Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[bobnowhere]

27. Metro Last Light Redux (Steam) - In many ways an improvement on the first, design, story and ambition but probably drags a little towards the end. The morality system is also stupidly punishing and is poorly thought out across all 3 games. ★★★★

28. Days Gone (Steam) - Fun world to exist in and definitely benefits from playing on a system that can actually handle it. The story is good but the uneven pacing and plotting is dire at best. Story is about to reach a crescendo? Nope someone needs a spoon for some reason and that is more important. ★★★ 1/2

 

[fantomena]

Finished Iron Man VR (Playstation 5 - PSVR)

Happy I bought this on a good sale, otherwise I would regret it. Coming from games like Alyx, Saints & Sinners, Lone Echo, Asgards Wrath etc. this game is just above mediocre. It took me around 7 hours to finish it and it was more than enough.

I have seen the MCU movies, I know that Iron Man is really powerful, enough to make Thanos bleed. In this game, Tony has trouble with almost everything, even a wave of small robots and he has to reload his weapons like every 10 seconds, it's annoying. You are playing as Iron Man in this game, but I barely felt like I was Iron Man, just a flying dude in some armor using the same weapons as Iron Man.

There are 12 chapters with an epilogue. The story is decent despite being somewhat predictable. The missions are mostly the same boring ones every time, defeating waves of flying robot enemies and some robot tanks that looks like boxes on the ground. The game is ugly, there is no life on ground, the background seems to be JPEG environments, the city in the game is small and ugly, Shanghai (one of the cities) is small and ugly with no life what so ever.

The gameplay is at least fun, flying can be difficulty, but shooting is at least somewhat fun. There is very little Pepper Potts in the game, Rhodes is not there (only mentioned in a magazine), Friday is there quite a bit and another Friday like character called Gunsmith.

You cannot go where you want, only where the devs have decided you can go, there is very little freedom in the game, you can only use what the devs want you to use.

The main enemy is Ghost and the side-enemy is Living Laser. Ghost was okay, Living Laser feels like someone the devs just wanted to have in the game just because.

There are some challenges you can do, but I didn't bother with them because I found the ones I needed to do in order to progress the story to be boring.

I did like going back to visit the cave Tony was in during the first Iron Man movie.

The game truly shows the limitations of the PS4 hardware and the PSVR system.

Score: 5.5/10.

if you are not interested in Iron Man, avoid it.

 

[Ge0force]

Retired Going Under


Going Under is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler where you can use almost every object in the game as a weapon. Beating up a bunch of monsters with a laptop or a fire extinguisher is so much fun, and because each object only lasts a few hits you need to switch weapon regularly. Another great idea are the mentors: by completing specific tasks for them they give you unique perks. You can also install "apps" that temporary give you benefits, and like most rogue-lite's you'll find random skills that you need to unlock by killing enemies.

While I had a few hours of fun with this game, I've retired after beating all 3 dungeon types. After that, you are required to beat all 3 dungeons again but with stronger enemies and different bosses. The unique rooms in every dungeon are already very limited, so it felt like playing a game you just finished again from the beginning on higher difficulty level to me. What I played was definitely worth it tho.

Score: 7.9/10

 

[Stevey]

Amnesia Rebirth.

I'd class this as more of a puzzle game than a horror game really.

Pretty good, not as good as TDD, but SOMA is still their best game IMO

6/10

 

[Cacher]

Blue Reflection completed.

Positive

• Second-half of the main story
• Art
• Character models
• Music (Best thing of this game)
• Boss battles
• Easy achievements

Negative

• First-half of the main story was dull and mundane
• Normal battles (Worst thing of this game. Non-existent difficulty even in hard, thus very repetitive and brain-dead)
• Pointless shower option
• Overall, lack of a sense of threat (both in terms of premise and difficulty)

6/10. Tbh, first impression was pretty bad. The story got more interesting after 15~20 hours.

 

[sk2k]

Finished: Minute of Islands
4/10

Pro

• Artwork
• Animations
• Sound

Contra

• everything else
• non-skippable cutscenes
• the developer's love for long slow camera pans
• boring platforming
• boring "puzzles"

 

[bobnowhere]

29. Forged By Blood (steam)- Tactical RPG/strategy game where you play the prince in a fantasy world disposed by a rebellion and running for your life. You can have up to 3 parties of 5 at a time completing missions in the world and taking back stolen lands. Sadly the game is overly complex, with too many mind numbingly boring systems and is littered with bugs. The story and ethical choices are good and the tactical game decent but you never seem to have enough information to prevent things from happening and walking places takes forever. The game desperately needed a usability pass after release but it tanked and was abandoned. Achievements barely work either. ★★ 1/2

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Florence (Mountains / Annapurna, 2018)

Florence is a heartfelt experience a piece of tripe that lasts around 30 minutes. It’s short, but deeply meaningful so shallow and predictable, you wish it were over sooner. If it had been released as an animation short instead of (originally) a mobile game, it probably would have gotten nearly no attention at all. As a game, it does stick out from the masses by virtue of its art-style and soundtrack, which would be nothing special at all in the film world, but is quite rarely seen in games. The actual gameplay is trivial.

