VideoGame_Discussion

Sadly, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, for now anyway. I was a couple of hours in, but started feeling overwhelmed. Almost like the game was too big. Almost felt like I was forcing myself to want to enjoy it. Video games shouldn't feel like that. You're supposed to feel unforced fun.

And I very much enjoyed Breath of the Wild, so I was disappointed that I wasn't feeling this one. But I hope to return to it.

Air Conflicts - Secret Wars on PS3. Two missions I've had to restart because of the kinda poopy checkpoint system in the game. For example, in one of the missions I reached a checkpoint with just a sliver of health left, so when I'd die and respawn at the checkpoint I'd still only have a sliver of health left, so any time that kind of situation happened I was better off just restarting the level completely (not that big of a deal since most levels barely last 10 minutes anyway, but in a game like this that is pretty repetitive I don't want to replay stuff doing the same thing again and again more than I already have to). The other level had an objective towards the end that required me to fly a certain distance to reach a marker on the map and I had to do it before the 2 minute timer expired, and despite giving it about a dozen attempts I just couldn't get there fast enough no matter what I did. Maybe if I restarted the level and chose a faster plane I could do it, but I think I'm okay with just moving on from the game. I didn't dislike the game and I'm more than halfway through the campaign, so I kinda don't want to just give up on it, but I recently started Devil May Cry V and I'm enjoying it a lot more, so I want to focus more on that anyway. I think there are a couple of games in the Air Conflicts series in the PS+ Premium classic game catalog, so maybe I will try one of those instead.

Been playing some of the G.G series games for the DS courtesy of the G.G Series Collection + cartridge.

Originally a bunch of $2 DSi download games, this release compiles 30 of them (I think that's all of them) into one, with a few being available at the start, and a points and achievement system to buy more of them.

My two favorites so far are Ninja Karakuri Den (a single screen platform action game where the goal is to destroy all the gears and get to the exit, with a boss stage every few levels) and Wonderland (an Alice in wonderland themed vertical shooter that very heavily leans into Touhou style). Haven't beaten either of them yet but am moving on to try some more of the other games.

For the past few years, I've been pretty good about finishing games that I start. There are a few exceptions.

I bought Astral Chain when someone joked that it was going to be a Retro Talkshop Thread Game of the Month. I thought it was a really cool game and loved its flashy, over-the-top presentation, but I never got the hang of the control scheme, which requires a lot of asymmetric analog stick gymnastics. I would like to revisit it at some point when it can be a primary focus, but it's not on my radar right now.

SaGa Frontier is likely to end up here as well. It's a big nostalgia bomb for me, as it was something I watched my friend play after we finished Final Fantasy VII and needed another JRPG fix, but years later, it's absolutely impenetrable to me. I have a party full of random characters, none of which seem to be particularly helpful unless I burn through all their resources. I'm probably doing something fundamentally wrong, but until I figure out what, I'll probably set this one aside.

"I'm probably doing something fundamentally wrong" should be part of the cover art of the SaGa series.

Orlandu wrote:

Except Unlimited Saga, which should have "We did something fundamentally wrong, no probably about it" on the cover.

Orlandu wrote:

LOLing very, very hard at this right now

I hear that the Remastered release fixes a few of these unintuitive mechanics, but none of the explanations I've heard have convinced me that it'd make much difference.

Renaissance2K wrote:

That was me who nominated Astral Chain for RTT GotM. It actually won (same month it released) but Lunar changed it to something else since nobody was playing it. I ended up beating it later and it was pretty cool.

And I'm in the same boat with Saga Frontier. I bought the remastered version but was getting constantly defeated by the same boring boss. (Finished the sequel on PS1 a long time ago.) I'll probably just try another character next time I play.

I forgot about Astral Chain. I probably put about 12 hours into it before dropping it. The premise was cool, but I didn't like the gameplay at all. It felt like a chore.

Renaissance2K wrote:

@Renaissance2K The only SaGa game I finished was Romancing SaGa 3 back on Super Famicom. I played it in Japanese (a language I very much do not understand) with a guide. I'm not sure it would have been any easier in English. I beat the entire game without ever figuring out how to cast magic. I think you had to put your party in specific positions for it to work. In spite of all that I really enjoyed it. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing that little light bulb appear over one of your character's heads.

