The last game you completed, and rating.

last night completed the Bards Tale - the 2005 one which was also on ps2 / original xbox.

impossible one to rate really as it totally depends why you would play it. I liked the humour and the writing.

visually and mechanically it is incredibly simple however and if it were released today it would get absolutely panned. A game of its time, but that i missed out on so wanted to go back to.

I have had my steam account since getting half life 2....... but this is only the 2nd steam game ever i have max gamer scored so i guess that says something.
 
Uncharted 4 - 8/10

Not as good as Uncharted 2 which is the series' best entry, but still a great, fun adventure game.

Tip: Don't use DLSS if your system can go without - it doesn't suit the game's graphics and messes up the image quality.
 
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - 9/10

Wow, colour me impressed. Game started off a bit iffy with this open area near the beginning that seemed a bit...repetitive?

But once I got past that initial stage it was just jaw dropping all the way through. Scenery, spectacle, dialogue, actually challenging puzzles, awesome action set pieces.

This game was way better than I thought it would be and actually better than Uncharted 4 in pretty much every way.
 
Anomaly Warzone Earth (Mobile Campaign) - 7/10
Anomaly Korea - 8/10

All the Anomaly games I must have got from some kind of Humble Bundle but they've never been played. Just done the above two, what great little games they are. Bit simplified as they are mobile ports but still decent. The PC version of Warzone Earth is even better, which is what I am working through now along with Anomaly Defenders which is great fun, too. I think I may even like the latter better than Defense Grid.
 
Aliens: Dark Descent - 7/10

Bit surprised by this one - didn't like it at all at the beginning but it slowly grew on me (mostly for the story which is pretty good and would've made a great Aliens movie).

Control of your team is a little iffy and there's quite a reliance on stealth which the game doesn't handle particularly well (and seems at odds with being well, Colonial Marines). In a weird design choice, ammo can only be found during a mission and can't be taken back with you to stockpile at your base of operations so if you run around collecting every bit of ammo you find you can find yourself running out if you have to extract your team and return to the map later as none of the pickups re-spawn - later on you unlock squad abilities that give you extra ammo so this becomes less of an issue.

The aliens themselves are pretty good for the most part - they're fast and dangerous and you can quickly become overwhelmed if one of your team goes down at just the wrong moment. There's not much variety though - just the usual runners, drones, warriors (and way too many queens) with the crusher and the praetorian from other games/media. They have added one new alien that has it's own unique 'thing' so that was an interesting surprise.

I wasn't crazy about the way the aliens patrol the maps - they're pretty much everywhere and constantly re-spawning - if one sees you you'll become 'hunted' and a steady stream of critters will arrive at the location where you were spotted. If you tick them off enough they'll send a horde at you to deal with which was exciting the first few times but in the late game it becomes an annoyance when you're trying to reach your objective.

I think for an Aliens fan (like myself), this is worth playing, but there's a bunch of odd design choices that make this a lesser game than it could've been. If you wait for a sale and pick it up for around £20, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

*Edit* Oh, and be warned - the save system *suuuucks*
 
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Horizon Zero Dawn 9/10.
Loved the story and the gameplay. Did glitch a few times where some of the robots were stuck inside stones, so was a bit weird as the game has been out a while and would have expected things like this to be fixed. But I was too intrigued with the story and gameplay so ignored the slight problem. Really looking forward to the next one, whenever that comes to the PC.
 
The Witcher 3
Hearts of Stone
Blood and Wine

I've actually completed the main game 3 times now, once on PS4 and twice on PC. Most recently played through the entire main game plus both DLC's with next gen upgrades.

All I can say is that WOW. I mean this game plus it's DLC's are just unbelievably amazing, I don't even know how to describe it.

When you play this, including the 2 DLC's it's very easy to understand how badly CDPR dropped the ball with Cyberpunk.

IMHO Blood and Wine is one of the most top tier gaming experiences and is even better than the main game. So is Hearts of Stone. CDPR were in the form of their lives with this. The level of care and attention to detail that went into this whole package is just incredible. Gaming doesn't get any better imo.

10/10
 
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Dead Space (2023) - 7/10

Hmm... some mixed feelings about this one as I'm a *huge* fan of the originals. This would've been an '8' but the PC port is (still) quite shonky and doesn't ever feel 'smooth' while you're playing it. EA/Motive seem to have abandoned the game too as there's been no patches for months now.

I'd say if you've never played the original and want to check out Dead Space then the remake is definitely the best way to experience the game given the stunning visuals and refined gameplay - be warned that playing with an mouse and keyboard is effectively easy mode as the game has been designed around using a controller.

FPS for me (3060 Ti @ 1440p) were all over the place sometimes in the 40's, sometimes in the 80's although mostly around 60. Almost every time you start moving the framerate will drop though as the game is constantly loading in assets.

Performance aside, the things I didn't like were mostly changes to the story so if you've never played DS these likely won't bother you (BIG spoilers below - you've been warned!):

I get they wanted Nicole to have a more prominent role in the story than just being a damsel to be rescued but it makes no sense to me that she'd be assigned to the Ishimura given her opposition to Unitology - why would the captain (a devout Unitologist) have her onboard when she's actively working to undermine the church? There were many ways Nicole could have played a greater part in the story but this was by far the laziest and dumbest the devs could have chosen.

