Wait, aren't you meant to be able to grind Xenoblade for thousands of hours or something?

How come? Did the ending have that much of an impact on you that you can't go back?

Emotionally or mechanically? The former I can deal with.

That's kind of how I felt. There also was an emotional attachment to how the game ends and there's a post credit sting that had me a little welling up. I don't know if I want to go back if that's the end point. But Syph is right, mechanically it's also a real slog. From chapter 8 on it's pretty much a run from boss fight to boss fight along with a hell of a gauntlet in chapter 9.

Sucks about Xenoblade. Well, it'll be a while until I have to experience that, anyway.

Salt and Sanctuary (w10)

Solid 2d Souls clone. Fight system is decent, as are visual and sound design. The skill tree is a great visual aid to fleshing out and customising your build. Went for a tank like character for my first run as per usual and finished the game with a discovery rate of about 70%. New game+ awaits.

Not an original game but nevertheless a very solid effort especially since the core Dev team consists of just 2 people (a married couple if I'm not mistaken). I basically copied the Dark Souls button configuration as Salt and Sanctuary plays exactly like a Dark Souls game. That being said the game is excellent in its own right and the Devs succesfully distilled the core essentials of what makes a Souls game work. And that's including level design and enemy placement. Not bad, not bad at all.

Above average and definitely worth a playthrough.

7.5 bags of salts out of 10

The Sexy Brutale

Pretty straightforward to finish in the end, despite initial concerns I'd be wandering about trying to work out what I was meant to be doing all the time. Enjoyable and different, if a little hackneyed and buggy. Awesome music. I'll probably but the physical edition for my shelf. 4/5

Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin

Another fun little VR thing that isn't too taxing and doesn't outstay it's welcome. Lovely graphics and the occasional smile. Uses the dreaded head aiming, but gets a pass on it because you're using psychic powers which convincingly shoot from your forehead. Recommended at its current sale price.

acemuzzy wrote:

TorqueL

It's shit

Heh. Tecoma done.

Nice little space walking simulator.

Bob wrote:

Just love skinning those digital animals to make purses and rucksacks. 8 out of 10.

Oh Bob, you cheeky wee psychopathic digital-animal murdering scamp.

God of War

I wasn't massively impressed with this. It looks great, has plenty of spectacle and is polished as fuck, but it didn't provide much in the way of interesting things to do.

The combat system is a good one, with tons of different options. It never really flowed for me though, with too much stuff packed onto the controller, and the camera angle and poor lock on system got annoying in challenging areas. It also chickened out of meaty boss battles, as the more visually spectacular they got the less control you had over them. Most of the upgrades, meanwhile, just seemed to be there for the sake of it, adding stat bonuses or percentage perks that made no real difference.

Exploration was better. There's a ton of stuff to find and it's all carefully linked together with puzzles and Metroid style gated areas. Even when you're simply collecting things or opening chests for those pointless upgrades, and even if most puzzles really only involve looking around for certain features to interact with, it's easy to get absorbed in long detours off the main track.

Storywise, I didn't really care for it. Trying to make Kratos anything more than a massive meat head didn't work for me, and even when the script was good the modern English and accents for other characters never stopped jarring. The use of the mythology and locations was well done though.

I've done a fair amount of optional stuff along the way, but have not intention of seeing it all. The combat isn't good enough and the fast travel isn't fast enough (the single shot thing it does is very neat, but hiding long loading screens behind enforced waits doesn't stop them being loading screens). There are a couple of things I'll look into (1 more dragon to find) and then I'm done.

This is definitely an AAA game, with production values off the scale and huge care put into the design to make sure everything is streamlined and works just right. It just all felt a bit too predictable and mechanical to me. I'd accept a few more rough edges in exchange for a leaner feature set and more imaginative gameplay.

Your review, and the game

I'm overdue some scores on me doors...

Super Stardust Ultra.  Basically the same as the PS3 version, but shinier.  Which is basically a good thing.  Recommended for any who haven't played it before, and I even got me the Platinum.  [8]

Last Day of June.  Took a while to warm on me, game play really wasn't all that, but a touching story I guess. [7]

Celeste.  Skill platformer, with some excellent levels and kinda intriguing plot.  At times felt like a slog to get through, but with lots of extras (strawberries and B-Sides), there's a lot to like here.  In fact the core mechanic is fun enough that for me it's a [9].

Ninja Senki DX.  Old-skool platformer, with double-jump + shuriken.  Just not hugely fun, and levels were hard in a "you'll need to memorize this, there's instance death, very limited lives and checkpoints" kinda way.  And I just couldn't really be arsed.  A stingy [4].

TorqueL.  Very indie physics platformer.  Very counter intuitive move-set, hard to control, and at times shonky physics makes it seem decidedly random.  Another [4].

Midway through a few others, nothing massively grabbing me atm though...

Half the people say that. They're the wrong half.

The other half say "meh". They're the right half.

Tempy is in the wrong half.

These things are facts.