Last Game You Finished and Your Rating

FEAR 3 - 5/10

+ Visuals are decent
+ Gunplay is satisfying
+ Mix of FPS and mech sections is fun
+ Mercifully short

- Plot is utter, utter garbage
- Some annoying enemies
- Tedious level design

It really feels like they'd run out of ideas here. The basics are good, i.e. the combat with the slow-mo bits, the guns are fun to use, etc, but the plot is genuinely one of messiest, most confusing, badly cobbled together attempts at a narrative I've ever experienced in a game. It's pretty short, so it's not too painful to get through, and there are some moments where it's enjoyable, but damn. The FEAR series is a good example of the games getting worse as they go on and there never really being a need for a sequel to the original, let alone two.

Donut County on Series S.

This was a lot of fun, a puzzle game with kind of a Katamari vibe only instead of a giant ball you play a little arsehole raccoon piloting a hole swallowing stuff up.

It’s very short clocking in at a little over 2 hours and once you know the puzzle solutions there isn’t a lot of replay value but it is definitely worth a play.

8/10 could have maybe been a touch longer and had a little more to the puzzles.

Been playing lot of games on streaming and beaten fair amount of them, so I'll go ahead and post scores/short comments how I feel about the games.

...Iru! - 6/10 A interesting game that only released in Japanese, it's basically trapped at school and you move around in first person when avoiding to get killed by unknown forces. The sad thing it's doing gameplay very poorly, as there's only three to four "hide!" mechs, stupid lock-in route at start meant I got locked into unable to get best ending, the progress is very linear as you had to find an event to trigger, then spend ages trying to find another spot to get items from/to trigger another event, and repeat until the end. I spent ages trying to progress through it. On other hand though, I actually like it! The story when cliched I was pretty invested into it and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Echo Night - 7/10 One of FromSoftware's games before they made Demon Souls, it follows same pattern as ...Iru but does it much better. I actually enjoyed this loads more than Iru and I really like the storytelling in it, even if it's bit basic.

Ape Escape - 8/10 Point loss for no subtitles and camera being pain, but otherwise very light-hearted fun game that I'm glad I finally got it in my PS1 collection. Really enjoyed my time with it, and it lasted me quite well (about 12-hours give or take)

Silent Bomber - 7/10 No subtitles in FMV scenes (subtitles in-game, though!), lack of second stick aiming and no checkpoint at last bit made me bitter about it, but otherwise very interesting PS1 game that we wouldn't see again (apart from indie game, maybe) -- basically it plays like Bomberman but you run around throwing remote bombs before denoting. It's very fast action game, and up till the end it's one of smooth PS1 games I've played -- even with explosions all over place the FPS didn't drop at all, if any.

Astral Chain - 8/10

Finally finished. Great, great game. A bit bloated in places (too much astral plane hopping for sure) and while I love the graphic style at times, at other times it can get a bit messy on screen. Side quests were very meh but also easy to skip. Enjoyed the story, not the greatest ever but did it's job, but the star of the show was the combat. So, so satisfying when it all clicks together and I'm slightly regretting not bumping up the difficulty when it did as I don't have the motivation for another play through. Nice post game content too.

Hope we get a sequel.

Days Gone

I absolutely loved this. Despite being quite buggy (though only one crash in my 40 or so hours), I found it absolutely engrossing from start to finish. Great motorcycle handling, great combat, nice environment and a really good story. I even spent a few hour post game (which I am glad I did as it revealed a second ending of sorts).

I guess some people won’t bond with the main character and the biker boys story, but I really like Deacon and all the rest of the cast.

If you liked The Evil Within 2 and Metro Exodus play this - it’s a combination of the two.

Massively underrated game. I want my sequel dammit.

9 (played on PS5).

The story really pays off in the second half. It's a very slow burn but it's so worth it.

Really disliked Deacon to begin with, ended up really attached to him by the end.

Yep. Honestly it’s a pace I’m totally ok with in general. I mean, I loved Death Stranding.

Civilization VI: Platinum Edition (kindly given to me by Pattybean )

I bought the vanilla game on launch after loving V but I didn't end up putting as much time into VI as I imagined. I played it a bit at launch and sporadically over the years until last year when I started a new single player game and actually finished it. I lost as I was getting to grips with the new expansions (Gathering Storm, and Rise and Fall). I also didn't really plan a path to victory early enough so when I finally tried for one (Diplomatic) I was beaten by a computer player after the other civilizations blocked the World Congress vote that I needed for my last 2 Diplomatic Points.

