I finished Final Fantasy VII Remake. I was pleasantly surprised by how much of it felt like an expansion of the Midgar section of the original game rather than just padding (there was definitely some of that though).
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Beating Games
- Thread starter Octopus Prime
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- the end times
Finished Hellblade II. The interactivity is pretty limited but the presentation is outstanding.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Been putting off playing through Powerslave, but Humble Bundle has PowerSlave Exhumed in a Nightdive bundle and I figured this was as good a time as any to rock through it. What a really impressive experience! You can see some of that proto-Metroid Prime DNA folks mention, and the remaster moves really fluidly and fast, almost Quake-like. I'd recommend it to FPS fans and perhaps also Metroid Prime fans if you don't hate "boomer shooters".
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I finished Immortality an FMV game from Sam Barlow. There is a lot to like about this game, but the end game like Her Story left me disappointed.
Immortality focuses on an actress and three separate films. You scrub through footage from the films and click on items to unlock additional movie scenes. Example, clicking on a piece of artwork in one movie scene may unlock another movie scene with artwork from a totally different movie. Immortality focuses on relationships and affairs in its FMV footage. In the early stages I liked Immortality a lot. Seemingly everything I would click on would reveal new scenes and rewinding scenes would reveal secrets.
My big gripe with the game comes from the end game. Once you unlock a certain amount of scenes, you are clicking on random objects in scenes you have already watched hoping to get a new scene. The vast majority of the time you are led to a scene you have already seen.
I had the same problem in Her Story, at a certain point it becomes incredibly difficult to unlock or find new content. The achievements let you know that there is additional content missing.
For a game that focuses on telling a story through scenes, this locking of scenes behind random object clicking feels very inelegant. I would have thought between Her Story and Immortality that some improvement in game design would be made.
I liked Immortality and will continue to support Sam Barlow's FMV efforts (I wish more companies would make FMV games), but I really hope next outing has a more elegant way of unlocking scenes or giving you hints to unlock scenes.
I'm sure I could look up solutions on the internet, but that is not how I play games.
Immortality focuses on an actress and three separate films. You scrub through footage from the films and click on items to unlock additional movie scenes. Example, clicking on a piece of artwork in one movie scene may unlock another movie scene with artwork from a totally different movie. Immortality focuses on relationships and affairs in its FMV footage. In the early stages I liked Immortality a lot. Seemingly everything I would click on would reveal new scenes and rewinding scenes would reveal secrets.
My big gripe with the game comes from the end game. Once you unlock a certain amount of scenes, you are clicking on random objects in scenes you have already watched hoping to get a new scene. The vast majority of the time you are led to a scene you have already seen.
I had the same problem in Her Story, at a certain point it becomes incredibly difficult to unlock or find new content. The achievements let you know that there is additional content missing.
For a game that focuses on telling a story through scenes, this locking of scenes behind random object clicking feels very inelegant. I would have thought between Her Story and Immortality that some improvement in game design would be made.
I liked Immortality and will continue to support Sam Barlow's FMV efforts (I wish more companies would make FMV games), but I really hope next outing has a more elegant way of unlocking scenes or giving you hints to unlock scenes.
I'm sure I could look up solutions on the internet, but that is not how I play games.
Credits rolling on Chained Echoes, didn't do some of the post game stuff, but did plenty of it before deciding I was finished.
Game is clearly, deliberately, and explicitly working in as many FF homages as possible, but they felt earned and thematically appropriate, rather than "HEY! REMEMBER THAT OTHER THING? THIS IS THAT!"
Well, mostly. Some were a bit too on the nose to do anything but have me roll my eyes. Either way, that was mainly set dressing, the games actual beeps and boops all had their own style that I really appreciated and they all came together really well.
Game is clearly, deliberately, and explicitly working in as many FF homages as possible, but they felt earned and thematically appropriate, rather than "HEY! REMEMBER THAT OTHER THING? THIS IS THAT!"
Well, mostly. Some were a bit too on the nose to do anything but have me roll my eyes. Either way, that was mainly set dressing, the games actual beeps and boops all had their own style that I really appreciated and they all came together really well.
Like all Ratchet and Clank games, I really liked Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, but I don’t really foresee myself replaying it. I liked it, but I wasn’t in-like with it.
As opposed to Spider-Man 2, constantly chucking different genres into the game was fun instead of annoying and both Ratchet and Rivet had the same basic kind of gameplay so, of the PS5 big budget Insomniac games with two versions of the same character, this is the one that holds together better, even if it has far less Kraven the Hunter
As opposed to Spider-Man 2, constantly chucking different genres into the game was fun instead of annoying and both Ratchet and Rivet had the same basic kind of gameplay so, of the PS5 big budget Insomniac games with two versions of the same character, this is the one that holds together better, even if it has far less Kraven the Hunter
I finished off Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. That's a lot of game, most of it very good. There were a lot of plot decisions that seemed to maybe actively work against the story they were telling. It's a lot of setting things up, getting distracted, then resolving something else entirely, having forgotten about the set up.
Still had a ton of fun with it.
Still had a ton of fun with it.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
I finished Dragon’s Dogma 2. I got a lot more out of this one than I did the first game, using some guides and asking nice people for advice. I found the main story to much less interesting the DD1, with the ending especially not hitting as hard emotionally. Additionally, most of the court intrigue stuff in Act 1 never comes up again, and when it does it’s not how you would imagine.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a fun Metroidvania with a lot of pretty tough combat and platforming.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
My favorite game of the year so far. Really good, and it's pretty heavily discounted everywhere now, so no excuses!
