VideoGame_Discussion

Songs For A Hero - Definitive Edition {} 7/10

Having not played the original version of this, I don't know what makes this the definitive version. But it's a 2D action/platformer where you select a hero in the beginning and set off to rescue a princess (what else are heroes good for?) all the while a narrator is singing along on your ass kicking journey. The songs are pretty funny at times. The problem is though that when I'm concentrating during a part with a lot of action or a boss fight, I can't easily pay attention to what he's even singing.

The game overall is pretty easy as far as the platforming goes. The most challenging parts for me were the boss fights, in particular trying to figure out when you're able to attack them. Some of the boss fights have multiple phases and if you die you will restart from phase one, which especially sucks because you also have to sit through all the dialog leading up to the fight and some of it was only funny the first time.

Aliens: Dark Descent 8/10

RTS lite, gets pretty difficult. It captures the atmosphere of Aliens almost as well as Alien: Isolation does Alien. This is amazing considering the perspective. I only started playing it post patches back at the end of December and I only had a bug 1 time when an alien corpse stuck in the ceiling.

Leveling up and customizing the marines was pretty fun and all of the classes seem well done. There are 5 in all. I would love to see a sequel with even more evolved gameplay.

Ven VR Adventure {2} 6/10

Astro Bot this ain't! But I still got some enjoyment from it, it just took a little longer than I'd have liked before it happened. I know Astro Bot: Rescue Mission was truly a gem, and it's really not fair to compare every other VR 3D platformer to it because they just won't be able to hold their own against it. I'm talkin' first-round KO, flawless victory, Astro Bot is the VR king of the genre. But just for comparison sake, let's say I put Astro Bot on the same tier as Mario and I don't mean just the games, but as characters, Astro Bot and Mario can appeal to players of all ages, universally liked by all. In comparison, Ven is one of the many failed 3D mascot platformer characters from the Xbox era. I'm talking Vexx, Blinx The Cat, Tak, Kao The Kangaroo, etc. I'm not just talking about the quality of those games, but the main characters themselves. When was the last time you've thought about any of them? I'll answer for you - you haven't thought about them because they all suck and are completely forgettable, and so is Ven. You will have forgotten about him once you've finished the game and moved on to something else, because there is nothing charming about him and he leaves no lasting impression, has stupid and repetitive one-liners every time you die (which will be a lot, and not always your fault). It's like they really expected you to die many times. They start you out with 20 lives which itself is already more than most games would start you with, and by the time I was halfway through the game I had over 120 lives. It's a pretty short game, you shouldn't need anywhere close to that many.

Honestly it really could've used more time in the oven. This feels like it might've been rushed out to try and get it out before Christmas. There's just too much jank (including a really annoying bug halfway through level 4 that until it is patched will require you to stand and then crouch at a specific part during a brief cutscene to be able to pass it, even though the game tells you from the start that it is best played while sitting) and I don't know if this is how it was on PC VR or if these are new issues just on PSVR2, but I suspect the jank was there all along after checking out a few older reviews. Another comparison to Astro Bot is that by the end of World 1 I already knew that I was going to go for that Platinum Trophy and to 100% it, that's how much I was enjoying it from the start. With this game, even though it's short (3 Worlds with 4 levels each), I really can't decide if I want to be bothered doing that or not. I mean first off there is no Platinum Trophy here to begin with, and one of the trophy requirements is to beat each level in time trial mode with no checkpoints, and that sounds like more trouble than it's worth because like I said you're gonna die a lot and it won't always be your fault. What I mean by "not always your fault", there are certain enemies that fart out poison gas and if they start the animation for it as you jump on them, you and the enemy will basically be killing each other simultaneously and it happens too often.

