VideoGame_Discussion

I beat Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin earlier this week.

Have nearly 100%ed the main game - just missing one item drop (from the Iron Golem who only appears in the Nest of Evil section, which makes grinding for it even more obnoxious than the Dodo since you cant just go off screen and back, but you have to redo the whole section again).

It's still the best Metroidvania style game in the series by far, which makes it almost as good as Castlevania on the NES

@GOW Ragnarok: Wow. I expected around 25-30 hrs. Thats a lot of value for a single player game thats not a sandbox. Im at around 23 hours at the moment and Im loving it. There are enough sidequests but they dont feel annoying or boring so far. I actually love doing them as you dont have to go out of your way much to do them.

Yeah it’s really fun and fleshed out side quests so I do not mind them at all. I just wish my backlog wasn’t tremendous atm cause I’m probably gonna finish the post game stuff in Ragnarok which will probably take several more hours.

One of the Warriors kicked my ass like 5 times today. The one thats called The Feared. That was a tough fight

The Feared I had to circle back to until I got to level 7. He was the toughest so far. I have 1 more berserker fight left too I believe.

The one that does the high jump tracking AoE attack was cheesy. At least that’s the only one I remember spending lots of time with- the lock on made it awkward. Of course the last two optional fights were terrible.

kevolones wrote:

That thing was a nice surprise. I used it more than my others.

Pretty neat tie-in to the original mythology, too. Very clever idea to weaponize it.

My thoughts exactly. Soooo much better and useful than it was in the original games.

Super Mario World on Switch for da Game Club.
I wanted this finished weeks ago, but lost interest around halfway through and set it aside.

Beat Chorus. The big issue with the game is the dialogue. The ship combat and whisper skills are strengths. Missles, laser and chain gun are your weapons and your skills can either help you do damage, warp behind enemies or find items nearby. The biggest fault has to be most of the side quests being straight garbage then the dialogue which I heard Midnight Suns also does. Also be prepared to do a ton of timed barrel rolls. I probably did more barrel rolls in the game then use whispers. I also messed up buying this game on PSN when it was free on Gamepass. Live and learn.

Right now play Midnight Suns coming in Monday or Tuesday then Fire Emblem Engage or Dead Space.

Callisto Protocol 7/10- Took me a little over 12 hours, playing on Max Security (hardest setting). Honestly, save for one part a decent ways into the game, this was an overall fairly easy game. The way the core combat mechanics of the melee works, you just hold a direction and dodge or block, then strike back with counter/melee combos. You eventually get guns and they work about like you think, so nothing too out of the ordinary there. Had some choppiness in random sections, but runs pretty decently now with a couple of patches under its belt at mostly highest settings at 1440p - ray tracing definitely had to be turned off, but the game is gorgeous for the most part even without it, so not worth the performance hit in my opinion. Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was but Dead Space is still king of this hill. If you need something to play, pick it up in a few months when it goes on sale and maybe by then some story DLC will be out as well since the ending is a dangling carrot.

Happy Game on

This game was...something else. Nuthin' happy about it (in a good way, at least to me).

Mario and Rabbids Spark of Hope -

pretty disappointing. Way too reliant on RNG. Every enemy has some status abnormality to inflict. Enemies always respawning during battle. The first one had way more strategy to it, IIRC. Won't bother with DLC or the next game.

That’s unfortunate. I really enjoyed Kingdom Battle too. It sounds like it makes battle quite hectic and less strategic too with respawning enemies. Meh

Marvel Midnight Suns is terrible to me. Collectible fest in the abbey. RNG based card system with rerolls is fine but could be better. Honestly the multiple currency system reminds me of a F2P game and the daily training aspect to. I am truly wondering if this was meant to be a F2P game but they shifted gears. The tactics used aren't great either. Maybe if I increased the difficulty it would be better but the game boils down to attack, heal with hunter and survive. The story is fine but the dialogue is terrible. The maps are small and the combat system isn't great. Reinforcements constantly come in. I found the social network to be mostly useless and pointless to read. Circle to skip chat boxes.

