Finished Any Games Lately?

Pink Stripes wrote:

Yesterday, I finished A Monster's Expedition and this is surely going to be one of my favorite games of the year. The game takes the basic concept of the grid-based block-pushing game, and replaces the classic block by a cylinder (a log). That simple change creates an amazing depth in the mechanics for solving the puzzles. This may sound very basic, but it is really amazing how far the game takes those mechanics.

At first this was sounding a ton like Stephen's Sausage Roll. But after looking it up on Steam, I see that it approaches things quite differently. And the fact that you called it "not too difficult" haha. Thanks for the review, I'll definitely look into this!

I just finished up the main campaign for Remnant: From the Ashes last night. I absolutely loved it and immediately grabbed the DLC. I'll be jumping into that tonight.

I just finished Wintermoor Tactics Club. More of a visual novel set in an 80s boarding school with a lot of tactics puzzles in it, I really had a lot of fun and the writing really does have its heart in the right place. There were also a few jokes that made me laugh.

Pink Stripes wrote:

Yesterday, I finished A Monster's Expedition and this is surely going to be one of my favorite games of the year. The game takes the basic concept of the grid-based block-pushing game, and replaces the classic block by a cylinder (a log). That simple change creates an amazing depth in the mechanics for solving the puzzles. This may sound very basic, but it is really amazing how far the game takes those mechanics.

The game is also incredibly approachable. Some puzzles are designed to make you stumble upon ideas that you hadn't thought about before, and that you will use in later puzzles. Each puzzle is also very short, and you can quickly undo or reset your moves. The main game is not too difficult, but there is still a lot to discover when you finish it, and it looks like that will be much trickier. If you shy away from puzzle games because they are too complex or get too tough too quickly, this game is for you. If you like a challenge, this game is also for you because you will get through the main part quickly and then you can start thinking about the hard stuff.

Beyond the mechanics, the game is visually very cute, and both the visuals and sounds transmit a lot of peace and tranquility and help you focus and enjoy the process. The humor in the exhibitions is also lovely. I'd really recommend this game to everyone.

Awesome, I didn't know there was another Draknek game out! Instant buy.

bbk1980 wrote:

I just finished Wintermoor Tactics Club. More of a visual novel set in an 80s boarding school with a lot of tactics puzzles in it, I really had a lot of fun and the writing really does have its heart in the right place. There were also a few jokes that made me laugh.

Glad you liked it! I was a big fan of this one, and finished it a few months back.

I finished Yoshi's Crafted World. By now Yoshi games have become somewhat formulaic, so if you're familiar with them, you know what you're getting. I really liked that they made an effort to make every level look and feel unique though.

Finished a second run through of Elex. Love these games, but they can be a real battle to get through to the point when you don't have to quicksave before every battle. Balance wasn't brilliant in this though, early 10 to 15 hours are really tough and although you want to get exploring it isn't worth the constant loading. The next 15 to 20 hours are OK but you still have to be very careful and here you make big calls on drug use, faction, play style generally.
Enjoyed the rest though.

Looking forward to Elex 2...soon.

I finished Final Fantasy XIII. It's not helped by me having played through the FFXII remaster a couple of months ago, but that's not a very good game.

Visually it still holds up, particularly when it comes to character models and animation, but the storytelling's confused, the goals and conflicts frequently aren't very clear, and the gameplay's fustratingly limited. The fact that you can (eventually) assign any party leader outside of combat, but not switch during gameplay, and the party leader going down means game over feels so arbitrary and leaves you at the mercy of the AI. When FFXII played itself, it's because you set up an exquisite machine with the gambit system. Here, it's the default state.

I kind of enjoyed the sheer absurd amount of spectacle on display at times, Lightning deosn't have much going on as a character, but she definitely looks real cool, there's a chapter where the Hope/Snow conflict has some tension, and once you get to chapter 11 it approaches the kind of thing you expect from a Final Fantasy, but overall? Not very good.

Finished Spiritfarer! Perfect game for 2020.

Wife and I finished Overcooked 1 main story!!!

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

I finished Final Fantasy XIII. It's not helped by me having played through the FFXII remaster a couple of months ago, but that's not a very good game.

Visually it still holds up, particularly when it comes to character models and animation, but the storytelling's confused, the goals and conflicts frequently aren't very clear, and the gameplay's fustratingly limited. The fact that you can (eventually) assign any party leader outside of combat, but not switch during gameplay, and the party leader going down means game over feels so arbitrary and leaves you at the mercy of the AI. When FFXII played itself, it's because you set up an exquisite machine with the gambit system. Here, it's the default state.

