What games did you complete? 2020 Edition

[Jamie John]

12. Lonely Mountains: Downhill (PC)

 

(A gif I made of me tearing it up down some sick ramps and shit.)

Spoiler

 

I’ve played this for about six hours now, having unlocked all the trails and completed all the beginner challenges (as well as the super cool secret bonus mode on a few of the mountains), and although I feel like I’ve had my fill of it for the time being, I thought it was really very good.

 

Primarily, it just feels so lovely to play, especially when you get your flow on and find yourself carving your route down the mountain, seemingly without effort, but in reality a mouse hair away from crashing at any moment. The controls do take a little while to get used to as you control the bike in relation to the screen, as opposed to the direction the rider is facing (although you can switch to this 'rider facing' control mode if you want to). After about 15 minutes, however, you’ll get the hang of it and wonder why you ever had a problem in the first place. At 75 FPS with the settings on max, the game looks beautiful, too, the developer’s making clever use of bokeh and dynamic camera angles to breathtaking effect at times, and the lighting in the aforementioned bonus mode is excellent, especially while in motion. Coupled with its sparse yet crunchy sound design (including some fantastically wince-inducing effects when you go flying headfirst into a rock, which you will, often), the whole experience of playing the game is very immersive as well as quite tranquil,  somewhat oddly so when you consider how much you have to concentrate on what you’re doing pretty much constantly.

 

In fact, I’ve not really played a game like it before. To begin with I thought it would be like Trials, but it’s a lot less linear, with dozens of shortcuts and alternative routes you can use on each trail beyond the beaten track that vary in their risk : reward ratio. It’s here where the game hits its biggest snag, however, as if you choose to explore these shortcuts, as you are encouraged to, the fixed camera means that often you literally won’t be able to see where you’re going when descending some pretty tricky paths or taking leaps of faith off of ramps, not knowing what to aim for when your landing zone is off-screen. As a result, more often than not, your exploration will end with you crashing or falling off a cliff, booting you back to the checkpoint and leaving you feeling a little hard done by. The only remedy to this is to just learn the shortcuts off by heart, remembering exactly how you need to align your bike and how fast you can get away with completing each one, but, as mentioned, because there are so many on each trail, and as the trails often intersect at points, learning each one just so you can shave a few seconds off your track times would seem to require some serious effort that I wasn’t particularly inspired to give. With no multiplayer or time trial ghosts, either, unless you’re interested in seeing how high you can climb up the leaderboards, there’s not a huge amount to keep you playing once you’ve seen all the different trails and have had enough of the challenges.

 

Perhaps these are things they’ll include in a future update. In the meantime, though, in spite of these flaws, I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to anyone, particularly as it’s currently on Game Pass.

 

8/10

 

Previous:

 

Spoiler

 

1. Death Stranding (PS4) - 8/10

2. Mark of the Ninja Remastered (Switch) - 7/10

3. Firewatch (PS4) - 7/10

4. Dishonored 2 (PS4) - 7/10

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) (PS4) - 6/10

6. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PC) - 8/10

7. Half-Life 2 (PC) - 9/10

8. Gears 5 (PC) - 8/10

9. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - 9/10

10. A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC) - 7/10

11. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) - 7/10

 

 

[Yewone]

Despite 2020 being monumentally shit for a multitude of reasons. Have to say Ive played (and completed) some fucking stunning games this year! 

 

07/01/20 - What the Golf (Apple Arcade)

22/02/20 - The Witcher 3 (Xbox One)

26/02/20 - The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone DLC (Xbox One)

06/03/20 - The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine DLC (Xbox One)

09/03/20 - Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (PS4)

15/03/20 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox One)

17/03/20 - My Friend Pedro (Xbox One)

01/04/20 - Doom Eternal (PS4)

04/04/20 - Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

15/04/20 - Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

04/05/20 - Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

05/05/20 - Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)

05/05/20 - Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One)

08/05/20 - XCOM Chimera Squad (PC)

11/05/20 - The Order 1886 (PS4)

14/05/20 - Outer Wilds (Xbox One)

15/05/20 - Moving Out (Switch - CoOp)

06/06/20 - Dishonored 2 (Xbox One)

[Mogster]

05/06/2020 - Vader Immortal

 

I got myself an Oculus Quest a recently, and played through all three episodes of this. It's more of an experience than a game, but it's very well produced and offers a nice bit of wish fulfilment if you're a Star Wars fan. It handles lightsaber battles and force powers pretty well, and the story, while ultimately inconsequential, manages a nice little bit of worldbuilding.

 

Other than that there's not much to say really, other than there was one bit that really set off my fear of heights.

 

Spoiler

January

07/01/2020 - Control (Xbox One)

26/01/2020 - Final Fantasy X (Switch)

February

10/02/2020 - Disco Elysium

22/02/2020 - Frostpunk

March

10/03/2020 - Darksiders: Warmastered Edition

29/03/2020 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps

April

07/04/2020 - Yakuza Kiwami

May

04/05/2020 - Final Fantasy VII Remake
09/05/2020 - Streets of Rage 4
23/05/2020 - Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

June

05/06/2020 - Vader Immortal

 

[Jamie John]

13. The Last of Us Remastered (PS4)

 

 

(Late-game spoiler screenshot:)

Spoiler

 

This was the first game I completed back when I bought my PS4 in 2016 and I’ve given it another run through ahead of the sequel in a couple of weeks.

 

It really is a masterpiece, isn’t it? Hyperbole aside, this game has the best writing, voice-acting and character building of any I’ve ever played. It’s just perfectly done, all the way through, and still, seven years after release, sets the bar when it comes to narratives in AAA games. It’s hard to believe that it came out on the PS3.

 

Playing it again has reminded me of just how solid an action game it is as well. With the difficulty set to hard, every combat encounter is searingly tense throughout but never becomes frustrating - the game truly succeeds in making you feel vulnerable and desperate, clinging onto life by your fingertips and doing whatever it takes to survive. I was literally trembling early this evening after completing the final level, most of which I had spent holding my breath.

 

On top of that, the sound design, the music, the graphics, the imagery, the environmental storytelling, the enemy design - it just all adds up to make it one of the best games of the decade. I really, really hope that they don’t fuck it up with the sequel.

 

10/10

 

Previous:

Spoiler

1. Death Stranding (PS4) - 8/10

2. Mark of the Ninja Remastered (Switch) - 7/10

3. Firewatch (PS4) - 7/10

4. Dishonored 2 (PS4) - 7/10

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) (PS4) - 6/10

6. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PC) - 8/10

7. Half-Life 2 (PC) - 9/10

8. Gears 5 (PC) - 8/10

9. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - 9/10

10. A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC) - 7/10

11. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) - 7/10

12. Lonely Mountains: Downhill (PC) - 8/10

 

[Unofficial Who]

Jun

 

16/06 Bing Bong XL (PC) One of the older Nickervision games, somewhat like Ding Dong XL but not as good. This time you're constantly zipping up and down on the left of the screen with objects coming in on the right. The button slows you down but it does feel in this one that some deaths can't be avoided. One of the lesser works in this series.

 

16/06 Duke Grabowski, Mighty Swashbuckler (PC) I heard about this Monkey Island style game on a podcast covering The Curse of Monkey Island (Bill Tiller who did the art for that and The Dig made this) and found it on Steam for less than the price of a cup of coffee and less than the pledge required to get it day one on Kickstarter. Initial impressions aren't great. It's Monkey Island meets Leisure Suit Larry as dumb as a bag of hammers Duke Grabowski (so named because he likes to punch things) is set with the challenge of wooing three ladies to become captain. This dodgy challenge is set up for him to fail as he's big, scary and has one liners like "I has teeth!" Despite the dodgy premise I was won over, he's a lug with his heart in the right place. It's really short (less than three hours with only a few locations) but it was worth the little I paid for it.

 

15/06 Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge (Browser) Into the car park! https://aaron-demeter.itch.io/lee-carvallos-putting-challenge

 

13/06 Shinobi (Switch) I've always preferred this over Rolling Thunder but I was never good enough to complete it. (And didn't complete the amazing C64 port back in the day.) As always the M2 version is immaculate in its recreation of the arcade game. But the addition of the AGES mode has made it accessible for those just not good enough. Save states, more hit points, allowing you to start out with a gun and "ninja magic" (a ten second rewind) has transformed this into a fun game. Finally 33 years later I've "finished" this.

 

08/06 Final Fantasy 7:Remake (PS4) This was obviously going to be a disaster, either following the story to the letter (and stretching it out) which would have been awful and in some places....of it's time (let's just go for problematic) or it was going to be completely different and upset hardcore fans. Loving most of my memories of the original game I decided to skip it. However my wife having bounced off the original bought it, drawn in by the promises of the Honeybee Inn. And so with some trepidation I played it, and fell in love all over again. I thought they'd have to pull punches or avoid some topics but to give them credit they leaned in. They haven't changed that the game is essentially about eco-terrorists, they've leaned into the criticism of corporate greed and social structures. They've fleshed out all the characters heroes, villains and bit players. The visuals are some of the best I've seen, detailed but still following the originals steam/cyberpunk look. The music is finally given the treatment it deserves. And rather than avoiding some of the problematic stuff, they've revisted it in a new modern context. Wall Market in particular is now a highlight. And the humour throughout just lands most of the time. There's a multitude of in jokes for those familiar with the original while still being (mostly) accessible to those new to the series. As for the mechanics and the ditching of turn based systems, it's Final Fantasy 15's combat system mixed with some of Final Fantasy 7's spellcasting with a dash of Xenoblade Chronicle's emphasis on positioning, pressure and teamwork. And it works, they've finally cracked it. It's incredibly brave, I don't think everyone is going to love this and some will be downright offended. I was delighted and entertained through the entire journey. It's the plot of Final Fantasy subverted, with the combat of maybe something like Bayonetta, a dash here and there of walking sims and the banter of something like Buffy. Possibly my game of the year.

 

08/06 Missile Command:Recharged (PC) This is Missile Command made simpler and somehow better for it. The game has been given a Geometry Wars style make over making the screen really easy to read. You still have three missile bases but they have unlimited missiles (with a cool down after every shot). You only have one fire button though, the closest base will fire followed by the next closest. Cities don't come back once destroyed but bases do. It ramps up from slow to challenging to "I'm dead" very quickly. Again this sort of game is impossible to complete but I've cleared all the achievements and upgraded all the bases. While I played this on PC there are touch pad versions  which work even better which on iphone at least can be tried for free. Highly recommended.

 

07/06 Star Wars Battlefront 2 (PS4) The single player campaign is regarded as a bit awful but I enjoyed my time playing as Iden Versio with a campaign that covers both the original trilogy and the newest one. It certainly looks lovely. There are some bugbears in the form of literal bugs. My slicing robot went missing in action three times throughout the game, twice leaving me stuck behind a locked door leading to a reload. And the AI opponents really can't deal with cover at all doing an odd dance whenever trying to hide behind objects. It's a pity as there's a decent Star Wars story here and a little more attention could have made this something special. Out of the two games on PSPlus this month this was much more appealing. Worth a try at least.

 

07/06 Orbt XL (PC) Another Nickervision one button game, you control a planet falling towards a black hole, pressing fire moves you away, releasing makes you fall. Every orbit nets you one point. And that's it. Again there's no "completing" a game like this but I was off the last achievement by two points. Took a while but I finally made it.

 

07/06 Ding Dong XL (PC) Inspired by the new Missile Command I went back through my collection of Nickervision games and got hooked on Ding Dong XL for quick bursts. There's not much game here. It's a one button version of that old playground game bullrush. You start at the top of the screen. Pressing the button makes you zip to the bottom. Pressing it again makes you zip back to the top. There are objects you don't want to hit that come in from the left and the right. One collision and it's game over. Of course with score based games like this you never really "finish" them but I've unlocked all the achievements so I'm counting it as done.