I feel the biggest strength are the characters each having unique cards making them feel unique.

The weaknesses were the gameplay. I think making it more like X-Com in combat and decreasing the complexity and downright removing the abbey exploration would make it more streamlined and enjoyable. Movement only real helps you position for knockback and other cards as agro is usually fixed unless your cards change that.

My backlog is empty going to wait for Fire Emblem Engage then Dead Space or skip Fire Emblem.

Q1 is looking okay. I know I will love Dead Space, Kirby play it on Wii but will replay it since I loved it and Resident Evil 4.

Going to also possibly get the below games Q1.
Fire Emblem Engage
Risen
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake
Hogwarts Legacy
Wanted: Dead
Wild Hearts
Atomic Heart
Scars Above
Octopath Traveler II
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle

Last night I finished my run of hard mode level 1 cap on Portrait of Ruin.

Not that much different from Normal mode, though Charlotte is pretty much relegated to background use due to how much damage she takes. Jonathan can use the Ultimate Armor which makes any hit do only 10% of your max health. Because each hit only took off a fixed percent, I also avoided the Max HP Up powerups so that healing items (which restore a set amount, not a percentage) would be more effective.

I did really like the subtle changes to some of the enemies, though most of them are identical.

Bugsnax 3/10
Pretty awful, beat b/c it was on GP. Surely not aimed at a gamer in his 40s, but then again I'm not sure who this really should be aimed at.

Slickriven wrote:

I cannot fathom this slander.

Bunger!

Slickriven wrote:

I just tried playing this the other day. The total opposite of my kind of game.

Kommie wrote:

Bunger was about the only solid thing in the whole game!?!?

Just finished The Quarry on Friday the 13th. Pretty fun timing on a pretty fun game. The characters start off pretty unlikable but they really grow on you as the game goes on. Lots of nice quality of life features including auto-win QTEs. Only one of my characters died along the way, which was a lot better than my run of Until Dawn. On a technical side the game is a little janky. Facial animation looks unnatural, water just looks weird, subtitles kicked in for exactly one spoken line, and I got stuck in a walk animation. Walking is super slow, even with the speed up button pressed (L1 of all things). I know the game is designed to be replayed, but the autosave and inability to back up saves on PS5 makes testing paths unfeasible. Might be worth a replay if I ever dive into the PC version.

I finished Stray on PS5 this morning. Now started a new game just to get the one trophy for letting the cat sleep for 60 real time minutes.

The game did get slightly better the more you play, but overall I'm glad I didn't buy this (I likely wouldn't have felt like I got $30-$40 worth of enjoyment from it) and so after one week PlayStation+ Premium has already saved me some money.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

This is currently on Game Pass, and as a game I was interested in because of LEGO and good reviews, Game Pass is a good way to play it. I really like the change to a more traditional third-person perspective. It definitely makes the world feel more alive. Some lamented the lack of puzzles, and while that's true, there's a lot more simple environmental puzzles for Kyber bricks. Think of this to LEGO like 'Breath of the Wild' was to 'Zelda' with their shrines. Smaller, but way more. The Kyber bricks stand in for the red bricks of the previous games. There's 1200 of them, and they are used to level up core attributes and specific class attributes. It's a good system, and easy for kids to understand I imagine. Additional keys can be found which are used to activate special conditions like stud multipliers. These keys aren't specific to a condition, so they can be moved around depending on what is wanted/needed.

Game play is much like a third-person game, as mentioned, with light combat and shooting, vehicle sections and small puzzles. The presentation is outstanding, and while the voice work is great, there's a mumble mode like the first few LEGO games that can be turned on and off. I did come up against some glitches, like whenever camera control is taken away on Hoth, the game doesn't give it back until you maneuver your character around a lot. Speaking of, there are a lot of characters as expected (and DLC characters, of course). Unlike previous games, switching between characters is much more intuitive. "L" and "R" are used to switch among the party, the D-Pad for selecting other classes and characters from a small group in the upper left of the HUD, and all characters are in the menu.