I kind of enjoyed the sheer absurd amount of spectacle on display at times, Lightning deosn't have much going on as a character, but she definitely looks real cool, there's a chapter where the Hope/Snow conflict has some tension, and once you get to chapter 11 it approaches the kind of thing you expect from a Final Fantasy, but overall? Not very good.

FFXIII IMO is garbage....Cant manage to play it

I'm on a mission to start/play/finish up to three games during my Fall Break. The first one: the adorable Cat Quest. Lots of furry cuteness and fun to be had!

Finished Immortal Unchained. It's off-brand Dark Souls. It has its share of jank, I'm not really into the visual style, but for a tiny team, they do a surprisingly good job of nailing the gameplay rhythm, and they manage to make souls-like combat work with guns.

I finished Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise. It's a fun first-person adventure game that plays like something in between a hidden object game and a point-and-click adventure game. Thankfully it does not require a lot of pixel hunting, but it does take a fair amount of backtracking between locations. The story is a tongue in cheek murder mystery about spies and special agents. Other than that, the art style is cool, the difficulty felt right, perhaps a bit on the easier side of things (and that's fine with me), and all in all it was a pretty fun game.

Ys: Oath in Felghana (Nightmare Difficulty) - PC

Whew! That might just have been the hardest video game I've beaten in my 30 years of gaming. I've played the other games in the series up to this point on Nightmare difficulty too, but they were nowhere near as brutal as this game. I actually started this game back in 2017, but I kept taking multi-month breaks because you can only grind away at a boss for so many hours before you need to put down the controller for a while.

I started an Ys playthrough of all the games way back in 2016, so it's awesome to finally get unstuck. Hopefully I can catch up on the series before Ys IX comes out here in the west.

Credits rolled on Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor Martyr, action RPG, main quest only at about 40 hours. Quite enjoyable with loads of missions but most had fairly small maps.
It's clearly aimed at MMO so playing solo doesn't get you the full experience but it was a well polished game and enjoyable.

EOL received on Transistor last week.

I'm on the fence on this one. I loved the look of the world of transistor and the voice acting was amazing. But I felt like it was missing... something? It seemed pretty short. Way too short to understand and experiment with all the different combinations of Functions, though I could have spent more time in the back-door area to test them I suppose.

I really wanted to know more about the world of Transistor. It's obviously a virtual environment, but they way they talk about the densins it's like character death is real death... so... what's the deal with that? Is this a Matrix situation, but people know they're in the matrix? Was it a bunch of AIs?

I finished the game feeling like there was a lot more to the story that just wasn't in there

Ori & The Will Of The Wisps is plundered to the tune of 100% completion. The orginal Ori was in my no.5 in my GOTY list last year & this overall is (bar a couple of caveats) a better game.

As Ori you start to unlock a wealth of tools that effect gameplay & exploration at every turn, which in turn make you appreciate how well & multilayered each area is designed. The platforming is again flawless & you feel in total control of Ori, double jumping, dashing, wall jumping, eventually using bash on projectiles etc

There are mechanics unique to each area like the rising bubbles that you can bounce between at Luma Pools. There are the Mouldwood Depths were the darkness consumes you & light sources are required for survival. The diggers paradise of the Windswept Wastes that see's you burrowing boulder dash style through sections of sand.

The total success at which WOTW nails the feeling of the swimming, digging, wind gliding sections just speaks to the high polish of every area of the game.

The ancestral trees that are again littered throughout the map give Ori some fantastic abilities. Its when you attain these that you really notice how much easier you can navigate the stunning environments. Grapple onto blue plants to reach previously inaccessible high areas. Unlimited breath underwater to explore without restriction. Swim Dash to actually damage enemies underwater & to burst out of the water onto ledges that you couldn't previously get near. The beauty about all these new skills is that you usually get them after experiencing the area (or at least part of it) without them. Its all the more rewarding for it.

The base area of Wellspring Glades that can be built up to flesh out the living area for the friendly creatures of the wood is a nice addition. You can speak to Grom (The Gorlek Builder) & give him Gorlek Ore which can be used to build more huts, cut all the thorns away from parts of the Glades etc You actually feel like your helping a little community flourish.

Story wise its about helping a creature brought into your family. A decay has set into the forest because of the spirit willows passing, the light it carried shattering into 5 wisps that you must find.

Its a simple but effective tale & WOTW is at its strongest when its shows you characters helping each other. There's very little words so its through the body language that it makes you care & feel joy, sadness, empathy to the friendly characters of the forest. It even successfully does this to the antagonist of the story which I appreciated a lot.