Just so it doesn't sound like I'm crapping on the game and it has no good features, I will mention a couple of parts of the game in particular that stood out to me (and I still have 2 levels left to beat, maybe there's a chance one of them rocks my socks off or something). One was a boss fight with a giant snake creature where you had to throw bombs at it. I just liked that whole mechanic, the boss fight itself won't rank up there among the best I've experienced in a game or anything. And the other was a mini-boss that basically makes you play a round of Beat Saber. Those have so far been two of my favorite parts of the game, and they are also the only sections in the game to justify the use of the VR2 Sense controllers because they couldn't be done with the regular DualSense. Another thing I like is also what I liked about Astro Bot: Rescue Mission and it's that these levels take place all around you, so a swivel chair is certainly recommended so you won't lose track of Ven. The game isn't all bad, and I'd even consider buying a sequel if the devs built upon this game and learned from what worked and what didn't work in this one (and also make it at least double the length).

SimCity

Where did the last three hours go out of ten.

Sometimes you just need a game where you can chill and this is definitely it.

Why am I so terrible at Resident Evil 3 (2020)?I want to love the game but it hates me
I’m really struggling to stick to my “evade and run whenever possible, conserve resources” plan
Great game though lol

Man I loved the RE3 remake despite popular opinion. I had beaten all runs on all difficulties but nightmare. I think the key is doing the challenges to unlock perks like unlimited ammo etc. Then it’s weeeeeee!!!

Solar Ash 7/10

I think I saw a review for this a while back and saw it was from the Hyper Light Drifter crew and was interested... not that I've really played HLD yet. Anyhow Solar Ash landed on GP so I wanted to give it a go and after maybe 3 hours... it's alright. It's a bit of a cross btwn Tony Hawk (the fast movement - you can 'skate' on pretty much any surface and grind on rails) and something akin to Shadow of the Colossus as you fight these huge beasts. It's colorful and the story seems interesting. In general you explore these sizable spaces needing to take out a few anomalies before gaining access to fight the big boss thing. You glide around on these anomalies (and the bosses) and need to hit some linked nodes or nerves of the creatures before destroying them. The bosses have 3 phases of increasing difficulty and I ended up reducing the overall difficult to easy, as that gives you more time to hit all the nodes. On the very first boss I could not get to them all fast enough, even on phase 1, got quickly annoyed and just wanted to enjoy the game. Even on easy, some of the bosses, thanks to trailing camera, could still take a handful of attempts. If you recall how in Shadow of the Colossus it could be frustrating if you didn't hit the 'hold on' button quick enough to prevent getting shaken off, it's sort of worse here b/c you need to skate and move fast on these guys, only some are moving around quickly. You generally want to stay on their hard shells to move fast plus the skating can get a touch floaty, then they'll sometimes flip over on a whim. The 3rd phase, their previously black body that you could touch before, but would slow you down, is now red and will insta-kill you.

The world and overall gameplay is pretty decent, but the bosses can be a little annoying to complete fast enough and not mistakenly fall off or touch their red body. The camera can screw you over and you fall a long way down to the area's basin and need to trek all the way back up. So for sure there's some annoyances, but I do like it enough to keep going. I've cleared the first 2 areas and am ready to fight the third's boss so I think I'm nearing 50%, but not sure. There's also some side things to do, like finding logs from your prior compatriots, who came to this void, or other characters whom are trapped in there with you. I don't mind exploring some but I've yet to find all of the things in any of the 3 areas I've visited so far - I'm not sure then if I'll bother going for them before finishing this.

benstylus wrote:

While I've never played Sim City, that's how I used to feel about Populous. I remember buying at on sale at the mall for $19.99 back when I was a freshman in high school. I had never heard of it, but I had a little money burning a hole in my pocket and it was one of the cheapest games I could find at the time and the box art looked very interesting to me. I would just get into this relaxing zone whenver I played it. Good times. Perhaps I should revist it.

Sim city snes was awesome. Simplified almost arcade version of a deeper sim. I loved it as a 13 year old.

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood {} 7/10

This is a sequel to a game I played all the way back in the year 2010 BC (before Covid) on WiiWare called Max and the Magic Marker, where you'd play as Max in a 2D platformer and use a magic marker to draw in the environment things like bridges or ladders to help Max on his advanture. I liked the game and was kind of impressed they were able to do what they did within Nintendo's really constrictive 40MB limitation on WiiWare (Nintendo really had no idea wtf they were doing in those days and I'm glad whoever was in charge of that department was replaced). In this game you pretty much do the same thing, with the story of Max coming home from school and being annoyed by his little brother, so he casts a spell that would make his brother disappear...and it works, so now you have to rescue him before your parents find out.