I've played most of the SaGa games but only finished Frontier 2 and Final Fantasy Legend 1. I have most of them downloaded to Switch so just have to get back to them eventually.

I got a little frustrated with metroid prime remastered because I found out you NEED the artifacts to beat the game, and I was already a little tired of the mindless wandering. But I took a break for a couple of months and I just beat it. Proud of myself. Lol.

But I can add a couple non completes

Monkey Island 2 special edition
and because of that, sold Return to Monkey Island.

Gave up on Sonic Frontiers Final Horizon. Amy and Knuckles are okay. The start up animation for the glide and the amount of surfaces you can climb is a bit questionable to me but I made it a rule of thumb that red is climbable. Amy on the other hand can get high into the air with her triple jump and float. I question the lack of hammer and inclusion of tarot cards. Tails on the other hand was terrible. Flying wasn't to difficult but combat with him is. He has no homing attack and melee options and goes strictly ranged. It would be fine if it was better but at that point I gave up on it. It wasn't fun climbing and I heard the towers are even worse. Playing the base game was okay but Tails sadly ruined things for me.

Every Bethesda game ever made except Evil Within 1 & 2 which were only published by them. I lose interest in them.

Tales of Arise for me. Started and liked it, but I always feel like I could be playing something better when I’m playing it.

Chex Quest HD.
It's such a short game, and despite the levels not being very long I don't like having to start over if I die because there's no checkpoints. The main reason I don't like starting over is because of how sluggish everything in that game moves. I really hope the next console can run Unreal Engine 5 better than the current Switch can run Unreal Engine 4 because if I know ahead of time that a game runs on that engine I almost always skip buying it on Switch because I know it'll run like ass (and even with how the game runs on Switch, they still charge $5 for this in the eShop while it is completely free on Steam). Also since I've never played the original Chex Quest and have no nostalgia for it, I don't really care about not finishing this.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War. Probably fun with friends. Tedious solo.

I want to unofficially say Omori. I put a nice amount of hours into it, but simply didn't continue. The game is fun enough, has humor, some nice music, and a story. Looks nice too. But I just haven't been gaming much lately.

Why unofficially saying Omori? Because I do want to finish the game sometime. Officially putting it here would be like throwing in the towel. Unofficially still leaves room to continue.

I haven't come back to Yumi's Odd Oddyssey. One stage was super difficult, others are unlocked by finding secret exits that are barely documented online. Though I did get the credits a few times by clearing certain routes, so you could argue that I did beat it...?

I just wasted 17 minutes of my life playing what might rank pretty up there on the list of the worst games I've ever played, and that's saying something coming from someone who has bought plenty of eShop trash on purpose (I've tried to cut down on that these days, but I've owned this game for a few years now). I will never finish it, in fact I've already uninstalled it just before I started typing this post.
It was Ultra Off-Road Simulator 2019: Alaska on
The physics are awkward (my jeep would get stuck in a ditch and there's nothing I could do to get out), the frame-rate drops pretty hard at times and overall it is pretty easy to see why this game sits at a 25 on the critics of Meta. I might have even more complaints had I actually put more time into it. Also I didn't realize it at the time, but in the eShop it appears they are using screenshots of the PC version because in the Switch version the top left of the screen tells you to press the left analog stick for more vehicle options, but in the eShop screenshots it looks like it's telling you to push the T key.

Gave Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon a shot. I’ve never played an Armored Core game. Not my cup of tea. I did enjoy both Zone of the Enders games though.

SupremeSarna wrote:
Hmmm, maybe you did beat it. You might have to post this in the last game you beat thread.

But if you post it there, just change the third to last word from did to didn't :)

Hi-Fi Rush may end up being on this list for me. The premise and story are cool, and the art direction is interesting, but I just don't have fun when I play it. There are so many tedious moments with the controls (particularly in timed instant death sequences where you have to remember the specific inputs to call in someone else to do something for you before you die).