 

Previously

 

 

May
36. 30/05 Tales from Off Peak City:Vol 1 (PC) 
35. 27/05 30 Miles to Barnard Castle (PS4/Dreams) 
34. 24/05 Super Bit Blaster XL (PC)
33. 22/05 When the Past was Around:Prologue (PC) 
32. 15/05 Mushroom Cats (PC) 
31. 09/05 deltarune:Chapter 1 (Switch) 
30. 21/04 Donkey Kong Jr (NES/Switch) 
29. 21/04 Donkey Kong (NES/Switch)
28. 21/04 Super Mario 2 (NES/Switch)
27. 13/04 Black Mesa (PC) 
26. 11/04 Arcade Moonlander Plus (PC)
25. 10/04 There is No Game (Jam Edition 2015) (PC)
24. 10/04 The Adventure Pals (PC)
23. 30/03 Bioshock Infinite:Burial at Sea (PS4)
22. 23/03 Bioshock Infinite (PS4)
21. 15/03 Bioshock 2 (PS4)
20. 11/03 The Supper (PC)
19. 08/03 Devil's Kiss (PC)
18. 07/03 Time Gentlemen, Please! (PC)
17. 04/03 Bioshock 2:Minerva's Den (PS4)
16. 01/03 Bioshock (PS4)
15. 27/02 Ben There, Dan That : Special Edition (PC) 
14. 21/02 You've to to be Kitten Me! (PS4/Dreams) 
13. 17/02 Art Therapy (PS4/Dreams) 
12. 16/02 Art's Dream (PS4/Dreams) 
11. 12/02 Juanito Arcade Mayhem (PC) 
10. 08/02 Wolfenstein 2:the New Colossus (PC) (plus The Freedom Chronicles DLC) 
9. 03/02 The Outer Worlds (PS4) 
8. 27/01 Quest of Dungeons (PC) 
7. 21/01 Feather (PC)
6. 20/01 Paperbark (PC)
5. 09/01 The Cat and the Coup (PC) 
4. 09/01 1979 Revolution:Black Friday (PC) 
3. 08/01 Wolfenstein:the Old Blood (PC) 
2. 03/01 Wolfenstein:the New Order (PC) 
1. 01/01 Detroit:Become Human (PS4)

 

 

[Mogster]

07/06/2020 - Red Matter (Oculus Quest)

 

Another Quest game! 

 

This was a neat little adventure that I'd liken to a very well themed escape room. The retro sci-fi ascetic was well done, and there was clearly a lot of effort put into the sense of presence. You spend the game in a space suit, with trigger operated claws to manipulate stuff and a jetpack for traversal. The only in-game thing that occasionally intrudes is a "game saved" message that pops up when it autosaves, and I can forgive it that.

 

The puzzles are well paced, never becoming too taxing but they're not usually too obvious either. They're also very tactile, full of levers, valve handles and chunky buttons. It's a joy to interact with really, although the puzzles do stray a bit too far into escape room territory to be completely believable.

 

The story is nothing special, but keeps things moving and doesn't get in the way.

 

It was good fun really.

 

Spoiler

January

07/01/2020 - Control (Xbox One)

26/01/2020 - Final Fantasy X (Switch)

February

10/02/2020 - Disco Elysium (PC)

22/02/2020 - Frostpunk (PC)

March

10/03/2020 - Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (Xbox One)

29/03/2020 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox One)

April

07/04/2020 - Yakuza Kiwami (PS4)

May

04/05/2020 - Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)
09/05/2020 - Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)
23/05/2020 - Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Switch)

June

05/06/2020 - Vader Immortal (Oculus Quest)
07/06/2020 - Red Matter (Oculus Quest)

 

[Jamie John]

14. The Last of Us Remastered: Left Behind (PS4)

 

I was surprised at how short this was on a second run through, although that might be because I played it on the survivor difficulty the first time and died a lot more.

 

Anyway, it's very good, and I found myself getting a touch emotional at the some of the scenes between Ellie and Riley. If I had one criticism, I'd say that it perhaps veers a little too much towards a walking simulator at times, moreso than the main game - of the 2 and a half hours it took me to complete, I'd say only about 30 minutes was spent in combat. The rest of the time I was walking about, listening to conversations, watching cutscenes, or completing QTEs. Still, the combat that is there is still as brutal and exciting as it ever was. The final showdown is especially well done and had my heart thumping. Great stuff.

 

Can't wait for 2 now 

 

9/10

[Gabe]

07/06/2020 - Sin Slayers: The First Sin (PC)

 

It is becoming a trend that developers no longer put out demos, but instead have a slice of gameplay (sometimes taken from the full game, sometimes set outside of it) and label it as a prologue instead. In principle I approve in having stuff to try before you buy, but the issue is that if the content isn't specifically crafted for the purpose of said freebie, then you are just getting the start of a game which, for a lot of games (especially RPGs) is going to be quite slow and not the best representation you can get, potentially putting off more players than they entice.

 

And so it comes to be that poor Sin Slayers: The First Sin has moved me from a 'perhaps buy at some point' to a hard pass (an affliction that also saw Alder's Blood harshly discarded from the wishlist.)

 

First, you are greeted with a crudely drawn - and even worse voiced - intro to what is the beginning of the game (the script is hopeless, too). The premise is intriguing; strangers, seeking refuge in a nearby church, find they cannot escape without defeating the Seven Sins - for they are sinners who have things to atone for. What follows is fairly straightforward moving a static avatar around a fog-of-war enshrined map, bumping into enemies and mini events, where you can either investigate (at the cost of increasing your sin level) or ignore (which reduces your sin level.) Increases to this mechanic makes enemies stronger, but without exploring stuff you'll struggle for food, crafting materials and money. It's risk and reward on a devilish scale.

 

Triggering a fight leads to a crude battlefield representation coupled with a fairly sterile turn-based affair. Animations are basic, sprites are crudely drawn and turns - even on the 4x speed setting! - are laborious and dull. It is here, more than anywhere, that not having a dedicated demo hurts the most, as you have two attack options with each character and that's your lot. I also find that any game that incorporates a speed setting is admitting right from the start that most content isn't worth your time and can be ignored.

 

You get the first Act to play with, which seems generous written down, but in reality can be done within two maps. There's a certain rogue-like element to it, where the map is randomly generated each time you start visit an area and I think, given the glacial pace before you level-up (I think it was around 24 fights for me) the idea is for you to grind for materials and xp, as none outside of the current party earn anything. It's far too rubbish for that, though.

 

There are undoubtedly some additional mechanics that come into play down the line - well, I hope so! - but I have no desire to ever find out. If that means I have a date with the devil when I pop my coil, so be it.

 

Previously completed:

Spoiler

26/05/2020 - Astrologlaster (PC)

25/05/2020 - Demon Stone (PC)

23/05/2020 - Stories Untold (PC)

03/05/2020 - Streets of Rage (PC)

29/04/2020 - Inside (PC)

21/04/2020 - Call of Duty WW2 (PC)

19/04/2020 - Wheels of Aurelia (PC)

15/04/2020 - Sword Omen: Legacy (PC)

02/04/2020 - Mother Russia Bleeds (PC)

29/03/2020 - Operencia - The Stolen Sun (PC)

20/02/2020 - Ruzar: The Life Stone (PC)

20/02/2020 - Alder's Blood: Prologue (PC)

17/02/2020 - Universal Paperclips (PC)

15/02/2020 - Gris (PC)

21/01/2020 - Gears of War 5 (Xbox One X)

19/01/2020 - Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls (Xbox One X)

05/01/2020 - Night Call (PC)

02/01/2020 - Remember Me (PC)

 

[Gabe]

09/06/2020 - The Outer Worlds (PC)

 

This is the game I was most looking forward to on Game Pass and man, oh, man I wanted to love it. But I just didn't - it's fairly average at best - and I'm quite sad about it.

 

It's quite clearly Fallout Lite, with systems that never really feel fleshed out and perfunctory gunplay and that same 'open everything to find items' loot-loop that I hated in those games. Not only that, but every different mechanic feels like it needed just a bit more depth and polish to make them work better, provide actual impact within the gameworld and just make them more fun.

 

I could probably write a lot about my disappointment but I'll perhaps add that to the main game thread instead. I will say though that I felt bad for Parvati - who was given by far the most backstory and character development, to the point it seemed the devs wanted you to always take her along - as due to feeling bored and wanting to finish the game, I skipped doing her last companion quest and didn't therefore get her 'best'. None of the other characters really grew on me/had much substance (nor were their builds sufficiently different to really make you chop-and-change) so I wasn't too fussed about the rest.

I was originally going to keep it installed on the off-chance some DLC was going to happen (and the story allows for it) but now, I don't think I'd bother with it because the core game just wasn't good enough.

 

The bright side, I suppose, is that I'd made a bit of a deal with myself that once I'd completed this or FFVX - which I have little desire to go back to some 6 chapters in - I'd start on The Witcher 3 (never played it before). Silver linings and all that I guess!

 

Previously completed

Spoiler

07/06/2020 - Sin Slayers: The First Sin (PC)

26/05/2020 - Astrologlaster (PC)

25/05/2020 - Demon Stone (PC)

23/05/2020 - Stories Untold (PC)

03/05/2020 - Streets of Rage (PC)

29/04/2020 - Inside (PC)

21/04/2020 - Call of Duty WW2 (PC)

19/04/2020 - Wheels of Aurelia (PC)

15/04/2020 - Sword Omen: Legacy (PC)

02/04/2020 - Mother Russia Bleeds (PC)

29/03/2020 - Operencia - The Stolen Sun (PC)

20/02/2020 - Ruzar: The Life Stone (PC)

20/02/2020 - Alder's Blood: Prologue (PC)

17/02/2020 - Universal Paperclips (PC)

15/02/2020 - Gris (PC)

21/01/2020 - Gears of War 5 (Xbox One X)

19/01/2020 - Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls (Xbox One X)

05/01/2020 - Night Call (PC)

02/01/2020 - Remember Me (PC)

 

[ckny]

Yesterday I completed my first video game in maybe 12 years! I think the last one was Mario Galaxy on Wii, well I fired up my DS last week and I finished the first Professor Layton game. I think I'll try Trauma Centre next

[Sprite Machine]

Previously...

 

1) AM2R - PC - 2016 (1991)
2) Ecco The Dolphin - Mega CD - 1992/3
3) Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 3DS - 2012/14
4) Mega Man X - SNES - 1993
5) Super Metroid - SNES - 1994
6) Donkey Kong Country - SNES - 1994
7) Chrono Trigger - SNES - 1995
8) Star Fox 2 - SNES - 2017 (1995)
9) Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - SNES - 1995
10) Xenogears - PS1 - 1998
11) Sonic the Hedgehog - Megadrive - 1991
12) Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - SNES - 1996
13) Kirby Super Star - SNES - 1996
14) Earthbound - SNES - 1995
15) R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 - PS1 - 1998/9
16) Tomb Raider III - PC - 1998
17) Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation - PC - 1999
18) Tomb Raider Chronicles - PC - 2000
19) Shenmue HD - PC - 2018 (1999/2000)
20) Shenmue II HD - PC - 2018 (2001)
21) Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - PS3 - 2012 (2001)

 

22) Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness - PC - 2003

Core Design's last Tomb Raider game, and the only one I hadn't previously played. The 'next-gen' brings a few new things, a shiny new look, more fluid animations and a 60fps presentiation, but this is a game that was clearly pushed out of the door before it was ready. There are so many undercooked ideas, half-arsed gameplay that goes nowhere, fractured levels and unresolved plot strands. When the game isn't trying to be everything and the kitchen sink - RPG, stealth game, adventure game, open world - and concentrates on the 'core' of tomb raiding, it's actually... not bad. That is, if you can get used to the twitchy new control scheme and remember to save often.

 

The biggest issue is the bugs. Now this is the PC version, which is apparently less buggy than the infamously bad PS2 game, and even this is falling apart at the seams. Levels failing to load properly, audio loops getting stuck, missing animations, flickering textures, walking through walls, collision detection gone kaput, and so on. And that's not to mention the slew of graphics and sound features that are missing "out of the box" and require a hefty amount of modding to get working. Thankfully, this game has a weirdly obsessive fan community, and it's been patched up rather well.

 

It's not a game I'd recommend in 2020, but as a half-way point between Core Design's pentalogy and Crystal Dynamics follow-ups, it's sort of fascinating and I definitely enjoyed bits of it.

[Mawdlin]

 

Cuphead (Switch)

 

Finally beat the last boss and all I can say is what a game.

 

I can't imagine anyone who's finished it doing worse than me. 25 hours on the clock and 1170 deaths, but I make up for flagging skills with persistence. I even have a very sore right thumb from the RSI playing this game for the last few days. (Looking online the death stat seems misleading though as if you quit and retry it doesn't count as a death. Something I didn't do. I can't believe some of the people online who reckon they beat this game with less than 100 deaths - bullshit).

