Just completed - The Bear and Badger

mistercrayon

Last night I finished the current darling that is Inscryption. And you know it's good but I don't know if I dig it as highly as others.

There's a lot of cool things in it but aside from that I don't think I really engaged with the narrative or the characters. it seems like a whole bunch of details is locked behind and ARG rather than inside the game. Principally the game is a card game but I'm not sure the card game itself is very good.

Spoilers

Spoiler:

Anyway it's not bad but nothing really really hooked me as something I'll hold dearly.

acemuzzy

Blasphemous (PS5)

So yes, solid. I think I'll still stretch to a [9]. Enjoy fluctuated a bit along the way, but there's loads to it, played well, lots of depth, so kinda hard to argue with it really. And I've not even NG+ed or anything, and there's free dlc aplenty etc

Moot_Geeza

Did you find the retro stages? They were added after I played and it and the extras are all integrated, so I'd have to play another few hours to get to them afaik.

acemuzzy

I think that's an Ng+ option? So uh no.

RamSteelwood

Backbone

WTF?
I was sort of enjoying it at first - the style and the writing is ok, and there was an early puzzle that made me think this is going to be an interesting challenge. but from then on it progresses in a very linear narrative that for me felt like several chapters were missing, with basically no challenge or puzzles, and the ending is total arse (due to aforementioned 'missing chapters').
I'm sure some people might love it and will say it's about the journey not the destination, but for me the journey was mostly dull and boring, and the destination didn't justify it at all.

Paul the sparky

I loved it, and it's not usually my kind of thing. Deffo takes a turn into WTF territory though, and feels a bit messy/rushed

Moot_Geeza

I really liked it, the dialogue options/conversational flow was pretty damn good for that sort of thing. I think the early puzzle you might be referring to (in a locker?) was the most irritating part of the game for me. I went in expecting a traditional point & click, which it definitely isn't, but once I got use to the exhaust clickable options to win approach it won me over. It could've done with an extra few months in the oven though, it was a bit glitchy in places.

RamSteelwood

yeah. up until

Spoiler:

i was quite enjoying it.
From that point on though it was like they had that big idea but didn't really know what to do with it, and then rushed the ending.

i think i would have much prefered it if

Spoiler:

(edit: was replying to sparky)

Moot_Geeza

Legit complaints, I was sucked in by that point though.

Spoiler:

Paul the sparky

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Legit complaints, I was sucked in by that point though.

Spoiler:

The slow walk through the carnival procession was superb.

Brilliant bit

RamSteelwood

frustrating 'just do it as a cutscene' bit.

opinions eh?

Moot_Geeza

Don't play The Last Stop, Ram. It's the unassailable king of that particular complaint.

RamSteelwood

cheers for the heads up!

Ed_Flanders

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Took me a while to gather strength for the last trial but I finally did it yesterday. It was longish but less difficult than previous ones I thought. I did not see the last twist coming (Junko). Still, I expected more closure than what the game delivered. I have the sequel so I'll get to it soonish.
The game as a whole is fun and pretty well written. Kudos to the translators. Lots of jokes some clever lines. The characters are much less two-dimensional than they seemed at first. In fact, enjoyed getting to know them so much that I'm doing the post-game "School Life" mode.
7 or maybe 8 out of 10.

Silke

Synergia (PC)

This is what happens when I drink more than I should, I drift towards the passive comforts of the Visual Novel. Synergia reads like some kind of bad fan fiction yuri-take on a dreamy mash-up of Ghost in the Shell and every undergraduate philosophy quote you can think of.

The music is nice though, and the composer is worthy of a better end than these words and sketch-like illustrations, which are better left to die and be forgotten.

Bollockoff

Halo: Reach

I enjoyed it more towards the end but my enjoyment definitely correlated with how often they let me go on a spree with an energy sword / gravity hammer. The amount of tanky as fuck shielded enemies got a bit oppressive as well and I had to wonder if they'd gotten rid of the bonus plasma weapons are meant to do against shields.

Story was mind numbing gungho hoorah Black Hawk Down yawnshit that in hindsight seems born of the period of the Iraq War and Afghanistan deployments. Bungie did well to jettison most of that shite going into Destiny.

Getting literally thrown out of a spaceship while in low-orbit to just plummet to the surface was a highlight.

Blue Swirl

For a brick, you flew pretty good.

regmcfly

Metroid Dread. More thoughts later but that last boss was a doozy. Thoroughly enjoyable and an insane ending.

regmcfly

From the 52 games thread

I've always been a bit Metroid-adjacent. I've loved the GBA games, fallen in and out with the Prime ones (1,3,2 btw) and whilst I like Super Metroid it hasn't cemented itself as a stone wall classic. Samuel Returns was fine, and the original is just inscrutable to me.

Metroid Dread has something that other games in the series lack, and that I adore in some of my GOATS, Hotline Miami and Super Hexagon - that flow state. This is Samus at her (intended) prime, absolutely rolling through worlds. What starts as a sweet slide becomes a whole toolkit of insane abilities that essentially make you a single person genocide enabler on the planet.