Giving up on Robocop Rogue City. The shooting while fun made me feel way to overpowered which made sense considering the source material. The dialogue was great though some voice acting wasn't the best. Finding side objectives and needing to collect evidence and find secrets for bonus xp was annoying. I just didn't really mesh with the game. I feel if this was a choose your own adventure and combat sections were lessened it might be better. I gave up after finding out leg shots were really the only way to deal with most armored enemies. In the first level for example, enemies with head armor should be dealt with by a shot to the groin which is fairly unique but later enemies like in the prison pretty much required leg shots. I have a feeling it was only going to get worse from there. If you want a game true to the source material and some interesting dialogue options give it a try. Just be warned the combat gets stale quick. Your starting firearm can be upgraded, some items can be picked up and thrown along with enemies, repair kits or OCP energy is frequent, first boss is a damage sponge.

Legend of Nayuta. I just have so many games on my play list I wasn't feeling it immediately.

Body Of Evidence on Switch.
I got this last week in one of those giveaways No Gravity Games does in the eShop as an excuse to give away their bad games leading up to Halloween. I knew to keep my expectations low going into it, so I can't say was too disappointed in it, but I know I won't finish it. The whole game is that you are sent in to crime scene-like scenarios and have to hide the dead body (or bodies) and clean up the mess (blood, broken glass, bullets, etc.) before the cops arrive. This is far from one of No Gravity Games' worst games, but I still wouldn't call it "good", in fact I don't think I've played a single game by them that I would call "good", but I just don't want to play this anymore.

The eShop description says it has lots of "black humor", but I didn't really see much humor at all. They attempted a lame joke with some dude named Tyler that was a nod to Fight Club (never seen the movie but I got the reference). Other than that the controls are kinda crap, it has a very small circle in the center that you have to aim precisely over the object you're trying to interact with, which can be frustrating when they are tiny bullets you're trying to pick up off the floor. Plus the weird physics make disposing of bodies too difficult sometimes, especially since you have a time limit to deal with. I tried to stick with the game but it isn't worth it, I'm 10 levels into it and there are 20 more, I don't want to spend more time on it.

Pandemic Shooter on Switch.
Another "winner" by No Gravity Games. It's a first-person shooter where it's you against a buttload of zombies. The story starts out kinda funny, it's a group of lizard aliens that have landed on Earth and released a virus that turns people into mind-controlled zombies. Why they chose humans is because humans are dumb and will believe anything they read on the internet, like the Earth being flat, which is the premise of the first level. What the other levels are about, I couldn't tell ya because after two 20 minute sessions with the game where I failed to beat the boss at the end of the first level, I've decided I don't want to play anymore. But they take jabs at anti-maskers, and people who believe the moon landing was faked, things like that.
The controls need some touching up, I've tried adjusting the sensitivity but I couldn't get it to feel "right", and there's no gyro aiming which at this point should be a requirement for any shooter on Switch. The graphics are cel-shaded, which I usually like, but the environments and enemies look less detailed than how I remember even the PS3 version of Borderlands looking, so it's kind of a waste here.

Inner Voices on Nintendo Switch.
Okay, one last game brought from those fudgetards wonderful people at No Gravity Games. I saved this for last because as a first-person horror/puzzle game, I thought this game had the highest chance of me actually enjoying it. But it's just so janky. I knew within 30 seconds of booting it up and seeing that it runs on Unreal Engine 4 that I should expect some jank, because that engine doesn't play well with Switch unless you do some heavy optimizing, and indie devs working with low budgets are not going to bother doing that as you can see from the many, many of the trash games in the eShop running on UE4.

But in a way this dev did their own way of optimizing, by scaling it back so far from the PC version that it's almost a different game now. I got stumped on a puzzle early on and turned to ol' YouTube for help and could only find playthroughs of the PC version, and it looks nothing like what I'm seeing on my TV when I'm playing on the Switch. The PC version doesn't look to be any GotY contender or anything, but it looks far superior to what the Switch version turned out to be.

