The Order 1886

The part of me that likes walking around environments, looking at all the details, enjoys standing still just to look at some cloth reacting to wind and is fine with progressing in a linear way loved it. 

The part of me that never minded QTE's disliked it.

The part of me that never really cared about shooters thought this was ok with a stupid difficulty ramp during the last gun fight. 

The part of me that tried to understand the story was left confused.

So yeah, I find it hard to really "judge" this game, it didn't have the best epilogue  
Dialogue between characters felt purposefully complicated, to reflect a certain time I'm sure but I've missed a couple things at the start as I had no clue what they were all arguing over. It does have a nice set of characters, acting ain't too bad but the story doesn't deliver. Pretty sure they always thought they'd be in it for the sequel. So there were a couple of things they probably wanted to expand upon, but are left open for now.

The QTE's, I've never really cared for them or had trouble with them in other games, but they managed to do that with this game. A couple of them involved too many different buttons in the same action sequence, and I kept messing them up.
I'm talking about the two fights The shooting was basic but solid. I liked the sounds and some nice designs. Couple scenes were a bit too long though, and switching to close quarter combat never really worked for me.

But it was all so damn pretty. I've always played adventure games by circling around the outer edges of a map, and making my way to the inside before progressing (and quite often giving up before the end) and have seen some boring and broken corners that way. This game never left you feel disappointed, you could look trough every window and spot something, no empty rooms and I've hardly seen any glitches. Had some boards that didn't seem to collide well when I had just loaded the game, but turning the camera around for a bit solved that. Materials looked good, lighting was nice, animation blends looked good... 

So overall I liked it, wouldn't have mind a sequel as I'm curious about some of the characters, but I guess we'll never see that. Think one of the articles posted in the thread (yes I went there, I wanted to see how the build up to the release went, as there's so much that went wrong in that area too) said it best, this might be more of a developer's game than a gamer's game. If you appreciate the (technical) beauty of this game, the rest is just solid enough to see it till the end. Just don't expect any mindblowing gameplay.

No idea if this is actually a thing but my mate used to get bad motion sickness and he read something about putting an object between yourself and the TV. He now puts a can of deodorant about a foot in front of the telly and it works a treat apparently. Worth a try?

Good write up Nina, I quite liked it too, but the visuals were a huge helping hand.  Metacritic is sitting at 63%, which considering 6/10 tends to mean 'avoid' is probably about right for a game that was £50ish launch.  If they'd gone the Hellblade route and released it as a half price download I don't think there would've been a backlash.  Ryse and The Order are the perfect candidates for an affordable AAA range, which is something that should definitely be a thing imo.

To be fair, PDZ gave most people that played it the boke.

Luckily ME was shit, so it's not like I missed anything.

EDIT: Posted in wrong thread!

Uncharted: Lost Legacy

Very similar to U4 - Pretty enjoyable game all up!  Bits of the game are wearing thin (the climbing and jumping around is clunky and it's sometimes not clear what bits you can climb/land on safely) but the good stuff still gets me.  Graphics are so lavish, and it has this trick it does several times where you're struggling through a dank enclosure and suddenly come out to a view of a lush green jungle vista with blue skies and a bright sun.  Some really inspired architecture to look at and climb over too.

Fun characters who quip at each other but didn't really follow the story very closely.  Not really sure what the bad guy was on about at the end.  Some exciting set pieces all up though the end sequence dragged on a touch.

Really fun way to spend about 6 hours or so!

Just looked that up - turns out I missed most of that!  And who knows what else.

Oh, well.  Too late now; already traded it in.

I thought the whole thing was somewhat ironically a relic from a bygone age.

JonB wrote:

Puzzles can be clever but obvious at the same time.

Absolutely.  It's one of the key ingredients for an enjoyable game in the genre, imo.

Finished the Cop mode on NFS Rivals.  Actually really enjoyed it by the end - good challenge, nice variety, fun handling.  My game got a bit confused and jumped me from the antepenultimate event to thinking I'd finished the game, so I had to "replay" the last level, which was a bit weird, but then I've also moved across to Racer and it's lost progress I probably made before, but left me with credits, so fuck knows what it thinks is happening.

Being racer is an intriguing amount of change.  Same roads etc., but different HUD, event types, weapons, you can lose your credits, and I'm back in shitty cars again rather than nippy numbers.  So I reckon I'll give it a bit of a crack too.

Drift challenges though?  Fuck that noise.

I have been thinking of trying N4S Rivals again.
I didn't really like it from the demo I played way back, I thought it wasnt as good as the bloody brilliant Hot Pursuit and decided to wait for the next release.
Seems the series has gone right down the toilet since so "not quite as good as HP" is worth more of a go.

I've just caught up with the last six or so pages.

Nice to see some vintage Reg.

Yeah I basically played it in that mode - straight back to the cop shop / hideout, then jump to the next mission.  A bit tedious cos loading screens but driving around is not always the best option.

Finished Inside

It clearly has a lot in common with Limbo. I preferred the graphical style of this but overall I think Limbo is the better game.

I also can't believe all the trophies appear to be for collectables? If I hadn't been looking at IGN I'd of completed it without getting anything at all.

Will probably go back through and collect them all to see the alternate ending in the hope it's better than the actual ending.

I re-read the Eurogamer review during playthrough and I've got to say I don't really get the same feeling from it.. it was ok but the end wasn't all that. There was no laughing at crate puzzle moments... But I really enjoyed the world and exploring it... I expect some greater reward or pay off though from Playdead. It's left me disappointed. Still £6 well spent and I'll be interested to see if they're third game plays so similarly.

acemuzzy wrote:

Finished the Cop mode on NFS Rivals.

Your chat got me picking it up cheap on PSN. I missed a bit of NfS. I’d forgotten one of my quibbles with this; you can’t pause. I switch off everything to do with its online guff, but I can’t pause. And I’ll need to work out how to miss out all the driving about. And the unusual physics means that some of the crashes are a little odd.

There’s some good fun racing in there, but it is so heavily obfuscated by desperation to add bells and whistles, it’s hard to love.