VideoGame_Discussion

Ooh

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker {} 7/10

For the first hour or so I was having a difficult time deciding on whether or not I like this more on Switch with just one screen vs on Wii U and 3DS with two. But the fact I even had to debate that at all just means that this (and I guess every other Wii U game ported to Switch) proves that the Wii U's GamePad didn't change crap in the grand scheme of things like the way Nintendo desperately tried to convince us it would.

I dug out the Wii U version of the game and recorded some gameplay footage of it and then did the same with the Switch version. They look practically identical other than the Wii U version is 720p and Switch version is 1080p (docked), but there's one graphical effect on levels with lava, I guess "hazy effect", and I don't like it. It looks ugly and low-res. Here's a screenshot I saved of it to show an example. It was used in the Wii U version too and I didn't like it there either, I was really hoping they did something about it on Switch. Still, besides that, now one of the nicest looking games on Wii U looks slightly better on Switch (3DS version is no slouch in the graphics department either).

Some of the levels/puzzles are really well thought out and since I hadn't played through this game since 2014/2015, a lot of the puzzles feel fresh to me again. Those Captain Toad stages in Super Mario 3D World were practically just an appetizer for what this game actually offers.

IMO (or maybe better to preface this as possibly "unpopular opinion"), but if you have the option, I might rank the 3DS version as the best way to play this game. I felt the game benefits from the added depth of the 3D effect and I'm finding myself kinda missing that in the Switch version. But if Switch is all you've got, this is still a fun game and I recommend it on any platform you can play it on. The Switch version does have the added co-op mode and some paid DLC that you won't get from the other versions, so it has that going for it too.

Finished It Takes Two.
If you're at all a fan of co-op platformers, I can't recommend this enough. So well done

Anybody with a Quest 2 play RE4 VR? If so, thoughts on it? I'm looking for a meatier Quest game to check out and I've been on the fence of this one for a while.

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:
Friend of mine recently told me about this. He's playing it co-op, said it's a blast.

nonamesleft wrote:

Co op is the only way you can play this, so......

Yea you can do local split screen or online i think. It starts off a bit basic/nothing special tbh but quickly picks up and stays at high level throughout
Only minor gripe, the difficulty seemed a bit too easy for the final chapter
But one of the most fun gaming experiences i've had overall. I think it's a great one to play with more casual gamers, children, wives/girlfriends etc, really accessible while being challenging enough for the most part

Kommie wrote:
Ah, I didn't know. Makes sense from the title, but I didn't know anything about the game (other than hearing that co-op was a great time)

Recently finished Mario 3D World with 2P. Currently on Cadence of Hyrule. Maybe we'll try It Takes Two next.

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:
Would you say the experience is worth the current Steam $40 price tag?

I'd say it's well worth it but I also feel like it should be available for less
If you have playstation 4/5 i think it's often on sale
I got it for "free" via EA pass

So, value wise it definitely justifies a full price tag but there's probably a good chance it can be bought for less

@DrizzDrizzDrizz

I don't have a PS4/5, so unless it's ported to the Nintendo Switch, it's just PC. So Steam (currently $39.99)

I'm really liking this GTA 3 remaster. I like the way it looks. And that it still plays pretty much exactly the same.

nonamesleft wrote:

I say go for it, still worth it. It's about 12-15 hrs length FYI

I beat Ion Fury today, was a blast. If you like 90s FPS, especially Duke 3D, i highly recommend this
If you like any semblance of story, stay away

I've put about 10 hours into Dragon Age: Origins in the last 2 days. Still one of the all-time great western RPGs. There's just something about this game that brings me back to it every couple of years. It's systems are a little basic by modern standards and it's definitely pretty clunky on the PS3, but it still holds up reasonably well for a 13 year old game. A complete remake would be amazing because I'd love for a new generation of gamers to experience this masterpiece.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Swooping is bad.

Started and finished A Way Out with my brother in a day (5-6 hours). Fun experience.

