Last Game You Finished and Your Rating

Gears of War 3 (1X)

Another fun romp. Really enjoyed the final boss battle. Overall not as good as the second game, but the story was strong and had some feels and a clever reworking of Mad World to actually ellicit some emotion successfully.

8

Devil May Cry V (Xbox One X) - 9/10

Nearly picked this up earlier in the year but glad I didn’t with it making its way to Gamepass so quick.

The game is stunning, and an absolute pleasure to play. Capcom have done really well this year, and apart from what I felt was a slow start, I can’t fault DMCV.

Devil May Cry 2 – 7/10

+ Nice soundtrack
+ HD remaster looks decent
+ Combat is enjoyable
+ Doesn’t outstay its welcome

- Annoying enemies
- Plot is instantly forgettable

I say I’ve completed this…I’ve gone through it with Dante. While it was enjoyable enough, I’m not sure I’m bothered enough to go through it with Lucia.
It’s only a short game though, so maybe…

Dear Esther (Landmark Edition) – 8/10

+ Looks lovely
+ Loved the music
+ Reasonably engaging

- Writing was…bad
- Too vague for me

Thought this was decent, and I know one of the main guys involved in it / helped him in some of his research.
I liked it, but thought the writing was really bad at times, and the whole ‘something happened but we’re not going to tell you the whole story and are going to leave big gaps and odd drawings around and you can come to your own conclusions’ thing doesn’t really appeal to me. Not that I want or need everything spelled out, but it just feels like it makes the experience a bit less worthwhile when there’s no clarity as to what’s happened or why.

Guacamelee 2 - 9/10

I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end. It's a fun mix of metroidvania, platformer and general Mexiverse craziness.

Moggy wrote:...I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end...

Well played, Moggy. Maybe you've got the "completion" bug and will be storming through games now!

Moggy wrote:Guacamelee 2 - 9/10

I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end. It's a fun mix of metroidvania, platformer and general Mexiverse craziness.

I bought this before I going to work this morning. Loved the first game and have been holding off for a price drop.

jawafour wrote:

Moggy wrote:...I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end...

Well played, Moggy. Maybe you've got the "completion" bug and will be storming through games now!

Hopefully it's contagious and you have it now

Ad7 wrote:

jawafour wrote:

Moggy wrote:...I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end...

Well played, Moggy. Maybe you've got the "completion" bug and will be storming through games now!

Hopefully it's contagious and you have it now

I've posted in this thread at least twice before. Moggy and I are taking over.

jawafour wrote:I've posted in this thread at least twice before. Moggy and I are taking over.

Moggy wrote:Guacamelee 2 - 9/10

I don't finish many games and so I don't think I have ever posted in this thread before! I really enjoyed Guacamelee 2 though and made it to the end. It's a fun mix of metroidvania, platformer and general Mexiverse craziness.

Loved this game and the original. The internet critique universe was a great addition.

Finished The Last of Us this morning. After my third play through I could pick holes, but it remains a thoroughly entertaining game.

8/10

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem

Really liked it. High up there in the series for me. It's the game that introduced the avatar mechanic and some features that carried on into Awakening but they don't detract too much from the core gameplay. Would say though it makes too liberal a use of ambush spawns - units spawning and acting on the same turn - on any difficulty higher than Normal in which they're not a thing. They're good when used well but sometimes they weren't hinted at very well. It's a good thing there are some permanent mid-savepoints to help mitigate some of the BS spawns. I get it's hard to balance though.

Yoku's Island Express.

Occasionally clunky controls and one or two questionable design decisions, but otherwise this was an absolutely lovely metroidvania. Loved the pinball bits too, never felt forced in which was surprising. Also the noisemaker annoyed the hell out of my missus.

8/10

Uncharted 1 - 6/10

Finally managed to finish this off tonight, the ending is possibly a perfect distillation of everything this game gets wrong. It's basically one long shooting gallery, from about chapter 20 onward you are just waking along corridors shooting at dull enemies, fighting the poor controls, getting killed by cheap shots and essentially being forced to approach the line up of enemy challenges in exactly the way the game wants you to or it's "blip" and you're dog meat.

The shooting, controls, enemy AI, arena configuration/ challenge direction in this are all just poor by any comparable standard. There are lots of things that the game does well, often really well - it's a nice story, well acted, and it must have looked absolutely stunning at the time, but the overwhelming majority of your time is spent doing those things that the game just does not execute well enough.

Really hoping the second game is the step up it's described as because I have no desire to play something of the same quality as this again!

Jenuall wrote:Uncharted 1 - 6/10

Finally managed to finish this off tonight, the ending is possibly a perfect distillation of everything this game gets wrong. It's basically one long shooting gallery, from about chapter 20 onward you are just waking along corridors shooting at dull enemies, fighting the poor controls, getting killed by cheap shots and essentially being forced to approach the line up of enemy challenges in exactly the way the game wants you to or it's "blip" and you're dog meat.

