VideoGame_Discussion

Pinkman+ on
Since I stopped playing Animal Crossing a couple months ago I feel like I've been ignoring my Switch in favor of PS5, so I browsed my game library and there are so many games in there that I don't remember buying, and this was one of them.

What I thought I was getting out of this: one of those types of ridiculously hard 2D platformers like VVVVV with graphics that look like it belongs on Atari. The game's eShop description says "A minimalist platformer with maximum challenge."
What I got out of it: A 2D platformer with graphics that look like it belongs on Atari, with barely any of the challenge I was expecting and hoping for. Within the first 15 minutes I had played through the first 30 levels. I thought to myself "Alright, maybe these are the warmup levels", but the remaining 70 levels weren't too much harder.

I don't think I spent more than two or three minutes on any one level (and a lot were under one minute). This reminded me of when an average-skilled player tries making a level in Super Mario Maker and names it "99% impossible" just because it pushed their abilities to the limit when they had to beat it in order to upload it, when a more skilled player can beat it without breaking a sweat.

Fun fact: One thing that made the game a little too easy is how many checkpoints there are, and apparently they were added just for the console versions. I guess if you want the big boy challenge you have to buy it on Steam. That's ridiculous, just give the option to toggle them off in the console version. Also added for the console version is your character's jetpack that allows him to hover for a short distance, while in the PC version your character would fart to hover.

So what we learned from this is console gamers don't fart. Just those pc loving slobs.

Fire Emblem Engage

I've only dabbled in turn-based strategy RPGs. I played a lot of 'Zone of the Enders: Fist of Mars' on GBA when I was young, got about half-way through 'Front Mission' on SwanCrystal before getting stuck, and messed around in 'Faselei!' on the NGPC a bit. I have 'FE: Echoes' and 'Awakening' on the 3DS, and 'FE Three Houses' on Switch, but have never played them. They always intimidated me. Considering so many were proclaiming 'Engage' to be a good place for beginners to start (and the Devine Edition is really nice!), I thought I'd dip my toes in here.

On the one hand, yes, it's a good place. The different systems get introduced at a good clip, but they only give an explanation for each in 1 to 5 short text boxes. Honestly, I forgot about most of the systems. The Class system was an afterthought to me until about 2/3rds the way through the game. I didn't even look at inherited abilities and much else with the rings until before the final battle. I feel like the "beginner" tag is more from other people than the devs. I think the devs still assume people are familiar with the series at least a little bit. So I spent most of the game working things out myself, lots of trial and error, and it's rough at the beginning. Once I settled on my group, had/matched the Emblems with their best characters, and started to tweak each character, the game became, all the pun intended, more engaging. Battles were more fun, mixing weapons and classes became more fun, and I found myself having...fun. Once I got around the menus system. The menus, are not great. Bonds, etc. are behind the "reference" tab, and doing anything with a character (rings, weapons, items, classes, abilities) is behind the "inventory" tab. For all the systems in place, there isn't one to compare weapons. You can see the stats for each weapon on their own, but knowing which one is better than another isn't very clear. So many games have done this for so long, so it's frustrating.

But the most frustrating thing? The story.

I've complained about Japanese developed narratives before, but holy hell is it bad here. The story is nothing but sub-standard anime tropes and mundane, cliché stories. The writing is even worse. Just some of the worse writing I've seen. The voice actors try so hard, but they have nothing good to work with. Honestly, I almost put the game down because of it. Instead, I started skipping cutscenes. Even as I type this the ending cutscenes are playing, and I know they're inconsequential. I also skipped the conversations between characters outside of battle. They really don't say or add anything and became a waste of time. In fact, I'd forget about most characters until I was running around the post-battle areas (which are also not very useful outside of some resources).

FE veterans have complained about the step-back in 'Engage' both with the story and characters, and even having not played an FE game before, I totally get it. There's not much of real substance with the characters. On their own, they're simple anime stereotypes, and together they have nothing interesting to say to each other. There's talk of bonds all over the game, but those amount to nothing more than stats to increase. And I think the game knows it, because the screen constantly dims during longer cutscenes, docked and undocked. The presentation as a whole isn't anything special either. The playfields have simple geometry and texturing. It looks like a Wii game in a bad way. The rest of the art design is anime standard again. Fine, I suppose, but nothing is really sticking to me. The fully animated cutscenes, though, are really nice, and there's some good music in here. Even if the main theme is too close to the main 'Westworld' theme.