 

I'm sure I'll go back soon and try get some S ranks and achievements, but I need a nice break from it now.

 

I find it interesting that people get stuck on different bosses on this. For me the only two I really had major problems with were the dragon and the devil.

 

I thought the penultimate fight where you had to roll the dice to get to the devil was one of the most imaginative ideas I've experienced in a videogame for a long time. I eventually got the timing almost perfect every time to hit the number I needed. I also loved the progress graphic you got at the end of each failed battle. I don't think I've ever seen this before outside the Ghosts n' Goblins games.

 

Goes into my top ten games of all time.

[Gabe]

11/06/2020 - A Normal Lost Phone (PC)

 

This used to be on my wishlist but then I played Simulacra (another 'lost phone' game but with a ropey horror angle) and it put me off. Despite only being about 50p at times. Thanks, then, go to the itch.io bundle where both this and the sequel reside (amongst 1,500+ other things of course). And I am so glad I got to play it, it was brilliant!

 

The basic set-up then is that you (me) has found a phone and are able to have a look through it to see if you can find any clues as to why it is no longer with its rightful owner. You'll look at messages, social media posts, a dating site and emails to try and work it out, all the whilst following the underlying narrative. To say more would spoil things, but it was a well-told, informative and realistic story (no Demon-phone here), where there are no big twists and turns, just a person dealing with life in their own way.

 

The puzzles, such that they are, do not take you outside of the story and don't take long to crack if you think about the stuff you see and read, but are satisfying when you instantly know the answer because of something you've taken a mental not of elsewhere.

 

I really loved it. I've never been one to play adventure games (though I've branched out over the last few years) so the presentation here doesn't make it feel like one and so instantly makes it more appealing to me, and for that I'm grateful.

 

I'm looking forward to what other treasures I'll find in genres I wouldn't usually play in this crazy bundle!

 

Previously completed:

Spoiler

09/06/2020 - The Outer Worlds (PC)

07/06/2020 - Sin Slayers: The First Sin (PC)

26/05/2020 - Astrologlaster (PC)

25/05/2020 - Demon Stone (PC)

23/05/2020 - Stories Untold (PC)

03/05/2020 - Streets of Rage (PC)

29/04/2020 - Inside (PC)

21/04/2020 - Call of Duty WW2 (PC)

19/04/2020 - Wheels of Aurelia (PC)

15/04/2020 - Sword Omen: Legacy (PC)

02/04/2020 - Mother Russia Bleeds (PC)

29/03/2020 - Operencia - The Stolen Sun (PC)

20/02/2020 - Ruzar: The Life Stone (PC)

20/02/2020 - Alder's Blood: Prologue (PC)

17/02/2020 - Universal Paperclips (PC)

15/02/2020 - Gris (PC)

21/01/2020 - Gears of War 5 (Xbox One X)

19/01/2020 - Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls (Xbox One X)

05/01/2020 - Night Call (PC)

02/01/2020 - Remember Me (PC)

 

[dreamylittledream]

June

 

Control + The Foundation DLC (PC)

 

Its bloody brilliant - do I need to say more?  No?  Didn't think so.

 

Yeah, well obviously I am going to add more words, well because that's kind of what I do.  So I'll elaborate as to why you should be dropping whatever you are doing right now and going to play this.

 

Now Remedy are not the most prolific of developers but I have a soft spot for them.  Possibly because Max Payne was the first game I played on the very first gaming PC I built nearly 20 years ago.  And to this day I will insist Alan Wake was a masterpiece.  Still not played Quantum Break despite owning about 3 copies of it, must correct that at sometime in the near future....

 

Anyway it is a truth often told that Star Wars games aside, the potential of a game where you play with Psionic powers hasn't been that well realised.  In fact discount Midways fantastic B movie AA release Psi Ops and Second Sight well its not even been attempted very often.

 

Enter Control - what you get if you cross a 3rd person shooter with an X files / SCP vibe in a brutalist vision of 1960s American bureaucracy and a lead character who cant throw hings with her mind.  Computers, telephones, office furniture, bits of the walls and gradually pretty much everything including for fork lift trucks.

 

You end up with quite a varied skill set of powers in Control, but the key mechanic that draws you in is flinging anything and everything against the enemy, dashing your slingshots with some bullets to grab health; playing as the classic glass canon flitting desperately through the horde.

 

And it is so much fun, really it can't be underestimated how much fun it is to smash a photocopier into a snipers face whilst you literally fly around the environment.  The games powers you up gradually, starting entirely grounded with just a handgun and ending up as a proper Captain Marvel styled levitating Psionic goddess.

 

The game is committed to its background - the oldest house is an endlessly fascinating environment to explore, full of mysteries as to who your character is in relation to what goes on there.  Its rare indeed to actually want to read those collectable documents scattered around office cubicles but Control builds a compelling narrative in these small details.

 

And of course you get to shoot and more importantly fling things at a variety of enemies whilst uncovering those secrets.

 

The plot plays fast and loose with the chosen one/right place right time dynamic and never lets the player stop and question what I exactly it is they are doing.

 

And the gameplay loop might be simple but so bloody inviting.  Turn up the atmosphere, add some Metroidvania flourishes and here we go.

 

I adored this from start to finish, I can overlook the slightly confused structure that would have benefitted from folding in side quests to the main narrative, when every environment and new location is so well realised (got to love the title cards).  Its all so stylised and on point.

 

The game nicely flits from isolated exploration to frantic combat arenas and occasionally taking a hard right turn for some off kilter side quests.   The main narrative remains compelling throughout and fits brilliantly with Remedy's previous experiments with a serial narrative.  We even get a fake out ending with credits to boot.

 

And just to add a little spice to the intoxicating punch the DLC is almost as good as the main game; adding another 5 hours content and raises just as many questions as the main game poses without fully answering.

 

So yes the map is still woeful, yes some of the difficulty spikes on the bosses are brutal (Mold -1 can go fcuk itself), but this is such a wonderful game that all this nitpicking fades rapidly. and you can just relax into the experience.  And rarely has a game made me grin quite so much as during the Ashtray Maze sequence.

 

So yeah love the mythos, love the key mechanic (and it never gets old), love the imagination that went into the Altered Item quests (particularly the ones in the first DLC).

 

GOTY retrospectively for 2019 / 10

 

 

Previously

 

Spoiler

January

 

1. Darksiders Genesis (PC)

 

So mystery of the week.  Why is no one talking about this game (seriously the thread has about a dozen posts (two of them by me before I even bought it).  I guess that's because no one is playing it.  And why is no one playing it?  Well fcuk'd if I know because its absolutely fantastic.

 

Okay I will admit a modicum of bias here.  I adore the Darksiders series.  Its the mix of beautiful mid 90s Imagine comics style art with the po faced but at times hilarious story beats and the way it the series realises that basically any genre is improved if you mix a bit of Zelda in there.  Here comes a history lesson:

 

Darksiders I - basically God of War meets Zelda, during and after the apocalypse.  Run around dungeons, hit things with a comically over powered sword, get items and solve clever but never terribly tricky environmental puzzles.  All with a chunky gorgeous art style.  And Vulgrum - everyone loves Vulgrum. 

 

Darksiders II - basically the above with a more mobile lead, and lashes of Prince of Persia style platforming,  an open world to join the dungeons and a dash of Diablo style loot.  Its undoubtedly one of my favourite games of the last decade, even though its oh so terribly clear how the budget gradually ran dry as the game moves towards its conclusion (massive impressive first open world area with loads of side dungeons, much more linear second map, by the third we're down to a single path).  It has its weaknesses (the plot never really goes anywhere, Death is as far less interesting character than War, its obsessed with 3 McGuffins being the key to move forwards and as a prequel it fails miserably to deliver on the best ending to a game ever (No, not alone...)).  But its great really.

 

Darksiders III - as above, but with about a 10th of the budget and no horses, less platforming, a rather shoe horned in Dark Souls vibe  but a quite nicely executed Metroidvania level design.  Its the weakest of the trilogy for sure but I still love it.

 

So yeah the Darksiders series has had a bit of a rough ride.  The first game managed to be something of a sleeper hit for THQ, surprising everyone who expected another God of War/DMC/Dante's Inferno knock off with basically the best non Nintendo version of a 3D Zelda.  It sold far better than expected.

 

Slightly desperate at this point, THQ basically threw all their money at the sequel hoping for a mega hit (they even bought all the advertising space on Time Square on release).  This was never likely for a niche title like Darksiders.  The sequel did good business despite everything but it wasn't enough.  THQ went bust.  Tragically no one saved Virgil Games but Nordic bought the IP.

 

Virgil dissolved and about half the company drifted off to form Gunfire Games whilst the other half became Airship Syndicate who made the also rather wonderful Battle Chasers.

 

A couple of HD remasters and the now THQ Nordic (because when you've bough most if the IP of a defunct company why not also take their name?) released Darksiders III from the Virgil off shoot Gunfire.  Teeny tiny budget was evident and it is comfortably the weakest of the trilogy, but it was still more Darksiders and therefore great by default.  Suggesting that AA games do have a future, despite modest sales it turns a healthy profit.

 

Which leads us to back to Darksiders Genesis.  As noted earlier half of Virgil (or so) ended up as Gunfire, but the other half of the senior team founded Airship Syndicate.  And made the really rather great SRPG Battle Chasers (basically a modern Vandal Hearts if you've not played it).

 

So we have half the creative team who made Darksiders, they are making games for THQ Nordic, they have a overhead isometric engine, they have the lead artist from Darksiders.  Why not make a Darksiders Diablo game?  You could even introduce the 4th horseman we've barely met (Strife)?

 

I'll admit I was a wee bit sceptical when this was announced at E3.  Darksiders has always been about genre mix, but I was far from convinced that Diablo dungeon crawling was a good fit.

 

I was wrong.

 

Mainly because this is not a Diablo style dungeon crawler.  Its a Darksiders game.  A proper Darksiders game.  More of a Darksiders game than the threequel in fact. It basically plays like a mix of 1 and 2 from an isometric perspective.  Or a 2D Zelda game with more hitting things and platforming.

 

Its bloody brilliant.  The combat feels great - War is just as he was from the original and despite the change of perspective the combat feels just as visceral  Strife meanwhile adds a dash of twin stick shooter to the proceedings.  The campaign is 16 levels long and meaty.  There are a shit load of secrets to find in the maps.  You get to ride you're horse(s).  The puzzles are never really full on Zelda head scratchers but keep you on your toes.  There's a surprisingly complex levelling system with the creature cores which has loads of potential for messing about with builds..  Oh and an arena mode for pure combat chaos.  And War is back and is still the best horseman by a mile.  And Vulgrim.  And Samael too.

 

If you even got a smidgeon of enjoyment out of the three preceding games you owe yourself to get this.  Its about £17 from CDkeys right now on PC.  Its out on console (would be great on the Switch) in February.  If you never played them the first 2 are free from Epic Games store until tomorrow evening so off you go.

 

Its my game of (last) year - hey I played most of it over Xmas - by a country mile.  After 33 hours and managing to get almost all the items from the maps and clocking all of the arena levels aside from the endless final one I saw the credits last night. Loved it.

 

Of course its not perfect.  Its another prequel (really, a 3rd one, after that ending?).  War rather overshadows Strife despite this being the latter's debut.  The plot doesn't really go anywhere (as its a prequel) and the MacGuffins are all present and correct.  But its just so much damned fun.

 

Phenomenal / 10

 

2. Jedi: Fallen Order  (PC)

 

So onto game number two and a game I have waited a very long time to play.  Its no secret that I am a big Star Wars fan and its also no secret that I love the Uncharted games.  So I have long waited for a Star Wars X Uncharted game where I could live out my Jedi role playing fantasies.  No really I have...

 

And it has been a long old wait full of disappointment.  Fist there was Star Wars 13:13 which looked amazing but was cancelled along with Lucasfilm games.  Then Visceral, the developer behind another favourite series of mine were entrusted to deliver a single player Star Wars game with design by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig.  Very exciting - no wait that's cancelled too.

 

So when Fallen Order was first teased from Respawn (another favoured studio of mine) my expectations were tempered - its never coming out is it?  And there hasn't ever been a decent single player Star Wars game has there?

 

Well actually that last point is patently untrue - leaving aside KOTR 1 and 2, we had Dark Forces and the Jedi Knight series, the Rogue Squadron games, Super Star Wars, Star Wars Arcade, the original wire frame Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, The Force Unleashed and its sequel (well loved them).  Me personally I even enjoyed Star Wars: Bounty Hunter but I'll admit that last one was probably was just me.

