Mega Man 11

Completed on Normal difficulty. Same old Mega Man really, but with plenty more polish. Visually it's lovely, especially some of the bigger characters (special mention to inflatable frog mini-boss). Gameplay wise there's some tight level design that's mostly testing without being too vicious.

But there are leftovers of old design sensibilities and a generally odd approach to difficulty that don't quite work. It seems outdated now to make pits and especially spikes instant death hazards when everything else isn't. It makes certain screens difficult to pass at all while the rest are only likely to cause moderate damage if you mess things up. On the other hand you end up carrying a whole range of cheap useable items and equippable parts that can make many challenges insignificant. The big temptation is not to just stockpile a load of energy tanks for a boss encounter and then mindlessly blast through it, especially when a Game Over means repeating the whole stage again.

The best moments, as ever with MM, are when you do things properly, especially making the breakthrough against the first boss and then working out the weaknesses of the others using the new weapons you get from each victory. In fact, one of the highlights in the end was probably the boss rush, which I made myself do in one life without items.

Not sure I'm bothered about the extra challenges or difficulty levels now, but I've had a decent enough time with it.

Jettomero: Hero of the Universe Switch
A perfect aesthetic, an utterly charming player-character, and a simple but engaging storyline. I really enjoyed this, and I’m glad I bought it and played it, although I’m glad I bought it at the price point I did. In truth, at my 3-4 hour playtime it was a little overlong for what is in it; there is not a lot to do. If anyone else is thinking about picking it up (and I would recommend you do, when it’s a few quid) I would urge them to plough on with the story at every opportunity. I scoured each location, but you’re honestly better to drive through the story as efficiently as you can. (NB: Collecting the various body parts is much easier and faster in the post-credits gameplay, if that’s your bag.)

Screenshots in the spoiler tags. No spoilers, just not clogging up the thread.

Banner Saga 1 glad i gave it a 2nd go (discussed on currently playing thread). Loved the choices you had to make, some very tough ones, at times reminded me of those 'choose your own adventure' books i read as a kid.

Portrayed war as a horrible, desperate mechanism that churns out misery and slaughters innocent people along the way.

Dont want to spoil it for anyone who intends to play it but there are some hard decisions, I've spoilered a few of the interesting ones.

1.
2.
Game is full of decisions like this, sometimes there are no good decisions.

6.5

1979 Revolution: Black Friday Switch
Hmmm. The best way to think about this is as a bit of light education. The videogame aspects of it just aren’t that great; interaction for the sake of interaction.

I’ll start with an unfair complaint: the protagonists best friend throughout is called Babak, which is apparently pronounced ‘bawbag’. It’s unfortunate when perfectly reasonable names in one language sound like something else in another language, but that doesn’t make it any less of a distraction.

Now to some more reasonable comments. Most of the interactivity comes with frustration. You are often presented with four dialogue options, and barely enough time to read them, let alone interpret how they might work out and choose one. Often, you are asked questions that, not only do you not know the answer, but nothing indicates if your character would know. I understand that this is an opportunity for the player to dictate details of the story, it’s inconsistent to drop that choice into an interrogation where there are right and wrong answers, and options to lie or withhold information you do know.

Then, the inputs are either unresponsive, or too sensitive, frequently resulting in something other than the option you wanted bing activated. Then, it makes that blanket mistake (as with every other game that uses dialogue trees) of playing an outcome that is different to what was implied from the text. Not that it seems to matter, as the very, very rare choices of consequence are unnecessarily highlighted by a ‘so-and-so will remember this’ lifted directly from Telltale.

The ‘action’ in the game is often interaction for interaction’s sake; a photograph taking ‘minigame’ (position camera until reticule is green, time shutter with image swinging in and out of focus) or the QTE style inputs which commit the unforgivable crime of mostly needing to be dealt with immediately (including one as you fade in from black on a restart) but occasionally after something in-scene changes, with no difference between the prompts used for either. At one point you are required to keep a bar between two points on the scale, and the smallest input resulted in a change larger than the target window.

Often, you are given some freedom to walk around, but there are invisible walls everywhere, and often the gap between an immovable NPC and an invisible wall is hard to find and manoeuvre through. Sometimes, to find an interactive hotspot, you have to enter a narrow invisible wall corridor, and then you pal follows you in and rands stock still in your way as you try to leave.