This originally released a decade ago on Xbox One and Xbox 360. I feel it would have made a better fit for the Wii U with the GamePad, but I can understand why they avoided that system like the plague (and why everyone else did, too). But luckily Switch has a touchscreen too, and this was ported to it 4 years later. I played in handheld mode just because I thought it'd be better for the drawing mechanic, but the controls just didn't feel that great regardless if I used the touchscreen or the analog stick, so back to playing on the TV I went. The controls in general needed some touching up, not just the drawing parts. First off, unlike the previous game, you don't get to draw objects all willy-nilly to help Max. Instead, this time your marker allows you to "draw" branches, vines and raise parts of the earth to help you get around (there might be more but I'm at Champter 4 so far and those are what I'm able to do). You can only draw those things when you find a glowing spot in the environment telling you so. Take that whole marker gimmick out and what you're left with is a pretty standard 2D platformer with some pretty basic puzzles, but I'm still enjoying it. The graphics look nice, and the audio isn't bad, with Max making comments on your journey along the way while not getting annoying or repetitive. It's just the controls could've used a little touching up, like Max not always grabbing on to a vine rope when you know you were holding up.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

The Wii only had 512 mb internal memory. If they didn't have some sort of hard cap, then people would have whined about running out of space too fast.

Yes they could have just given it a hard drive like the PS3 and 360 but that would have added to the cost, and that $250 price point was one reason people went for Wii in such huge numbers (compared to double that for the base PS3 or 360+hard drive)

Pixel Ripped 1995 {2} 8/10

A sequel to Pixel Ripped 1989 on the original PSVR, and I really like this whole "game within a game" vibe this series goes for. This has several games within it that play like mid-90s games some of us grew up with, like LttP, Super Metroid, Castlevania, Road Rash just to name a few.

At one point you're so engrossed in the game while having your mom giving you crap for playing too much, so you've gotta find ways to distract her (like putting the controller down to grab your nerf gun to shoot a jar of cookies off the counter) to shut her up so you can get back to playing.

Another section has her lecturing you that it's bedtime, but you're a little rebel and adapt to the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" mentality, so you keep on playing and she'll periodically wake up and come check on you, that's when you gotta quickly put the controller down and grab the remote to shut the TV off until she goes back to sleep and when she does you turn the TV back on and continue playing. There's another part where you're playing on the kiosk at a game rental store and it was pretty cool just listening to the other kids chit=chat around you.
The game is pretty fun and the graphics are good, no issues with the controls at all. They've released a newer one based in 1978 and I think that one is published by Atari so they can use the actual names of the consoles and IPs, I'm definitely going to check that one out because I liked the previous two.

benstylus wrote:


I don't know if HDD was even necessary as much as just giving users the ability to save directly to SD card. I don't think they even got that part right with the Wii U either.

Hogwarts Legacy

9/10

I’m not into Harry Potter like I am with other fantasy genres like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but man this game is amazing. Truly captures the feel of the world of witchcraft and wizardry tenfold and it’s just so immersive. I’m having a blast exploring and solving puzzles. The combat is air tight and precise. Flying on a broom or mount for traversal in the overworld is visceral and plain old fun. It’s also making me want to rewatch the Harry Potter flicks too and I just might.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth Nostalgia at its finest/10

Snagged this from someone on here who got it in the recent Humble Bundle and man did I score a deal - price was great but the game has been a true gem. Feels like a modern twist on the old Dragon Warrior (it does use a more Metroid like side view and map, but the one character is a dead ringer for the blue DW hero IMO) or similar NES titles with its 8-bit look, its wonderful chip-tune soundtrack and the overall the feel of the game. I've got 6 hours in and have the map at just 37% so I think I've got a good ways left to go and that's exactly what I would want, more of this game, especially after getting some unlocked powers for the 3 characters.
I do have a minor gripe, that when you die, you return to the beginning of the dungeon and then have/want to trek back to where you were, there is an elevator and some other mechanics that open up as you progress and access/activate them, but a few times that gameplay loop can feel a little bit annoying. There is an incentive to killing all the foes in the rooms you progress through on this trek, as they drop orbs that act as a currency to buy all manner of upgrades after you die. There are very few options to heal, so simply avoiding as much damage as possible is a good tactic.
But in my 6 hours so far, that slog was only felt maybe twice and not for too long as eventually I was finding more elevator access rooms to allow for greater fast travel as well as getting upgrades to help with progression and such.