 

But it would be fair to say that since EA has had the licence there hasn't been a good single player Star Wars game.  And my dream of a Uncharted style 3rd person Jedi platform adventure looked lost to the wilds of time.

 

But no Jedi:Fallen Order is pretty much exactly the game I was looking for and is about a million times better than anyone could have expected.

 

There is no huge amount of reinventing the wheel here.  Respawn basically took what they were good at, constructing a well designed and written campaign with lots of wall running (c/f Titanfall 2); added a hugely authentic Star Wars aesthetic (say whatever else you want about this game, it looks like Star Wars) and dropped in everyone's personal Jedi  power play fantasy and et voila; you have one of the most entertaining titles of the last 12 months.

 

This is to all intent and purposes Star Wars X Uncharted; if you had any doubts then the opening level that has you scaling a massive tower before plunging you into a train chase where you end up dangling precariously from destroyed sections of the vehicle should leave you in no doubt.  It goes further however and mixes in lots of other games DNA into the gloriously tasty gaming soup.  There's more than a touch of the rebooted Tomb Raiders in the well um, Tomb sequences, complete with environmental puzzles, we get a whole dollop of Metroidvania with unlocking abilities allowing you to access previously inaccessible parts of the map.  The attempt to work in some Dark Souls both in the combat and the meditating (camp fire) mechanic is perhaps the most ill fitting addition (narratively it makes no sense whatsoever) but the combat is fast, fluid and once you are fully powered up dazzlingly entertaining.

 

Its not perfect of course; the games momentum is a little jerky moving from the on rails but striking intro level to the rather ponderous first planet but it soon gets a grip on the pace.  The absence of fast travel is inexplicable and hurts the pre end game where you want to mop up missed secrets.  The unlocking of force powers too is a bit slow, granting you only force slow for the first few hours of the game was an odd move - surely would have been best to lead with push.  Technically it generally looks fabulous (admittedly I am playing no doubt post a couple of patches and with a decent PC) but the odd sinking into the environment on occasions on Dathomir feels out of place and which idiot forgot to have BD1 move off your shoulder when you are swimming but still kept the animation of the chests  suggesting he had jumped in?).

 

But all of this is relative nitpicking.  The game is a long, well designed campaign full of fun set pieces, snappy combat and free running platforming.  Its surprisingly well written and acted, probably telling a better story than well the last two Star Wars films for one.  And the Star Wars fan service is second to none.  Despite warning of a Dark Souls vibe, on the moderate difficulty level  the game is never more than slightly challenging (the bosses all have blatant tells and weaknesses and the hardest moments tend to come when you are mobbed or forget your force powers).  I had an absolute blast.

 

May the force be with you / 10

 

3. Halo: Reach (Master Chief Collection) PC

 

So the journey is over, I have finally completed all the main line (i.e the FPS ones) Halo games.  Dare I say it, it ended with a little bit of a whimper rather than a bang.

 

So I was late to the party with the Halo series.  I did have CE on the original Xbox, but I (whisper it) wasn't really that keen.  I got as far as driving the Warthog , found it near impossible and gave up.  As far as Halo 2 goes, for some reason I never played the campaign, although I did spend many hilarious hours playing couch VS with @Gordzilla

 

And I may have bought Halo 3, Reach and indeed 4; but I never actually managed to play them.  You know just because.  And I developed a distinctive 'obviously' correct opinion that the Halo games were well a bit meh really.   Despite never really actually y'know playing them

 

So when I got a Xbone I bought the MCC collection - mainly because it was like £6 and I had a shiny new console.  But I was actually keen to give the games another go, because well all that noise about Halo.

 

And well I was wrong 18 years ago or whatever it was.  Halo is a fabulous game.

 

Anyway I have gradually made my way through the series from CE onwards and played the entire series available of the MCC (and 5 too, although the less said about 5 is probably the better).

 

I've had half an eye on playing Reach (for which I still have a 360 disc on my gameshelf) through BCC - but once the game was confirmed for the MCC collection and y'know remastered and all that jazz I decided to wait.  And as these days I have an all singing all dancing gaming laptop the PC version beckoned.

 

Not sure on balance whether that was the correct option.

 

So yeah Reach.  Its well okay.  But turns out a little anaemic.   Some this may well be down to the gimped sound; its still not fixed as far as I can tell and everything sounds well a bit tinny.  And I know the soundtrack for this is much admired; but I badly missed the actual Halo theme - it nearly appears on a couple of occasions and well its kind of frustrating.

 

Which ultimately fits with the way the game presents.  Its all a bit clinical and well lacking something. As you may be aware Reach is a tragic war movie prequel as presented through a video game, or basically Rogue One the videogame.  I may have played all of the preceding and succeeding games but I still failed to care much about Noble squadron.  I knew they were all going to die and it had very little impact when they did.  Your character, Mr proto Master chief is an ambivalent cipher (oh and look Cortana chooses him and he was second only to the Chief in various war games) but he fails to develop any personality of his own.

 

And its a pretty short campaign, definetly shorter than the numbered titles; and whilst I've heard comment that it has some of the best set pieces in the series, I wasn't quite feeling it.  I mean yes it has the Halo dynamic, it doesn't feel divorced from its predecessors like say 5 does.  But there were far more memorable moments in well, Halo 4 for example.  It feels like Halo, I was enjoying myself but I never had that feeling of wow what I am I playing like I got from say Halo 3.

 

So yeah DLD Halo rankings: Halo 3 > Halo 4 (its really good no really it is) > ODST > CE > Reach > Halo 2 > Halo 5 / 10

 

4. Shadow Warrior 2 (PC)

 

And now for something completely brainless and explosive.

 

I loved SW1, whilst I played it later, turns out it was the original prototype for the Doom reboot.  Nineties FPS game design meets 2010s graphics.

 

This wasn't as good.  Mixing Shadow Warriors vibe with the looter shooter genre ends up being slightly more miss than hit.  By having procedurally generated levels some of the fun of exploring the maps of the first game was lost.  The game also badly misses the lovely anime seriousness of the originals plot and cut scenes ; this time it goes straight for silly cock jokes with little or no messing about.  Hoji is much missed.

 

But it does have guns, lots of guns.  And the swords are still phenomenal.  Some reasonable improvements with the controls makes the special moves a lot more intuitive to pull off too.

 

It never even tries to rise above, go here, kill some demons, go over here and kill some more as far as level design goes, but it still manages to be entertaining as you blast and slash from A to B.

 

And my word it does look very pretty in places.

 

Meh I had fun but the first game was better / 10

 

5. Assassin's Creed Origins + The Hidden Ones + The Curse of the Pharaohs (PC)

 

Well that's one way to slow down my completion rate for the year, play a game that literally feels like it will never end.  In a good way mind, although after 95 hours of it I'm very ready to play something else.

 

So literally two months it has taken me to get through this, and that's with a weeks annual leave in lockdown not doing a great deal more than play it.  This is, if you let it be of course, a ridiculously long game.

 

I've only a passing acquaintance with the AC series, still harbouring a slight resentment for the fact it killed off my beloved Prince of Persia games.  I did play the original at the time of release and was not wildly impressed.  Looked stunning but not a huge amount to do.  I also plated the sequel on release but found it took an inordinate amount of time to get going, too long in fact so I got bored and gave up.

 

Fast forward 10 years or maybe more, late to the party with the PS4 my new console came with a copy of Syndicate.  And I finally completed my first AC game, and really enjoyed it too.

 

Anyway, I've had a thing for classical and ancient history (and a degree to show for it) since I was a kid, so had been meaning to play this for a long time.  I was attracted by the the RPG stylings and the reports of many of the irritants or past AC games were a thing of the past (tailing etc - although some of the sub Benny Hill chase sequences that I experienced in Syndicate were probably worth the price of admission in their own right).

 

Anyway, this is all largely true.  This doesn't feel an awful lot like the earlier games at all.  In fact it comes across more like a third person version of Far Cry (endless enemy camp infiltrations), with some incredibly expansive exploration in a fascinating and incredibly realised period of history.

 

Playing on a pretty decent PC, its hard to underestimate how pretty this game looks.  It captures Ptolemaic Egypt perfectly and the extent of the world map is just stunning.  The plot does rather stumble along, rather lost in the fun you have from uncovering question mark after question mark, exploring long forgotten tombs in the wilderness, skating down Pyramids, climbing temples and dealing silent death from above to the guards.

 

The game is neatly simplified and tweaked to make the core gameplay; get to area, scope out with your bird, silently dispatch the guards being sneaky a la Batman Arkham or with some carefully placed arrows and then killing your quarry and then go explore some more endlessly inviting. 

 

One can not stress just how huge the map is; even after finishing the main quest line I still had a third of the map to explore.  The plot is  slow moving for the majority of the game and then suddenly accelerates in a slightly odd tangent but this ultimately matters little given the engaging nature of the game loop.  The two leads however are unusually well developed, even if I didn't see the eventual twist in their relationship coming.

 

And even more surprisingly the DLC is almost equally as well done as the main game.  The Hidden Ones is a nice little expansion to the main game but clearly more of the same but Curse of the Pharaohs' is arguably the best content of the entire game - Thebes, and what they did with the tombs of the kings being a massive highlight.

 

Perhaps playing it all through was a little too much of a good thing, I have Odyssey all lined up but I need a break for now, but this was cracking stuff.

 

Hidden Blade / 10

 

May

 

6. The Division 2: Warlords of New York (PC)

 

So after my two month epic run though of AC:Origins, what better way to pallet cleanse than with erm another Ubisoft open world game.  To be fair, The Division plays pretty differently from the AC series in basic gameplay loop and well I'm a sucker for Ubi's open world formula anyway so I like the familiar whistles and bells.

 

Anyway The Division 2 was one of my highlights of last year, it basically it took what the first game did and basically did everything (from a PvE single player sense anyway) significantly better.  It is probably the best 3rd person cover shooter I've ever played, with crunchy gunplay, a real emphasis on battlefield placement and of course guns lot of guns.  I spent 80 happy hours in the game and played every piece of single player content all the way to World Tier 5, all 3 episodes and even the Kenley College stuff; and loved pretty much every minute of it.  The Division 2 is a curious game in that it wants to be an endless loot/MMO shooter but it packs so much genuine new single player content that even those who have little interest in grinding get far more than their money's worth.

 

So after the year 1 content (which was generously largely free, the season pass only granting some extra side mission (pretty decent ones) and a bit of exclusive high end gear; its paid expansion time.  As I have Uplay+ this was all available for me day one on release day along with the season pass, but 25 notes if you are purchasing; which is not cheap for an expansion pack.

 

However, this is a fairly generous expansion.  We get the setting moved back to the superior environment of |New York (the base games biggest weakness being Washington DC is not quite the iconic city NY is) and exploring a new section of the map in lower Manhattan that the original didn't cover (spoilers yes you do get to visit a certain statue, although no gun fights in the torch which seems a missed opportunity).

 

This is a decent slab of new content - we get 4 new areas which is about a 3rd of the base games map, and each with their own control points, SHD caches and bounties to complete.  The new campaign takes in 6 new main missions, all of them taking an hour or so to complete and another 7 side missions which are somewhat shorter.  They are almost all good and the new main mission are perhaps the best content in the game to date, taking in an oil refinery, an underground park and the previously mentioned statue as eye candy for the battles.  In a slightly surprising turn, this time we get some actual boss battles with personality and unique game play mechanics (although rogue agent numero uno Keener is a flipping irritating battle).

 

Its very much more Division 2, and this was absolutely fine with me.  We get the fun of starting again with the loot grind as you level from 30-40 (definitely the best bit of the original), the new map is an impressive post apocalyptic environment (this time in the Summer but following a hurricane) and all the mission are great fun to play through.  As a devoutly solo player, I happily progressed through without significant difficulty (which is just as well as only a month after release matchmaking for the campaign on story wasn't really happening); the SHD caches have developed significantly from the base game with almost all of them presenting a slight environmental puzzle to solve.

 

And so 20 or so happy hours were spent - perhaps slightly annoyingly its fairly easy to reach level 40 before reaching the climax of the campaign but the new levelling system doesn't kick in until you finish...there's a story reason for this but yeah, meh.  The plot such as it is serves its purpose but the conclusion feels rather empty given the shadow Keener has cast to date and the new big bad really comes out of nowhere but lets face it no one plays The Division for the story.