'Engage' can be a good game for beginners both of the 'Fire Emblem' series and turn-based strategy RPGs in general, I can see that. But in my opinion, skip the story, mess with combat related systems early on your own, and enjoy the otherwise deep strategy gameplay. I'll check out the other games at some point, but not any time soon.

Beat CHOO CHOO CHARLES. It is a horror game where you are chased by a spider that uses a train as body armor. I think the game took me two or three hours. It has an interesting narrative but wasn't worth the price. I tried Wild Hearts but found Monster Hunter to be a way better experience. I just dislike open world games to much. Atomic Heart got better but wasn't for me plus Russian elements didn't help. Hopefully the upcoming Kirby and Scar's Above prove to be more enjoyable to me. Bayonetta and Resident Evil 4 is coming out in March hopefully they prove to be superior.

8 Doors Arum’s Afterlife Adventure 6/10

This one's heavily influenced by Hollow Knight, though not nearly as long nor rich with lore and atmosphere. It was rather challenging at times and required some very strong precision and quick timing with some of the platforming. Lots of bosses/mini-bosses to fight but a limited color pallet of white, grey, black and red only. Not the worst Metroidvania I've ever played but not one I'd strongly recommend either. If you like the genre and are good at platforming and dodge-rolling to avoid boss fight damage, it was a 12+ hour run for me. The controls could've been better and the key-binding was a mess with the UI seemingly mislabeling the buttons in the assignment page to the X1 controller in my hands. Got this for free on Amazon (Twitch) Games when it was available a few months back.

Dead Space Remake - 9/10 still great.

Beat Kirby Return To Dreamland Deluxe, It is a short but enjoyable game. There are 120 challenges in Magoland the 20 hidden ones are really difficult and I am not doing them all. Ex Mode, True Arena and Mago Mode are increasingly more difficult. If you played it on the Wii it can be worth renting for Mago Mode. The mini games from Magoland not so much. Pretty much played Kirby and took days off work thinking it would last a while. I was wrong.

Waiting for Scars Above and then the long wait for Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon on the 17th. Might try that Poppy Playtime game in the meantime.

My friend and I beat KeyWe last night. It's a really fun co-op game, but occasional glitches made some levels more frustrating than they needed to be. We got gold rank on all but a handful of levels.

100% Kirby Deluxe. You don't need to do the extra 20 challenges thank god. The challenges room need to played to 100% story mode though which is easy. Onto Scars Above shipped today so I will get it Wednesday-Friday hopefully. After that March 17th for Bayonetta. Hopefully System Shock releases early March and isn't delayed again. Kickstarter really did a number on me.

After 30+ hours, finally finished Cathedral on . Hard game. Died 217 times. Finished with 96% item completion. I missed 13 out of 100 books which unlocks the last bottle.

Game scales terribly in terms of enemy damage you take. Bosses are also sponges.

Beat Circle of the Moon in 12h 40min on the DS lite given as a freebie from @bill

It’s a great game but was really a dog towards the end and I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to beat the battle arena but could only make it to room 15/17. I don’t have the rare drop armor items ideally needed to put me over the top and not willing to grind for them.

I did get all of the DSS cards except the ones that are rare drops in the battle arena.

Great game, but glad it’s over. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl again in a few years lol.

Anyone else beat it?

Next Up: Rebelstar: Tactical Command from the maker of X-com

I'm glad you're enjoying the DS. That thing had been sitting in my closet for a very long time.

Snappy wrote:

I beat the entire series Circle to Order on the DS. I don't mind the grind as I like feeling more powerful in those types of games. I even 100% the glossary for items and drops. Just equip the high luck items to boost drop rates.

Scars Above isn't to bad so far.

I recently got the platinum for the Castlevania advanced collection. I enjoyed most of them- I think CoM was my fave because of the old school feel.