This is a lengthy game too, and I only got about 500 Kyber bricks by the time I finished it. Yes, they skip over a few key moments from all three trilogies, but those moments were covered in past games, and others wouldn't be that fun to play. The game is easy, though, like, super easy, and I couldn't find any difficulty options.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. There's a lot to do and it's just plain fun. When the game goes on a deep enough sale, I'll probably buy it.

Steelrising - 7.5/10

Towards the end the lack of enemy variety was annoying and I kinda bum rushed to beat it. It's certainly an OK souls like Clone of sorts but not that hard. I probably won't bother with the platinum honestly.

Bayonetta 3 -7.5/10

As much as I enjoyed this 3rd installment I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t better than the last game. Although I did rather enjoy the final chapter and that one moment in the final boss fight where something cool happened that recalled the prior 2 games. The Kaiju like fights were neat at first but got repetitious towards the end and I’m not sure if it was just me but the controls felt a little too loosey goosey for my tastes this time around and not as buttoned up as the last 2 games. Some platforming sections got a little annoying when time wasn’t on your side. The music was great as always as was the high octane combat. I liked how you got to control various demons this time around too and incorporated them into the core gameplay mechanic. The story was all over the place and didn’t really hook me in until the very final chapter when I went OHHHHH so that’s what they were trying to convey! But again, who really plays Bayonetta games for its intricately woven story?

Alas it was a long wait and worth it for the most part. I look forward to future entries although I must say I wish they would change up the formula a bit or perhaps release future entries on better hardware like the successor to the Switch since it’s now a Nintendo exclusive. The frame drops in here we’re a bit too frequent for my liking.

I beat Fantasy Life (3DS) and the Origin Island DLC main quest.

The DLC adds a ton of post-game stuff, raises the level cap from 100 to 200, and is basically exactly what you would want out of a DLC pack if you enjoy the game and want more out of it.

Except it's already on the cart and the actual download is just a 2 block unlock thing. Apparently the Japanese version was released initially without DLC on the cart (the dlc was 2000 yen more), then a more expensive reprint came out later called Fantasy Life Link which includes it...

We got the compromise version. Regular price game but DLC locked on the cart. And it's $9 instead of 2000 yen.

With the eshop sunsetting in two months, try the game out and if you like it then get that dlc.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

I agree with much of what you said. As far as story, a story doesn't have to be intricate as long as it's well told, but I don't feel like the story of this series has been well told the whole time. Bummer because there's something there story wise.

benstylus wrote:



I had bought this game back in 2014 specifically to play it online with some of my overseas gaming buddies. Couldn't do that though, because they region-locked the online servers. Even worse was that if you had bought the DLC you could no longer play multiplayer with people that hadn't also bought it. Both of those were two very stupid decisions that I had no idea about until after the game had already been shipped on release day. I ultimately wound up giving the game to one of my nieces without even playing it myself but she ended up enjoying it so I guess it wasn't a total waste of money.

I finished Deliver Us The Moon this morning on PS5. It was...alright, I guess. Maybe a 7 outta 10.
I had read the first sentence of the game's description before deciding to download it and "Sci-fi thriller" was all I needed to see. For the remainder of my PS+ Premium subscription I should base all my download decisions just on the first sentence of a game's description.

It is a fairly short game (5 or 6 hours), no enemies to worry about except during one stealth part, besides that the only risk of dying is during sections where you have limited oxygen. There are puzzles to solve throughout the game and they're pretty simple for the most part, except for one maybe a little over halfway through the game that stumped me and I had to resort to looking for the solution on YouTube (judging by the comments I wasn't alone because they gave no explanation for what you were supposed to do there). The story is not bad, but I admit by the 3/4 mark I stopped caring and just wanted to finish the game.
Not a game that'd be high on my list of recommendations, but I didn't hate it.

