirrels. There is a sort of story which to be honest seemed unfinished or maybe i missed something but for a few hours (think it took me 4 total) it was a fun enough game. Nice visual look to it.

6 nuts out of 10
 

Mivey

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2018
3,962
11,271
113
Last week I finished Fable Anniversary

I heard a lot about the Fable series, before going into this. How Molyneux promised this game would basically simulate everything, down the last acorn which will slowly turn into a tree as your hero ages. I expected that to be a load of bollocks, which it is of course, but it certainly sets an expectation about how complex this world wants to be. And it doesn't really live up to that. The game is certainly ambitious, there's lots of mechanics that allow NPCs in towns to react to your hero. The various items you can wear, the hairstyle you can get or what beard you have affects how you look, which makes NPCs either laugh at you, or be scared at your, or just downright admire you. This leads directly into the romance mechanic, where NPCs can get infatuated by your hero, and your hero can also give them presents to make them love you more. If you gift them a wedding ring (twice, first to be engaged, then later to be married) you can marry them, and yes, there's even a silly "simulation" of sex. I'm sure getting all that to work was a huge amount of work for the team at Lionhead, and I have no idea why anyone thought it was time and money worth spent. It's so incredibly pointless, you'll engage with it all once, which takes all of 5 minutes, and then forget about it right away. I'll give them game some serious credit for allowing same-sex marriage, though. If it that was already in there in 2004, on home consoles, even more impressive.

The rest of the game is a pretty decent action RPG with a nice, if a bit clunky combat system and a very by the numbers story. Maybe extra points for how impressively bland it can be at times. Like the only thing that makes this game remotely stand out is the "British humour" which really just means that the game wants you to know it was made by British people. That's it. No wit, no cleverness, just a few quirky accents.

Fable summarised in one phrase would be:
 

Avern

MetaMember
May 14, 2020
370
1,239
93
Finished Outer Wilds

I went into the game completely blind, and I'm glad I did. Its approach to exploration is a triumph. The game is packed with things to discover, and it makes them feel thrilling, sometimes awe-inspiring, without ever needing to have the exploration feed back into some other gameplay loop. You're not exploring because you want loot, you're exploring because the Outer Wilds is such a compelling place. It makes you want to see the sights and unravel the mysteries to satisfy your own curiosity.

If you haven't played it and have any interest, avoid spoilers like the plague until you can get around to it. Since learning about the game IS the game, knowing things before-hand will take away from the experience in a more tangible way than most games.

What impressed me the most was how well the game managed to stick the landing with its ending. You spend so much of the game thinking that the end goal is to find a way to save the solar system. Both the sun's explosion and the Dark Bramble are set up as antagonistic forces to be defeated. It seems like the Nomai tech may be causing the supernova, and surely they also have tech that could stop the growth of the bramble.

But in the end, it turns out that the Nomai couldn't contend with the Dark Bramble, their deaths were pointless ones born of random chance, and there is nothing you can do to stop the sun from going supernova, let alone anything to stop the millions of other dying suns. The heath death of the universe approaches, and it is as inevitable as your death has been at the end of every loop.

So the answer isn't to play hero and save the universe. You can't. But you can create a new one, and the way you do is what I love so much about the ending. After spending hours trying to understand the universe well enough to know what's going on, why the timeloop is happening, what and where the eye is, where you can find a ship to reach it, how to power that ship, where to find the power source, how to reach the ship (anglerfish are so scary), and have enough expertise with a ship to do all of that within 22 minutes, after all of that, the final challenge of the game is to kick back with your buds around a campfire and play music.

Because while Outer Wilds thinks learning about and understanding the universe is a wonderful and worthwhile pursuit, it also thinks that it isn't enough. You can't just understand the universe, you have to appreciate it too. And I did. I loved exploring the Outer Wilds, and I feel like it gave me a better appreciation for the real world, even if it's usually more mundane than the insanity of the Outer Wilds system. It was an amazing experience.
 