I originally bought this on Android, but it didn't even work on my tablet, so I got a refund and bought it on sale on Steam instead. Shouldn't have bothered.

2/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here and here.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Finished Florence (Mountains / Annapurna, 2018)

Florence is a heartfelt experience a piece of tripe that lasts around 30 minutes. It’s short, but deeply meaningful so shallow and predictable, you wish it were over sooner. If it had been released as an animation short instead of (originally) a mobile game, it probably would have gotten nearly no attention at all. As a game, it does stick out from the masses by virtue of its art-style and soundtrack, which would be nothing special at all in the film world, but is quite rarely seen in games. The actual gameplay is trivial.

I originally bought this on Android, but it didn't even work on my tablet, so I got a refund and bought it on sale on Steam instead. Shouldn't have bothered.

2/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here and here.

I'm glad you feel the exact same about this game as I do. I largely feel like I have to be the crazy ones because people get really defensive when I say it's not that good. And it showed up on a lot of top ten lists for big sites the year it came out but it just fit the slot of the token indie game to push up at the end of the year. There tends to always be one with soft, pleasant presentation with minimal gameplay that gets propped up as something that made people feel emotional.

This shouldn't have been the pick that year.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Sackboy: A Big Adventure (Playstation 5)

I liked this game a lot, had a lot of fun with it. Not as good as platformers like Mario Galaxy series, 3D Land, 3D World, Odyssey and some others, but I didn't expect it too.

The game looks great, sounds great and has a decent amount of content, got it on sale too, so that's nice. It's a good platformer with a cute story where you meet new characters and each of the 5 worlds have a lot of levels in them, some shorter than the others. You try to collect as many dreamer orbs as you can and collect as many score points and other collectibles like clothes and coins as you can, coins can be used in a shop (Zom Zom) to buy other clothes. If you have enough orbs you can use them to open up the boss fights. I was afraid I would not have enough orbs to open to boss fights (final level of each world), but I also had more than enough. The boss fight are fun, but nothing special. There is also 16 trials you can do that the aim is to do them as fast as you can, didn't manage gold on all of them as some of them were pure bullshit (YT comments agreed with me, checked some walkthroughs on some trials).

There is one last world (4 main worlds) that is opened once you beat the final boss in the game, there are 5 levels here and they are all difficulty, the last level requires 275 dreamer orbs which I did not have and I can't bother to collect them all.

The negatives are that the top down perspective sucks, the vast majority of the game is in 3D, but certain levels and certain parts of 3D levels are in top-down perspective and the game is clearly not made for that as it was often difficulty to see where Sackboy land when I jump and how high certain obstackles are (do I jump here or just run?). And again, some of the level design in the trials are badly made.

Overall a really fun and great platformer with a good amount of content.

Score: 8.5/10

 

[mssq]

Finished Little Nightmares II (PC w/ vorpX)

Beautiful game. Art, sound design and world building coming together to create something unique and creepy. The game worked almost perfectly with vorpX, the added immersion is truly something. So if you have VR headset (and vorpX) I would recommend playing with it. The gameplay is more of the same from the first one, so if that wasn't your thing this wont change that.

Ending spoilers

That little bitch! I can't remember when I have felt this betrayed.

Score 9/10

 

[Involution]

Can I talk about Dragon Quest Builders here? With Dragon Quest Builders 2 releasing last month (I think) on Game Pass I decided I'd get into the series. I have a personal rule that I play an entire series in order where possible so I binged both DQB games in the span of a couple months. Let me just say that this is the happiest I've ever been from just playing a game/series. I want to rate them both 9/10, I'd even stretch it to a personal 10/10. The series is basically Minecraft if it had a focused story campaign and humorous writing with lots of that DQ personality. I don't build any grandiose buildings like some others share online but the games still speak to me.