7.5/10

Batman: Arkham Origins {} 7/10
I already knew going in to this game that it was going to be the weakest of the Batman Arkham series of games because that's what everyone seems to say, and having played it now I can see why people think that. But the Batman: Arkham series are really good games, so this being the weakest doesn't mean it's a bad game, it just means it had a high bar set by the previous games and it came up a little short. Having said that, I kind of wish I had chosen to play it on Steam instead (didn't even know I had it until I recently bought a Humble Bundle and decided to look through my unredeemed keys from previously purchased Bundles) because unlike how Batman: Arkham City made effective use of the GamePad at Wii U's launch, this game basically just uses it as a map and not much else. And if you're not going to take advantage of the GamePad, what makes the Wii U version of your game worth playing over the other versions? I know this game was done by a totally different dev team than Batman: Arkham City was, but those devs pretty much laid out how to use the GamePad and I guess these devs didn't feel Wii U was worth investing the extra time it'd take (honestly that probably is how they felt because none of the DLC ever made it to the Wii U version, neither did the multiplayer mode and there are still multiple bugs that didn't get patched, making this version look like an afterthought). Granted, the game does let you use the GamePad for off-TV play, but you will need to use the TV to navigate to the game's option menu to enable that feature every time you play. That's just f'n dumb, isn't it?

For this being a 9 year old game and on Wii U no less, the graphics still look pretty decent. But there were some points where the frame-rate tanks (even in cutscenes and I noticed that in Arkham City on Wii U as well) and there seems to be a lack of anti-aliasing because lookit dem jaggies. While this is basically exactly the same city as the previous game, it does feel like it has a fresh coat of paint with all the snow and some decorations (the game's story takes place on Christmas Eve).

As far as audio, there is something that bugs me about this game that also bugged me about the previous game and it's that when someone (like Alfred for example) is contacting Batman through his earpiece thingy, their voice will only come out through the GamePad speaker while Batman's voice will come out through the TV. If you have the GamePad volume slider all the way down and don't have the closed captioning enabled in the game, you'd never know what they were saying or who Batman was even talking to. The only way to get around that is if you use the Pro Controller (which wasn't an option in Arkham City).

The controls are typical of this series and are fine. And while I've already pointed out that unlike Arkham City this game makes no meaningful use of the GamePad, it does at least support the Wii U's Pro Controller. I have played for an hour or two using the Pro Controller and at times it feels better than the GamePad and I'll probably stick to the Pro Controller for the majority of this playthrough unless I'm playing in off-TV mode. Unfortunately when you are playing using the Pro Controller, the GamePad screen goes totally black and so I can't even prop it up next to the TV or on my desk and view the map while playing with the Pro Controller (that's exactly how I played through The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, so it's disappointing the developers didn't think to include that feature in this game).

TL;DR while this might be the weakest game of the Arkham series, I don't regret finally playing it. If anything I regret waiting this long to do it. But while not a terrible game on Wii U, you might be better off playing this on any other platform it is available on instead due to missing features on Wii U.

Aliens Fireteam Elite is much better than it should have been. 7/10 it is highly repetitious though.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I played through 'Arkham: Origins' through nVidia's first Shield streaming service (which actually worked well) on my Shield tablet, but picked this up for WiiU a couple of years ago (I think the box art matches the WiiU banner well). I haven't played it yet though. The Deathstroke DLC did come out on WiiU, though. The code in my preowned copy was unused. But I can see how it would be better elsewhere, at least on PC.

DCGX wrote:


Looking into it there was some DLC, skins and challenge pack stuff that was released on day one. Also on day one you could purchase the Season Pass for upcoming DLC on Wii U that would've added to the story, but within 2-3 months they refunded everyone who had bought it and decided not to release it due to the game selling poorly on Wii U.

Side note: I just realized Batman: Arkham Origins' price is $19.99 in the eShop. The previous year's game Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition is still $59.99 for going on 10 years now (there are quite a few other Wii U launch titles that are still at that price in the eShop).