I began a new game as Cleopatra earlier this year and was gearing towards a Science or Diplomatic victory. I played on Prince difficulty with 7 computer players on the land masses and islands map. I started inland so couldn't really sail very early on but managed to expand to 4 cities soon enough while holding my own against the barbarians.

The Ottomans were on my border so I worked to expand before they did. They weren't happy with this but I was happy with my settlements by the time they asked me to promise not to settle more cities next them. Eventually I settled a couple of new cities in a different continent which turned out to be the same land mass and between the Ottomans and Canada. I ended up with an alliance with Canada for the rest of the game even after I captured one of their cities when pressure from my empire caused it to revolt and I attacked it to capture it

I also tried to develop my science production and diplomatic favour and win events that would give diplomatic points throughout the game to put myself in the best position to win. I wasn't able to found a religion as the other civilizations had founded them all before I could recruit a Great Prophet.

The game ended when I picked up my last 2 victory points in a World Congress competition to reduce CO2 emissions. Luckily, I discovered Carbon Reduction during this which helped me win as I had initially given up on the on the points at stake as I wanted to keep my oil power plants to help production for the space race. My shuttle was less than 20 light years away from victory when I won the Diplomatic Victory so it was very much in the bag

I'll go back to Metroid Dread and some other games for now but will try a few more games of Civ 6 until Civ 7 comes out as well as some expansions. Civ 6 really brings the series forward from Civ 5 as the weather effects and global warming add a new layer of thinking to the game and the city layout makes you think about what you can do with the space you have. Long term, I think that it will still suffer from an AI that isn't as good as a human opponent but it's still a very enjoyable game.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Days Gone

I absolutely loved this. Despite being quite buggy (though only one crash in my 40 or so hours), I found it absolutely engrossing from start to finish. Great motorcycle handling, great combat, nice environment and a really good story. I even spent a few hour post game (which I am glad I did as it revealed a second ending of sorts).

I guess some people won’t bond with the main character and the biker boys story, but I really like Deacon and all the rest of the cast.

If you liked The Evil Within 2 and Metro Exodus play this - it’s a combination of the two.

Massively underrated game. I want my sequel dammit.

9 (played on PS5).

Quite a review. I’ve had this installed since Christmas on PC bug played other games. I love Evil within and Metro games, so I’m interested. Currently playing God of war and the division again, so not sure when to squeeze in another 40 hour game.

The Medium - 5/10

This was pretty much the definition of average. Average puzzles, average story, average stealth sections. The hugely underrated Murdered: Soul Suspect did the same thing better years ago.

Control - 8/10

Loved this. Slightly annoying map notwithstanding, this was a blast. Combat was excellent, and the world felt real and well built. Story was so a bit pretentious, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

The Pedestrian - 3/10

This was annoying as strawberry floating gooseberry fool.

3/10

Fair scores for all 3 of those. I enjoyed The Medium a bit more than you, but using 5 as the truest definition of average it’s hard to argue with. Could not get on with The Pedestrian at all, which was a shame as I was looking forward to it.

Yakuza 6 - PS4

After all 7 games and about 4 years I have finally finished Kiryu's saga of beating up thugs in the street, convoluted conspiracies and hilariously weird side-skits, starting with the glitzy excess of 0 in narrative/chronological order. This series is unlike any other, and best described as a Martin Scorcese crime epic but random pages of the script have been replaced with the b-stories from the Simpsons, which seems fairly accurate and it does feel like a multi-series TV show in game form. This is a tough one to recommend because either you have played through up to 5 and therefore are invested in the story to see it through to the end or you've never played any of them, in this case it is an absolutely terrible idea to start here as a lot of the significance of characters and events would mean nothing without knowing what happened before.

There are some surprisingly touching moments among all the weirdness, in particular how some long-running side story arcs which have run alongside the main story are wrapped up, in particular the one about meeting the guy who ran the slot car racing game in 0 and helping him out one last time now he is older and in very different circumstances struck a cord, them reminiscing about how he and Kiryu played around with toy cars during the halcyon days of their youth was quite genuinely touching and relatable in a way, and was one of the real moments of "Oh that's closed/I remember when this was X" i've had while walking around a virtual rendition of a town i've never been to but have memories of; otherwise innocuous buildings, alleys and street corners which have layers of history built upon them; from the massive skyscraper built on the area of the empty lot from the first game, or the expensive apartment complex built over a park that was in gradual construction for much of the series to seeing the building where the Pocket Circuit racing was held now being an accountancy firm or something was one of those moments.