The Chant - This was not good. At all.

Omno on
I can't really say I enjoyed this a whole lot, it was pretty bland overall. It reminds me a bit of Journey in that you're just going through these worlds for seemingly no reason. There are puzzles to solve along the way, but with the exception of one puzzle in particular (like the last game I beat, I had to resort to looking up a guide because this puzzle made no sense, and the puzzle is randomized so you still have to figure it out yourself) which nearly drove me to almost quitting the game, the rest are all basic crap you shouldn't have any trouble with. As for why you're doing any of this stuff? I couldn't tell ya. There's a story (barely), but if you even care enough to want to know about it you have to go to the pause menu to read it each time you unlock more of it and I didn't figure that out until I was halfway through the game and by that point I didn't care. The game is like 4 or 5 hours long, I did what was needed to reach the end credits and won't be going back for anything I missed. If you're a platinum trophy chaser I don't think this one would be very difficult to get.

@PizzaTheHutt I beat Omno on last year or maybe in '21 (it was on GP, so I didn't pay for it) and rather enjoyed it. It wasn't going to win any awards, but I clearly liked it more than you did. I think I maybe got the full 1k GS too or nearly all of Achievements.

Wreckfest 7/10
Cars are a bit too floaty at times and AI and just the nature/theme of the game can frustrate with the crashes and missed chances to win races, but overall it was enjoyable. It's been on GP for a long while and the % of folks who beat even 40% of the campaign is pretty low, it's just over 2% for beating the full campaign (all 5 championships) which I did.
I can see some people just enjoying the destruction derby events and/or slamming into other cars as it felt like classic Burnout Crash Mode with certain things, especially the Dorito shaped track.
I tended to focus on winning events, so having a big lead wiped out by being blindsided by a crossing car did become annoying at times.

Beat Fire Emblem Engage hopefully will get my copy of Dead Space and Forspoken soon. The issue with this game is power creep. The old characters after Chapter 10 are completely outclassed. Why they let a lvl 1 healer join in chapter 5 is beyond me. The story is somewhat predictable as I saw the one mysterious person being the linked to the main bad guy. The game is interesting but the chain attack system and everything else ruined it for me. I feel games need fix leveling not random gains. The story is okay but the gameplay is where it truly shines. The new engage system is an interesting addition. I didn't really care for the game support system and will be avoiding Fire Emblem in the future. 7/10 for me.

Evil West 8.5/10
This was the best current gen throwback to the Gears of War coop style games of that era. Graphics aren’t the greatest and framerate can be a bit choppy but other than that it tells a coherent tale has some charm and humor and is action up the butt from start to finish. It’s quite refreshing to play a linear based corridor like 3rd person action shooter with a heavy emphasis on in your face satisfying melee combat that packs a punch. We really need more games like this and Focus seems to know that and keeps delivering the goods to us on more than one occasion. Flying Wild Hog is no stranger to action shooters too I just hope sales on this game warrant more like it cause this was simply awesome.

Is it playable solo? I still want to try that at some point.

Yeah I played it mostly solo.

Kommie wrote:
There is Coop but it is optional from what I remember and unlocks further into the game.

Well done with Forspoken. I was going to beat it but the gameplay just got to me. I remember Infamous and the fun I had with that versus this makes me question it. I even played First Light, Second Son, 1 and 2 and Festival of Blood three times minus Festival of Blood which I beat twice. I feel it needed more polish. I found the dialogue in Chapter 2 to be somewhat questionable as well as the choices. It does get better just not much better but I didn't get past Chapter 4 so keep that in mind.

Getting Dead Space on Monday or Tuesday. Unsure why my copies are shipping on release day instead of earlier. Then my preorder of Hogwarts should arrive.