Currently Playing in 2020...

Completed the Just Cause 4 story today, and beat another Rakoon feat whilst i was at it.

Donkey Kong Country Returns
I've very nearly completed this. It's good, but it's spoilt so much by the controls. It's so much more frustrating and difficult than it needed to be. I can't believe that in a game that's otherwise so polished and well done, and also a game where precision platforming and timing is required, that you're forced to rely solely on shitty motion controls.

Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
I'm finding this quite difficult now. I've unlocked all of the star characters, and won most of the tournaments, but it doesn't pull any punches, and you have to be on it for every shot of every hole. If you strawberry float up, it really doesn't let you off. A lot less enjoyable than Mario Golf 64, but it's okay.

Lotus wrote:Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
I'm finding this quite difficult now. I've unlocked all of the star characters, and won most of the tournaments, but it doesn't pull any punches, and you have to be on it for every shot of every hole. If you strawberry float up, it really doesn't let you off. A lot less enjoyable than Mario Golf 64, but it's okay.

The worst thing about the game is the Boos popping up onscreen reminding you how to play every few strawberry floating seconds when you're trying to work out the best way to play your shot.

Kerbal Space Program.

Docked successfully for the first time yesterday joining a science module to my space station. Also got a rocket orbiting the Mun which is awesome.

Next I think I'm going to build a docking platform in a pretty high orbit for refueling ships.

Halo 4
A very good futuristic science fiction shooter, but for me it wasn't a Halo game. Three distinct things were missing that have been present in every other game - the iconic musical themes, scattered humour throughout the campaign, and no Covenant language translation. I knew changes would be made what with a new studio and everything, but too many changes were made to the formula for me. I also didn't 'feel' like a super-soldier if that makes sense. The story was good though, and I preferred fighting the Promethians over the Flood - especially the tactics they utilise (which I admit were initially confusing). My one issue with it, is that although at the start Cortana says "a lot can change in four years" it never explains why we are fighting Elites again. I had to go to Wikipedia for that information.

Halo 5
I am ~4 levels into this, and I really can't comprehend the hate it received so far. Right from the start I knew it was a Halo game. The music is back. The Convenant speak English. The dry humour is back, and the weapons feel far superior to Halo 4. They have a real weight to them. They have also made several additions that I really appreciated - an on-demand objective highlighter, the ability to manually save checkpoints, a squad revival system and an auto-crouch system. The ability to blow limbs of Promethians is also quite satisfying! Spartan Locke doesn't come across as badly as he's made out to be either. So given the gameplay is great, I have to assume the hate comes from the story or some annoying enemy I have yet to come across? I was curious, but having read a brief synopsis on Wikipedia the story doesn't sound terrible though - there are other games that got higher praise for worse stories.

The one really jarring thing initially is that they dropped you straight into battle with a completely different controller layout than all the other games. Luckily they have the option for the traditional controls. So who knows, but I am really enjoying the campaign so far.

I'm sort of able to look past the terrible performance issues of TDU2, but at the same time I really wish it had been one of the games to be converted through the backward compatibility program to work on the Xbox One. I highly doubt I'll continue on with it, and instead just look forward to the next one, since everything I've tried so far to fix those performance issues hasn't worked (unless it really is as simple as removing anything from the audio ports, but then I've got no sound).

The Messenger. Sort of thought this was a metroid style game. It's not bad anyway, levels are a bit too long for my taste, but it isn't bad at all.

JT986M2 wrote:Halo 4
A very good futuristic science fiction shooter, but for me it wasn't a Halo game. Three distinct things were missing that have been present in every other game - the iconic musical themes, scattered humour throughout the campaign, and no Covenant language translation. I knew changes would be made what with a new studio and everything, but too many changes were made to the formula for me. I also didn't 'feel' like a super-soldier if that makes sense. The story was good though, and I preferred fighting the Promethians over the Flood - especially the tactics they utilise (which I admit were initially confusing). My one issue with it, is that although at the start Cortana says "a lot can change in four years" it never explains why we are fighting Elites again. I had to go to Wikipedia for that information.