Nobody Saves The World
9/10
Might be my new favorite Indie game. It's like Castle Crashers meets Zelda with the ability to form shift. The writing is quite funny too.

100 Classic Book Collection (DS)

The UK version. I bought it because it has quite a number of different books from the US release, 100 Classic Books, which I reviewed 10 years ago
https://m.gametz.com/?A=Reviews;ruid=2670

I just tried a thing tonight - the game allows you to send copies of your free DLC books to others with the game, so I wanted to see of the two versions were cross compatible. Sadly the US and UK versions are not on speaking terms.

I still enjoy it though. I gave it a B- back in the day, and I think I still agree.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

Was ready to start it. Switch out of battery . Idk/10

Sounds like a good thing. Kingdom Hearts should be avoided.

Kommie wrote:


I actually haven't played a single Kindgom Hearts game, so I have no expectations going in. Though this one is a music based game, so I don't expect it to be like the mainstream games.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

The game is a rhythm based game. Similar to the concept of that game Dance Dance Revolution: you hit a button to the beat of the music. But here you don't (usually) need to hit a specific button. L R and A all do the same thing. X is used to hit certain specific targets.

The game isn't that great so far, pretty repetitive, but I'm anyway playing it mainly to hear music from the series, a series from which I've played none of the games, and thus haven't experienced much music of the series.

So far, a couple of the music tracks have Yoko Shimomura's style written all over them. Yoko Shimomura composed the music for all of the Mario & Luigi games, including Legend of the Seven Stars.

I don't know who composed the music for the Kingdom Hearts games, but I'd bet that Shimomura was involved. The style of some of these tracks here is just too similar to her music. In fact, I'd say it is her music. I'd be very surprised if it was someone else. (This game does have music from across the series, so it could easily be that some pieces were composed by her and some not.)

Werewolf The Apocalypse Earthblood- 5.5/10
This one is a tough pill to swallow. I keep wanting to like this game because it's janky and reminiscent of Vampyr, but Vampyr did the jank oh so much better to make it look like a AAA game next to this that has you playing as a badass werewolf ripping crap up to metal music, my genre of choice, and yet it just feels so broken and blah at times. The stealth is purely BS at times, the AI is terrible and the combat should feel beefier than it is, which is blatantly redundant. I have 3 levels left so I'll soldier thru to the end against my better judgment but this is going up for sale as soon as I cross that finish like for sure.

I played more of that than I should have. I kept wanting it to be better than it actually was. Putting a werewolf in dull office and warehouse environments was such a waste.

Absolutely. It completely neuters the experience of what I'd want oaks imagine it'd be to be a werewolf. Optional stealth? Y tho?

I'm about 2 hours into one of @Kommie favorite games, Indigo Prophecy. Totally forgot I had a physical copy of this on the PS4. I haven't played it since it came out in like '05 so I was really curious to see how well it holds up. It's such a bizarre, unique, and awesome experience! Unfortunately, this isn't much of a remaster which is a bummer. It's just a lazy port of the PS2 version. But still, I'm enjoying it. It's a nice trip down memory lane.

image

Heavyd814life wrote:

Indigo Prophecy is still my favorite QD game to date. Such great jank.

It's called Fahrenheit in Europe and I plan on playing it some day, tried for a bit on ps2 ages ago and liked it, not sure why i stopped

That is the only QD game I've never played.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

I finished this game and it wasn't so much that it was bad, but that they managed to make heavy metal werewolf carnage boring. How the hell they managed that is beyond me.

IIRC, David Cage had himself in the tutorial for Indigo Prophecy explaining how amazing a writer he is and why the game was so ground breaking. I should have known to not play it at that point.

Every few months I get a soft urge to replay Detroit, with different choices.
One day I might do it. You can join me on the quest

Kommie wrote:

If he were that good a writer, he would have picked a more exciting pseudonym than David Cage.