Feeb wrote:

Nice! I think if I had played on a TV and with a controller it would have been an even better experience -- pulling off tight maneuvers/attacks in the more challenging areas can get pretty darn taxing on the hands and eyes on a handheld. (stating the obvious)

I played it on ps5. Definitely more enjoyable that way imo.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
9.5/10
I really enjoyed this title once I learned the combat better and settled in. It looked and ran great on my system and actually in performance mode its locked 60 helped me with the combat and I only noticed a few graphical things here and there. After Titanfall 1, 2 and this, Respawn has some top notch games under them, looking forward to Jedi: Survivor.
Only real cons for me were:
- The sliding sections got annoying and were a touch over used
- Why aren't there fast travel points? 2 planets in particular were pretty big and FT would've been great, they did shortcuts but there was still a lot of ground to cover and at times backtrack over
- Cal ran like a donkey - his animation when running just looked goofy, also Cere's model was a little odd looking

Fallen order map, level design and backtracking made me dock it to around a 7.5 or so. It’s great when it’s lightsaber battles and discovery but becomes very tedious with retreads and some pretty bad level design at points. That 3D map was usually a nightmare to use for navigation. I may have burned myself out on it though having platinum on ps4 and 5 mostly full / no auto pops.

I've never seen a good 3D map.

Worst map ever. I beat the game but still haven’t gotten the platinum, because I got lost finding a collectible and eventually just gave up.

Feeb wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

There are a few in the bottom of dathomir that are ridiculous to get to and then to find.

Yeah the map was not great, reminded me of Metroid Prime's but it was harder to move your camera around it and the decision to not fully hide the in-game background was dumb.

So far I'm at 100% on Ilum, Boganno and the Wookie planet. I only have a small section in Dathomere, at the bottom swamp, to find something and then a few things in Zeffo. Zeffo stinks b/c I missed things in both tombs and getting back into them is annoying and hard as heck to find via the map. I've also used guides at times to find things vs beating my head off of a wall. If I didn't enjoy the overall game this much I would've just walked away, but spending an hour or 2 to get the handful of remaining things seemed alright, plus I've cheated already if you will with looking things up.

Sun wrote:

There's a bundle on Fanatical right now with this. Did you like it? Can't really tell...

Kommie wrote:

I did enjoy it. It provided that old-school Metroidvania feel which is a genre I really enjoy (I think it caters to my OCD tendencies). While I don't need to 100% every game, I came close on this one, but they only tell you which general area the missing books are in and not the exact room. For $7.99, 30 hours was a steal. I did have use some YouTube videos to beat some of the bosses, but even then it's still an accomplishment given the difficulty.

If you do get the game, I'll give you a tip right now. Make sure you buy each armor upgrade at each of the towns. I did not do that and it made the game harder.

Sun wrote:

I'll probably grab it, there's a bundle of 3 games for $9.99 and it's one of them

Scars Above is short but enjoyable not worth $39.99 since it has no replay value but an easy platinum and a short playthrough 7-8 hours long. I found the repeating boss battles and lack of enemy variety to the biggest issue. I found the commentary on the world to be enjoyable but the story is messy to say the least. It has decent elemental weapons but is mostly a generic FPS with some gimmicks included. I highly recommended just renting the game at most. Now the long wait till March 17th for Bayonetta which I might hate.

Crysis 3 remastered
Not a bad remaster visually. Probably the best looking in the remastered trilogy IMO. The gameplay though screams Call of Duty for the most part. This came out around 2013 when COD was still the hot ticket so I guess that’s why they wanted to cut/paste the formula here with trying to retain the Crysis motif of having an alien power suit and being able to use its various functions like armor and stealth while blowing the crap out of stuff tenfold. I still enjoyed it thoug for what it was. A short and sweet high octane FPS with some cool suit features and upgrades. -7/10

Like a Dragon: Ishin!

Going from a game like 'Fire Emblem Engage' to 'Ishin!' really highlights the difference in narrative quality. Where 'Engage' was rote, cliché and downright bad, 'Ishin' is nuanced with questions about opening up 1800s Japan to the world, colonization and country loyalty while sprinkling in just enough personal conflict to invest in the characters. It's still a bit melodramatic, as this series tends to be, but I was "engaged" the whole time.

The game itself feels both new and familiar. The fighting styles help it stand apart from past games (oh the swords!), but the sub-stories are notably tamer here. I finished the game with almost 14% overall completion with not even 50% sub-story completion. There's still a bit of clunkiness and graphical holdover from the original PS3 release, and I made my opinion clear on the switch to Unreal Engine in the other thread, but all-in-all this is a great update to a great game. This only leaves me with 'Yakuza 6' to play/beat before the next entry.


