VideoGame_Discussion

Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue {} 6/10

I remember playing this on the Nintendo 64 way back when it first released, trying to help one of my younger nephews who couldn't get the hang of 3D platforming. I didn't put a lot of time into it, but I recall thinking it was a pretty decent game and not the usual licensed trash game I was used to getting as a kid in the 8 and 16-bit eras.

Revisiting it all these years later though and looking at it differently, I can see the faults more easily now. I don't like having to deal with the camera. You control the camera with the L2 and R2 buttons instead of the right analog stick. The DualShock had released 2 years prior to this game, but I guess it took a while for developers to figure out what to do with the extra analog stick because it's not used in this game at all. Also, the audio during the FMV scenes is really too loud (a problem I wouldn't have noticed on the N64 version since the FMV would have been replaced by still images). Finding collectable items can also sometimes be a pain because this suffers from a problem pretty much all 3D platformers of this era had, where you can't see the items (or enemies, power-ups, etc.) from a far distance until you get close enough to them, so you pretty much have to inspect every area of the level if you are going to hunt them all down. Enemies you've defeated will also respawn if you walk far enough away.

The rest of the game itself still seems decent, I guess. I mean, it doesn't hold a candle to 3D platformers released these days, but then again I don't think any 3D platformers from 32/64-bit era can. Overall it feels a bit on the easy side (and surprisingly they removed all cheat codes even though they didn't add in Trophy support), and if the camera wasn't an issue I probably could've breezed through this over a couple of days, but since the camera controls annoy me as well as a few other things like Buzz's repetitive one-liners, I just played through one or two levels per day and for that it's fine since every level pretty much has the same objectives anyway, the only thing that changes is the scenery.

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Tray Racers! {} 3/10
I'm always hunting through the eShop for trash to play (it usually doesn't take long because there's certainly no shortage of crap in there), and this just released and happened to be free. Somehow I still feel ripped off.
Basically you are racing through sand dunes in a "post-apocalyptic world". The tracks are randomly generated which might explain why none of them felt well designed. Before you can officially race you are forced to do several minutes of practice runs with the other players you are matched up with. The game supports up to 16 players, but I never found a lobby that had more than 5 in it. Maybe the ridiculously long load times turned most players off, I know it did for me. One loading screen was so long I thought the game had crashed. Anyway, it'll be a strong contender for worst game of the year.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 10/10 This is amazing stuff. Didn't know this would be so good. It's like Zelda, but good.

Kommie wrote:

I saw this on GP the other day and downloaded it. Haven't tried it yet.

Maybe I should have checked GamePass before buying it on Steam, oh well!

Yes Turnip Boy was a blast and pretty short. Highly recommend playing, especially if you've got it via GP.

The Artful Escape {} 8/10
I had no idea what to expect from this, but I'm glad I gave it a chance. It's a 2D platformer with an emphasis on music and a story about a dude who learned to play guitar like his famous Uncle but feels those are some big shoes to fill and everyone expects him to live up to that. He ends up getting abducted by some alien dude and that's when the crazy journey begins. The voice acting is good, so is the music, and the graphics are really good and cartoon-ish kind of like Rayman Legends. It's a short game though, I feel like I'm maybe 4 hours into it and the thing on the console home screen says I'm about 81% through it already (a feature I wish more PS5 games used).

Octodad: Dadliest Catch - You're an Octopus and your family doesn't know. And there's a chef who knows and wants to kill and eat your. Controls are very, very janky.

Been playing Omori. At about the 5 hour mark. Got to a point in the game where there didn't give any other option other than for the main character to stab himself. Next thing you know, you continue with a different character's story arc. What a shame. I was doing a lot in the other arc. Had a lot of more places to explore. I really hope this isn't one of those games where there's a ton of things to do but each playthrough is different depending on how you go about it.

Yoshi’s Story is a little weird. The only objective is eating enough fruit to get to the next stage. 6/10 so far and I’m about 5 levels in.

I just beat Sekiro for the first time, owned it since launch. Once it clicks, it really fudging clicks. 10/10. Way different from Elden Ring, but honestly I'd say probably just as good.

Started playing Mafia 3 (PS4) and am really enjoying the story. It surprisingly feels a lot like Mafia (empty city, sluggish controls, straight-forward main missions) but everything is much improved. What is absolutely killer though is the soundtrack. Hearing songs by the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival absolutely nails the vibe.

Anxiouz wrote:

The soundtrack and the story/world in Mafia 3 are awesome. I didn’t care much for the open world or mission design, though. Felt like a paint-by-numbers open world game for the most part. I played it at launch and it was also buggy as hell. But glad you’re enjoying it!

Anxiouz wrote:
I'll have to give the soundtrack a listen. I need some new tunes.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Yeah, it's a weird step back IMO following Yoshi's Island which was awesome.