Put 4 hours into Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. Just isn't my type of game the collecting of items to build arrows at the start was probably a bad sign on my enjoyment level of the game. I also didn't like the navigation system. It seemed like abilities would make it better but you shouldn't have to unlock such important features in my opinion as navigating the world in a open world game is important. The combat wasn't that satisfying either. Human enemies die in one punch except for mechs and other pilotable vehicles and shooting wasn't the greatest to me which is understandable. Giving up on Undertale Yellow genocide run couldn't really enjoy doing it and found the pacifist run to be more enjoyable minus a few combat events. It is a fan made game though.

ued222 wrote:

Crafting is fast becoming one of my least favorite things in gaming. It's down there with farming (which is basically a variation of crafting) and nearly everything "roguelike"/"roguelite".
It used to be cool to be able to make your own stuff instead of buying it, but then it morphed into being forced to make stuff because it wasn't available to buy and further evolved to you can't even buy materials so you gotta scrounge for them. It's turned into a cheap way to artificially pad a game's length.

The last game I enjoyed crafting in was Fantasy Life, and that was probably because (1) most of the materials can be purchased somewhere and (2) I was also playing it with sailorneorune and the streetpass feature allows you to gift rare materials to other people without losing them yourself. So we would go back and forth giving stuff for crafting and never running out.

I won't argue that. All that crafting bullcrap is what ruined Animal Crossing: New Horizons for me. I mean they made a lot of other mistakes with that game too, but crafting is near the top.

This year at least, mine is Fire Emblem Engage. I started it soon after launch in January and have put around 5 hours on it over a week's time every few months this year. I just can't get into it after the last few have felt mediocre (Three Houses, Fates, Valentia) and this feels no different. I find myself asking, "why bother with each new iteration of a series, when you can go back and play the ones that made the series amazing to begin with?"

Eastward on I still want to return to it one day but it was just too slow paced for me to stick with it long term consistently.

I beat Eastward but thought it was pretty average overall. I actually thought the Game Boy style RPG in game was better.

Yeah I expected a lot more from the developers. especially since I really enjoyed their previous game Timespinner.

Onimusha: Warlords on

In 2024 I really wanted to drop less games than last year once I've started them, so it sucks this early into the year I'm dropping this one already. I've read it's a 5 or 6 hour game, so I tried to stick with it, but I'm done with it.

I think I missed the boat on this and Devil May Cry, because instead of playing them when they each first released a little over 20 years ago (even though I owned one I missed out on a lot of PS2 exclusives because GameCube and Xbox were more of a priority), my first time is playing them when Capcom put out these low effort ports in the eShop instead of giving them a proper remaster treatment and fixing things that really needed to be fixed. Well, from what I've read they did make minor adjustments to the controls, so good on them for that. But other parts that needed fixing, like the ability to skip cutscenes (there's this one annoying part within the first hour of the game with two back-to-back puzzles and if you fail either one you're booted back to the title screen and have to reload your save) went ignored. I don't care one bit about the game's story, so without that it's just a generic hack-n-slash.

Since they released it at only $20 it's entirely possible they were just releasing it for people who were already fans of it but no longer had a PS2 to play it on. But if they were trying to win over new fans, I think some more work needed to be done.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I'm guessing they were releasing it for fans and to gauge interest. According to leaked sales data, it sold over 300,000 copies. I'm still unsure why they didn't use 'Genma' though, since that version had some gameplay tweaks and more content. I agree, I think regardless of the version, some modernization would've helped.

Koral on

This reminds of that that PSP/PS3 game, flOw. It's a pretty pointless game that doesn't have much gameplay, and I'm not sure what the story is or if there even is one because despite this game having a US release in the eShop, all the text in this is in Japanese because that's the eShop I bought it from (in the past I've never not had a game I bought in the Japanese eShop automatically display all text in English when I change my account's region back to America). This game is much prettier than flOw was, but is equally as boring. I'm sure it's a short game too, and maybe I'll return to it later on, but for now I'm moving on to something else.

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora - Great graphics, hit or miss on gameplay. The open world was very impressive to look at but once I reached the third major area I gave up. I may return to it down the line but like many Ubisoft games it's just too many things on too big of a map with not enough of a story to keep my interest. The gameplay is hit or miss, it had a few good story missions early on but the enemies in the clear the base missions were awful, on a few occasions when I sniped an enemy with a bow from a distance it triggered the entire base of enemies and they immediately knew my location.

Cyberpunk 2077 ce la vie