The last game you completed, and rating.

Fort Solis, walking sim, got some quicktime elements that I'm not to sure actually affects anything in the game, only 4 hrs to complete so actually completed a game for a change, but it kept me interested all the same, and didn't have a predictable end like I thought it would.

An 8 out of 10 which includes a Brucie bonus point for the £1.39 price tag.

opethdisciple said:
Spiderman 2 on PC.

Two crashes in the first few hours but luckily stable for the remaining 30hrs afterwards.

Excellent game. New York is well realized and the boss battles are excellent.

9/10
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Completed SM, and was blown away with it, but Miles Morales, I got to the end story trigger and stopped playing, still to finiish it though I don't know if I will, might just skip finishing it and go onto SM2.
 
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Final fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade - 8.5/10

Went back to platinum the first game after platinuming Rebirth. Really enjoyed it, even more so than my first time playing through it now that I'm much better versed on the mechanics and know what to expect when it comes to the less great aspects of the game. The slow traversal is still annoying and the combat definitely feels a lot less refined than Rebirth but it's still easily the best JRPG combat system I've experienced outside of turn based, and even than it might have actually topped it. It was refreshing not having to spend so much time in the menus swapping materia compared to Rebirth too thanks to the more restricted parties in this game.

DLC is excellent too, up until the cringe lord anime Mankind wannabe rears his ugly head in the last 15 minutes at least though the boss fight itself is still solid.
 
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tommybhoy said:
Completed SM, and was blown away with it, but Miles Morales, I got to the end story trigger and stopped playing, still to finiish it though I don't know if I will, might just skip finishing it and go onto SM2.
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If you didn't enjoy Miles Morales, you almost certainly won't gel with SM2. It's easily the worst of the 3 games and has problematic pacing / writing.
 
xaldub said:
If you didn't enjoy Miles Morales, you almost certainly won't gel with SM2. It's easily the worst of the 3 games and has problematic pacing / writing.
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My lads told me not to bother too, but as he's played it, it's in the library, I need to at least experience the first level.
 
Blue Prince, technically I've not finished it yet but I may not and I feel I need to rant about it a bit. I'm a massive puzzle game fan so it pains me to say this, but it's just not good. It's annoying to me because first of all it's got scores way above what it deserves IMO, and partly because it's wasted potential, the idea is really good but it's execution is a nightmare.

Putting RNG into a puzzle game is...it's just so stupid, I don't know why anyone would do this. I get that there's strategy to room placement, getting bad cards out of the deck early, reserving certain ones for deeper into the run, getting gathering ones as early as possible, etc. But it's still horribly RNG based, you can either run out of keys, run out of diamonds, or just straight up lock progression up the map off by drawing cards that constantly loop back on themselves.

There is all these synergies in the game, a surprisingly large amount of them. Find a hammer and you can smash boxes for items, find a spade and get extra dig holes, room synergies, items you can combine, etc. There's way more than I care to list here, but the thing is that's all RNG too, you can draw a root cellar for your shed room and get extra dig spots and never find a spade. You can draw a garage and never get the car keys, I kid you not but 90% of the synergies have never worked for me in maybe 40 runs total.

The puzzles are honestly pretty simple, there's so many clues to solve them, you're outright told how to do them if you pay close attention. There's literally written instructions on how to solve the dartboard, you end up doing the same puzzles over and over, some of the repetitive ones get harder each time but not much, it ends up just being time consuming more than anything.

If you're good with puzzles you'll basically know the punchline long before you can execute it, I'm at the stage where everything is in place to get to the final room but you just need RNG on your side to execute it, and the same with many other side puzzle like the generator and lab being connected. So you're just frustratingly doing runs over and over in the hope the RNG is kind to you.

The only nice thing is that you'll need to get a pad a paper out because there's a lot to track and write down, so I guess it comes with a sense of making you feel clever. Sorry rant over. I'd give it a 6/10, I'd probably give it a 9/10 if the RNG was removed and replaced with something more sane.
 
Just got round to finishing Cronos: The New Dawn.
Pretty good in places - it's no DS or TCP, but I'm happy with any copy of DS :)
Last boss was rather annoying, due to having to keep walking back to start the battle and skip 2 cutscenes each time :rolleyes:

Now back to Silent Hill F :D
 
Shadow of the Erdtree

Technically a DLC rather than a full game, but I thought it felt like a new game so long after playing Elden Ring.