At first it seemed like this was taking a more focused, personal and intimate tone with what happens, which it does but after a while the ludicrous and complicated web of secrets, betrayals and counter-betrayals kicks in for one last round with a plot that is true to form and is certainly more interesting than in 5, which built up revealing almost nothing about what was going on until almost right at the end with a payoff that definitely wasn't worth the 40+ hours and 5 different playable characters, each with their own city area which was definitely not as interesting as Kamurocho and the entire game could have been chopped by about 1/4 and nothing of value would have been lost.

I think at this point i'm probably going to stop with the series; not becasue I don't like the complete genre shift of Like a Dragon or anything, but I think i've had my fill, and possibly of long story games in general at this point. Like a Dragon got great reviews and the Judgment spinoffs look interesting but I feel like this was possibly the last for me. Like Kiryu, neither me or my PC are getting any younger and I don't really feel any incentive to get a PS5/XSX and the time as well as cost investment for playing huge narrative games like this as well as things like AssCreed, Far Cry, The Witcher 3 etc is no longer an appealing one, coupled with all the grotty business practices I've whinged about ad nauseum over the years and changing priorities in life I think this is probably it. I will probably look to pick up some of the Call of Duty PS4 games i've missed now they're extremely cheap thanks to the annual pump and dump churn of the franchise and go through the single player modes as they are short, linear and punchy with no filler, but I suspect they may be the last things I use the machine for, so I think is a pretty good one to go out on.

Smacking baddies with bicycles but also philosophising about life/10

Trelliz wrote:Yakuza 6 - PS4...

...Smacking baddies with bicycles but also philosophising about life/10

Crumbs, Trelliz! Your assessment took quite a turn; I could feel your appreciation for the Yakuza series and then you changed perspective and appeared to signal the end of gaming. It was quite a plot twist and I hope that you can continue to discover one or two games that capture your interest.

Outer Worlds

Pretty good. Just loved how constantly characters and story felt involved in what was going on. All the different dialogue options and the choices you can make. Companions making different comments and interjections based on things that have happened. One thing that I loved in comparison to New Vegas was that you could have two (humanoid) companions at once and how they can complement each other. The ship crew dynamic is pretty cool as well, but it takes me out of it a bit when they repeat conversations in the ship - like, it's great you can't miss any of them permanently I guess.

Been hooked on it the past few days. Even sped through a second 'evil' playthrough and was pleasantly surprised by some of the content I missed (or could do differently), and I was pretty thorough on my first playthrough. That said, not in an immediate rush to try out the DLC on account of me having to pay a good amount for it compared to the base game (which I just have via gamepass) and I feel like I've had my fill for now.

Looking forward to Outer Worlds 2 though - and possibly Fallout if they get Obsidian on that.

I really enjoyed The Pedestrian...

Resident Evil 2 Remake - 8/10

I played both campaigns and my second playthrough was much more enjoyable than the first one. That's what knocked it up to an 8.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 - 7/10

This game gets better as it goes along. I found the start of it a little frustrating as there's quite alot of stuff to get to grips with. The last two episodes were really fun, I liked the puzzles where you have to use both characters.

Also did a bit of Raid Mode and it seems fun. I might stick with it for a bit.

Clarkman wrote:I really enjoyed The Pedestrian...

I found the controls (Xbox) really unwieldy and unintuitive, which just created an extra level of confusion for every puzzle.

I must admit to dropping it early on, which is something I rarely do with a game, especially one that I had been looking forward to.

Kriken wrote:Outer Worlds

Pretty good. Just loved how constantly characters and story felt involved in what was going on. All the different dialogue options and the choices you can make. Companions making different comments and interjections based on things that have happened...

I'm glad you enjoyed this, Krik. I picked it up on Switch and, whilst the port took a bit of a pasting at release, I understand that subsequent updates have very much improved it. It's a game that is high on my "play soon" list.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:

Clarkman wrote:I really enjoyed The Pedestrian...

I found the controls (Xbox) really unwieldy and unintuitive, which just created an extra level of confusion for every puzzle.

Yep. Drawing lines between the panels never became anything less than a chore throughout the game. When you walk into a room with eight panels involving a lot of trial and error moving things around, ugh. I ended up using a guide for the last few areas just to get it done. Shite.

Prey (2017) - 9/10

Not quite as good as games like Bioshock or Deus Ex but it comes really, really close. Thin story, occasionally unwieldy combat and fairly brutal difficulty didn’t spoil how good the emergent gameplay was. Laughed at how shite the ending was.