Every boss has been fantastic, and although my clear time of 9:09 is not earth shattering, the way in which I know every pattern in my head now (especially the last 2) means I need to see how fast I can go now. I'll definitely go back to this in the new year, post traditional Pokemon Xmas gaming, and having now googled the sequence breaking item sequence, I need to try it.

Some stuff didn't quite hit - the shine spark is fiddly as fuck, and there is a bit of too much backtracking mid game that doesn't provide too much change, but overall I need to swap 1 and 2 because this is my goty .

Bollockoff

Halo 3: ODST or how many games in the Master Chief Collection can I finish while queuing for FF14

So it feels thematically they wanted to try something different here; you're not a Spartan and half the game is trudging through a slightly open-ended city scape in engagements you can mostly ignore and run past. But they didn't seem to have the courage to reflect that in the gameplay because you're still basically fucking Master Chief and what they've done to try and obfuscate the fact you still have a shield makes CoD's regenerating flesh soldiers seem grounded. On top of you can still flip Warthogs no problem and go toe to toe smack trading with Brutes.

I guess this game was in the period where Nathan Fillion was in Things as Nathan Fillion. He has a fucking awful love-can-rebloom-after-a-dumping-on-a battlefield romance subplot with a superior officer.

Pretty bad.

Bollockoff

Funniest thing is this sad orchestral transitional noir jazz piece that plays as you're roaming a ruined city. A mood piece as subtle as all of Halo put together.

Bollockoff

It's so awkward I've added it to my liked playlist on the Spotify for memories.

hunk

Bollockoff wrote:

Halo 3: ODST or how many games in the Master Chief Collection can I finish while queuing for FF14

So it feels thematically they wanted to try something different here; you're not a Spartan and half the game is trudging through an a slightly open-ended city scape in engagements you can mostly ignore and run past. But they didn't seem to have the courage to reflect that in the gameplay because you're still basically fucking Master Chief and what they've done to try and obfuscate the fact you still have a shield makes CoD's regenerating flesh soldiers seem grounded. On top of you can still flip Warthogs no problem and go toe to toe smack trading with Brutes.

I guess this game was in the period where Nathan Fillion was in Things as Nathan Fillion. He has a fucking awful love-can-rebloom-after-a-dumping-on-a battlefield romance subplot with a superior officer.

Pretty bad.

Haha, spot on.
My only gripe was how strong the odst crew were as compared to the Spartans and the Chief. Their strength is about on par with the MC in CE which means they're capable of slaughtering whole batallions of covenant. Otherwise, great game despite the flawed fillion romance story arc.

hunk

Psychonauts (pc)
Great little action adventure hybrid platformer from Double Fine which has stood the test of time better than most of its contemporaries. The visual/audio design (typical Lucas Arts) is timeless, the script is great, the platforming and the puzzles just work without being too frustrating. The only complaint I can think of is the fiddly controls you have to constantly reassign yourself midgame depending on the puzzle/fights. And some dodgy rail jumping controls making for stupid insta death's.

Otherwise, a quality title which still holds up remarkably well. Looking forward to the sequel.
7/10

Silke

I've wondered how it would be to play the Halo games today without the inevitable nostalgia, and, well, I reckon Bollockoff's telling it how it is; can't say I felt particularly impressed, going through the MC Collection last year.

GurtTractor

The first three are really good, I played them all again a few months ago and they honestly hold up great while Reach/ODST don't do it for me.

I've said it before but the only good bits of Halo 1 are good, meaning that there's 3-5 levels that everyone really remembers and replays, the others being pretty dire and repetitive.

Halo 2's campaign is the most consistently enjoyable and variable in my experience, with only one or two sections that are a bit lame, and those don't last long.

Halo 3 is somewhere in between, pretty good overall. It does have some utter stinkers though, the Gravemind nonsense in particular is a real wind up. But the good vehicle based levels have bags of replayability.

Yossarian

I’m all about the quality of the combat in the Halo games, and I don’t think it’s ever been bettered than in the original. The sandbox was so perfectly balanced, everything had a role, deaths practically never felt cheap or not your fault. Halo CE on Legendary is as close to perfect as you can get.

The others added more spectacle, more variety, more set-pieces, all of which were fun, but they did end up diluting that perfectly pure sandbox from the original.

hylian_elf

Yoss knows

GurtTractor

Certainly the moment to moment gameplay and feel of Halo 1 is still the best, the other games are in it's shadow in that respect, especially 343's efforts. In terms of the package as a whole though I feel like 2 or 3 are perhaps the strongest, 3 if it's about the multiplayer, 2 for the campaign for me at least.

I've always got time for those special levels in CE, the thunder of the assault rifle is ingrained in my soul.

Blue Swirl

regmcfly wrote:

From the 52 games thread

Metroid Dread has something that other games in the series lack, and that I adore in some of my GOATS, Hotline Miami and Super Hexagon - that flow state.

This is why it hasn't gone back into my Switch in a while - the flow is excellent... until I hit am EMMI section, and it becomes the worst kind of insta-fail stealth.

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