Dragon Quest Builders (PS4)

I played this on PS4 Pro if that matters. It's still a great game and different enough from 2 to recommend. The story is very focused and streamlined so you can consistently be moving to the next part without too much downtime. The entire game doesn't feel like it's needlessly padded (unless you really struggle with building) or that it severely gates you from doing things you want to do. Room recipes are pretty logical once you figure out the patterns behind them, though the border between your town and the outside field could be better defined for the sake of not accidentally building outside the boundaries.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PC - Game Pass Ultimate)

DQB2 streamlines the building process way more than 1. Lots of tools and such just to make building that much easier like swapping blocks and making room blueprints. Unfortunately the amount of interruptions during gameplay to teach you these things are also increased. NPCs help with the building process too which really puts some of the game on autopilot and makes things easier. It's never really a downside though since they only end up helping on the large scale builds, ensuring that you're never stuck building giant structures forever during a campaign. If there's any downsides to 2 it would be that I enjoyed the story much more in 1, but that's not to say that 2 is bad by any means. Room recipes also seem to make a bit less sense to me as well.

If I had to complain about anything on both games, it'd be that they couldn't get multiplayer right on either of them lol. DQB2 has some weird wording on cross-play multiplayer, and it turns out you can't play multi with your friends on other systems and the multi only applies to the free building portion. You can share and like pictures or whatever system they have in place for cross platform for that but it's super misleading. Still, they're both great games whether you play alone or with someone else.

Overall, like I mentioned before, I would say it's a 9/10 but according to my personal satisfaction it's a 10/10. If they announced DQB3 at $70 CDN I would probably reach for my wallet right now. It's not a perfect game though so I could understand if others would say it's 8-9 territory.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


This was a really cute, fun and charming game. There is no enemies or combat in the game, you mainly take pictures and try to help the wildlife following a story that takes place over 5 days. Took me 2 hours to play through it. Only negative is really that the running is somewhat slow, I know you play as a kid, but then at least allow me to dash or something.

Score: 9/10

 

[Aaron D.]

Can I talk about Dragon Quest Builders here?

Overall, like I mentioned before, I would say it's a 9/10 but according to my personal satisfaction it's a 10/10. If they announced DQB3 at $70 CDN I would probably reach for my wallet right now. It's not a perfect game though so I could understand if others would say it's 8-9 territory.

I freakin' love DQB2 so much.

I purchase one maybe two $60 titles a year and I impulse bought DQB2 during the launch window.

Proceeded to fall madly in love with the joyful world, clever writing & mechanically deep systems. Surprisingly good/efficient game engine as well.

Best $60 I spent in a LONG time.

 

[spiel]

Hand of Fate 2 - 8/10

What I liked:

• Unique gameplay, it's a card-based dungeon crawler that mixes it up with real-time combat.
• The RNG can suck but I have to grudgingly admit that the game does give you ways to minimise it.
• Story-wise it's generic medieval fantasy where everyone is a jerk but I did enjoy the writing. Many interesting encounters with various outcomes.

What I didn't like

• The illusion of meaningful combat. You can switch between a sword+shield, hammer or daggers, which are good for specific enemy types. Enemies can be dodged or parried. By chaining enough hits you can activate a special ability. But all this stuff doesn't really matter in the end. The combat tends to feel samey since you're performing the same combos over and over again. The worst part is as you progress further, the game attempts to increase difficulty by throwing more mobs at you. Which isn't fun or actually challenging, just tedious. In the end I just enabled easy mode to shorten combat.
• Loading screens when entering and exiting combat. Seriously, in the final few stages there was pretty much a loading screen every other minute.

Donut County - 6-8/10

I liked it! A short, delightful experience. But at the end of it I couldn't help but still feel like more could have been done with the main mechanic. I guess I was expecting something in the vein of say, Gorogoa, instead of an interactive playground like Windosill.

Hot Pot for One - no rating

It's not much of a game... it's a hotpot simulator. Performance was awful, physics are wonky. But it made me smile because I can relate to eating good food alone on a celebratory day. And it unintentionally made me laugh when ingredients landed in unexpected places.

 

[Ge0force]

Retired Divinity Original Sin


Very well made RPG with a great story, a huge open world and tons of depth. I really liked that there aren't fixed classes, but you can build your characters however you want. I had two melee characters (sword + shield tank and two handed damage dealer), a mage and a ranger with crossbow and poison spells. The combat is really good and stays fresh because you can get new skills when you level up.

The only reason why I retired the game at the beginning of act 4 is because the game is too long for me. After more than 65 hours I really want to play something else, and I couldn't follow the story anymore because I skipped several long dialogs.