Spider-man 2 (PS5) - 9/10 - Everything feels so familiar and they really didn't push the gameplay envelope, but...the story is great and throws a lot of cool bits in, gameplay is polished, and it's just a damn solid game throughout.

Many of the map filler items are redundant like the previous 2 games but the level-up trees have more value so grinding a bit is worthwhile. And it introduces story elements into them much better to make it seem more interesting (if only just a little bit).

I'm on-track to 100% with only a couple missions left from what I can tell from the story, but this is one of those games that it simply worth the price of admission. If you haven't played a PS5 ever, this is definitely a killer app like GOW.

Main complaint is that with multiple characters with multiple types of attacks it's tough for me to remember which Spidey powers I have when switching between characters. If I don't make their suits super obvious I can't tell who I am until I try to do moves.

Slickriven wrote:
How's the music?

nonamesleft wrote:

I think it's really good, some tracks are better than others though. I think you can listen to it here, at least snips:
https://mattkap.bandcamp.com/album/astalon-tears-o...

Slickriven wrote:
Thanks for the link. Will have to give it a listen. I'm constantly on the lookout for new potentially good video game music.

Prince of Persia the Lost Crown

I just finished the last boss and I’m cleaning up trophies. One of my biggest pet peeves- bugged trophies. This one really feels like a kick in the nuts because some of the items you need take so much work through frustrating platforming to get- only to find there’s bugged stuff. Ouch.

The game feels and looks like a low budget indie title. Graphics ehh cartoon and music is mid. There are some very clever puzzles and use of time / split personality etc. There are far more super frustrating controller tossing moments though. The bosses are ok, they look like Sifu bosses, just low quality cartoons. They are all quite frustrating as well on harder difficulties. The boss fights, like the ridiculously long instant death around every corner action segments- require near perfection for a lengthy battle to win. Often you just get the wind knocked right out of you by losing in the 2nd / 3rd phase of a boss- and have to dig deep to hit retry and not just walk away. Lots of the game induces this feeling of pure frustration and disappointment. It’s very often a total bummer.

One of the sequences was a small room with a series of rolling spike logs that came from every angle. No crap I worked on this for at least a full day before I finally completed it- only to be rewarded with lilac cosmetic pants. Are you Fukun serious? These pants don’t even look lilac?! I’d absolutely go pantless before earning these again. It was no joke over 2 full minutes necessitating perfection- and each slip was instant death and restart. It felt like the world championship of action games.

If this sounds compatible with your health and you enjoy a challenge- give it a go. But if you get to that room - just don’t. You’ll know it when you see it.

7/10. And I feel like that’s kind of generous. I’m not sure why this one has been so hyped. It’s a ho hum butt-hole Metroidvania of the souls lite variety. Dime a dozen these days.

Shakedown: Hawaii {} 7/10
Retro City Rampage originally came to be after some dude was trying to port Grand Theft Auto III to the NES just for craps and giggles way back in 2002. He eventually turned it into its own game and in 2012 Retro City Rampage released. It still was very much like playing GTA III in 8-bit. I originally played it on PlayStation 3 and didn't like it. I gave it another try on PS Vita and still didn't like it. Then a couple of years go by and I decided to give the game one final chance, this time on 3DS, and for some reason this time the game just clicked and I ended up really enjoying it.

Shakedown: Hawaii is the sequel to RCR (at least I think it is, I hardly remember the RCR story or if it is related to this one), this time taking place in Hawaii and upgraded to a more 16-bit aesthetic.