 

Perhaps most disappointingly the  post game gives little reason to play on; I was all ready to give the new season content manhunt a go but it basically consists of replaying content I've just done or did previously with no alterations....yeah nah.  There is sadly no equivalent of the WT levels of the base game or the remixed missions that offered.

 

But I did thoroughly enjoy this return to New York and the rock solid foundations of the series - I will be back but only when there is something new to play.

 

Lots of fun but maybe not £25 worth of content / 10

 

7. Metro Exodus (PC)

 

So back to getting my monies worth out of Xbox Game Pass, this was a game I was quite excited about on release, but didn't quite get around to it at time, and then being very pleased it appeared on Game Pass, before the slightly desperate realisation it might get removed before I get around to play it.  Its the new subscription service stress, will I play this before it vanishes?

 

But anyway I managed to get to it.  I have a soft spot for the Metro games and their oppressive atmosphere; I get a real Half Life 2 vibe from them somehow, along with shades of the Resi games and say Dead Space.  I've never played the Stalker games but apparently they owe a lot too (I do actually own these too but lets face it these are games on are on the Steam pile of never never).

 

Anyway both the previous Metro games were classy, pretty, story heavy and very stressful corridor shooters.  The shooting wasn't great but the atmosphere was second to none.  I enjoyed them both immensely.  This makes an attempt to break for the horizon and take the stabilisers off, although interestingly the game is most successful when it sticks to the previous formula.

 

Ultimately this is more of the same but with better and more varied environments, with an occasional side order of some open world busy work. We get a very scripted opening sequence that may ways irritate many, particularly when it leads into an infuriating stealth sequence with a sequence of seemingly unavoidable deaths. But the suddenly it all opens up once you reach the Volga and it suddenly all goes all Far Cry.  Which is fun and all that but the game plays its best hand in its heavily sequenced story sequences, we get some wonderful claustrophobic slices of game where you navigate your way through an underground substation  and a train terminal.

 

And then it goes all Rage with updated graphics and again we have some  open world navigation where we can explore, but its the scripted sections that lead the game play off.

 

In some ways I enjoyed the latter half of the game better where it abandons the freedom of the earlier sections (which is some what frustrated by some god awful vehicle navigation).  The incredibly beautiful forest section and then finally a return to the Metro in another city which was probably my favourite section of the game.

 

I got the good ending I think (my character lived) but the mechanics for this seemed a little forced.  I am not a stealth player and made extensive use of lethal weapons for taking out enemies without being seen.  I never killed an NPC who surrendered and I rescued everyone I met who needed it.  But I only managed to save 2 out of 3 member of my crew playing in exactly the same fashion. Stealth got just too frustrating during the forest sequence, so I gleefully murdered people, despite feeling bad as they were kids who didn't know much better but still saved my crew member by not killing one critical character and saving some people but during the previous  level I just killed a couple of slaves (who were trying to kill me at the time) and got the adverse outcome.  Dunno the stealth stuff doesn't quite fit with the way the game plays best, Artyom is clearly not a pacifist.

 

At its best this was fantastic, tense, beautiful and well scripted - at its worse it pisses about without going anywhere.

 

Performance wise, a year after release its still a bit broken on PC.  Despite running this on a 1060 and an i5 8 series processor I could only get a decent frame rate on medium setting (still looks amazing mind) and the game was minded to crash within 15 minutes of running before it offered to run in safe mode and then behaved itself perfectly fine - bizarrely couldn't tell the difference once I changed the resolution to 1920 x 1280...

 

great post apocalyptic zombies / 10

 

8. Mirrors Edge: Catalyst (PC)

 

So the year of catching up very slowly with the backlog continues (have I played anything released this year, this year yet - checks notes - looks like a no - oh wait The Division 2 expansion counts right?  Otherwise its a no) - so 7 down, 800 odd to go according to my GOG library....don't know what's more worrying really - the fact that I have 855 games in my library and I've never even booted over 800 of them, or the fact that I only got a PC capable of playing games 15 months ago...

 

Anyway we digress, lots of those entries in my library are down to my membership of a variety of subscription services which whilst I am undoubtedly not getting value for money from, give me a lovely warm feeling that I will never be short of something to play; well until they remove that game I was always intending to play just before I actually get to it.

 

Which leads us to the Mirrors Edge reboot.  I'm not entirely clear why it has taken me 4 years to get around to playing this game.  I adored the original; the stark white red and blue clinical futuristic asthetic, the hi octane first person platforming and kinetic campaign.  I also recall getting severely frustrated in several places, largely due to the god awful combat and successive deaths when I misread how a sequence was meant to play out but it captured a moment in time for me and I still carry warm memories of the game.

 

So at the dawn of this now dying generation I was tantalised by the prospect of a reboot/prequel/sequel.  But some 3 years later when it finally released I failed to pick it up. In retrospect I wondered whether this was due to fact I was late to the PS4/Xbone gen and only joined two years after release, but no turns out ME:Catalyst came out in May 2016, and I had owned a PS4 by that point for about 7 months.

 

So I must just have been distracted at the time.  And then after buying an Xbox One maybe a year or so later I picked up  an EA access sub, and it was high on my must play list...but I well didn't (now that was a waste of money,  a years sub to the service and I don't think I played a single title on it).

 

So yeah, a few years later and I get a gaming PC and take that £20 Origin Basic subscription because look lots of cool games I've never played - including the Mirrors Edge sequel that for some reason I never got around to.

 

And well here we are a year or so on and I decide that finally now is the time to bloody play the thing; you know the one I've been interested in now for maybe 8 years since it was first teased and only 12 years since the first game was released.

 

First person platforming is not a well trod genre, mainly because well its kind of hard to play a game where its vital to know where your feet are at any given time when the camera is not showing you your feet.  Its been successful on maybe three occasions I can think of: that Jumping Flash rabbit game on Psone; because crazy idea that's never really been done before and the world was fresh and polygonal new at that point (I seem to remember it being one of the first games ever to give me motion sickness but anyway it was different).  Mirrors Edge because it looked so stunning and gave a whole new perspective to the parkour previously only seen in third person in the like of Prince of Persia and um...Titanfall 2 is the only other game that springs to mind that stole all of ME's good idea and managed to string some excellent shooting mechanics and add giant robots to boot.  Otherwise 1st person platforming tended to be a really bad idea, like Turok: Dinosaur Hunter platforming sections bad (hmmm maybe I should replay those two given I now have the remastered PC versions - maybe I'm being unfair in retrospect).

 

Anyway ME despite its flaws was a thrilling game.  But the reboot was not well received.  For one it being a reboot failed to connect (its very clearly not even vaguely the same characters as the original game  despite the names being the same - not that they were terribly memorable in the first place).  And then it decided to be open world and that apparently didn't work.

 

As it turns out this seems to be more than a little unfair.  So plus point one; this game has not aged.  No doubt I benefit for playing it on what is now middling PC hardware but in 2016 was fairly high end; but this is a seriously pretty game and one that literally belts along at 60fps with a near future cyber punk stark vibe.  It still looks phenomenal and can be safely be played on Ultra with a mere Nvidia 1060.

 

But secondly the fact that they went for open world turned out to be almost completely irrelevant.  Yes we have an Ubisoft load of points of interest, pickups and collectables and pointless side activities but they can be safely ignored in favour of a campaign that is in almost every respect the equal of the original and a second set of side quests that occasionally are even better (a whole game made up of those Grid overload tower climbs might be the best game ever).  I actually liked the open world format with side quests to take in as you progressed through the campaign and throughout the game just like all the most successful open world games navigating through the city to the next way point was always fun.  So yes, the collectables are forgettable but fun to grab if you seem them (hello grid leaks), and the dashes and deliveries a little pointless but fun to sample; but the actual main line game and the full on side quests were almost uniformly great and occasionally truly memorable (the Shard level will live on for me for quite a while I can assure you).

 

So take it as what it is - a linear game with some open world elements and its a great first person platformer.  And there are few games that can say that.  Yes I did die needless times when I misjudged where my feet were, but when you string move after to move together and travel through the stunning environment effortlessly the thrill of Mirrors Edge has not lost its appeal.

 

There are of course a couple of silly missteps that really shouldn't have been made.  I have no truck with a levelling system; but it was rather silly to place vital traversal actions like the double wall run, recovery roll and quick turn on the skill tree and not make it clear you won't be getting very far without them.  They don't take long to unlock if you focus on them but given you literally can't complete the latter half of the game without them at least release them through the story.  And the combat - oops.  Whilst it was a decent decision to eschew guns; replacing it with the most janky first person melee system I've played in some time, which literally frequently leads to Benny Hill style chases so you can wall run and the do a flying kick was an ill-advised move.  The game works far better where you run rather than fight and should have been structured as such, rather than having half a dozen moments where you can not help but try and fight badly.

 

But when the game works it really works well.  I kept the runner vision on as it made navigating the open world city far more fun, but the game was at its best during missions where it turns itself off and challenges you to find the path; reminiscent of the best navigation based platformers.  And dashing through a hail of bullets, across futuristic skyscrapers never really got old.

 

Taking just the main quest and side content I got a decent 20 hours of playtime and had my fill of the concept; maybe the open world execution was a little half baked but there is more than enough linear well designed level design here to be more than worth the price of admission.

 

TLDR: @Wiper was right (and you won't hear me say that often I can tell you) this was one of the best games of 2016 and deserves to be revisited...

 

Adrenaline / 10 

 

 

 

 

[strawdonkey]

 

On 02/05/2020 at 20:34, strawdonkey said:

01: Shovel Knight

02: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

03: Racedierun

04: Super Mario Maker 2

05: Muv-Luv Extra

06. Untitled Goose Game

07. Glass Masquerade

08. Pokémon Sword

09. OneShot

10. Gorogoa

11. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

12. Hylics

13. LiEat

14. Sonic Robo Blast 2

15. Hustle Cat

16. Universal Paperclips

17. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

18. Pixel Session Vol. 1

 

Making a start on the itch.io bundle. This is a collection of Pico-8 games but you can only play the first one - which is a bit like Mr. Driller mixed with avoiding lethal party rings - until you get a good enough rank, at which point you're given a password for the zip file for the second game.

 

There's five in all, four of them are fun five-minute blasts with some really lovely ideas that you have to figure out on the fly - and I didn't understand how to be even remotely useful at the other one, so it'd be a little unfair of me to be too hard on it in case it's me being the idiot.

 

If nothing else this reminds me how much I love the Pico-8. It's unclear why Pico-8 even exists but the fact that it allows people to make low-tech fun stuff is awesome, and don't forget that Celeste originally spawned from the Pico-8 scene so it can act as a springboard for incredible projects.

 

Celeste is in the bundle by the way. Play Celeste. It's amazing

[Jamie John]

15. Sniper Elite V2 (PC)

 

 

(A tasty GIF I made of me sniping some fool)

Spoiler

 

Yes, you read that correctly, Sniper Elite 2 - the second game in the series, released in 2012.

 

According to Steam, I bought this game on 4th June 2014 and it’s been sitting in my ‘To play’ folder all this time, nagging me to play it. So, on whim, I booted it up, fully expecting to uninstall it within half an hour. Instead, I played it for the best part of 5 hours and completed it. And, you know what? It wasn’t actually that bad.

 

I mean, it’s still pretty bad, but sniping Nazis in the face in and of itself is just so instantly gratifying that I kept playing all the same. It’s a game that makes you do this a lot:

 

 

More or less everything else outside of the actual sniping, however, is the definition of mediocre and plays like a PS2 game. The AI, in particular, is laughably crap and every level is exactly the same. I’ve not played a Sniper Elite game before, and based on my experience with this entry I won’t be rushing out to buy a more recent one any time soon, but some lizard part of my brain enjoyed this enough to see it through to the end, even if I do feel a bit dirty for saying so.

 

Anyway, it's done now and I can finally move it into my 'Played' folder. Phew.

 

6/10

[Mawdlin]

Journey to the Savage Planet (PS4)

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Sure, the humour starts to grate after a while but as the planet opens up it becomes a joy to explore. I finished the main mission after about 15 hours and 65% but kept going because it was fun mopping up the collectables. Never did quite get to 100% but enjoyed using all my skills to find all the nooks and crannies. My only criticism is that the platforming sections were imprecise.