Score: 8.9/10

 

[sk2k]

Retired.
6/10

Pro

• nice visuals/enviroments
• nice shooting
• a dog

Contra

• clunky movement
• hard to see enemies
• dumb ai
• enemies spawning everywhere
• op melee takedowns
• TOO MANY EFFECTS/PARTICLES/WHATEVER ON SCREEN! it is often hard to see what is going on lol

 

[bobnowhere]

30. Children of Morta (Steam) - Beautiful pixel rogue-lite about a family, the Bergsons, fighting to return peace to the world. All 6 family members play differently, and the one extra one, and add heaps of variety to play styles. Enter a dungeon, get as far as possible and due to a deal with the world, reincarnate and start again with your experience intact. A beautifully told story that rivals anything. ★★★★ 1/2


31. Ruiner (Steam) - Cyberpunk isometric twin-stick shooter with all the attitude you'd expect of the genre. Good shooting and melee and heaps of build styles allow all sorts of strategies. The game can get a bit diarrhea Christmas lights at times but you get a slow mode to help you. ★★★ 1/2

 

[Routa]

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[fantomena]

Finished


A fun game with fun and somewhat difficulty combat with nice world building and good level design, for the most part. Some of the puzzles and traversal was kinda weird/annoying at first, but you need to understand how the gameplay works to make it easier. I didn't understand much of the story or I did and the story was easier to understand than I actually realize. The graphics can make the game look like a shovelware-type of game at first, but it is not, the graphics are nice and the gameplay is the best par. Took me around 5.5. hours to complete.

Score: 8/10

 

[Digoman]

It's clunky and unpolished (just like when released) and showing it's age but.... still fun. The AI can create several annoying moments (like npc cars always swerving to get in your way) but in the end activities are entertaining and even without fast travel traversing is not a bore. I ended up almost 100% it with 29 hours and enjoyed it. It is just as stupid (in a good way) as 10 years ago.

However the remaster side is.... not that good. Most of my issues (like 24 fps cutscenes, audio sync) were solved by limiting the framerate to 120 on the Nvidia drivers, but lots of people aren't that lucky, and the publisher don't seem to concerned with fixing anything, after all it's been out for more than an year. Some graphical updates are nice but in general are even and I don't think they added and QoL improvements.

Again I enjoyed In the end, but I was replaying a "classic" from a decade ago. Don't know if new players will tolerate all the issues, or if it's better to go with original with mods.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Really enjoyed this game, good story for the most part, got a bit weird/uninteresting during chapter 5 though, but otherwise an interesting and mysterious story. Lovely graphics, lovely music, decent walk-simuator-ish gameplay and good puzzles. I wish it was a bit longer though as I like these mysterious love-craftian stories in games, but they usually never go much in-depth and the story usually loses the "mysteriousness" part of the story too quickly and simply get's weird/dumb, but this game kept the mysteriousness for the most part. I was afraid it was gonna be yet another mystery story that involved a cult like in Call of Cthulu or everything being in the protagonist's head, which Im happy it was not. Hate those "it was all in the head", hallucinations and such story plots.

Overall, pretty graphpy, nice world bulding, nice gameplay, wish I could run faster though, had to use cheat engine to increase the running speed, nice puzzles, but game could be longer, could keep it's mysteriousness longer and explore the lovecraftien stuff more.

Score: 8.5/10

 

[BlackRainbowFT]

I just finished Days Gone.

First impressions weren't good. It looked really -really- generic and I fully admit I approached it the wrong way... I played it a bit too much like Just Cause and kept dying over and over again (I played it on Hard 2). When it finally dawned on me that this is a stealth-heavy open-world game, I really started to dig the gameplay and how satisfying it is to plan an attack on a camp or how to best take out a horde.

At first I also disliked how Deacon was constantly mumbling to himself, screaming after every radio broadcast by Copeland, etc. After a while, for some reason, the characters started to feel like actual people. Even though the story wasn't that original, I thoroughly liked the way it was told.

I have to say I'm really surprised... nay... flabbergasted by how much I liked it (given my severe case of open-world fatigue... heck, I even dropped RDR2 halfway through). The only negative point would be that it's a bit buggy...

...I'm really bummed out there won't be a Days Gone 2...

 

[Paul]

Finished 7/10


Solid thing, a must play for John Woo fans. Graphically lot better than the years old prototype trailer.
I found it difficult with gamepad, and just right with a mouse. Story is just an excuse, absolutely not the reason to play this.
All missions are just about killing all enemies, there is no variety in objective design.
Soundtrack is pretty good, albeit nowhere near Hotline Miami.

But who cares about the flaws, when the actual gameplay is so fun? Once you get into the flow and jump around the room killing enemies in and out of slow-mo during the bloody ballet left and right, it is fantastically enjoyable.

Congrats to Vreski for actually getting the game to release.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Deathtrap


Amazing hybrid between a Diablo-like aRPG and a tower defense game, made by the creators of the Van Helsing trilogy. The game is based on the tower defense levels of the first Van Helsing game, and adds lots of new traps, skills and gameplay elements. Great level design, lots of challenge, plenty of loot to collect and VERY addictive. Very recommended!