Kirby's Epic Yarn

I haven't not played this game in years, but for some reason had a real desire to. I didn't own it anymore, and went back and forth on getting the 3DS or Wii version, but opted for the latter to see the excellent aesthetic graphics on the big screen. Yes, it's easy, and yes, it's short (I finished it with 88% completion before the final two levels unlock from beating the game), but it's just so cozy. Credit has to be given to the music for this. It's lively yet calm, and tucks the player in. My only real gripe is the forced use of the Wiimote only. Yes, it's needed for the occasional train section (not my favorite), but the Wiimote can make diagonals tougher than they need to be, especially when trying to swing around the levels or throw something at an enemy. Otherwise, what a little joy.

DCGX wrote:

Glad someone else feels the way I did about Engage. The story is awful and a huge step down from Three Houses. It's like a bad anime with terrible pacing, a boring story and completely forgettable characters. I only beat it about a month ago and I don't remember a single thing about it. How it managed to crack 80 on Metacritic is beyond me because even the gameplay isn't that great. Map design falls off a cliff later in the game and the novelty of the engage system lost its appeal for me pretty early on.

Sorry for the random rant lol. Glad you enjoyed Ishin, though! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on 6.

Heavyd814life wrote:

I get 'Engage' to a certain extent, because when you're strategy is clicking and you're taking out enemies in one hit, it's very satisfying. Even then, though, outside of a couple interesting maps later on, the game relies too much on reinforcements for added challenge. Otherwise, yeah it's a pretty dull game. Not bad, but not that great. It's the story that drags everything down. From what I read, the Emblems/Rings were a way to celebrate the franchise, but really it's not much more than equipment in game. I think people just get excited for anything 'Fire Emblem,' but they release regularly outside of Japan now that that isn't enough.

Will do! I don't know when I'll get to 'Yakuza 6.' Probably later this summer.

Hogwarts Legacy - 8.5/10

Just finished this and it was a blast! I've heard a few complaints about performance, but it's very solid on the PS5. Played it on Hard in performance mode and it was smooth for the most part. A few hiccups here and there and I had the game crash on me 2-3 times, but nothing major. It took me about 55 hours to complete (did a huge chunk of the side content). I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and this game is a dream come true in many ways, but I think my connection to the world (top tier world building here, btw) made it easy for me to overlook its flaws.

So the game suffers from the same issue many open-world games do in that it becomes pretty repetitive. Exploration in the last third of the game felt like a bit of a chore and once I hit the 45-hour mark, I started focusing on the side quests and main story to wrap things up. The loot system is...straight trash. No other way to put it. It's really bad. And it's such a shame too because you've got caves and hidden areas to explore around the world, but the only thing you'll find is equipment that's always worse than what you already have. It got to a point where I just ignored these areas completely. Lockpicking is another thing that's pretty poorly thought out. No one wants to sit there and go through a lockpicking minigame 100 times. It should have just been automatic once you learn the lockpicking spell.

Now the good. As I mentioned earlier, the world-building here is truly fantastic! Traversal is kick ass and combat on Hard is a very nice challenge. Things get a bit too chaotic when you are facing 10+ enemies at once, but it's still a ton of fun putting spells together to take down foes. You can get into a flow in combat and it's an awesome feeling! Also, seeing the Room of Requirement brought to life is pretty damn awesome! It's basically a little base of operations where you can brew your own potions, upgrade equipment, grow herbs and plants, and manage a pet sanctuary for any animals you find/rescue as you travel the world. It's all completely optional, but it's a wonderful addition. The story isn't mindblowing, but it's very solid and the voice work, especially for the female MC, is fantastic! The characters are great, the customization options are on point, and flying around on a broom and chaining spells in combat all feel really good. Props to the devs for nailing those aspects of the experience. I can't say enough good things about this game. It's far from perfect, but it's an absolute must-play for fans of the franchise. I've got a whole laundry list of things I'd like to see in a sequel so here's hoping we get one soon.

Nice review. I'm still playing it, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I know this doesn't help you at this point, but, in case anyone else ends up reading this and plays the game too: you actually can automatically skip the lockpicking minigames. When the minigame comes up, it tells you at the bottom of the screen that you can press square to auto-solve.

Heavyd814life wrote:

@Bleed_DukeBlue What difficulty are you playing it on? I didn’t see an option to auto solve and googling it now, it seems it’s only an option if you play on Story difficulty?