Maybe he was trying to insinuate that his writing is as good as Nicholas Cage's acting. If so, then success

How dare you compare the One True God to a wanna be auteur writer/director.

benstylus wrote:

Wait are you absurdly implying Nic Cage isn't a great actor?

Was in the mood for some old-school OG God of War-style game tonight and grabbed Castlevania: Lord of Shadows (X360 digital on XSX) for $6. I hit Continue and was on chapter 3 but don't really remember this game much at all.

It's rather good but the controls are clumsy and it's not as smooth playing as Dante's Inferno (which I think is fantastic)...I believe both were around the same timeframe circa 10 years ago. My biggest issue is the quicktime events...not that they exist but that you can hit any face button for 90% of them...but occasionally it's a specific button you need to press out of the blue. That's super cheap.

And this really isn't a Castlevania game. It may have the name but it's wildly out of character for the series.

Put in my PS4 copy of Uncharted collection today, playing through Drake's Fortune and found a game breaking glitch that made me waste the entire day. I may never game again. It's weird because I've beaten this game a few times but never on the PS5. So it might be isolated to that. Still pisses me off.

Monster Hunter Rise (PC)

It's Monster Hunter and it's good. I highly recommend it to people that like to play Monster Hunter.

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 9/10

This was great and improved upon the things that sucked about the previous game. Story was great, music and sound design, and Miles' abilities were awesome.

Sun wrote:

What did you think sucked in the original that was better here, just curious? I played both back to back and it felt like an extension/almost DLC, really loved them both
Appreciated the length of MM too, i'm a sucker for that 10-15 hour sweet spot

Yeah, I haven't played MM yet, but I'm curious what you thought sucked in the original but was improved.

sinnie wrote:

I played through them all again on PS4 and didn't encounter a glitch so maybe it is just on PS5. That really sucks.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Crazy thing is that I don't remember Indigo Prophecy being that janky. I just remember being blown away at the time because I'd never played anything like it. But replaying it now...holy mother of jank lol. I totally forgot about the camera and how obnoxious the QTEs are. But man, I'm loving every second of it! Nostalgia is so powerful but yeah, if I'm being completely objective, it's one of those games you have to approach understanding that it's an older, kinda experimental game so it's definitely rough around the edges.

@Archer and @DrizzDrizzDrizz I think you guys would dig it. It's a 15-year-old game so it's a bit rough compared to Heavy Rain, Beyond, and Detroit (really wish Quantic Dream had at least remastered it), but there's so much to love if you enjoyed the other Quantic Dream games since this is the one that laid the foundation for those games.

Gypsy wrote:

Yes I've played through twice on PS4 so it must just be PS5. Arggh I was 50% through. Oh well onto Uncharted 2 I guess.

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:


Scott wrote:


Pretty much doing away with the repetitive nature of the neighborhood crimes to get 100% district completions. By making them unique and relegated to the Spidey app, my OCDness didn't have to worry about them like in the original.

Sun wrote:

Wow, that's great! The crimes were basically the only thing I didn't like about the first one.

Anxiouz wrote:

Lords of Shadow is pretty great.

Lords of Shadow 2 was not great

Lords of Shadow 2 was a train wreck. One of the worst sequels of all time.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Wow, something we agree on!

Lords of Shadow 2 was a great Dracula game. Just not a very good Castlevania game.

Think I stopped playing pretty close to the mousey bits.

Other than that, I liked em both okay otherwise. Just sorta felt like they were new games in the same mythos, and I liked the little twist.

Been playing this 3D action platformer called Blue Fire. Anybody played it? It has some minor jankiness but I'm absolutely loving it. So much fun and they nailed the platform long for the most part.

My goodness, Death's Door is the Diablo/Zelda dungeon crawler with Souls elements I didn't know I needed. - 8/10 so far. Go Game Pass!