They made Isaac a complete a-hole by retconning the last conversation he and Nicole had and having him (unfairly) blame her for the deaths of both of his parents - I get that he was distraught but Isaac's always been written as a decent, caring guy and seeing him acting like a complete ass was painful to watch for a long-time fan of the series. Writers: you don't always have to justify and explain everything - particularly if it's detrimental to your story/characters.

So they made Isaac older (why?) and made him look like Gunner Wright, the voice actor - fine? I guess? But Isaac Clarke is a character - like Leon Kennedy or Lara Croft - he's not Gunner Wright any more than Elias Toufexis is Adam Jensen in Deus Ex. I'm glad Gunner got to appear in 'his' game but he was already synonymous with the series through his voice work so it feels unecessary. Also they featured an older version of Nicole supposedly based on the voice actress' likeness and as much as I dislike the divisiveness, I have to agree - why did they make her so... haggard? Tanya Clarke (even in her 50's) is adorable!

Oh, and one last 'old man yells at cloud' - if you're going to make substantial changes to the likenesses and characters of Isaac and Nicole including aging them up and retconning their history - why not make them married? They're in their 40's-50's right? Seems the devs wanted to make a bunch of superficial changes to better shape what they thought Dead Space should be in 2023 without actually doing the work to make the characters and story better.
 
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X-Com Enemy Unknown 7/10

Finally played this one having owned it for ages. Love the old ones and was always put off this due to the ‘consoley’ nature of it. I thought combat was reasonably good although the alien ‘pods’ felt contrived and for me was unrealistic. The base stuff was rubbish didn’t feel any sense of control over it really. Something like Apocalypse from years before did it all far better. Soldier base interphase also crap and consoley and unnecessarily fiddly. However did enjoy it overall and will play the sequels. Definitely combat was highlight.
 
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Brotato - 10/10

Just did D5 tonight for the first time. Not easy and unlike some of the other difficulties maybe not quit as much fun. Hard to fault the game other than the odd stutters I get sometimes, but that might be my PC. Absolute bargain for the £3.19 I paid for it. I think I prefer it to Vampire Survivors because of the restrictive playing area (slight Geometry Wars-vibes) and the clear waves structure. Also feels like it has much more build variety and the manual controls add something different (if wanted). Also a fairly nice suite of accessibility options which is great.

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ZXSpekky48k said:
X-Com Enemy Unknown 7/10

Finally played this one having owned it for ages. Love the old ones and was always put off this due to the ‘consoley’ nature of it. I thought combat was reasonably good although the alien ‘pods’ felt contrived and for me was unrealistic. The base stuff was rubbish didn’t feel any sense of control over it really. Something like Apocalypse from years before did it all far better. Soldier base interphase also crap and consoley and unnecessarily fiddly. However did enjoy it overall and will play the sequels. Definitely combat was highlight.
Click to expand...

The old ones are alive and kicking still.

Check out https://openxcom.org/

You may already know about it.
 
Persona 5 Royal - 10/10

I think I had my fill of it by the end as it's not a short game; but thoroughly enjoyed my time with the characters and the world. The music is on point.
 
Grumps82 said:
The old ones are alive and kicking still.

Check out https://openxcom.org/

You may already know about it.
Click to expand...
Thanks I was unaware of that and will take a look. I liked the originals when they first came out - it was perfection at the time and was a brilliant refinement of rebelstar and laser squad. Personally I have a real soft spot for X-Com Apocalypse despite its flaws and somewhat unfinished nature - it was such an ambitious game.
 
Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart: 8/10

This probably deserves a 9 but it's a short game and for £50 I don't feel the value is there. There is a new game+ that offers some extra unlockables but I didn't feel all that compelled to go back to it.

That said, this game is utterly charming - great characters and voice work, spectacular animation and visuals and some genuinely impressive set pieces - it's a very pretty, fast-paced roller-coaster ride that kept me smiling all the way through.

It still needs some patches I think to really finish polishing it, but for the most part I didn't encounter any issues. There are some annoying moments when you can clip through scenery and get stuck in geometry that really shouldn't be there but you can manually save whenever you want so it's not really that big a deal.

Controls felt a little off for me on an XBox pad - flight controls for one segment of the game were just plain weird and I had to remap them - also some alt fires for weapons didn't seem to work the way the game thinks they should (due to this originally being designed around a dual-sense controller no doubt).

Overall, I recommend it - great fun, great story, dazzling visuals - maybe wait to get it for £25-£30 though.
 
After finally burning out on Fallout 76, I played through Dead Island 2 over the last week.

Found it kind of like a paint-by-numbers zombie game. All very familiar, all very run of the mill. It looked and ran nicely, but it broke absolutely no new ground at all. Everything is imported from other games in the same or similar genres. The story and side quests are straight out of the big book of zombie game cliches and fetch quests.

The question that remains is, 'how much fun can it make beating up zombies over and over again?' Fun enough to keep it going for 15-20 hours, I found. It was just wearing a bit thin around that amount of game time when, hey presto, it turned out I was at the end of the main story anyway, so I guess it got the pacing right.

A creamy middle of a 6.5/10 game, says I.
 
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