Score: 8.9/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun game and the gameplay loop is addictive, nice art style and music. Negative is that the game does get a bit repetive and monotonous towards the last 2 chapters in the game.

Score: 8/10

 

[Ge0force]

Retired Unheard


The concept of this game is great, but even after looking up the solution and no matter how many times I listen to the conversations, I can't figure out what exactly happened. This game is obviously not for me.

Therefore no score.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Annie: Last Hope


Annie is a surprisingly good zombie shooter, that has a few flaws but also does a lot of things right. The 3D voxel graphics are amazing, rich in detail and the excellent lightning gives the game a creepy atmosphere. The level design is very good, with plenty of bosses, NPC encounters and action scenes to keep things interesting. Last but not least the sound design and music are incredibly well done. Very recommended!

Score: 8.6/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished A Case of Distrust


Very decent detective game with excellent writing and unique graphics. Rather short, but definitely worth buying at the 80% discount during the steam sales.

Score: 7.6/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finished


This was a really cute, fun and charming game. There is no enemies or combat in the game, you mainly take pictures and try to help the wildlife following a story that takes place over 5 days. Took me 2 hours to play through it. Only negative is really that the running is somewhat slow, I know you play as a kid, but then at least allow me to dash or something.

Score: 9/10

Just finished this as well. Lovely little game to play for a few hours. Nice story, nice simple graphics but colourful and vibrant. Only negative for me was that i couldn't find a way to invert the camera Y axis (you an invert the normal play y axis) and so found aiming the camera difficult but not game breaking.

9/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Stories: The Path of Destinies


I'm really surprised how good this game is. The selection and order of the levels you play depend on the choices you make in the story. Every time you complete a series of five levels, you learn something that you can use to make the right choices the next time you play. Every level is beautiful and very well designed, and there are multiple paths to unlock to reach your goal. The combat is also excellent, using a combination of melee combat, elemental spells and a grappling hook to pull enemies towards you. It's also the first game where I actually enjoyed the story teller. The voice acting and sarcastic humor are really great. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[Cacher]

Finished Stories: The Path of Destinies


I'm really surprised how good this game is. The selection and order of the levels you play depend on the choices you make in the story. Every time you complete a series of five levels, you learn something that you can use to make the right choices the next time you play. Every level is beautiful and very well designed, and there are multiple paths to unlock to reach your goal. The combat is also excellent, using a combination of melee combat, elemental spells and a grappling hook to pull enemies towards you. It's also the first game where I actually enjoyed the story teller. The voice acting and sarcastic humor are really great. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.0/10

Thanks for the review! I want to pick this up but somehow it was not discounted during the summer sale...

 

[bobnowhere]

Finished Stories: The Path of Destinies


I'm really surprised how good this game is. The selection and order of the levels you play depend on the choices you make in the story. Every time you complete a series of five levels, you learn something that you can use to make the right choices the next time you play. Every level is beautiful and very well designed, and there are multiple paths to unlock to reach your goal. The combat is also excellent, using a combination of melee combat, elemental spells and a grappling hook to pull enemies towards you. It's also the first game where I actually enjoyed the story teller. The voice acting and sarcastic humor are really great. Very, very recommended!

Score: 9.0/10

Check out Omensight as well, same devs

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Afterburn (actually I gave up during the last mission but that's good enough for me )


Decent arcade air combat game with colorful graphics. Played fine for me using a x360 controller. Sadly there are only 6 missions available. The first 5 missions are rather easy and can be finished within the hour. The last mission is a huge increase in difficulty, and I gave up after many tries because of the ridiculous amount of enemies that suddenly appear around you. Worth it for an hour of fun but nothing more.

Score: 6.1/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished TSIOQUE


Short but lovely adventure game with sublime animations, a decent story and lots of humor. Some of the puzzles require some trial and error as you die instantly when failing, but most puzzles are clever and make perfectly sense. Definitely worth playing!