Halo 5
I am ~4 levels into this, and I really can't comprehend the hate it received so far. Right from the start I knew it was a Halo game. The music is back. The Convenant speak English. The dry humour is back, and the weapons feel far superior to Halo 4. They have a real weight to them. They have also made several additions that I really appreciated - an on-demand objective highlighter, the ability to manually save checkpoints, a squad revival system and an auto-crouch system. The ability to blow limbs of Promethians is also quite satisfying! Spartan Locke doesn't come across as badly as he's made out to be either. So given the gameplay is great, I have to assume the hate comes from the story or some annoying enemy I have yet to come across? I was curious, but having read a brief synopsis on Wikipedia the story doesn't sound terrible though - there are other games that got higher praise for worse stories.

The one really jarring thing initially is that they dropped you straight into battle with a completely different controller layout than all the other games. Luckily they have the option for the traditional controls. So who knows, but I am really enjoying the campaign so far.

Playing as Locke for me represented a major disconnect with the franchise, I hated being the Arbiter in Halo 2 but at least he was part of the story arc, Locke is a nobody. I found Halo 4’s ending genuinely emotional...

deathofcows wrote:

Ironhide wrote:Installed the Moguri Mod for Final Fantasy IX which upscales all the pre-rendered backgrounds and a few other things.

Everything looks so much better, pity Sqeenix couldn't be arsed to do it themselves.

I just finished a replay of FF IX a day or so ago!

I loved it. Its often light and charming in tone but still with some genuinely great character development and themes explored (Vivi!). And playing it again, I think I never actually finished the final sequence or if I had, couldn't remember it well. The ending is a beaut and I got a little emosh.

I played it on Switch, but did a lot of browsing of the Moguri Mod and so on which looks fantastic and I'm a little jealous.

I'm actually just here at my laptop to write an article about it this morning, and am still high on the feeling from finishing it.

In case of interest to anyone, here is said article about FFIX!

But really it's about the pleasure of fixed-angle backdrops in old-school Final Fantasy

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020 ... al-fantasy

P.S. Orange Rakoon this is a sort of culmination of many of the ideas we were discussing in the BotW/Link's Awakening Camera/Continuity discussion way back! So thanks for that discussion too!

Stuck more time into The Messenger. This is a really interesting game. I'm talking about the shift in gears, where it moves to something like Metroid game after being more like a pure platformer. It has some really good bosses as well.

Edit - the second half of this game is really disappointing. I have no idea where I'm meant to be going most of the time. Will likely bin this.

I picked up Yoshi's New Island for £3.60 off ebay - didn't want to pay much as I saw it had mixed to poor reviews.

Actually really enjoying it - having finished world 1 I'm keen to continue, and I'm wondering why it took such a lot of criticism when it came out. As far as I can tell, it is more of the Yoshi platforming/egg throwing/collecting stuff I enjoyed in the original. And that suits me very well!

(I'm also playing picross 3d 2, very close to finishing the whole thing on hard. Very satisfying)

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4. I liked the vanilla version of this but some of the changes made to this version are horrendous. It's gank squad central in places, how the hell am I supposed to fight an NPC invader and 3 of those frigging tortoise knights at the same time? Bloody rage inducing... still I did kill the Pursuer so I must be doing something right.

Cumberdanes wrote:Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4. I liked the vanilla version of this but some of the changes made to this version are horrendous. It's gank squad central in places, how the hell am I supposed to fight an NPC invader and 3 of those frigging tortoise knights at the same time? Bloody rage inducing... still I did kill the Pursuer so I must be doing something right.

The original was gank central as well. I was thinking Scholar would change that, but NOPE.

Squinty wrote:

Cumberdanes wrote:Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4. I liked the vanilla version of this but some of the changes made to this version are horrendous. It's gank squad central in places, how the hell am I supposed to fight an NPC invader and 3 of those frigging tortoise knights at the same time? Bloody rage inducing... still I did kill the Pursuer so I must be doing something right.

The original was gank central as well. I was thinking Scholar would change that, but NOPE.

Scholar makes things worse, there is just more of everything.