 

It was nice to play a game with clear signposting and the emphasis on fun over frustration.

[Mawdlin]

Rive (Switch)

 

Good little game this, which sounds patronising but isn't meant to be. By little I am referring to the cute if deadly tank you control, and to a lesser extent the completion time of the campaign which is 5 to 6 hours (for me). It's a twin stick shooter with a difference as there are platforming and puzzle elements thrown in. There's also a well implemented hacking mechanic where you can override door circuitry and even possess other robots. It's broadly a cross between Robotron 2084 and Paradroid.

 

Perhaps the early levels are a bit simplistic and there's too many claustrophobic moments, where you're merely finding your way around by traversing narrow tunnels, but when this game opens out into larger arenas it's terrific. The controls, enemy patterns and shooting is precise and satisfying but word of caution: the last two or three levels become very tough, but in turn make you appreciate weapon choice and the nuance of control to a higher degree.

 

I think I paid £1.24 for this which is nuts really. Even the bonus arena challenges are well worth that.

[RubberJohnny]

Age of Wonders: Planetfall - I mentioned this game is basically Civilisation with XCOM combat, and that's a mix that feels uniquely wired for my brain chemistry. I'll be honest, I never really liked combat in Civ, and stuck to culture/tech, but here I really enjoyed it and got into the warmongering. Making each battle turn based does extend the time a bit, but there is an auto-battle option that is pretty good (it doesn't do as well with naval), and you have the option of rerolling and playing manually if you don't like the auto outcome. The only downside of doing battles this way is that an early advantage cascades, two equally matched armies can clash, and a lot of the time one will be wiped out and the other left relatively unharmed, which is not how it'd be in Advance Wars.

 

The XCOM part is initially overwhelming, there are 6 factions and every unit they have is unique, furthermore there are 3 subfactions that they can ally with and get 5 unique units from, and each faction has a secret tech that gives them another 5 units and changes their whole theme. This is a lot to take in! One time you encounter the buglike Kir'Ko, they might be plague spreading infestors backed up by gross abominations, the next they might be psychic dominators with strange ethereal creatures from the void. Add on top that every unit can be modded with upgrades, and Hero units can wield weapons from any race, and there's a lot of "wait what?" and puzzling out whether that status effect that just hit you is coming from the unit or something they've equipped.

 

Anyway, 120 hours later, I completed the games story-based campaign, which is actually pretty impressive, you play the games 6 factions across a couple of worlds each, before a final mission that brings them all together. Each mission is like a match of Civ, except with story based victory conditions, you have a big central quest chain based around reaching areas of the map, delving into dungeons, researching tech, etc, and pick up other quests about winning over factions or investigating weird stuff. The early missions are quite short, while the later ones have "just do a victory condition" as the last stage. There are choices to be made in these missions, factions to side with, decisions that can change your factions secret tech, and so on. Beware that the difficulty increases as the campaign goes on though, I put it on medium, and it starts easy, but by the end was putting me up against multiple warlike very hard AI, so I had to drop it to low.

 

I enjoyed this so much I might buy it to add it permanently to my collection, or dive into the DLC, which adds another faction, although I might have a break first, after so long I'm glad to be free of it's compulsive allure for a bit.

 

Spoiler

Yakuza Kiwami

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

Gears Tactics

Grandia 3

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Wave Race 64

Slay the Spire

Halo 2: Anniversary

Halo CE: Anniversary 

Crackdown 3
Kingdom Come: Deliverance + DLC

God of War (2005) 

Resident Evil 2 RE

Grandia 2 

 

[loathsomeleopard]

World Of Illusion (Megadrive Mini)

 

Yeah, I wanted something easy to just let my mind wander with. This is by no means a hard game, and not great value back in the day. But it’s got some lovely animation and arguably it’s funnier than many actual Disney cartoons, too.

[BadgerFarmer]

11. Jetlancer

Finally finished this off after getting stuck a couple of times on the timed score attack levels. They're some of the oddest difficulty spikes I've seen in a game for some time, and along with a few other poorly designed mission objectives bring the whole thing down. For the most part, it's very similar to Luftrausers, with the same nippy and tight plane control. But to compensate for its repetitiveness, it feels like they've overcomplicated it, with too many buttons to remember and too many customisation options that aren't worth the bother. Still, the basics are solid, the bosses add some variety, and the blue skies are nice. It's OK.

 

12. The Last of Us Part 2

I won't say anything except that I thought it was mostly exceptional and hugely impressive, but definitely has a few problems.

 

13. Atomicrops

I'll call this done, even though I've just finished the first year. After that you unlock a second year and so on, each one a little more difficult. Anyway, I'm pleased with what I've played. It's a Roguelike that combines farming mechanics with a twin-stick shooter. Plant crops in your little patch, explore the surrounding areas for further seeds and various enhancements, then defend your plants at night from hordes of slugs and gun-toting rabbits. Visit town to sell crops and buy stuff, then back to the farm for a new day.

 

And it just works. The systems all link together logically (e.g. dead enemies leave behind fertiliser that can enhance crops). The simple resource management stuff slots in unobtrusively around the action and the random roguelike element, keeping you strategising on the fly. The combat itself is also satisfying, and gets pretty hectic by the third season. There are a ton of different upgrades, as you'd expect, plus permanent unlocks and things to discover over extended play. But I doubt I'll get very far in. My only real issue is that the areas, enemies and bosses seem to be the same each time. More varierty in those areas and I'd be willing to carry on.

 

[Gabe]

14/06/2020 - Bright Memory (PC)

 

This fusion of FPS/lite-RPG/hack-and-slash is an interesting little curio. For starters, it's only about 30-45 minutes long (depending on how many times you die) and secondly, it was originally meant to be a fully fledged title. It also has full RTX implementation, which looks nice (it was my first experience of it - though I can't say it changed the experience for me) and gave my 2070 Super a workout.

 

Anyway, somewhere along the line the idea of making this a game was abandoned - instead becoming more a demo of sorts - with full development moving over to Bright Memory: Infinite, which will become the 'proper' game. In a show of good faith, the developer still sells this, but so long as you buy it before BM:I launches, you will get that game for free. It's a noble gesture and whilst I certainly wouldn't pay the £7.19 demanded on the promise of something to come, I did take that offer when on sale for £2-odd.

 

It's a strange beast; movement is fast and combat frenetic. You have some basic guns but also abilities to play around with, that can freeze, electrify or float enemies, or boost your never-seen stats (like run speed and XP earned). Every enemy is a bit bullet spongey, bosses naturally moreso, and there's some light puzzling too.

 

With such a short runtime the game actually does well to create something playable. It's all pretty basic but that's to be expected, considering it's a one-man band helming the project (apparently). Weapons lack a bit of punch (the shotgun feels like it's tickling enemies rather than giving them new air holes where there chest should be) and the skills feel a little undercooked, but it looks nice enough if you ignore the embarrassing schoolgirl 'costume' that was added at some point.

 

In contrast then to my recent Sin Slayers slating (because I was quite happy to judge that as trash on the basis of a longer demo) this has done enough for me to pay a bit more attention to development on the main release (though to be fair, I'm not sure that would be the case if I wasn't already getting it for free).

 

If nothing else, it's nice to support independent development, right?

 

Previously completed:

Spoiler

11/06/2020 - A Normal Lost Phone (PC)

09/06/2020 - The Outer Worlds (PC)

07/06/2020 - Sin Slayers: The First Sin (PC)

26/05/2020 - Astrologlaster (PC)

25/05/2020 - Demon Stone (PC)

23/05/2020 - Stories Untold (PC)

03/05/2020 - Streets of Rage (PC)

29/04/2020 - Inside (PC)

21/04/2020 - Call of Duty WW2 (PC)

19/04/2020 - Wheels of Aurelia (PC)

15/04/2020 - Sword Omen: Legacy (PC)

02/04/2020 - Mother Russia Bleeds (PC)

29/03/2020 - Operencia - The Stolen Sun (PC)

20/02/2020 - Ruzar: The Life Stone (PC)

20/02/2020 - Alder's Blood: Prologue (PC)

17/02/2020 - Universal Paperclips (PC)

15/02/2020 - Gris (PC)

21/01/2020 - Gears of War 5 (Xbox One X)

19/01/2020 - Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls (Xbox One X)

05/01/2020 - Night Call (PC)

02/01/2020 - Remember Me (PC)

 

[DarkCrisis]

1. Resident Evil 7(XB1) 8/10

2. Batman Arkham Asylum(XB1) 7.5/10

3. Halo: CE Anniversary(XB1) 5/10

4. Life is Strange(XB1) 8/10

5. Luigi Mansion 3(Switch) 8/10

6. New Super Lucky’s Tale(Switch) 7/10

7. Catherine: Full Body(PS4) 8.5/10

8. Untitled Goose Game(Switch) 6/10   

9. Sleeping Dogs(PS4) 9/10

10. Doom 2016(PS4) 9/10

11. Peggle 2(PS4) 7/10

12. Spider-Man(PS4) 9/10

13. Crash Bandicoot(PS4) 7.5/10
14. Resident Evil 3 Remake(PS4) 8/10

15. Spyro the Dragon(PS4) 6.5/10

16. The Order 1886(PS4) 6.5/10

17. Resident Evil 2 Remake(PS4) 9.5/10
18. Sayonara Wild Hearts(PS4) 8/10

19. Resident Evil Revelations 2(PS4) 7/10
20. Donut County(PS4) 6.5/10

21. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition(PS4) 8.5/10
 

22. Ratchet and Clank(PS4) - After watching the PS5 reveal event last week I decided to take a break from my Assassins Creed Origins play through and play Ratchet and Clank. Easily the best remake platformer I have played this year with my only real gripe being the weapon selection system which I found pretty frustrating in the last couple of boss fights. If you looking for a decent platformer on PS4 I definitely recommend this one. 8/10

[Vorgot]

1. Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet

2. Resident Evil 2 Remake

3. Donut County

4. Assemble With Care

5. Persona Q2

6. Witcher 3

7. Persona 5 Royal

 

8. Picross e4 (3DS) - It's Picross, it's great. Not much more to be said. I even enjoyed Mega Picross this time round, so I must be getting used to those. On to e5!

[Quest]

22/12 - Shinsekai Into the Depths (Switch)

15/12 - Control (XB1X)

14/12 - Judgment (PS4)

17/11 - Jedi: Fallen Order (XB1X)

09/11 - Paratopic (Switch)

08/11 - Night in the Woods (XB1X)

03/10 - Destiny 2 - Forsaken (XB1X)

30/09 - Destiny 2 - Warmind (XB1X)

27/09 - Destiny 2 - Curse of Osiris (XB1X)

25/09 - Super Mario 64 (Switch)

18/09 - Bad North (XB1X)

17/09 - Valkyria Chronicles 4 (Switch)

12/09 - Tell Me Why - Chapters 1-3 (XB1X)

02/09 - Hypnospace Outlaw (XB1X) 

01/09 - Lapis x Labyrinth (Switch)

 

Full 2020 list:

Spoiler

30/08 - Florence (Switch)

23/08 - New Super Lucky's Tale (XB1X)

22/08 - Battletoads (2020) (XB1X)

20/08 - Final Fantasy VII (XB1X)

20/08 - Fall Guys (PS4)

16/08 - Iconoclasts (PS4)

10/08 - Tetris Effect (PS4)

10/08 - Xeno Crisis (XB1X)

09/08 - Murder by Numbers (Switch)

09/08 - The Messenger (XB1X)

07/08 - Astral Chain (Switch)

31/07 - The Touryst (XB1X)

31/07 - Ryse: Son of Rome (XB1X)

29/07 - Carrion (XB1X)

28/07 - The Last of Us Part II (PS4)

22/07 - Heave Ho (Switch)

19/07 - Death Stranding (PS4)  

07/07 - Astrologaster (PC) 

07/07 - Helltaker (PC)

06/07 - GNOG (PC) Neat hidden-object/puzzle-box thingies with similarly vivid, kaleidoscopic visuals as Vignettes. My daughter likes playing these things with me, so I expect I'll be hunting down some more.

06/07 - Signs of the Sojourner (PC) Smart take on the deck-builder, linking cards to communication. It's neat that attempts to stack your deck to better speak to people in foreign lands results in your being unable to relate to those you left behind at home. Having lived away for so long it hit surprisingly hard.