Resident Evil 5 {} 8/10
I bought this for a friend that had never played a Resident Evil game before. I didn't bother to explain that this is Resident Evil in name only, because that's irrelevant to someone that has never played the series before and we were just looking for a good co-op game anyway and this game delivers on that part at least.

The game looks good in handheld mode (well, maybe as good as a game from 2009 can look in 2022) and I like the option of being able to use gyro aiming. So now I own this game across Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Steam and now Switch, and with it having gyro aiming support plus the ability to play it on the go, as far as I'm concerned this is now the definitive version of RE5. My main issue with the game is the load times. They're not super long, it's just that they are a little too frequent (and that's certainly not exclusive to the Switch version).

Anyway, my opinion of this game is still the same as it always was since 2009. Is it a bad Resident Evil game? Yeah, maybe. But is it a bad game overall? No and you won't get me to say otherwise, and I wouldn't keep re-buying it across as many platforms as I have (and I'll only stop when I've run out of people to play it with).

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Yeah, it's not a bad game at all if you just try not to think of it as an RE game. Same thing with RE6. Terrible RE game, but a very solid action game.

I have yet to play RE6, RE7, Village, RE2make or RE3make. All on the backlog.

Just got Life is Strange: True Colors from the library so going to play that next. I just finished Miles Morales.

Ready or Not Early Access 8/10

Well, I almost never play with M+KB, but this game is worth it. Got it last night and played for a few hours with friends. It's a squad-based tactical game, multiplayer but not PvP (like Ghost Recon Wildlands before the multiplayer release). Unforgiving, pretty realistic, great physics/ballistics, cool maps, and more content being released frequently as they work through early access to finish the game. Runs super smooth for an early access too, I was around 80FPS with all graphic settings and resolution scaling maxed out.

Armored Head 10/10

This is an arena shooter that puts you in the role of an android machine that is nameless. You are to survive 30 waves and you win the golden trophy just for surviving. But there's a little more to it than that and you just have to feel the game as you play it to understand. This game is really a hidden gem that can be overlooked and waved off as just another FPS. Though I feel it does deserve to be looked at because it looks visually well done and it's gameplay is incredibly fun. The weaponry in the game is a little overpowering, lol. When you get a hold of the Howitzer weapon in later waves, you'll see what I mean. Just a total wave cleanser. The wave bosses, which there are three, are tense and enjoyable to fight that give you a challenge. Armored Head can surprise you at times when you think it's easy by blowing over the first 10 waves, it gets a little harder and there is a difficulty switch for challengers.

But I fell in love with this game and it's very rare that a game gets me to even go through it's achievements, but Armored Head did it. It goes on sale for as low as $1.64 (currently as I type this) but it costs $3 when not on sale. Worth every penny for what you get out of it. Underrated gem.

Currently replaying Dragon Age: Inquisition. I remember being completely obsessed with this game at launch, but I don't remember much about it outside of a few story beats and the big reveal towards the end. I've wanted to replay it for a while now with a female Inquisitor and now seems as good a time as any with DA4 (hopefully) on the horizon.

I'm on a bit of a BioWare binge atm. Just finished the Awakening expansion for Dragon Age: Origins which is still a solid piece of DLC. I also messed around with KOTOR on the Switch for an hour or so (very solid port) but I'll wait for the remake before playing through it again. I think I'll replay Jade Empire next. I have really fond memories of that game so it'll be interesting to see how well it holds up.

Finally finished AC Valhalla. I wont miss it too much but definitely enjoyed the last 10 hrs or so more than the previous like 70-80

Oh also I got a Quest 2 today and initial thoughts:

- it's really great, compared to PSVR much crisper/clearer graphics and the tracking is so much better
- the headset feels kinda heavy and tight but I might need to adjust it more
- I honestly didn't do much research on this part but I expected the games library to be much bigger, lotta VR games I know and assumed were on Quest aren't on there
- i paid for one game so far, Eleven Table Tennis, and it's incredible, feels so real
- the facebook account thing is annoying

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:

Can I ask what level you were by the end? It feels that even after 30-40 hours I'm only about halfway to where I may need to be.