It reminded me of what an amazing game ER was and how much I enjoyed exploring its bleak, mysterious world.

Exploration felt really satisfying in this game for the most part too. Finally figuring out how to get somewhere you've been able to see for ages is consistently satisfying. Some nicely crafted environments, but sometimes they felt a bit empty compared to the base game.

I switched to a shamelessly OP str-fai build, using Blasphemous Blade for exploration and burnable bosses, and the Bloodfiend Arm with Prayerful Strike as my tough boss killer. This blasted through everything perhaps a bit too easily, but I was having fun with it.

Not too keen on what I've seen of Nightrein so far, but really hoping we get more SP content like this from From sometime soon. 9/10 (only losing a point for some of the emptiness in a few of the areas)
 
Got to the end credits of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 this morning, wow!

I loved every minute of the 110 hours I spent as Henry in this, it was almost perfect. The graphics, sound, music, voices etc. were all excellent (a few repeats but there was a huge amount of dialogue!).

I still didn’t get on with the combat combos, instead I used a heavy war hammer and blocked then bonked them on the head which worked well enough. A minor frustration that some missions forced a sword into your hand.

I have a few side quests to complete so will keep playing for a while but it is never the same afterwards.
 
DLC4 for Rise of the Golden Idol, just when I thought I couldn't be more confused this took my deductive skills to a whole new level. Think Jonathan Creek on steroids.
10/10

 
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Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin - 6/10

I really fancied playing DS2 again, having not touched it since playing through the original version at launch, and initially I was having a lot of fun with it. The first half of the game is pretty good overall, despite the questionable enemy placement and dodgy hitboxes. I'd forgotten just how long it is though, and the back half of the game is something of a slog. Especially the DLC areas, which are terrible and full of annoying enemies assembled in gank squads. Most of the bosses are also kinda lame, with only a few memorable encounters mixed in amongst the 'dude with weapon' and annoying gimmick bosses. It's still a decent game and looks great with the lighting mod, but overall its reputation as the weakest Souls game is deserved.
 
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (the new one): 4.5/10

+The open world 'weapons free' levels get better as the game goes on, to begin with I didn't like them as it just seemed to be about sprinting to objectives without much AI support. Improved a bit later on e.g. the Dam level and Oligarch offering a couple of different ways to approach it.
+Graphics and performance are fine.
+Decent range of weapons as you'd expect. Shotguns in particular feel good.
+Reasonable variety in levels, indoor/outdoor, lighting levels etc.

-It's pretty short, I didn't put a timer on it but probably took about 5hrs. Most of the levels are short and some of them just end abruptly.
-Some silly bits that just involve pressing F, like blending in. They designed this whole section around the London South Bank, for the sake of an incredibly short tracking mission where it signposts where to stand to follow/overhear your mark by pressing F. It's like a really bad, short version of Assassin's Creed with no autonomy. An earlier section on an airplane was similar. I know CoD is on rails at times but those may as well have been cutscenes.
-The storyline/characters feel a bit underplayed, like I don't really care that much what happens. The dialog feels uninspired and cliched.
-Checkpoint pacing is erratic. The final mission for example seemed to trigger checkpoints every 20 yards whereas the Dam level, you had to basically do the main mission (diffusing 4 different bomb sites) before any checkpoint at all, so if the game crashes or you die after doing 3/4, it's all wasted progress.
-Although I said the 'weapons free' missions improve as the game goes on, I'm still not totally sold on the sandbox approach as it inherently can't provide the main strength of COD games which is the sort of ongoing narrative with big curated set pieces. Early on it just seemed to be a case of sprinting towards the nearest objective marker, find whatever ordnance (Mortar strikes, RPGs etc) has been randomly left nearby and blow up the choppers. I don't hate the concept of letting players have different routes to complete a level but the execution is a long way off something like Deus Ex.

Overall probably the worst COD game I've played. Next up, BLOPS6.
 