Kommie wrote:

This game is pretty funny.

Archer wrote:

...

So Dead Island 2 finally came out and I'm having a freaking blast with it. There is some lag though but they're patching stuff to fix it. It's still a ton of fun though and the characters are great!

sinnie wrote:

It's really good. The quality of life improvements are incredible. I love the original and Riptide, but they definitely show their age nowadays. DI2 is just a pleasure to play, well worth it!

Chicory: A Colorful Tale {} 6/10

I played this in co-op with a friend (remotely via SharePlay because the co-op is local only) and honestly if we weren't playing it co-op and I was just playing it single player, I probably would have bailed on this after the first hour or two. At times it just wasn't holding my attention much.

We finished the game last night, but since we were only able to play it once a week, I feel like I've forgotten half of the story already because I'm playing other games to fill in the gaps during the rest of the week. I will say though, if you're a parent and looking through the eShop, PlayStation Store, Steam etc., looking for a co-op game to play with your kid and you come across this game because it has cartoony graphics and looks like a kid's game, there are times where the story goes kind of "dark" and before a cutscene it will warn you when a character is going to "self-hate" or touch on sensitive snowflake topics like mental health, or say angry things to your character and they will give you the option to skip the cutscenes but overall I didn't find them to be too bad.

I feel it's important to note that the co-op mode is just "girlfriend mode", like Super Mario Galaxy where the second player doesn't actually have their own character to play as, they just use a paint brush to help the main character and paint in the environments. For the most part they're really not doing much and they're just riding your coattails, but you let them think they're being a great help and you couldn't do it without them. They can really come in handy during boss fights though, because multitasking by controlling your character with the left analog stick and your paint brush with the right analog stick simultaneously can be overwhelming sometimes, but it's fine during the rest of the game because there are so few enemies you need to worry about.

Star Wars: Republic Commando {} 6/10
I had wanted to play this back in the day on the original Xbox but I never got around to it, it just wasn't a priority. As one of Nintendo's recent free trials I figured I'll finally check it out and, well, it feels very much like a 2005 first-person shooter alright. I don't mean that in a bad way, but it does feel a little rough around the edges.

For the most part this is basically a straight up port of the original Xbox game, but stripped of the multiplayer modes (both online and split-screen options are absent in this version), making it single player only now. It wasn't given the full remaster (or better yet, remake) treatment it could've used to better compete with more modern shooters of today. I don't know that anything was added to this to make it better besides a minor touch up to the graphics, but I'm disappointed at the lack of gyro controls. Without gyro aiming, I feel like Joy-Cons are among the worst controllers for this genre of game. I think we are (thankfully) at the point where most devs putting their first-person shooters on Switch know that Nintendo fans like our gyro aiming, so I think more fps games support it than not and so I always get disappointed when a developer puts their game on Switch and didn't include the option, but at least that is one way to know which developers listen to the players and which ones don't. Anyway, beyond that, the game's performance is a bit lackluster. There are plenty of times when playing that I notice the frame-rate dropping. I know Switch is outdated, but it shouldn't be struggling to run a game from 2005 unless the developers are just lazy.

So far from what I've played (around 3 or 4 hours), it's not that difficult of a game. You have CPU teammates you can boss around and tell them where to go, clear out a room or whatever (it's not as deep as Rainbow 6, think more along the lines of "baby's first tactical shooter"). You don't really have to worry about them dying because they just fall down until you revive them (and health refill stations are pretty common to find). The player also can be revived by them, so the only way to actually see a Game Over screen is if the whole team gets wiped out at once, which I have yet to see happen.

I kind of regret that I will not be able to finish this before the remainder of the free trial period is over, because I am enjoying it, but not quite enough that I want to buy it due to how poorly optimized it is on Switch and as I said it is missing the multiplayer mode from the original release, so once I've beaten this there is little chance I'd return to play it again. For what it's worth, after watching some comparison videos on YouTube, the PS4 version is also missing the multiplayer mode but at least it runs at a consistent 60fps (unfortunately I don't think I want to buy it on PS4 either because I'd have to start over completely).

@PizzaTheHutt I beat SW:RC co-op back on the with my then college roommate and recently beat it again on the - which is really just the same game tweaked some to run via Xbox's back compat program. Nostalgia surely played a little role for me, but yes it's an old game that's mediocre now and wasn't amazing back then either.
The difficulty did ramp up in 2 noteworthy places, the 1 being right near the end, so missing out might not be so bad for you. Knowing it is 18 years old, it wasn't horrible, but your 6/10 score unlikely would've gone up, IMO, had you played it on a different system.

Does Cyberpunk ever pick up and get good? I've waited forever to start it but figured since there hasn't been a patch in a while it might be nearly finalized. I've been playing about 2 hours and so far it's just OK. I want to give it a fair chance but it's definitely not catching my interest to this point.

sa330206 wrote:

No it doesn't. It stays the same mediocre level through the entire game.