02/07 - Halo 5: Guardians (XB1X) A perfunctory Halo campaign is still better than most, but this feels compromised in so many ways, not least by the insistence on four-player co-op. The half-frame rate enemies that make it seem like you're shooting Ray Harryhausen creatures are ridiculous too.

02/07 - Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (Switch) Board games and the like, elevated by Nintendo's knack for presentation and tactility, but marred by the usual bizarre omissions. 

30/06 - Coffee Talk (XB1X) So, apparently, 'visual novel where you serve drinks' is something of a minor genre now, which is good because I enjoyed both this and VA11 HALL-A, though I preferred characters and music of the latter. This is more dynamic visually and in terms of adding a little creative flourish to the drinks, though. 

30/06 - A Mortician's Tale (PC) Very short little tale of starting work as a mortician. Little interaction of interest, and there's really no elevation or intrigue to the narrative before it ends abruptly. A wasted idea.

29/06 - Observation (XB1X) Playing as the AI of a space-station is a neat idea but the execution doesn't quite come together here. Too much ponderous searching with slow cameras for tiny objects and a general lack of direction from the NPCs lead to some frsutration, but it does look really great.

26/06 - Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion (Switch) - It's rare that I feel like I get good value from DLC, but with this I did. It does that remarkable Nintendo thing of wringing everything imaginable out of the fundamental gameplay and systems established in the main game. Presented fantastically and fiendishly difficult at times, I was sad to see the end of this.

24/06 - Metamorphabet (PC) - Cute little tactile illustrated/animated alphabet, which I've been using to help my daughter learn early phonics. 

24/06 - Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (PS4) The cast of Yakuza put on an amateur dramatics production of Fist of the North Star,  and it mostly works, though driving around the wasteland is mostly filler and the substories aren't quite as funny in this context as they are in Kamurocho. A solid, ten-hour-ish main story puts it in the lower-mid tier of Yak for me.

23/06/ Forza Horizon 4 (XB1X) - Main game 'done'. Really need to pick up the DLC at some point.

23/06 - Streets of Rage 4 (XB1X) - Pretty much exactly what I'd hoped it'd be. I'd seen Lizardcube's potential in their Dragon's Trap remake, so had faith they'd get the presentation right, but they also nailed the feel of SoR. Only minor issues are the frustrating shielded police and the lack of even a basic dodge, which is sorely needed now that the enemies are more manoeuvrable. 

22/06 - Anodyne (Switch) - A kind of bizarre, corrupted Link's Awakening. I found this really enthralling, helped massively by the brisk pacing and fantastic little soundtrack. 

22/06 - Life is Strange 2 (XB1X) - I've enjoyed every Dontnod game to some degree, and this might actually be the best thing they've done. It feels less openly manipulative than the first LiS, better written and less binary in the choices and outcomes. A much prettier game than I expected, too.

17/06 - Eliza (Switch) - Brilliantly observed near-future Visual Novel about AI, mental health.... errr, sometimes synthesisers. Absolutely adored this.  

16/06 - Islands: Non-Places (PC) -  Surreal urban spaces, buildings and machinery with some light interactions. An enjoyable moody vibe for half an hour.

16/06 - Democratic Socialism Simulator (PC) Swipe left or right on a bunch of proposals brought to you as the newly elected president. Not particularly deep and it's too easy to keep everyone happy, but the basic premise is amusing for fifteen minutes or so.

16/06 - Mu Cartographer (PC) Map reading through an abstract, arcane UI that you have to figure out through experimentation. A t m o s p h e r i c.

16/06 - Sagebrush (PC) Exploring the site of a cult mass suicide. If this were a AAA game it'd be full of frenzied cultists running at you with pitchforks or something, but this walking sim is more powerful for the absence of all that nonsense. The toing and froing with keys is a bit much, but this was mostly compelling stuff.

15/06 - Sandcastles (PC) - Raise sandcastles with a swipe, then watch them fall as a wave sweeps in. That's it. My three year old enjoyed this for a few minutes.

15/06 - Vignettes (PC) - Hyper colourful perspective-puzzle-toy-things

15/06 - Kids (PC) - Crowds of little Keith Haring peeps throw themselves down a hole at your command, and, errr, there are some gross peristalsis sound effects and stuff. Weirdly engaging.

15/06 - Far from Noise (PC) - Little narrative short that plays out as a car balances on the edge of a cliff.  A potentially neat set-up wasted on dull, woolly writing that didn't resonate at all with me.

15/06 - Wide Ocean Big Jacket (PC) This is more like it. A short camping trip that's nostalgic in an evocative way, with endearing characters that made me laugh.

04/06 - Superhot (XB1X)

01/05- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (360)

25/05 - Daytona USA (360)

15/05 - Gears 5 (XB1X)

18/04 - Quantum Break (XB1X)

16/04 - Animal Crossing New Horizons (Switch) - Obviously not actually finished, because Animal Crossing is eternal.

20/03 - Panzer Dragoon (Saturn) - Well I didn't waste any time getting a few runs of this done. It's still great. Onwards to Zwei.

20/03 - Panzer Dragoon Orta (XB1X) - I was absolutely overjoyed to find this hidden away on Game Pass, as I've wanted to play it for almost twenty years now. It didn't disappoint at all. Looks absolutely blinding on the One X as well, and proves that games of that generation can really shine with a bit of polish in the right places. Need to get around to playing through all the extra scenarios at some point, but I also want to re-play the Saturn games before the remake is out.

16/03 - A Short Hike (PC) - 

16/03 - Art Sqool (PC) - Vaporwave Passpartout: The Starving Artist. Nowt special but a light distraction for an hour.

15/03 - Gears of War 4 (XB1X) - It's more Gears. I does nothing to evolve the series but it does avoid the complete overkill of throwing seven million monsters at you that plagued Gears 3, and is probably the best straightforward campaign since the first game.

20/02 - Guardian Heroes (360)

20/02 - NiGHTS into Dreams (360)

18/02 - Snake Pass (XB1X) - I'd been turned off this around the time of release by people suggesting it was an exercise in frustration, but as it's about to leave Game Pass I thought I'd give it a whirl, and I'm glad I did. For one, it's a lovely looking thing in those vivid Viva Pinata colours, but in the slithering and coiling of Noodle it does that rare thing of feeling like nothing else. They nailed it to the extent that I'm not all that disappointed it doesn't look like getting a sequel. Sumo done good (again).

14/02 - Blazing Chrome (XB1X) - This is so faithful to the Contra of old that it's difficult to find fault with it and not feel I'm being unfair in some way. It's just that while it's great fun, immaculately presented and knows exactly what it needs to be, it lacks a certain spark of innovation that gave the OG titles their edge. There were few moments of genuine surprise, unfortunately.

12/02 - Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch) - One of the best Switch games of the last year, and almost certainly one of the best Western-developed games Nintendo have ever published. NLG have absolutely mastered the character of Luigi, and this is the strongest game in the series by some margin. I think there's room for improvement in terms of collectibles, and finding better use for all that money you hoover up, but this is vindication for Nintendo's continued support of these guys. 

11/02 - Demon's Tilt (XB1X) - The old Naxat Soft games are pretty much the only pinball games I've ever got into, so I was somewhat sceptical about this having the same allure, but I think they've nailed it by dialing up the occult intensity to ridiculous levels. It's aesthetically pitch-perfect, really, but more im

11/02 - Metro Exodus (XB1X) - Much as the characters in the game struggle with life outside the metro, as do the developers in many ways. This strikes an odd balance of scripted sequences, mid-sized open-worlds and wide-linear-corridors to various degrees of success, but the atmosphere and attention to detail remains. 4A really need to work on their voice-work, though, or just make better accessibility options available for those who want to keep the original Russian dialogue. 

07/02 - Ori and the Blind Forest (XB1X) - Really enjoyed this. It wasn't as difficult as I'd been lead to believe, and was lighter on the Metroidvania side than I'd imagined, but I'm all for different takes on the genre. Appreciated the brisk pacing, as I pretty much ran through this in about two sittings. Bring on the sequel.

10/02 - Sea of Thieves (XB1X) - A combo of network issues and time means I'm putting this aside, and I suppose the GaaS things are never finished anyway, but I enjoyed my time with this, sailing the highseas with random Australians. Found everything on the ocean captivating and full of adventure, but everything on land very tedious and pedestrian.

05/02 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider (XB1X) - Selfish, murderous psychopath Lara Croft kills a few hundred civilians in the opening act through her own ignorance, sulks when her friend tells her off and then spends the rest of the game thieving from villagers and patronising actual researchers and archaeologists, having learned nothing.

These are rotten, miserable games that assume the people of these lands are too simple to discover and appreciate the wonders surrounding them without Lara there to explain everything. I honestly wanted the villain to win, which I'm sure some more generous folk might interpret as a deliberate move on the part of the writers, but I'm not buying it. 

I suppose the tombs are fine, though.

03/02 - The Outer Worlds (XB1X) - I went into this wanting to play as a mostly pacifist, sarcastic space arsehole. That the game accommodated this throughout the  play-through is massively to its credit. Visually it's wildly inconsistent (some of the interiors look fantastic - outside, less so) and there's not much to be gained from exploration, but the flexibility of so many of the quests drew me in, after Fallout 4 proved to be such a huge disappointment.

29/01 - A Plague Tale (XB1X) - Essentially The Last of Us with rats, as you stealthily escort someone through a bleak environment occasional engage in some brutal stoning. Even shares some of the same story beats. It's well executed, though. The soundtrack is of particular note, with it's scraping, scratching strings and rough percussion, and it's one of the prettiest games I can recall playing. The rudimentary combat doesn't really support the greater emphasis on combat in the final hour or so, and it became a little frustrating there, but it's amazing to me that this comes from the studio behind  a bunch of licensed games and Fuel (which I fucking loathed).

24/01 - Sunset Overdrive (XB1X) - Enjoyed this about as much as Spider-Man, which surprised me. The humour is, well, a bit zaaaaany, which usually puts me off, but it has its heart in the right place and the core grindin', bouncin' and shootin' is really satisfying. Some tasty boss-battles in there, too.

24/01 - Lonely Mountains - Downhill (XB1X) - A nice little game, this. They got the feeling of slinging the bike around corners just right, and avoided the temptation to fill the later levels with novelty shite as a way to add variety. It's a neatly pure experience.

19/01 - Afterparty (XB1X) - A disappointment after Oxenfree. The same neat little dialogue system is there, and the voice acting is great, but the central characters are unappealing, the game itself is riddled with bugs and there's some rough stuttering between areas. Mostly it just lacked the compelling mystery of Oxenfree, though, and I was bored long before the end.

14/01 - Untitled Goose Game (XB1X) - It's slight, but my daughter laughed like a loon throughout the whole thing, so it's a winner in my book.

 

Backlog:

Spoiler

Switch

 

Disgaea 1 Complete    

Nintendo Labo - Vehicle Kit

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations 

Shovel Knight: King of Cards 

Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows   

Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment 

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition   

The Wonderful 101

Super Luigi U

 

Ongoing:

Phoenix Wright: Justice for All (Switch)

The Stretchers (Switch)

The Midnight Sanctuary (Switch)

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch)

 

[matt0]

Been a while since I updated my list in this thread, played a lot of random Game Pass stuff. Can't be bothered to do long write ups of all these but here's a few scattered thoughts:

 

Ace Combat 5 (Xbox One):

 

Finished on normal difficulty with the simplified flight model, but still found it pretty tough. Looked decent, played well and brought back lots of fond memories of Amiga era games like Wing Commander, Knights of the Sky, F-15 Strike Eagle 2 etc. that had the trappings of sims but were action games at heart.

 

Gato Roboto (Xbox One):

 

Beautifully made, charming Metroidvania with nicely done 1 bit graphics. Couldn't fault it but also found it a slightly empty experience - like someone had set out to make a textbook example of the genre purely for reference. I couldn't help comparing it to Minit which has a similar style and design philosophy but far more imaginative within its genre.

 

Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One):

 

Finished arcade mode 5 times, twice on normal (Cherry and Axel), twice on hard (Blaze and Floyd) once on harder (is it called that? the one just below Mania) with Adam. Was not disappointed by this when it finally came along!

 

Ridge Racer 3D (3DS):

 

Managed to get all gold on all three difficulty levels of the Grand Prix mode. 3D effect was cool despite some dodgy pseudo motion blur effect when you boost. You'd think it would suffer from being 30fps with frame rate drops but the sense of speed remains intact. Decent, no frills portable version of Ridge Racer.