Now for the minor complaints, it never quite hits the highs of the escape sequences of the original, especially the Ginso Tree. Its missing these Zelda style dungeons that The Blind Forest had. Yes there are areas that incorporate a new mechanic that isn't found elsewhere but it never feels as fleshed out & grand.

The combat is improved but it never quite feels tactical, the far out viewpoint being one of the major causes of this (a boss at the end of the game really highlights this factor). Its still very gratifying, you feel every hit, the feedback is fantastic. Your abilities probably get too powerful but its supposed to be fun more than difficult I guess.

One of the easiest recommendations of the year. An utterly superb Metroidvania that can stand toe to toe with the greats of the genre.

Wow. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! The new Ori stands as one of my biggest disappointments of the year, so your enthusiasm and different perspective was an interesting read.

So that's what Spike has been up to lately.

I still am waiting for an Ori sale on Switch.

I finished G-String, which is a Half-life 2 total conversion that just got released.

Yes, you read that right.

The story's frankly pretty incomprehensible - it's the ecologically devasted cyberpunk future, you're the subject of a human experiment with telekinesis powers (that's your gravity gun) who've escaped. You move forward because it's the only way you can go.

Apparently a one-man project 13 years in the making, it certainly plays like a TC for Half Life 2, made linearly. By which I mean the opening half is a slog through way too many floor is lava and platforming sequences, with basically only the pretty splendid skyline and occasional setpiece to entice you into pushing forward. And then in the back half, the pacing starts getting better, the setpieces get more frequent, you get to go into that great skyline. There's a motherf*cking space battle.

It the opening was cut down by a couple of hours, I'd recommend it to anyone down for some inde jank, but that's a lot of junk and hazardous waste to hop, skip and wade through to get to the good stuff.

Quit Hellblade on the first boss, basically unbeatable even on easy due to the mouse issue with multiple monitors.
I've had dual monitors for years and cannot recall another game where the mouse would leave the game without alt/tab, so is basically always in a windowed mode. So I'd lose control if I moved outside of a small zone for the mouse and it was only a couple of hits from that boss to kill her. Very frustrating and no solutions that I could find on the net.
I'm not too bothered, I was finding it quite slow and those matching puzzles bizarre.

Signed up to game pass for £1 today so I've got several others to play in the month.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Wow. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! The new Ori stands as one of my biggest disappointments of the year, so your enthusiasm and different perspective was an interesting read. :)

Thanks Clock! How far did you get? What was it that disappointed you after enjoying the first one so much?

Stele wrote:

So that's what Spike has been up to lately.

I still am waiting for an Ori sale on Switch.

Did you play the first one Stele? I am now officially freed up for Hades binges, I've like 150+ posts to catch up on in the thread.

I don't agree with Clock often, but I'm with her on the second Ori. Big disappointment for me. The increased focus on combat was a turn off.

Spikeout wrote:
Stele wrote:

So that's what Spike has been up to lately.

I still am waiting for an Ori sale on Switch.

Did you play the first one Stele? I am now officially freed up for Hades binges, I've like 150+ posts to catch up on in the thread.

Nah still want the first one. That's the sale I have been waiting for.

Oh man Hades is so good. I beat it in 48 runs but I'm on run 63 now or something. Can't quit.

Spikeout wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Wow. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! The new Ori stands as one of my biggest disappointments of the year, so your enthusiasm and different perspective was an interesting read. :)

Thanks Clock! How far did you get? What was it that disappointed you after enjoying the first one so much?

I made it as far as collecting the three wisps. I think I got partway through Bauer's Reach before moving on.

I played it back around launch, so it's been long enough that I don't remember all of my issues with it. However, from what I recall, I felt like the game leaned away from the things the first game did well in favor of trying to borrow from another experience that other teams had already done better.

The first Ori game thrived on flow. Mastery of the bash ability allowed you a freedom and fluidity of movement that I haven't encountered in other platformers. It was immensely satisfying to simply move from area to area, building up speed, and learning all the ways that bash enabled seamless movement from place to place without ever touching the ground. I got really into Ori as a result, ultimately getting into speed runs and low-death challenge runs, something I rarely do.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps leaned away from that focus on flow and movement to put more of an emphasis on combat. Specifically, to put an emphasis on a combat and world design heavily influenced by Hollow Knight. I understand the appeal; once it gets going, Hollow Knight is a good game, and there was potential for a real "chocolate in my peanut butter" union of two very good games to make a better game.

