The [NEW] GRcade Gaming Alphabet 2024 - NEW ALPHABET NOW LAUNCHED PG. 21

hardspace shipbreaker - first of the year and a belter, 100% completed, wish there was a bit more variety in the jobs toward the end

x4 - tutorials too irritating, refunded

project zomboid - interesting game but just cant get started in it so its not grabbing me

saints row - shite, good character creator trapped in a terrible game

pokemon platinum - playing through all the pokemon games i missed this year, this was ok, too much focus on kanto pokemon and not very diverse trainer battles. elite four was good though. credits rolled

infinite craft - https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/ - other people seem to be having more fun with it than me, but browser game ticked off

Can I discount fake rinks so me and Cuttooth can get our adjacency bonus?

Yeah, that seems fair. You shouldn’t be penalised because someone put that there.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Played just over an hour of this - it isn't for me!

I'm not really into anime/manga so I'd need a decent story to get into this, and the whole "here's a bunch of ULTIMATES all in one school" thing is just absolute tripe to my mind. Add to this that I've been playing for over an hour and I've basically done nothing but click through bad dialogue interspersed with irritating sound clips - I had a brief look at a walkthrough and I'm still a fair chunk of time away from the first murder, so I'd really rather play something else.

It's reviewed well so I'm sure it's a good example of what it is, but I don't like what it is.

Truck Simulator 2023 - Driver Europe might be the most disappointing completion I've ever done for one of these. A terrible version of a challenge game where the timer is too lenient and the challenge is almost non-existent. The two challenges consisted of here's a trailer, go deliver it or here's a vehicle that needs towing to a destination. Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact you rarely have to drive more than a mile to complete one of these challenges. And sometimes you barely need to drive at all, with the parking point being right next to where you start. Even within the last ten missions such were appearing. And what do you get for completing all 100 missions? A mission X, which is just a regular mission that randomises itself. Ah, well. It was a quid in the sale, so even if it reeks of mobile game ported to the Switch (I'm guessing it would be more of a challenge with touchscreen controls), at least I've had some fun without spending anything on it.

Uncharted 3

Back in 2022 I grabbed this trilogy to try and catch up on this PS exclusive series. was underwhelmed by the first one (playing the 2013 TR immediately before it didn't help!) but was actually quite pleasantly surprised by the second - it was more of the same but it seemed more confident and therefore more willing to push the boundaries in set pieces etc (plus Rene Auberjonois :wub:

). Despite that, the fact that it has taken me two years to finish the trilogy probably tells you my opinion on this game/series.

An exciting start - just like in Tomb Raider 3, we begin in London! As a Londoner this makes me very happy, until it becomes apparent that there isn't really any London in this section and it's just a slog through a dungeon nominally underneath the East End. I'm sure people in Cartagena or rural France or wherever will say that Uncharted 3 isn't exactly a Lonely Planet guide for their region, but it's still disappointing. As an aside, I refuse to believe that the main antagonist, the head of a global conspiracy steeped in arcane Drakean lore from across the globe, would pronounce it "Carter-Jeena" - I'm just not having it...

From there we go on a trip through time and space through 1980s Carter-Jeena, then on to modern France, a ship graveyard, 123 Yemen Street, and then a big city hidden in the desert. And it's all just meh. Walk through an area trying not to trip over the totally-not-just-cover furniture. Climb walls where you'll instantly die if you fall from ten feet in the wrong place. Find something. Shoot your way out. Jump thirty feet in a cutscene and walk away from it.

The combat has some really annoying foibles. On the surface it's just a bog standard third person cover shooter, which is what it is and that's fine. But too often Nate will snap out of cover when you don't want him to and leave himself susceptible to enemy fire, not that the cover works at all when enemies can seemingly come from any direction. Grenade throwbacks are dodgy - the time I perfectly timed a grenade throwback only for Nate to throw it against the pillar he was leaning against was almost a rage quit event for me. And woe betide the poor soul who tries to shoot an enemy at point blank range and ends up in the melee combat, with its over-reliance on mashing circle, counter QTEs, and the same four melee animations for the whole game. The combat is so annoying it actually makes me want to do stealth takedowns, but they're gooseberry fool too!

A word about the climbing. The climbing is one of the more fun parts of the game and you get some nice visuals as you scale these interesting buildings. Climbing up through the sinking ship is great! But they completely overdo the whole loose hold mechanic, to the point where you're more surprised if a ledge holds your weight than not.

Apparently this won loads of GOTYs but the whole trilogy just leaves me feeling cold.

Roonmastor wrote:Can I discount fake rinks so me and Cuttooth can get our adjacency bonus?

Dowbocop wrote:Uncharted 3Apparently this won loads of GOTYs but the whole trilogy just leaves me feeling cold.

I don't think the first three games have aged particularly well but I would still recommend Uncharted 4 if you haven't played it. The combat still isn't brilliant but it's better than the third game.