Score: 8.1/10

 

[bobnowhere]

32. Anthem (Origin Pass and EA Pass and PC Gamepass. It took a while) - What or tortuous experience. The story is complete nonsense, the loot crap, the customisation shit, the robo suits hilariously overheat after 20 seconds. Who designs a game around flying and verticality and limits the suits? Also there are no ships, somehow people move around this world full of shear cliffs in slow cumbersome walking vehicles. That doesn't work. The shooting and abilities are good. Trash game. ★ 1/2

33. Lego Movie 2 Game (steam) -Weirdly designed lego game, fewer larger levels with optional content. You also keep giant stashes of coloured bricks to build a city on a distant planet. Standard lego otherwise. ★★★ 1/2

 

[gabbo]

Halo 3 ODST
So why can't Halo games always be this much fun? 2 and 3 were boring slogs through the usual Halo level design, where as this only had the boring aspects limited to Rookie's 'find the other squad item' bits, which were overly melodramatic (tf is with the music) and admittedly a larger than necessary section of the game. I didn't rally enjoy wandering aimlessly through samey streets over and over. The actual squad bits leading up to Dare were quite fun and varied. Also the ODST squad has more personality in their visor animations than Master Chief has had in 3 games + Reach
3.5 / 5 Orbital Drop Shock Troopers

 

[Digoman]

Mass Effect 1 (Legendary Edition)

Probably going to wait to finish up all three before thinking more about it but so far:

• Overall didn't have too many problems with port. Two crashes total in 28 hours. Some bugs but nothing game breaking. Performance was decent. Some stutters (but I'm not very sensitive to that) on occasion, but I only noticed the FPS really "tanking" to 60 fps at one point.
• The gameplay modifications definitely makes the game feels more like a shooter like the sequels, but are not bad and I enjoyed them. They do make Insanity on a first run a lot easier if you use the sniper rifle a lot.
• Mako is probably better (it's been a while since a played the original) but still annoying. To "clean up" everything I installed a mod to speed it up and it got a lot better.
• There is less dialog with companions than I remembered.... guess that's the effect of having played the games several times (except the last one). Romances are still very.... "bioware"
• While the filler content is middle of the road with so many reused assets and generic worlds, they main missions are still very good.
• The games opens and closes very strongly. Probably one of the better introductions to their world I have ever played. The final missions also finish up everything so well and gets you hyped about the "future" possibilities.
• Music is still incredible.

Overall, still a great game. The remaster work is good and the gameplay changes make it play a lot more like a normal (if somewhat dated) shooter but still retain what the made it so special. Highly recommended if you want to replay the game or want to see what fuss about it is all about.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


It's a quite "basic" game in a way, it doesn't push any concept further and the puzzles are quite the samey about scaling objects and the world. I did find the story to be decent, music was great and the level design was nice. The game still could have had better puzzles and the story could have been more fleshed out. The game feels like it was taped together by different parts, not all the parts are finished, but the core part that hold the parts together is finished. Basically the systems and the gameplay is there, but the devs should have done more with what they had.

Score: 7/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Good game, weird game, more like a really surreal and very cool "stylish" point and click game with some wasd-moving. Interesting story and overall a very surreal game. Difficulty to explain by writing.

Score: 8/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Pretty much Finished Outer Wilds


Great game. Really well made space exploration game. You play as a rookie astronaut from this race of beings who inhabit a solar system that previous had some alien visitors and you are tasked with finding out what happened to them. The game involves flying around in space investigating planets and ruins etc and unravelling the story. It really is one of those games where its best to go in blind and so i wont write any more, just to say that it was really enjoyable and interesting to play, a pretty unique experience.

It did take me a few hours to get into it, there was a point where i wasn't going to continue but im so glad i did as its one of my favourite games of this year. Once it all 'clicked' and i worked out the mechanics of it i was hooked and blasted through the game in a few days.

9/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Life is Strange 2 (DONTNOD / Square Enix, 2018)

Sixteen year-old Sean Diaz returns home from school for a quick check-in with his father and young teenage brother Daniel before heading out to party with his high-school friends. But out of nowhere, a strange and violent incident rips him and his brother out of their suburban lives and sends them onto a desperate journey across the USA.

Pro:

• Original developers DONTNOD are back for this one and so is Unreal Engine. The visual fidelity and the level of detail are another subtle evolution from Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Expect the same excellent production quality as in the previous installments in all other important aspects (animation, voice acting, music). It is still a ways off from the incredible standard set in Tell Me Why however.
• The choice & consequence mechanics of the previous games have been augmented. In the original Life is Strange (and the prequel, with the exception of episode 3), there was always a strict 1:1 relation between a choice and consequence, even for consequences that play out with significant delay. Here, the game tracks an invisible score for the closeness of the relationship between the Diaz brothers and another invisible score for the younger brother's sense of morality that is influenced by choices made by the player across all five episodes. The values of these scores play a significant role in determining outcomes during the game and which of the four possible endings the player gets to experience.
• The story in this game is a huge leap forward in scope and ambition compared to the previous games. It also raises the dramatic stakes. This is no longer a comfy high-school relationship drama with a supernatural suspense supercharger, this is a story that references big, divisive present-day political issues of the United States and leaves its main protagonists (and the player) to deal with being destitute, homeless and chased by the FBI within 15 minutes of the first episode. Moreover, by making the player exclusively control the elder of the two brothers, the player also gets to make the choices of a caretaker and substitute parent in these terrible circumstances.
• Despite the story's weaknesses (see below), the endings pack a big emotional punch, particularly because the game makes the player cringe and wrangle so hard to arrive there.