Cyberpunk was such a disappointment to me when I played it at launch. Technical issues aside it was just blah and Keanu got annoying towards the end. I heard the new patches made it better but I expected more from the story and gameplay. Especially after all the hype it received initially.

That sucks about Cyberpunk. I'm still early on but a few annoying things..

The world is huge and looks like it has potential but just seems boring to me. I dont know why but it's not pulled me in at all.
The car driving is straight up terrible.
I found it hard to shake a wanted level of even 1 star. I didn't get killed or anything but it was just annoying. This might be a user error.

I think I'll give it a few more hours and if it doesn't grow on me, I'm pulling the plug. I'd rather go back and replay a game I've already beat like the Witcher 3 than painfully play Cyberpunk.

Did you play the Witcher 3 DLC? Blood and Wine was fantastic.

sa330206 wrote:

I actually thought the couple of hours I played were fun. I just have a hard time getting back to it with all the great games I have in queue. Ive been trying to avoid open world games lately and I usually dont enjoy FPS games. This game has both.

I love the Witcher 3 and I downloaded the PS5 version and started playing the 1rst DLC. Love it. I wish I had more time to get into it.

I'm in middle of Mario Tennis Open

It's been awhile since I've played a Mario sports game, and I have very little experience with tennis (I think I've only gone to play actual real tennis only once) so I decided to try this one out.

I'm impressed by the precision of the racket. You can easily hit the ball. I thought it'd be easier to miss it. You still can miss, but it feels on target. Feels well put together.

It's cool how the characters each have custom rackets. Adds a cool touch.

I tried several characters so far: Bowser, Boo, and Donkey Kong. And now that I think about it, how is Boo actually holding the racket? Does he envelop the racket handle with his paw-like hand?

There's a feature where if you're in a specific spot that's highlighted in the ground as the ball comes to you, you can hit the ball back with an extra effect. I keep missing those. Was only able to activate flower power, which sent the ball back on fire at a super speed.

There's also minigames. There's one that I tried earlier, where you hit a tennis ball against the wall, the picture on the wall being a moving from left to right super Mario Bros stage. As you hit the ball, you scroll towards the end of the stage on the screen. But what I don't understand is that there's a timer, just like in the Mario games. I got timed out. How do I get to the end of the stage? You can't hit the ball faster. Didn't seem intuitive to me.

Minigames aside, you can also pick up your DS and move it around to move the character as you're on the court, something like that. Motion controls in a way. But I didn't try swinging the actual DS. That's an accident waiting to happen. So I'm figuring you can't actually swing your DS to swing the racket. It's not like a wiimote where there's a strap. I doubt Nintendo implemented a tennis racket DS feature. They probably foresaw thrown DS consoles to be a potential problem.

Life is Strange 2 {} 8/10
This started off with a bang, unlike the previous Life is Strange game (Before the Storm), whose story didn't start to get good until about halfway through the game.

I've only got two Chapters left to play through. I don't know that this story will end up having quite the same impact that the first game did, but the writing is good, the voice acting is good, and as usual with this series, the soundtrack is pretty good too (kudos to whoever is in charge of deciding what songs get used and where, because the song at the end of Chapter 3 fit very well).

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Dotboy {} 4/10
Known as Pixboy in the US eShop, I bought this when I had a couple leftover Yen in my wallet and didn't want it to go to waste, so I bought the first cheap game I saw and, well, that is pretty much the same as letting them go to waste, I guess. I mean, I already had a feeling I wasn't going to like this, but of the games in that price range this one looked to be the least crappy (but not by much).

It's a 2D platformer that looks and feels like it came from the late-80s/early-90s (has color filters to make it look like you're playing a GameBoy game) and that's a good thing or a bad thing, depending how you feel about that. For me, I grew up playing 80s and 90s games and am so glad games have only gotten better since then. I often don't enjoy revisiting those games and usually don't enjoy when new games try to imitate those games. I've died more times than I should have in this game due to either the jump button not registering when I've pressed it, or the wonky hit boxes on spikes for example. It looks like there are 40 levels in this game, but I'm getting ready to tap out after only 10.

Bayonetta 3 - 7/10

I played all 3 Bayonetta games this year. While each one incrementally improved over the previous one, I found them somewhat repetitive. Not sure if my tastes how just outgrown button mashing action games (I feel the same way about DmC: Devil May Cry which I'm also currently playing). The game does feel good, and the presentation is over the top, but the levels seemed like an afterthought and a big tunnel to get you from point A to point B. The various change in gameplay was refreshing though and interesting.

Really enjoyed playing as Viola though.