 

Nier Automata (Xbox One):

 

Worthy sequel but didn't make as big an impression on me as the first game, maybe because it does a lot of the same tricks and (deliberately) carries over a lot of the same cruft and redundant design. A weird little world to spend some surreal gaming time in during lockdown.

 

Sea Salt (Xbox One):

 

Lovecraftian Pikmin thing where you terrorise the inhabitants of a medieval town with your summoned swarm of eldritch horrors. Low res pixel art visuals reminded me of Cannon Fodder. Good fun for an evening or two but didn't hold my interest past the first playthrough depsite offering up an arena mode, different characters with different perks, etc.

 

Pikuniku (Xbox One):

 

Another indie adventure game that reminded me a bit of Minit but not as good. This one comes across as a slightly arch take on Dizzy with some genuinely funny moments. It's game world has lots of points of interaction and physicsy stuff going on, but the level of interactivity felt a bit inconsistent across the whole thing. Okay.

 

Westerado: Double Barelled (Xbox One):

 

Compact, short open world game. Feels at different times like a lost Spectrum game, a NES style adventure or a 16 bit It Came From The Desert-esque adventure with simulation elements. Hinges on completing quest lines for NPCs who then give you clues to the identity of the man who killed your family, which reminded me of Friday 13th on Spectrum in a vauge way. You can make incorrect accusations based on incomplete information, cause mayhem and generally be an arsehole if you want. Ultimately it falls apart towards the end when the longer, intertwined quest chains start to trip each other up and it felt like I was breaking some storylines by doing parts of other ones in the wrong order. Ambitious and it looks and sounds great, but it doesn't quite pull it off.

 

 

2020 so far:

Spoiler

 

January:

 

Jedi Fallen Order (Xbox One)

Untitled Goose Game (Xbox One)

 

February:

 

Innocence: A Plague Tale (Xbox One)

Outer Worlds (Xbox One)

Empire of Steel (Megadrive)

 

March:

 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC)

Indivisible (Xbox One)

Max Payne 3 (PC)

 

April:

 

Shovel Knight: King of Cards (Wii U)

Vanquish (Xbox One)

Monument Valley 2 (Android)

Ace Combat 5 (Xbox One)

Gato Roboto (Xbox One)

 

May:

 

Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One)

Ridge Racer 3D (3DS)

 

June:

 

Nier Automata (Xbox One)

Sea Salt (Xbox One)

Pikuniku (Xbox One)

Westerado: Double Barelled (Xbox One)

 

 

[Mogster]

17/06/2020 - Beyond Blue (Xbox One)

 

I'd had my eye on this for a while, as the idea of an underwater exploration game with the involvement of the Blue Planet team was quite appealing. I was also in the mood for something relaxing, the reviews seemed generally positive and the price was low.

 

It was okay. It was clearly quite a low budget title, being very short indeed and very sparse in terms of assets. The diver you control, along with the various species you run into are well animated and look pretty decent. You only ever hear the other characters in the story, their appearance limited to a static mugshot. The voice acting is good though, and tells a surprisingly personal, if slight story to accompany the exploration and science.

 

Exploration is a bit of a strong word though. Each of the eight dives takes you to a fairly small area, most of which introduce you to new species and environments. Usually the only agency you have is to move a reticule around until you find waypoints to tag, swim to them and scan every creature you encounter along the way. Scanning multiple examples of each species unlocks more facts and behaviour animations to watch back in your sub, and scanning the waypointed stuff progresses the story. That's really all there is to it, so I guess the game is something of a walking (swimming?) simulator. 

 

That's fine though. As you progress through the story you become attached to a family of sperm whales, which make for the main throughline, and make a number of other discoveries along the way. You also unlock short talking head interview snippets with real marine biologists and others, along with footage from Blue Planet. My issue with the story is that it's just too slight, and the emotional payoffs fell a bit flat for me as a result.

 

Story aside, I don't think the game does enough to make the rest of experience interesting. The small environments are fairly well modelled, but there's little incentive to explore away from your waypoints. The creatures you encounter don't do anything interesting if you follow them, so you can't observe any different behaviour outside of scripted encounters. Even the main attractions don't really do much of interest, with the voice acting doing a lot of the heavy lifting. On top of this, the different environments don't really offer any differences in how you play. The near future setting handwaves away your suit's ability to keep you alive at silly depths, and aside from the ability to switch to infra-red and UV lights (mainly for one single task) there's not much new to offer as you progress. 

 

It was a pleasant enough way to spend a few hours though, and can't really complain for £16. It's the sort of game that would make for perfect Game Pass fodder, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it show up there later down the line.

 

Spoiler

January

07/01/2020 - Control (Xbox One)
26/01/2020 - Final Fantasy X (Switch)

February

10/02/2020 - Disco Elysium (PC)
22/02/2020 - Frostpunk (PC)

March

10/03/2020 - Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (Xbox One)
29/03/2020 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Xbox One)

April

07/04/2020 - Yakuza Kiwami (PS4)

May

04/05/2020 - Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)
09/05/2020 - Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)
23/05/2020 - Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Switch)

June

05/06/2020 - Vader Immortal (Oculus Quest)
07/06/2020 - Red Matter (Oculus Quest)
17/06/2020 - Beyond Blue (Xbox One)

 

[FiveFootNinja]

15. Journey (PS4) - Played this with my 4yo this morning. As beautiful and enigmatic as it ever was, he was captivated for the entire session and really enjoyed dancing and chiming around with another stranger we found. Although I did most of the controls he was in charge and has now officially completed his first console game. I can't think of a better one for him to start his gaming journey with.  Perfect.  - 10/10

 

 

On 28/05/2020 at 10:29, FiveFootNinja said:

1. Jedi: Fallen Order (XB1) - 10/10

2. Untitled Goose Game (XB1) - 8/10

3. Gorogoa (iPad) - 9/10

4. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (XB1) - 8/10

5. Abzû (PS4) - 6/10

6. Braid (XB1/360) - 10/10

7. A Plague Tale: Innocence (XB1) - 8/10

8. Quantum Break (XB1) - 6/10

9. Oxenfree (Mac OS) - 7/10

10. Monument Valley 2 (iPad) -  7/10

11. Sniper Elite 4 (XB1) - 8/10

12. Marvel's Spider-Man (PS4) - 10/10

13. Fractured Minds (XB1) - 5/10

14. The Last Guardian (PS4) - 8/10

[gossi the dog]

17/06 - Maneater (Xbox One) - an open world game where you are a shark out for revenge against the fisherman who killed your mother. You start off as a pup, and the aim is to eat as much food as possible to grow bigger and evolve which unlocks new abilities, whilst taking on missions, exploring for collectibles and attacking fishermen. It's a compelling loop. The missions themselves do end up being a bit samey - with most being of the kill x humans or kill x other species variety. However as you grow bigger, you open up deeper water with far bigger predators for you to kill. I generally regard underwater levels as being the worst, the forced inertia and clumsy controls and camera angles usually serves to frustrate, but they've absolutely nailed the controls here - it feels natural. The game has a presentation akin to the earlier Grand Theft Auto's where it doesn't take itself seriously which perfectly suits the game. I even went back after completing the main story to mop up the last remaining collectibles to get the full 1000 achievement points, which is something I very rarely do and sums up how much I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Great stuff.

 

18/06 - Coffee Talk (Xbox One) - You run a coffee shop, and over a two week period you get to see several characters lives as they pop in to drink and chat to you. There's next to no actual gameplay other than making hot drinks which depending on what you make can give you closure to a set characters story. It's a pretty interesting visual novel that's short enough to not outstay it's welcome. Worth a play if you have Xbox Live Gold where it's free this month.

 

Previously:

 

01. 01/01 - Persona 4: Dancing All Night (PS4)

02. 03/01 - Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4)
03. 11/01 - Yakuza 3 (PS4)
04. 11/01 - Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (PS4)
05. 12/01 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan (PS4)
06. 21/01 - Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox One)
07. 24/01 - Storm Boy (Xbox One)
08. 10/02 - One Piece World Seeker (Xbox One)
09. 10/03 - GRID (Xbox One)
10. 01/04 - Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F (PS3)
11. 07/04 - Resident Evil 3 (Xbox One)
12. 11/04 - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (Xbox 360)
13. 12/04 - Duck Tales Remastered (Xbox 360)
14. 14/04 - Song of the Deep (Xbox One)
15. 15/04 - Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd (PS3)
16. 25/04 - Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone (PS4)
17. 08/05 - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS4)
18. 17/05 - Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

 

[Sprite Machine]

Previously...

 

1) AM2R - PC - 2016 (1991)
2) Ecco The Dolphin - Mega CD - 1992/3
3) Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 3DS - 2012/14
4) Mega Man X - SNES - 1993
5) Super Metroid - SNES - 1994
6) Donkey Kong Country - SNES - 1994
7) Chrono Trigger - SNES - 1995
8) Star Fox 2 - SNES - 2017 (1995)
9) Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - SNES - 1995
10) Xenogears - PS1 - 1998
11) Sonic the Hedgehog - Megadrive - 1991
12) Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - SNES - 1996
13) Kirby Super Star - SNES - 1996
14) Earthbound - SNES - 1995
15) R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 - PS1 - 1998/9
16) Tomb Raider III - PC - 1998
17) Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation - PC - 1999
18) Tomb Raider Chronicles - PC - 2000
19) Shenmue HD - PC - 2018 (1999/2000)
20) Shenmue II HD - PC - 2018 (2001)
21) Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - PS3 - 2012 (2001)
22) Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness - PC - 2003

 

 

23) Jak II: Renegade - PS3 - 2012 (2003)

Completed for the first time, but not 100%. (Well actually something stupid like 120%, which isn't 100% ) 20 hours.

 

Oh dear, what happened here? Was this the the year that videogame publishers realised nobody was buying cutesy character platformers anymore? Grand Theft Auto was popular so they decided to add cars and guns to Jak & Daxter, give Jak "attitude" and make him swear, and transform into a 'dark' alter ego. See also: Prince of Persia Warrior Within and Shadow the Hedgehog.

 

Anyway, truth be told, I went into this with an open mind. I vaguely recall being on this forum (or edge?) when the game first came out and a few people were genuinely delighted by it. "Forget the change in tone, it's really good", they said. "The best one", they said.

 

But no, it's not. This is one of the most disappointing sequels I've ever played. Structurally, the game borrows from GTA's "missions", sometimes giving you a couple to choose from, but generally operating in a linear fashion. This game is longer, but I'm certain that's entirely down to how many times I died and repeated the same thing over and over, and the game's checkpoints are extremely harsh, often requiring long boring sections to be repeated. See, unlike the first game allowing you to do these little mini-missions in any order you like (Mario 64-style), here you're funnelled through one route only. Don't like turret defence sections? Tough, you gotta do one. Don't like escort missions? Tough, you gotta do one. Don't like races? Tough, etc. What's more, the game seems to borrow the worst trait of its cousin, Ratchet & Clank - whereby restarting after death will reset all the enemies but won't reset your ammo count, so if you're in a section without many ammo boxes, you can actually make the game harder every time you die.

 

Outside of missions, the city overworld is similarly frustrating. It's a large dystopian police state, and generally you'll want to avoid running into the armed guards on the streets and get to your destination in your vehicle of choice, either a sturdy hovertank that takes a beating but turns like a shopping trolley, or a flimsy little airbike that moves fast but explodes after two minor collisions. However, the map design is so frustrating because it's all winding little alleys and zig-zags. When you're trying to follow an objective marker, you often have to go in the opposite direction and wind back round, while opening the larger map to check at every junction is slow and clunky.

 

At every step, this game seems intent on testing your patience, rather than entertaining you. I can't think of a single mission where I felt I was just having fun and not gnashing my teeth to get through it. It's not like it's even a particularly difficult game as such, it's just that the challenge comes from annoying little things, randomised obstacles, wonky physics and sparse checkpoints. On the plus side, the storyline is actually quite interesting, the cutscenes are well animated and the presentation is good - it must have been a real looker on the PS2, and it mostly maintains 60fps with a bit of stuttering and no loading screens. I had a few glitches, including a recurring issue where the music failed to start, but this was fairly rare.

 

The joyful, colourful little platformer of 2001 is just a distant memory, but where that game still manages to hold up today, this has not aged so gracefully. Both in gameplay and in tone, this feels really cringey and naff. Talk about a franchise taking a wrong turn.