Con:

• Unfortunately ambition ultimately turns out to be ahead of the game's ability to deliver the great piece of contemporary critical Americana its writers wanted it to be. The story begs to be much longer and more detailed than what was squeezed into five episodes of about 3 hours each. Even so, there are huge leaps forward in time between episodes that the game tries to cover with a few pages worth of in-game journal, with varying success. Somewhere left on a cutting room floor is a 50-70 hour epic version of Life is Strange 2 that I would give a left eye to play.
• Similarly, the game's interesting reflections on family get somewhat diluted in the overarching great escapade.
• Episode 4 stood out to me as tonally and thematically out of place compared to the rest of the game, as if David Cage had been guest-writing.

4/5

 

[Digoman]

Mass Effect 2 (Legendary)
Well.... not much to say, it pretty much the same game, with some very minor tweaks. But the game still holds up pretty well.
Graphically it actually looks kind of nice, with some improved textures and lighting (but again, very minor differences). Gameplay-wise, while it is a lot more action than RPG, it does play a lot better by today standards.
Technically this edition was "fine. A couple of stutters, a lot of the same bugs as the original (including problems with targeting powers that can get very annoying if you're playing Vanguard on Insanity).

The big missed opportunity here is that they could have added small tweaks like hiding helmets, buying missed upgrades, option to skip the minigames, and so on. Oh, and since they removed those cringe buttshots of Miranda, how about removing the equality terrible dance Kelly do in your cabin. I had forgotten about that

So overall, still a great game, because it's the same game. But you can clearly see the wheels starting to come off on the whole "your decisions matter" and "planned trilogy" thing, with some very uneven writing - great for most of the companions, but less than stellar for the main story.

Still happy to revisit the trilogy.. but now... Marauder Shields is waiting for me....

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Played a few things since I last posted so I'll quick fire a few at once

Catherine: Full Body (PS5 via PS4 BC)

I played the original back in the day but I think I appreciate this way more now given I'm now near enough Vincent's age and have felt the same pangs of what to do with my life long term wrt relationships etc (minus the cheating of course!)
The puzzle gameplay is also pretty engaging, bringing in some variety without ever being too taxing

8/10

Astro's Playroom (PS5)

On one level this is a pretty short and sweet platformer, that controls well and showcases the dualsense controller effectively, A pretty nice freebie for the PS5.
But on another level; wow, this is practically weapons grade nostalgia! If you're a long term playstation fan it is basically impossible not to play this without a massive grin on your face as you uncover all the unlockables (playstation hardware through the ages) and references dotted around the stages

8/10

Time Crisis 5 (Arcade)

There's little to actually say here, it plays like every time crisis since #3. The only other thing I can really mention is that the aesthetic in this installment is very different to the rest of the series and I'm not a fan.

6/10

Resident Evil 8 (XSX)
I like Resi quite a lot but I was still surprised at how much I enjoyed this, Capcom has really been hitting it out of the part with this series after RE6.
To put it simply its really a blend of RE7 with RE4. The hub village works really effectively as an almost metroidvania esque area which I wasn't expecting, where the more you want to explore the more you'll get out of it, but is still purely optional.

Also, I can't believe that the story (for a resi game) is pretty good? Now that I didn't expect! It's got a great sense of mystery that kept me engaged and there are some twists along the way that I really didn't expect. probably my GOTY so far.

9/10

Ghost of Tsushima (PS5 via PS4 BC)

It's just another AAA open world action game
"why did you play this then, if you don't like this genre?"
Yes I know pedantry voice in my head! But I'm a big weeb and can't resist this game's admittedly gorgeous aesthetic

The combat is surprisingly good, like a harder version of Batman Arkham's. In fact in a number of places it's too difficult!
Also the story, while on the whole is nothing special, does take some interesting turns towards the end as Jin faces the consequences of turning his back on the samurai way
Otherwise though, this is very much "just another AAA open world action game"

6/10

 

[Routa]

Finished Wizardry Gaiden 1 : Suffering of the Queen

The original Wizardry Gaiden series was only available in Japanese exclusively until semi-recently. There are 3 for the Game Boy and one for the SNES that recently got a fan translation.

Obviously, there are tons of limitations for this being a Game Boy game - but given the platform - I was decently impressed.