Cumberdanes wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Cumberdanes wrote:Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4. I liked the vanilla version of this but some of the changes made to this version are horrendous. It's gank squad central in places, how the hell am I supposed to fight an NPC invader and 3 of those frigging tortoise knights at the same time? Bloody rage inducing... still I did kill the Pursuer so I must be doing something right.

The original was gank central as well. I was thinking Scholar would change that, but NOPE.

Scholar makes things worse, there is just more of everything.

This is a reason why I laugh when people say DS2 is their favourite one. I went on to finish Scholar of the First Sin on PC. Sometimes, I really strawberry floating hated it.

Yakuza 4

I'm up to part 3 now, so playing as the cop. I like it but I don't think it's a patch on the earlier titles. None of the sub stories are that entertaining and I don't feel a desire to hang around to see and do everything outside the main story line.

I'm really enjoying playing through the story and I want to see what happens but all the side stuff has been very disappointing this time around. It's the stuff I love Yakuza for so it's a shame this entry in the series seems to be lacking in that respect.

Hopefully 5 and 6 will be better as 4 is easily my least favourite so far. 0 and Kiwami are absolutely God tier games.

6 is great, for a start it has the kitty cafe, and Onomichi is one of the best settings in the entire series.

deathofcows wrote:In case of interest to anyone, here is said article about FFIX!

But really it's about the pleasure of fixed-angle backdrops in old-school Final Fantasy

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020 ... al-fantasy

P.S. Orange Rakoon this is a sort of culmination of many of the ideas we were discussing in the BotW/Link's Awakening Camera/Continuity discussion way back! So thanks for that discussion too!

This was really interesting again! Which is impressive considering I haven't played FFIX so the specifics are lost on me

Just last week I was talking with a friend about Metal Gear Solid 3 and it's original, fixed-camera release vs subsistence with it's player controlled third person camera. I can't decide which version I prefer despite them feeling obviously different. It's not quite a fixed backdrop in the original because you can enter first person aiming, which is why I think the design still translates into a third person camera (these places were always created to be freely looked around in some manner), but the fixed camera angles do frame certain areas in important ways - guard patrol routes are more obvious in their patterns, items get framed through the scenery in a sort of hidden object game style, and the insides of buildings and caves get a more cramped and oppressive quality. Subsistence plays better and is easier, from a pure quality of life perspective, but you still lose something.

I assume you've played Crystal Chronicles as you mentioned it? My favourite element of that game is crossing the miasma streams. The combination of the camera, visual and sound effects and the character movement make crossing those streams feel so incredibly tactile even when playing on a GBA with no rumble whatsoever. It's pretty much magic how they pulled that off, and I really hope HD rumble in the Switch re-release adds to it rather than detracting.

Bought both expansions for Civ VI, even though it turns out you only actually need Gathering Storm.

Bit odd that my first completed game felt, despite plenty of cutscenes showing natural disasters, fairly normal with little overall impact from climate change for my civilisation. It was weird that I was pretty far behind on the science victory track and still managed to win, when the one in the lead refused for whatever reason to do the final task faster than one light year per turn.

The diplomacy victory condition is probably the most interesting addition and better than what I remember in Civ V where it was all based on city states liking you. The best narrative aspect of climate change is being the one to pump out tonnes of emissions and riding to the rescue for natural disasters that you've helped cause. Whether that's intended as a comment on international efforts to combat climate change I don't know.

I like the addition of the history timeline, as playing as Robert the Bruce gave me these:

I really need to get into Civ VI. I played it for a few hours and liked what I saw but I got distracted by other things. Just not sure whether to dive into it on PC or Switch as somehow I bought it on both platforms.

Vermilion wrote:6 is great, for a start it has the kitty cafe, and Onomichi is one of the best settings in the entire series.

A kitty cafe in Yakuza?! I suddenly need to finish 4 and get through 5 as quickly as possible!

Honestly though, I think I might need to leave a gap between playing 4 and 5 as I'm pushing myself to finish 4 now and I don't want to start 5 already feeling burnt out. I also want to finally give Deus Ex Mankind Divided a play and also Rise of the Tomb Raider which is free on PS+ from today. Even in lockdown, there's not enough time to play all the games I want to!