Elsewhere, while exploring rooms, looking in one area (such as a drawer) would highlight three items to inspect. Having inspected one, you are often pulled right back out to the room, resulting in you having to re-select the area you were examining, often triggering a piece of audio. On one occasion, this resulted in me hearing, “I should be looking for the camera, but I have to check out these home movies,” about ten times in a row, between each video clip.

Almost everything you select has information attached, which more often than not pulls you out of the game to read the basic info, with the option to come even further out to read more. It’s interesting (although has a distinctly secondary school feel) but I didn’t expect a game, so highly praised for its storytelling, to be so bad at telling a story.

On looking at the information collected after my first run-through, I’ve got most but not all of it. But there’s not enough of a draw in the storyline to warrant going back through it to collect that stuff. I suspect there may be a slightly different ending, or perhaps an epilogue, but sod going through all that again to see it - there are simply Khomeini frustrations for it to seem worthwhile.

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas Switch
I’m pretty sure I was paying attention to the plot bits, but I never really felt like I knew what was going on. Yeah, sure, following dad’s footsteps on adventure, yada yada, but I never knew why. The bad thing didn’t seem to be bothering anyone. I’m not sure why it was important for me to do something about it. Still, the water was lovely.

I’m a little bit frustrated that there’s no aftergame. After the credits, it told me that I had reached skill level 13 after 15 hours and so many minutes (although, the clock weirdly keeps ticking when you pause the game) with a 72% completion. I know there’s at least one spell I didn’t find, one island I never discovered, and a bunch of fish I never caught, but loading my save takes me back to the calm between phases one and two of the final boss.

I might be able to wonder back through the last dungeon. The thing is, this game is a nightmare to navigate. Remembering which island is which, or where on each island you’ve been, or how to get back to that bit where you think there might be a chest or bloodstone you couldn’t reach before, is really hard, because so many parts look the same, and are complex to navigate, and your only maps are a world map (island names, percentage completed when you click on it) or the mini-map in the bottom corner, which shows your immediate vicinity, but not where that is on the island, or where on the island to head for the bits you haven’t seen.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but there’s a disparity between the ease and simplicity of the combat, the dexterity required to complete the often opaque puzzles, and the Rain Man qualities required to commit the whereabouts of everything you see to memory.

It also betrays its mobile roots, in needlessly assigning all of your equipment to one face button, requiring you to manually reassign its function (which, if you forget to do, means you’ll dash into an enemy you wanted to shoot with your bow and arrow, or produce a lit bomb when you wanted to jump a small gap, or any combination of the above) while there are four (count ‘em) shoulder buttons going completely unused.

I did like it though, honest. Mostly.

Also can you teach me how to play and finish games moot. My attention span is sorely lacking.

But the best tip is to Switch your attentions to sub 4hr retro chic indie duffers.

Banner Saga 2 . Again the combat is passable, however the story keeps you hooked. So many decisions that you make go so wrong or come back to bite you in the arse in unexpected ways further down the line.

I'm not giving anything away by saying BS2 is literal continuation of BS1 like the Lord of the Rings movies were. Your still on the run from the Dredge (bad guys). Its desperate and bleak.

Towards the start of the game there is a setpiece which wouldn't look out of place in a hollywood blockbuster movie, its fraught with tension and the decisions you make on the fly during it, gees....

Looking forward to wrapping up the story in Banner Saga 3.

7

Good weird bad weird or can't decide weird?

Ugly weird.

Ooh Bokida just went 80% off on Steam...

Andy wrote:

Bulb Boy Switch
Well, that was fucking weird.

Seconded. Worth a play through, especially at sale prices. I'm most impressed that it stays logical despite the utter bar-shit-craziness of the setting.

RE7

Not bad.  Some very atmospheric environments, and really good audio - amazing what a difference a lack of music makes.  The trip to the the final room in the 2nd house was pretty scary.

First person but still manages to be a little clunky - that's mostly ok as you aren't playing as masterchief but irritating when it chucks a number of enemies at you and often it's not easy to run around them.

Got a bit bored towards the end and was happy it finished.

Restarts: 12
Mr Everywhere: 18/20 (grr)
Coins: 15/18 (grr)
Files: 30/32 (grr)
31 healing
0 stabilisers
0 steroids

Grr = I hate not finding everything in a game.

mrsmr2 wrote:

RE7

How long did you spend? I’m 6 hours in and only just beaten second boss.  Wasn’t as bad as first boss.

I’m expecting same to be honest. I always end up taking longer than most.