That makes sense. I'm playing it on Story. Sorry. I didn't realize it was specific to that difficulty level.
On really long games in which I'm mostly interested in the story and the atmosphere, I usually drop the difficulty so they don't take even longer.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Prodeus via Game Pass

It wasn't my intention to find the exact opposite of 'Kirby's Epic Yarn,' but I think I found it. An homage almost to a fault to the earliest 'Doom' and 'Quake' games, if this had come out after either of those series' second entries, it'd be totally understandable to assume 'Prodeus' was officially part of either. Which is to say, this is straight up an action shooter set in a hellish environment. What it goes for it nails, but that also means it could use better enemy variety and variety in the environments. Everything is gray and brown when not drenched in blood. The game tries to mix things up in the latter, albeit short, half, but it's not enough. Hellscapes and demonic imagery isn't really my thing, so I was getting tired of it.

Same with the arsenal. There are six categories of weapons, each with three options, and each of those three options in the category share the same ammo pool. Though I never really found myself without ammo, and in the late stages there are floor panels that regenerate your ammo automatically. There isn't any surprises here, though you're forced to buy a few weapons before the double jump and dash can be purchased. Both of which feel underpowered. Purchases are made with ore, which is found in each stage. The game is designed to be replayed over and over, so it's impossible to get everything in the first run. The overhead map is cool, but slow to navigate.

The game feels like it's unfinished. It more or less ends with a short cutscene and a brief text explanation of the ending. In the campaign menu, it looks like there will be more, but I don't think anything is announced. This is available physically too, so if that's the case, that sucks for collectors. Quick note on the menus, in most cases, scrolling up and down is only handled by the triggers, which doesn't work well. They too also feel like mid-90s 'Doom' and 'Quake,' but that isn't a good thing for navigation.

'Prodeus' is a quick game to finish, but it'll take a long time to fully complete. It's worth a run for fans of 'Doom' and 'Quake,' but with that in mind, it has its foot firmly planted in years past.

I enjoyed Prodeus but agree with most of @DCGX's points. It knows it wants to be an homage to early 90's fast paced shooters and largely pulls that off. Needing better weapons in later stages and thus needing to find the hidden ore to purchase them was pretty annoying. I generally didn't want to have to replay levels to find more. I also didn't like the over-use of 2 colors, early on most enemies shot red projectiles at you while also covering your screen and/or the arena in their same red blood. Later that flipped to blue but both cases made spotting incoming projectiles challenging at times, especially after melee'ng some foes or exploding them near by.

lol Ironic since they introduced blue in the stage environments later on too. Plus,

I just beat Super Mario Bros 3 and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap via NSO this past month. Never played the GBA version of SMB3 until now, and never beat Minish Cap until now despite starting it several times.

Now starting up Octopath Traveler II and Ocarina of Time to finally give it a legit play through.

I am eyeing that Mario & Luigi GBA game on NSO too though. I hear it’s a great game but I’ve never played it. I dig Mario RPG on SNES so I’m sure I’d have a good time with it.

Far Cry 3 Classic Edition.
This was such a fun game, but that last mission was some real bullcrap. Good use of The Flight of the Valkyries, though.

Final fantasy 6 - 8/10 Still good, but definitely some nostalgiatardation going on.

Slain Back from Hell - 7/10 This was $1 recently in a Fanatical bundle with Valfaris. There was definitely some bullcrap checkpoints but the music slaps and Valfars is supposed to be way better. Will probably wait awhile before playing that though.

Kentucky Route Zero ??/10
It's hard to describe KR0 in terms of a game, I suppose it's a great example of games as art as some folks get it, some don't and I suspect more oscillate between the 2 options. Some scenes were beautiful - the bar-concert, visiting the Rum Colony, the effectual ending scene. Then others were boring, pointless or odd like the very long bar/play scene or the final interlude.
Parts made me sad, missing my dad who died ~8 years ago and other parts felt like I was just tapping A to bring up the next dialog, holding B to print it on screen faster, barely reading and repeating those two inputs.
The music and sound were top-notch and I should have used headphones as I'm sure I missed some of it. The sounds when you're 'on' the Zero were really good, plus the afore mentioned bar-concert song.
It's an experience for sure, but is it really a game? I started it b/c of the good 'press' it had, pushed myself to finish b/c it's leaving GP in a few days and enough things about it made me want to complete it, but the 'satisfaction' normally found in completing a game really wasn't there...