Yeah, this one’s really great, folks. I think it’s a Metroidvania all-timer.
It's the first big-budget platformer to draw influence from Metroid Dread, and I think it's pretty neat. Be advised that it is possible to skip creating an Ubisoft account, I think by going forward as far as possible when it asks you to log in and then backing out.
I would say it is to Metroid Dread as Fenyx Rising was to BotW
All games are bad, Lokii
All Games.
All Games.
Are All Games Bad?
It was great! it didn’t hit the heights of BotW but clearly not for a lack of trying. Been meaning to replay it
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Wake me up when a big budget platformer takes influence from a good Metroid game.
I saw some Dread in The Lost Crown but also a healthy dose of Hollow Knight
Finished off Spiritfarer. I think I might have missed a spirit, and I didn't finish Buck's quest lines, but I was over 90% completion and I unlocked the end of the story and it felt like time to say goodbye (lol). God, what a sad game. It made me think about death, aging and mortality and all of that, much more than was comfortable! I cried a whole lot! The basic concept is "What if Animal Crossing but all your friends die?"! Luckily I got attached enough to cry over only a bit more than half the cast. Very calming and cozy game, at least until it makes you come to grips with dementia or old age or terminal illness.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I made it to the little mushroom boy who puts on a play for everyone and then dejectedly has you ferry him on when no one likes it very much. and had to walk away. Yikes.
Yeah, that one was tough. I mean, a lot of them were tough. That was kind of the game's whole thing, for better or worse.
i played shin maou golvellius, the msx2 version (the last of three, each of which has different maps, overall game progression, and bosses) of the game mostly known in english circles as the master system's closest analogue to the legend of zelda, and i keep thinking about it. this is one of my favorite 80s Sword Action Games i've played in this recent exploration, up there with ys 1 and 3 for me, but like a lot of the non-ys ones the central conceits are pretty bizarre in a modern context. these ideas are kind of tough to get used to on their own, since it's a game that's very much about trial and error, and the game builds them up pretty slowly at first before more exciting discoveries and abilities start coming into play in the second half. the guardian legend, which released between the msx1 version and the latter two, uses the same basic structure but attaches them to a more standard exploration overworld and shmup stages where you fight with projectiles...it's definitely more recognizably "good" and i might still like it better, too.
more than anything, it's like yoshio kiya's xanadu; the msx1 box says "by pac fujishima" and even with several other artists and programmers credited i understand the game is fundamentally his work. even compared to some of its contemporaries it's difficult to ascribe any real meaning to the individual secrets in the game; they're almost all revealed by defeating enemies, walking over hidden trigger spots, or tapping other objects with your sword, but they're also only activated in an esoteric sequence as you successively discover the ones that let buy new "bibles" to hold more currency (it's called "find," at least in this version, and as the game goes on you start meeting a bunch of the land's gods, so it's less weird than that probably sounds). and the scrolling stages are similarly trial-and-error based. if a player doesnt get tired of trying to do those things on every screen repeatedly until one of them works, it's only natural that they'd start trying to understand the game, and try to catch onto those sequences and developments faster. obviously, there's still some guesswork there; there are a fair number of hints around for various things, surely more than i even read and solved myself since i was playing in japanese, but ultimately i found myself starting to try and predict in advance things like where fujishima would put objectives, which parts of a screen were most likely to be important, and how to approach the scrolling stages. and as the game went on, i was right increasingly often. though i did get stuck looking for the last item for a while...there weren't really any hints that i could tell, but i could've remembered a screen i hadn't previously found anything on faster.
this is communication, in a way. you're trying to understand the creator's thoughts, via an intangible and abstract expression of them. and lots of games designed by one person, especially in an experimental way, have tons of this. unlike xanadu, i feel like a lot of them are hard to describe...golvellius presents more of an elusive vibe than an expression of a concrete idea. and i'm fascinated by that, even if this game doesn't particularly feel like art.
it is pretty funny though. especially the ending.
more than anything, it's like yoshio kiya's xanadu; the msx1 box says "by pac fujishima" and even with several other artists and programmers credited i understand the game is fundamentally his work. even compared to some of its contemporaries it's difficult to ascribe any real meaning to the individual secrets in the game; they're almost all revealed by defeating enemies, walking over hidden trigger spots, or tapping other objects with your sword, but they're also only activated in an esoteric sequence as you successively discover the ones that let buy new "bibles" to hold more currency (it's called "find," at least in this version, and as the game goes on you start meeting a bunch of the land's gods, so it's less weird than that probably sounds). and the scrolling stages are similarly trial-and-error based. if a player doesnt get tired of trying to do those things on every screen repeatedly until one of them works, it's only natural that they'd start trying to understand the game, and try to catch onto those sequences and developments faster. obviously, there's still some guesswork there; there are a fair number of hints around for various things, surely more than i even read and solved myself since i was playing in japanese, but ultimately i found myself starting to try and predict in advance things like where fujishima would put objectives, which parts of a screen were most likely to be important, and how to approach the scrolling stages. and as the game went on, i was right increasingly often. though i did get stuck looking for the last item for a while...there weren't really any hints that i could tell, but i could've remembered a screen i hadn't previously found anything on faster.
this is communication, in a way. you're trying to understand the creator's thoughts, via an intangible and abstract expression of them. and lots of games designed by one person, especially in an experimental way, have tons of this. unlike xanadu, i feel like a lot of them are hard to describe...golvellius presents more of an elusive vibe than an expression of a concrete idea. and i'm fascinated by that, even if this game doesn't particularly feel like art.
it is pretty funny though. especially the ending.