You play as some out of touch, rich old fart that has been coasting by on past success and come to find out that you're not so rich anymore. So you set out trying to take over businesses around the island. Gameplay-wise it still feels like RCR: you steal cars, shoot people, get chased by police, etc. But now there is more of a Monopoly vibe as well because you have to micro-manage all these properties that you're buying.

One of the things I liked about Retro City Rampage was the humor. It was a pretty funny game with lots of pop culture references. This game as well has lots of humor (minus the pop culture references) but thus far I haven't really laughed at any of it.

Overall there are a lot more things to do in this game compared to RCR. Of course the taking over various properties around the island and the micromanagement of them all, plus you are changing between three characters throughout the story, and the missions in general offer more variety than RCR did with lots of mini-games and the game overall is nearly double the length. But for some reason, I just feel like I can't wait for the game to end. I'm not going to give up on it as I'm a little over halfway through the story mode, but I feel like it might be going on a couple hours longer than it needed to.
-=-

Epic Roller Coasters {2} 5/10

First off I didn't pay for any of the DLC, so I only messed with what was available in the base game which is free to download. There's not much to do unless you pay for the extra coasters, thus the low score.
This is mostly a "VR Experience", which there aren't really a lot of on PSVR2 compared to the last-gen PSVR. Those are always good for showing off to family and friends that visit, and they want to see what this VR stuff is about even if they're not gamers. This is good for that, but not much else.

There's only a few coasters you get in the free version, and unlike real roller coasters once you've rode these virtual ones you probably won't do it again (typical for most VR Experiences). Two of the free ones were pretty cool though, one was an underwater theme and the other was with a T-Rex chasing you. Oddly the game's thumbnail and title screen has Sponge Bob characters, but none of the free content in the base game has anything to do with Sponge Bob, so that's kind of misleading.
In addition to just riding the coasters, there's also a race mode and shooting mode. The shooting mode has you riding the roller coaster while shooting at targets. It's not really fun though and I can't think of one damn good reason to play that mode when Switchback VR already exists and does it better.

PlataGO! Super Platform Game Maker {} 3/10

I bought this years ago on both Steam and eShop, never actually played it on Steam but today finally booted it up on Switch. This is such junk. It clearly was trying to capitalize on the success of Super Mario Maker, which as a big fan of SMM is why I bought this (it released 2 weeks before SMM2), but it's just not enjoyable. The lack of in-depth tutorial for making your own levels really hurts the game, and the graphics and controls just look and feel so outdated. If you're big into retro gaming in the 8-bit era then you may not mind that, but I kinda do because 2D platformers have evolved so much since those days. I mean, there's a reason Nintendo opted for Super Mario Maker to use the NSMB controls/physics instead of the 8 and 16-bit games.

There looks to be a decent tool for making levels if you take the time to learn how to use it, but even with Super Mario Maker I am always more interested in playing the levels of other players than making my own, but even that isn't so easy to do in here with how awkward it is to navigate the menus.
Graphically it uses an 8-bit aesthetic, though you can apply a filter on your custom levels that make it look like a GameBoy game, SNES game, or even a red Virtual Boy-like game (there are others too but I didn't mess with it very long). Steam version lets you import sprites from other games if you wish, but looking through the game's community hub on Steam it seams to be dead, no recent posts. And when searching in-game for levels to play and sort by date, I couldn't find any from later than 2020, and I also had the game crash on me while trying to find levels to play.
-=-

Star Wars: Squadrons {} 8/10
This is fully playable in flat mode on your boring old TV, but I felt there was no reason not to exclusively play it in VR like I do every other hybrid VR/flat game.
The presentation in this game is pretty damn good. It's the kind of big budget game the original PSVR needed more of (or VR in general needs more of). So I'm glad that EA even went ahead and supported it, because I wouldn't be playing this at all otherwise.

This is the first OG PSVR game I've played in a little over a month that I've owned a PSVR2, so going into this I was half expecting to notice a big downgrade in graphics. It actually looks pretty good though. Normally I would complain because the cutscenes are in 2D, but I feel like I can give this game a free pass because they are really well done, voice acting is top notch and all that stuff. But honestly I don't give a rat's ass about Star Wars lore, so all the talking parts that happen in-between missions really drag on too long and when I continue playing later this evening I think I'm going to start skipping them all from now on. I just want to blow crap up and these parts kind of ruin the mood.