Cuttooth wrote:
Dowbocop wrote:Uncharted 3Apparently this won loads of GOTYs but the whole trilogy just leaves me feeling cold.

I don't think the first three games have aged particularly well but I would still recommend Uncharted 4 if you haven't played it. The combat still isn't brilliant but it's better than the third game.

I might in a few years if I see it cheap. I think to me something like Uncharted is the gaming equivalent of the soppy rom-coms my wife puts on while she's doing the cooking or something. It's largely fine in what it does and it's a relatively short A-B experience, but it's just completely unimaginative. A better example is the first Transformers film. I liked it when I watched it and I would totally leave it on in the background if it was on the telly, but it is a mediocre film in almost every respect and I expect better from films now.

After playing a few hours of TLOU I'm largely of the opinion that Naughty Dog have only really made one game and just tinker around with it. Again, I picked this up the other year because I've heard it's excellent, but other than write a critically acclaimed zombie story and knock it together in the Uncharted engine what else have they actually done in the intervening decade plus?

Robocop Vs Predator

This is a free game by Oscar Celestini and can be grabbed here (have included the link to his main store) - https://oscarcelestini.itch.io/

This is a fan project which aims to recreate the style of the classic sidescrolling shooters of the Gameboy era - specifically Robocop Vs Terminator - by pitting him against Predator. This was apparently supposed to happen back in the day but didn't, which is surprising because Aliens/Robocop/Terminator/Predator seemed to be on a permanent spin cycle throughout the 90s in comics and games so this feels like the only combination they didn't do!

Graphically and sonically the brief is nailed spectacularly. I defy anyone to fire this up and not get transported back to a mate's house in 1992 with a shoebox full of grey carts under the bed :wub:

Gameplay-wise it's also bang on, which is more of a problem because that means it's far too hard for me :oops:

- I've only got halfway through the second area so far but I did make a bit of progress on my last run. I've not yet managed to get it working with a joypad but I don't think that'll help me...

I'd heartily recommend this, and it'd be worth it even if he did levy a small fee to own it. In fact, you could say...

hi gamers, if i were to break out the pokemon games into 'subtitle (pokemon)' would i go to jail? im playing through all the games i missed and it feels shitty to fill out p with a load

soul silver: first time back in gen 2 for what must be around 20 years, it was more fun than platinum for me, but i didnt realise how much grinding there was essentially required to progress, i must have had a total memory black out on that. same old story about kanto being really cool but also totally wasted, and sometimes strange wild poke distribution. still fun overall i think. completed

nfs heat: cute idea but graphics options on pc are dogshit. refunded

False wrote:hi gamers, if i were to break out the pokemon games into 'subtitle (pokemon)' would i go to jail? im playing through all the games i missed and it feels shitty to fill out p with a load

All I'll say is that people have committed more heinous crimes than that across these sheets over the last two years.

thats all the approval i need

anyone else can fight me

Cuttooth wrote:
False wrote:hi gamers, if i were to break out the pokemon games into 'subtitle (pokemon)' would i go to jail? im playing through all the games i missed and it feels shitty to fill out p with a load

All I'll say is that people have committed more heinous crimes than that across these sheets over the last two years.

You do need to play ten games on a letter so filling out a single letter with a franchise like that is probably not a terrible idea.

20 Small Mazes

This popped up as a free game on my Steam store page. As you may have guessed, it's a collection of twenty small mazes that you have to solve! Each one has a unique mechanic that you have to work out, and there are some fun rule-bendy solutions that you need to deduce. The mazes are one on top of the other: you can solve them in any order and then they disappear. At a 72 minute completion I can't say it was particularly hard (one of them I solved last purely because the other mazes were getting in the way!), but it was an amusing distraction and I enjoyed the concept.

It's free, fun, short and would run on Liz Truss's brain - just play it!

At this point, I really don't care what everyone else does and only fill it in for my own satisfaction. Too much rule bending for this to actually be a competition.

Has there actually been though? I can't think of anything other than people arguing over games starting "The" which the rules explicitly say can go either way.

OrangeRKN wrote:Has there actually been though? I can't think of anything other than people arguing over games starting "The" which the rules explicitly say can go either way.

Each Wordle is a sequel using the same engine and I will die on this hill.

Zilnad wrote:At this point, I really don't care what everyone else does and only fill it in for my own satisfaction. Too much rule bending for this to actually be a competition.

i thought we were effectively peer moderated

if someone posted some outright bullshit then we'd hound them down

the, (the) doesnt count sorry

I will allow you to put the Pokemon games down as whatever you like but for me they would go into P and we would lose the neighbour synergy bonus.

IMO the Pokemon colour names are just the same as numbering sequels. They're not really the game's main title. Might as well say that Please, Touch The Artwork 2 is a game title starting with a number.

The [NEW] GRcade Gaming Alphabet 2024 - NEW ALPHABET NOW LAUNCHED PG. 21

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