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
(re)Finished


I don't know how many times I beated this game and the original. As much as I loved the Resident Evil 2 Remake, this one has a familiar feeling, obviously the controls, camera angles and such aren't for everyone but I just love the setting and the overall eerie atmospehere. The sound design is great, the dogs barking, a window suddenly breaking... It's also fun to casually speedrun or do some challenges ( I just did a knife only run)

I know it's a shitty explanation since every time I play this I go back to the good old days™ playing it on my old ass TV.

It's the best way to experience the first game if you don't like the old graphics and it definitely goes more into a 1:1 remake feeling.
 

AHA-Lambda

MetaMember
Oct 9, 2018
2,811
7,247
113
Finished Hitman 3 (PC, EGS)

It's more Hitman. It's fucking great. Not much else to say.

Finished The Medium (XSX, Game Pass)

An interesting one this. I've very little experience with Bloober games before now (only Observer, which I thought was ok, but also likely not reflective of their other works) so I had little expectation from this at a gameplay pov.
It's basically an old school resi game but with no combat. So fairly simple all in all but I rather quite enjoyed this.
I certainly found it effective at building atmosphere, mystery and tension. With a game that's not got deep systems that's all it can fall back on really, but I enjoyed it for what it was.
Only things I would say against it are 1) on XSX a few graphical glitches certainly appeared at times, enough that it wasn't a one off anyway and 2) at 8-10 hours it may be a tad long considering the style of the gameplay loop.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
3,992
11,886
113
Observer: System Redux (PC)
I went in expecting a game where you travel between locations in a Cyberpunk world, exploring crime scenes. What I got was an adventure inside a single block of apartments reminiscent of Hotel Dusk, only Cyberpunk and you get to explore the minds of people.

The concept is cool, and some of the side quests are a interesting, but the whole game falls into too many Cyberpunk tropes to really distinguish itself from anything else in the genre. I didn't love it, but it's well-made and visually impressive. Don't expect anything interesting to happen in the narrative and you'll enjoy this.

7/10

Mafia: Definitive Edition (PC)
I liked Mafia II. I never bothered with 1 or 3, but I enjoyed the II's feeling of an open world without any of the open world trappings and boring stuff. Evidently, the first game follows a similar structure too, and for that I enjoy it.

The story feels a little barebones, and I struggled to really connect with the characters because of it. And the gunplay feels a little flimsy too. But it's a competent game and worth the money I paid for it in the Humble price error. Maybe I'd have been happy paying a little more.

If your first entry to series was Mafia II, going back to the original in remastered form is going to be 10 hours well spent.

8/10
 

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
925
3,011
93
Finished


It's ok, I finished because it's co-op and it's fun enough that way. The game is a love letter to the 80s and 90s action movies and the whole ''macho'' aesthetic taking it ironically

Huge cast of characters, with each one having a special attack related to its respective movie, freeing a ''Bro'' will give you another life and another character to play. Everything is fast paced and humorous with fully destructible environments, but somewhat reliant on luck since you swap to a random character each time you free a prisoner.

As I said, it's fun to try and play for a little but I wouldn't have finished playing it solo since it can get repetitive,
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
2,417
8,223
113
Superliminal


I loved it. I really like this sort of walking simulator. Its very nice looking, Trippy perspective based small puzzles along side a bit of a story. Took 3ish hours to run through. Couple of difficult sections but once you work out the solutions its a good feeling.

Give it an 8/10
 

fantomena

MetaMember
Dec 17, 2018
9,635
25,849
113
Finished


Great game, not as good as the first one and I found the "try and fail" part of the gameplay a bit annoying and the combat was not the best, but otherwise it's a great game. Great level design, beautiful graphics, very interesting story and world. Didn't manage to find all the collectibles as some of them was apparently at the end of the levels and I don't wanna replay whole levels, at least for now.

Score: 8/10