Sun wrote:

I feel the same way when I play these type of games. I only do 1 or 2 missions per play session because I get tired of the formula quickly. I still buy and play them though.

Sun wrote:
How'd you enjoy the first one, being that it was the first in the series and fresh.

Omori

One of the things I really appreciate about this game has nothing to do with the game itself. You know how sometimes when you load up certain games, it takes a long time to start, as you have to see each dev/studio name? And you can't always rush past that. But here you can just press A and skip through them. It's great. Extra point(s) for that.

RE4R is a damn fine remake. 9/10 so far and I’m halfway thru

nonamesleft wrote:

It was okay. Maybe because I played a port of it 13 years after it came out? I own a copy on PS3 and I own the double-pack on Wii U but never played them. First one looked rough on the Switch.

Sun wrote:
I haven't played any of them. I'm intrigued by the upcoming one that's in the works. I think it's about the main character growing up? Something like that.

nonamesleft wrote:

The prequel is already out...Cereza and the Lost Demon, but the gameplay is different.

As my 50th game clear this year, I beat Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure .
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://i.imgur.com/5Q82FOR.jpg[/imgt]

It's a great rhythm game by SEGA. The stylish Parisian art thief Phantom R and his dog Fondue must solve an growing mystery surrounding his father's disappearance, a possibly-resurrected Napoleon Bonaparte with an evil army, a mysterious symbol appearing on various magical treasures, and more, all while dodging the authorities and supporting a new friend. The story and characters are fairly memorable, even if some moments are a little stupid or pointless in the long run. As for gameplay, you spend a lot of time in visual novel-mode, tapping the Touch Screen to find collectibles, recording sound effects for use around the overworld, and solving minor sound-themed puzzles. When you're not doing that, you get to play rhythm minigames that usually advance the story. They use various inputs, like button controls, swiping with the stylus, and even gyro controls. The tunes are catchy, but I'll have to listen to them again to really memorize them. It's satisfying knocking out Napoleon's knights with single palm strikes, quickly sneaking around museums at night, and kicking a soccer ball to pummel a bratty child detective.

All that stuff is good, and the game is really cool because of it. But I do have some critiques. A fair number of the minigames are just annoying. The difficulty curve is pretty forgiving until about Chapter 7, when this go off the rails. Before you know it, the game expects you to divide your attention between two sides of the screen with little time to breathe or quickly flip between six different inputs. (The poodle minigames especially are abysmal.) You can spend coins to use items to enhance your performance, which I strongly encourage in the later chapters. The most obnoxious part is the grading system. You hit the right notes to fill the groove bar from E to A, and any mistake drops it down at least one grade. So you can still get an A if all your mistakes happen early on, but a late mistake is basically a guaranteed B. I can handle that, but the real kicker is the high score system. You can earn an A and still have a low score, but you can also get a D or C and have a high score, depending on when you messed up. The game prioritizes your score over your grade, so a worse letter grade can overwrite your better one. Did I mention some level content is locked behind getting all As? So if you're not careful, you can play yourself into a corner, getting an extremely high score but making just one or two mistakes at the end to net yourself a B. Now you have to outperform your amazing score to replace it. I had to reset the game without saving in order to feasibly get an A on a few difficult minigames, which isn't how this system should work. Your score and overall grade should be saved separately so average players can prioritize getting As to unlock that final bonus chapter, while dedicated players can keep trying to top their scores without fear that the bonus chapter unlock could be affected.

Tapping everything on the screen to find important--and missable--trinkets is a tad irritating when you just want to get a move on. The art style is one part nice and another part cheap. It looks like a lower-budget Prof. Layton game, which is nice until you see Marie's character portrait, as it in particular looks amateurish. The voice acting is adequate but can be flat at times, and there are countless moments where the actor says something completely different from the subtitle--as an example, every time Napoleon says "hare" in the subtitles, his VA says "rabbit," perhaps because they didn't think Americans knew what hares were. Sometimes entire sentences will be changed, shortened, or restructured, which is distracting and just looks sloppy.

Overall, I give it an 8/10. Not amazing, but compelling and stylish enough to play all 18 hours of it and nab every A rank. I recommend buying it on the 3DS eShop while it's still $20, because if you don't, tracking down a rare cartridge will run you a fortune! ...Huh? The eShop's closed? Good luck, then!

Sun wrote:
Wait, what? It is? Had no idea. I thought it was in the works. Will look into it.

@SupremeSarna

A pic of the console's screen. :) Nice. It looks kind of Professor Laytonish. I wonder if similar artists were involved.

That ending that you wrote about the eShop, for a second I was wondering if Nintendo had extended it and kept it open, until I kept reading... 😅

I was disappointed SEGA didn't do an eShop closing sale. They like putting their games on sale. Luckily, I bought 'Rhythm Thief' during the last SEGA 3DS sale when it was $7. I haven't played it yet.