There's a team-based multiplayer mode, it not only lets you play with non-VR players, but it supports cross-platform with PC and Xbox players too. But I can't tell you how it is because the few times I've tried searching for a match it never finds any to put me in. There's a fairly small group of dedicated players on the game's subreddit that try to get active games going on Wednesday and Friday evenings, but if I even managed to get in one of their games I know I'd just get my ass whooped because I only want to play a few rounds, I don't care enough to dedicate the amount of time it would take to actually get good enough to hold my own against players that have been at it for years. Basically if you buy this game, don't let the multiplayer mode be a deciding factor, just buy it for the campaign mode because that part is fun even for someone that isn't a Star Wars fan (me).

Bloons TD6 is the most addictive thing I've played since Diablo 3. God help me. Just a tower defense game with monkeys popping balloons, but I can't stop playing for whatever reason.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Yes! This is the kind of stuff VR needs in general, even if there's a flat screen version, it sings in VR. It's cheap now, but I got it at launch and it was well worth the full price.

Cave Digger: Riches {2} 5/10

I bought this for like $5 or something without looking up any reviews ahead of time (and now that I've tried, you can barely find any of the PSVR2 version specifically), just a couple of screenshots that made me think this could be like SteamWorld Dig in VR. Well, it kind of is, but it's nowhere near as fun.

You boot the game up and are literally thrown right into it. Like, there's no title screen, no tutorial, no explanation of how things work, none of that, not even a way to pause the game to make adjustments to anything (screw snap turning, I want it off!) You just start in front of a pickaxe, pick it up and start chipping away at these rocks in front of you and collecting gems that you then convert to money to buy tools and upgrades. And they don't tell you what the upgrades even do until after you've bought them, that's how much they just expect you to figure everything out on your own. I put around 3 hours into this total, but after around 45 minutes I was worried that I had seen all this game has to offer, and wasn't too impressed by it. In the saloon they start you in at the beginning of the game, within 5 minutes of playing I had gotten stuck behind one of the tables, later on got stuck through a wall where I had to restart the game (good thing it autosaves often), heck the first time I booted up the game it spawned me out of bounds, and multiple times when trying to pick up a gem off the floor I would end up taking out a tool from my utility belt, etc.

I might come back to this one a few more times, because I feel like there might be a decent (though reptitive) game in this, it's just a shame that it is buried under so much jank, and for that I can't recommend it. I've heard the sequel is better, but I really can't say I'm in a rush to give that one a chance after playing this one.
-=-

PowerWash Simulator {} / {} 7/10

I originally played this on PC via GamePass in summer of 2022. It was fun for a couple of hours before I ultimately uninstalled it because my GamePass trial was about to expire. Now it was a PS+ game and a friend wanted to try it in co-op. I started it and played a bit on PS5 not realizing that the PS5 version wouldn't let me play in co-op with my friend on PS4. So I decided to keep the PS5 version installed for single player and download the PS4 version just for co-op. That didn't last too long though, as I soon realized that I don't really want to do all this in single player again, so the PS5 version got uninstalled. To be honest it was exactly the same game anyway. Like, the load times on PS4 are already short, and the graphics on PS5 weren't significantly better or anything, so I couldn't find a single reason to keep them both installed. Both versions offer gyro aiming though, and that's something the PC version lacked. It's nice to have as an option, and I use it once in a while, but it isn't much of a game changer in this the way it would be in a first-person shooter.

Anyway, the game is slightly more fun in co-op, but after a play session I'm often left thinking "why did I just waste an hour of my life doing a virtual chore?" and then do it again the next time we play. Also, only the host's progress saves and the co-op parner won't be able to earn any trophies, and I dislike when games do that (not so much the trophy part, but when only one person's progress saves). My friend and I are 4 or 5 levels in, and I don't know how many levels there are in total, but the minute she feels bored and wants to quit I will not do or say anything to try and change her mind because I'm already kinda reaching that point now. Having said that, if it got a PSVR2 release, I'd be willing to play it again...

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