Unfortunately, the combat wasn't as good as Hollow Knight, the platforming wasn't as good as Ori and the Blind Forest, and the end result was a mushy and unsatisfying approximation of better experiences from somewhere else. Every time I spent any time with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, I found myself wishing that I were playing the first Ori or Hollow Knight instead rather than the disappointing Frankenstein they'd come up with.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Spikeout wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Wow. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! The new Ori stands as one of my biggest disappointments of the year, so your enthusiasm and different perspective was an interesting read. :)

Thanks Clock! How far did you get? What was it that disappointed you after enjoying the first one so much?

I made it as far as collecting the three wisps. I think I got partway through Bauer's Reach before moving on.

I played it back around launch, so it's been long enough that I don't remember all of my issues with it. However, from what I recall, I felt like the game leaned away from the things the first game did well in favor of trying to borrow from another experience that other teams had already done better.

The first Ori game thrived on flow. Mastery of the bash ability allowed you a freedom and fluidity of movement that I haven't encountered in other platformers. It was immensely satisfying to simply move from area to area, building up speed, and learning all the ways that bash enabled seamless movement from place to place without ever touching the ground. I got really into Ori as a result, ultimately getting into speed runs and low-death challenge runs, something I rarely do.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps leaned away from that focus on flow and movement to put more of an emphasis on combat. Specifically, to put an emphasis on a combat and world design heavily influenced by Hollow Knight. I understand the appeal; once it gets going, Hollow Knight is a good game, and there was potential for a real "chocolate in my peanut butter" union of two very good games to make a better game.

Unfortunately, the combat wasn't as good as Hollow Knight, the platforming wasn't as good as Ori and the Blind Forest, and the end result was a mushy and unsatisfying approximation of better experiences from somewhere else. Every time I spent any time with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, I found myself wishing that I were playing the first Ori or Hollow Knight instead rather than the disappointing Frankenstein they'd come up with.

You did progress through a lot of the game then. I suppose I understand the increased frequency of combat but the I thought the traversal was equally well done in terms of keeping up speed, wall jumps, using double jump etc Its still very platform focused. There are even more traversal skills too which I find adds to the feeling of mastering getting through the environments as efficiently as possible. Things like grappling points on ceilings, boosting through sand rocks that propel you in a direction of your choosing (relative to position), the sections were your burrowing through the sand also require using momentum a fair bit.

As counter points to my own argument there's the shard that makes you stick to walls which makes wall jumping less skillful & there's maybe too many traversal options that you sometimes forget if you need to dash through an object or grapple upto it.

There are multiple exclusive sections were Bash is a necessity or used extensively, Mouldwood Depths being one such area. It would be interesting to take a run through The Blind Forest to see the parallel in this area though.

WOTW without a doubt wears its Hollow Knight influences on its sleeves. The shard system is a mirror to HK's charms & yeah the combat is nowhere near the level of HK.

Still at least you give it a fair shot. Thanks for expanding on your thoughts.

Stele wrote:
Spikeout wrote:
Stele wrote:

So that's what Spike has been up to lately.

I still am waiting for an Ori sale on Switch.

Did you play the first one Stele? I am now officially freed up for Hades binges, I've like 150+ posts to catch up on in the thread.

Nah still want the first one. That's the sale I have been waiting for.

Oh man Hades is so good. I beat it in 48 runs but I'm on run 63 now or something. Can't quit.

48 runs seems good. I've no idea how big it is as I've probably done about 6-8 runs, getting past Meg once. It seems to be the indie darling of the year so far. I hope it really grabs me.

The dialogue & banter you have with the God's is funny but informative at filling in the backstory or fleshing out the world building. The structure of the game seems to go way beyond other Rogue Lites too. I still need to gel with the combat more though, its good, perhaps very good but not highly addictive....yet.

Meant to edit. 1st win was run 18 or so. But 48 runs to complete the main story, and and 40 hours of play time according to Switch menu. There's also some epilogue that I'm still chasing but mostly I'm doing side quests and trying out new weapon aspects. And just having fun.

Ah I see, I'll have to catch up on the Hades thread & get in on the conversation. Did you eventually run into repeated dialogue in your playtime? It seems as if Supergiant have written thousands of pages of dialogue for this thing.

Spikeout wrote:

Ah I see, I'll have to catch up on the Hades thread & get in on the conversation. Did you eventually run into repeated dialogue in your playtime? It seems as if Supergiant have written thousands of pages of dialogue for this thing.

Not yet. It's amazing how the dialog plays off the game systems too. There's a pact system that changes things after you beat it once. And if you change something for a boss fight, then change it back the next run, the boss will comment on the differences. Just an unbelievable level of detail.