Aretak said:
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin - 6/10

I really fancied playing DS2 again, having not touched it since playing through the original version at launch, and initially I was having a lot of fun with it. The first half of the game is pretty good overall, despite the questionable enemy placement and dodgy hitboxes. I'd forgotten just how long it is though, and the back half of the game is something of a slog. Especially the DLC areas, which are terrible and full of annoying enemies assembled in gank squads. Most of the bosses are also kinda lame, with only a few memorable encounters mixed in amongst the 'dude with weapon' and annoying gimmick bosses. It's still a decent game and looks great with the lighting mod, but overall its reputation as the weakest Souls game is deserved.
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There been a lot of people coping in recent years exclaiming the game is actually good, even the best in the trilogy, and it's baffling. It's like the Star wars fans pretending the prequels were actually good all along, they're terrible. I tried playing DS2 again the other day and it just feels so much worse to play than every other soulsborne game.

There's some great moments sure but I'll never forget just how much I hated DS2 when it first came out. A stark contrast to how I felt playing DS1 after completing Demon's souls. It was like trying heroin for the first time.
 
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Ice Rich said:
DLC4 for Rise of the Golden Idol, just when I thought I couldn't be more confused this took my deductive skills to a whole new level. Think Jonathan Creek on steroids.
10/10
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Love these games and the DLC I feel is good, I only skipped the 3rd DLC because I wasn't a fan on the style honestly and when I saw those types of puzzles before I didn't really enjoy it as much, a friends said DLC3 wasn't as good as the rest as well. I'm about half way through the 4th, love the pirate theme, AND this seems like an hiommage to Obra Dinn, oine scenario specifically.

If you've not played Obra Dinn, you should. Thank me later.

I've just finished the Alters, by the same devs who did This War Of Mine, which is easily in my top 5 games of all time. It shares a lot in common, base building, going out of the base to scavenge resources, lots of branching paths and possibilities. The planet atmosphere is nice although it gets FPS dips on a 3080 oddly, they have made a barron planet look interesting. It's got the same potential negative gameplay feedback loops as TWOM which if you nip in the bud early on makes progress a lot easier. It has a truly interesting story, a lot of heart, great ambient music in places, they picked a great voice actor for the main character(s) You've got base building, research trees, anomaly hunting on the surface, resource management, building resource mining and power networks to hook things up. A lot of different options about how to progress, lots of different combos of alters to try and different routes to take with research (you wont be able to get everything). There's also a bunch of uncomfortable moral choices.

It's hard to think of a reason to not give this 10/10.
 
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PrincessFrosty said:
Love these games and the DLC I feel is good, I only skipped the 3rd DLC because I wasn't a fan on the style honestly and when I saw those types of puzzles before I didn't really enjoy it as much, a friends said DLC3 wasn't as good as the rest as well. I'm about half way through the 4th, love the pirate theme, AND this seems like an hiommage to Obra Dinn, oine scenario specifically.

If you've not played Obra Dinn, you should. Thank me later.

I've just finished the Alters, by the same devs who did This War Of Mine, which is easily in my top 5 games of all time. It shares a lot in common, base building, going out of the base to scavenge resources, lots of branching paths and possibilities. The planet atmosphere is nice although it gets FPS dips on a 3080 oddly, they have made a barron planet look interesting. It's got the same potential negative gameplay feedback loops as TWOM which if you nip in the bud early on makes progress a lot easier. It has a truly interesting story, a lot of heart, great ambient music in places, they picked a great voice actor for the main character(s) You've got base building, research trees, anomaly hunting on the surface, resource management, building resource mining and power networks to hook things up. A lot of different options about how to progress, lots of different combos of alters to try and different routes to take with research (you wont be able to get everything). There's also a bunch of uncomfortable moral choices.

It's hard to think of a reason to not give this 10/10.
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Echo Obra Dinn - one of my favourite gaming experiences. I even play the OST sometimes :D Also Outer Wilds in the same vein.
 
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tommybhoy said:
Fort Solis, walking sim, got some quicktime elements that I'm not to sure actually affects anything in the game, only 4 hrs to complete so actually completed a game for a change, but it kept me interested all the same, and didn't have a predictable end like I thought it would.

An 8 out of 10 which includes a Brucie bonus point for the £1.39 price tag.
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Might check this out. Looks interesting. The last game I played like this was Tacoma which I really enjoyed.
 
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