I was about 340ish by the very end

I spent some time earlier on doing more side stuff and going out of my way to collect things (not fully but if something was kinda on the way or nearby), then had a longer stretch of only doing main quest and whatever was directly on my path, and then at the end i did some "cleanup" but only for finishing the Order quests and doing Asgard/Joten-something

It felt like i leveled up (2 skill points) all the time, started running out of skills i actually wanted to upgrade on the board

Oh and time wise I finished at around 105 hrs, maybe realistically 100 or so because I occasionally left it on

I can easily see that it could take another 100 to collect everything though, but I'm not doing that, definitely done with it

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:

Quest 2 is so inviting, but this really worries me going forward. I just get the feeling the whole platform will be nothing but ads sooner or later. Plus, I don't have a Facebook account and really, really don't want one. Even the dummy one I used to have to follow indie devs didn't sit right with me.

Shin Megami Tensei V - 7.5/10 - Started out really good but by about 80% thru i just wasn't feeling it. Ended up turning the difficulty down to casual just to power thru and finish it. Lots of great touches but the map turned me off from the game quite a bit. Navigation wasn't fun with having to find very specific paths to reach so many objectives, and bosses requiring very precise skills as well as a story that got pretty crazy and nonsensical, even for a SMT game...

DCGX wrote:

Yeah for now I don't really notice it tbh, i turned off most of the social aspects because I don't need the FB integration, i havent seen ads (except when i tried youtube vr app i had a 1.5 min ad i couldn't skip!? That was odd/annoying) but who knows

I definitely think it shouldn't keep you from jumping into oculus quest 2 though, i'm so happy with the purchase overall

Discovered the sidequest/app lab stuff too so there's a lot more options than I thought,
Mostly indie or alpha/beta stuff but i picked up a really great tennis game, oculus store itself had none

Ok i just played a few ranked matches online of Eleven table tennis on Oculus VR, and this is truly a gamechanger for me.
The immersion is incredible, I literally almost placed my "racket" on the virtual table after finishing, like I would in real life, caught myself just before dropping them on the ground haha

It's so, so good. I just need to find a way to make the headset more comfortable, maybe i need to buy the elite strap but i cant find it anywhere locally

Been playing Outriders lately, enjoying it but it's not perfect. As a big fan of The Division, Outriders feels pretty good as aside from much smaller map areas and much more linear focus it does feel like the Div.
The skills are pretty cool and it aped a lot of features/ideas from Ubisoft's series/the genre overall.
Voice work is pretty good, it's a pretty game but has some pop-in, missions get a little repetitive and most of the attempts at humor, in the dialog, fall flat. I've been looking for and collecting all of the crap, but since much of it is stuff to read, I just don't care and while I'm doing the side missions I mainly just want to complete the game and don't really care about the backstory/lore.
It's fairly dead though as each of the times I've played in the last week+ there's only been around 3-7 other users playing at the same time according to the one label in the lobby, sort of sad but I'm not overly surprised.

Lego Jurassic World 8/10
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis 8/10
Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition 6/10
Jurassic World: Evolution 7.5/10
Monster Jam 2 7/10
Conan Exiles 9/10
The Forest 8.5/10
Super Mario 3D World 10
Aliens: Fireteam 7/10
Predator Hunting Grounds 7.5/10

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:

I'd rather just not get involved in anything Facebook if I can help it. I have PSVR, and will get PSVR2 whenever that and a redesign of the PS5 hits.

DCGX wrote:

Understandable, I was in the same boat until a few days ago when I decided to just go for it.
But the difference compared to PSVR (which I also love) is really big - the tracking and easy pop on and play aspect especially, but also the graphics are a notable step up. PSVR always was kind of a chore to set up and play, this is just so seamless. I urge you to reconsider if you dig VR lol

I'm hoping PSVR 2 is on par or better than the Oculus Quest 2.