The problem is, I don't really have a lot to say. It plays almost exactly like the early Wizardry titles, except it's just on the GameBoy. I'll just distill my thoughts into some quick bullet points.

• The first half of the game is very very simple, especially dungeon wise. They are all pretty small, and encounters only tend to happen when you go through a door, so you have some predictability of when you are gonna be attacked.
• The Samurai-type enemies are just obnoxious. They have a chance to behead any one they hit, which seemed to happen constantly. This became less of a problem when a character learns Rez.
• Everything is indicated by a white flash: teleporting, poison, falling down a hole. If you don't have the map spell available, good luck figuring out if you teleported.
• The second half of the game is a maze with no direction. You have 3 floors all interconnected with holes, shutes, teleporters, stairs. I got stuck here and had to look up a walkthrough. You apparently have to step on 8 spots that are scattered about, and once you step on them - the game indicates nothing has happened, which is why I had to look this up, to make sure I was actually making progress. Everything else gives you a message! Why not this.
• Other Wizardry games, you could walk through secret walls. That isn't the case here, you have to open your menu and click search to see if theres a hidden door. There is zero indication of the doors being visible. You'll just have to blindly search on everything.
• Do not try to heal on traps, coming out of the menu on a trap triggers the trap again

It's a perfectly average to below average dungeon crawler.

The other three look to be more impressive. Obviously, I feel the GameBoy ones are gonna be rather limited compared to the one on SNES.

Rating: 4-5/10

Oh, and here is me lucking out on the final boss

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Alan Wake's American Nightmare (Remedy / Microsoft, 2012)

Following the events of Alan Wake, the titular main character finds himself transported into an episode of one of his previous writing gigs, the TV show "Night Springs". Trapped there in a night full of horrors, he has to fight a dark alter ego of his, who intends to steal Alan's identity in the real world and unleash the horrors of Cauldron Lake onto humanity at large.

Pro:

• The story mode has all the classic Remedy ingredients: Cheesy, but entertaining story, characters, dialogue and collectible flavor content (you get documents, radio-show segments and videos in this game), intense close-quarters combat with a great variety of weapons and the collectible scavenger hunt is balanced just right to keep your eyes open and looking for them, but not get overwhelmed or annoyed with the task.

Con:

• The story mode is pretty short, even if you take your time and explore at leisure, it'll be over in about six hours
• The arcade action mode is just basic survival game-play against the clock, with an early appearance of mobile-style scoring (three-star-system). Even back in 2012, you would have had to either be pretty bored, out of other games to play or a die-hard achievement hunter to bother with this and now there is pretty much zero reason to play this mode at all.

I enjoyed the story mode a lot and am glad I finally played this, but I gotta say the fact that I played it on Epic Tim's dime also really helped. Would not recommend paying more than 5 bucks (U.S.) for this.

3.5/5

 

[Routa]

Finished EDF5


It's EDF. You run around and shoot bugs. There are some more nice QoL and general changes in this one compared to 4, like armor carrying over from class to class, but I'd really like some of the following changes in the next one.

1. There are too many missions, 111 in this one. This could easily be cut by more than half. I would actually feel incentivized to go try the harder difficulties if there were less missions, but I don't really have a ton of interest in playing 111 levels over again.
2. Speaking of the higher difficulties, it would be nice if there were other differences than enemies having more health and doing more damage - but there seemingly is not.
3. The loot pickup needs to be fixed. I hate running around picking up all loot boxes. A friend I was playing with quickly switched to using Cheat Engine to increase the pickup radius for loot so we could easily grab everything.

Not much to say. All missions are just kill bugs until all bugs are dead. The dialogue is hilarious. It's stupid, mindless fun... and seeing those bugs explode is so satisfying.

Rating: 7/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Well "finished" is kinda weird, you finish the game by launching the rocket, but the game is still fully playable with replayability afterwards.

Not scoring this one actually. However I can say that it is a masterpiece of a game.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Nova Drift (beaten wave 100)


Excellent space shooter with a huge amount of different ships, weapons, shields and upgrades. The Asteroid-like controls take a while to get used to, but I ended up liking them a lot. The game is still in early access but there's tons of content already. Very recommended!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finished Paradise Killer.


What a nice interesting game. Sort of a detective type solve the murder game with a very weird and unique setting. I wont spoil the setting as i enjoyed going into it blind but i found it pretty good. Its first person. There are lots of things to explore without being overly big. You piece together evidence for a murder and then have to take it to the judge to pass judgment. Its got its own style and presentation. Ok graphically if not a little basic but it doesn't really need to be any better than it is for the type of game. Took me about 10-12 hours to finish.

8/10