The shooting, controls, enemy AI, arena configuration/ challenge direction in this are all just poor by any comparable standard. There are lots of things that the game does well, often really well - it's a nice story, well acted, and it must have looked absolutely stunning at the time, but the overwhelming majority of your time is spent doing those things that the game just does not execute well enough.

Really hoping the second game is the step up it's described as because I have no desire to play something of the same quality as this again!

It is a massive step up on every front except for the shooting. ND just can't seem to get shooting right in any of their games.

Gemini73 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:Uncharted 1 - 6/10

Finally managed to finish this off tonight, the ending is possibly a perfect distillation of everything this game gets wrong. It's basically one long shooting gallery, from about chapter 20 onward you are just waking along corridors shooting at dull enemies, fighting the poor controls, getting killed by cheap shots and essentially being forced to approach the line up of enemy challenges in exactly the way the game wants you to or it's "blip" and you're dog meat.

The shooting, controls, enemy AI, arena configuration/ challenge direction in this are all just poor by any comparable standard. There are lots of things that the game does well, often really well - it's a nice story, well acted, and it must have looked absolutely stunning at the time, but the overwhelming majority of your time is spent doing those things that the game just does not execute well enough.

Really hoping the second game is the step up it's described as because I have no desire to play something of the same quality as this again!

It is a massive step up on every front except for the shooting. ND just can't seem to get shooting right in any of their games.

This is on one level good to know, as being a massive step up is a good thing, but at the same time I'm still worried as the crap shooting is what really killed the first game for me!

There were other significant problems with it as well though, which hopefully they have improved on.

A big one was that the animation was atrocious at times, like genuinely hilarious levels of bad. Drake looked like he was constipated or had serious back problems for the vast majority of the time. His hilarious "pawing at the air" jump thing he does at times is just tragic to watch as well!

The incredible linearity and lack of any real player agency was another killer for me - the whole thing just felt like one long interactive movie where you really didn't have any input into what was happening. The things you did need to do were either really trite (crap puzzles where the answer is always given to you in your magic notebook), frustrating (hammering buttons to open doors, moving incredibly slowly because the game decides that it wants you to for some unknown reason etc.), awkward and badly designed (jumping sections where the controls are so wonky you keep dying as he jumps the wrong way, bad signposting on where you need to jump/climb to next, inconsistent rules about how far you can jump and what you can climb/hang on to etc.) or just dull (any of the shooting really).

Again the final boss was a tedious example of most of what I felt was bad about the action. You land on a boat where you have to move through each conveniently penned off section removing guards and taking advantage of the highly convenient waist high boxes that have been left there for you to hide behind until only the big baddy is left (who you are unable to hurt despite him being right there. ), after which he falls back to the next area (again remember you're not allowed to hit him whilst he's running folks!) where you do the same damn thing again. You've been robbed of all your alternate weapons so there is really no variety to how you can take these enemies down, you can't run in and melee anyone as you'll be gunned down in seconds. So it really is just a dull rinse and repeat of the worst parts of the game - cover shooting. They even manage to throw an annoying QTE into the mix just to try and prevent brain death in the player from the monotony of it all - which as they happen so infrequently in the game you forget about and so no doubt have to repeat at least once.

All of this then leads to the "final showdown" where it is just you and the Big Bad, but RUH ROH you drop your gun before you can shoot him! ( ) so now you have to do exactly what the designer wants you to - hide behind another set of strawberry floating boxes, moving forward one box at a time until you are close enough to engage the boss in..... ANOTHER strawberry floating QTE BATTLE!

And then that's it - game done and you get to watch the quite nicely done end sequence. But the player has not achieved anything in this whole sequence, they don't feel any ownership of the victory because it was dull, monotonous, hackneyed, and spelled out to them the whole way and then reduced to a strawberry floating QTE for the final coup de grâce! There is zero satisfaction in the whole thing.

This is also all made worse by the narrative (which in many ways has been pretty solid otherwise) - the guy you are fighting is literally nobody. I don't even know when he appears first in the game but as far as I'm concerned he's just a mid-level grunt, another hired goon amongst a sea of hired goons, why should I give a gooseberry fool about squaring off with him in some final showdown? There is no compelling antagonist in the game, there's the British guy who taunts you a couple of times and then dies shortly before the end of the game, there's the pretty dodgy stereotype of a wild mercenary pirate guy but again he dies and never really earns his chops as an adversary. There isn't anything to focus your attention on, nothing driving the player or the characters into the ending.

If you want to make a movie, make a movie and do it well, but if you are going to make a game then take advantage of what a game gives you - interaction! - and do something interesting with it!

I'm probably going to start the second game tonight, and I'm really hoping it steps up in the way that people have said it will!

I won't lie, Uncharted 2 definitely still has some of the problems you've highlighted but they're not nearly as obvious. It's definitely as step up across the board save for the shooting.

The third outing improves upon the formula once again, but by the time I'd reached the end game I'd had my fill of the Uncharted series which is why I never bothered with 4.

4 is an average third person shooter with some stunning setpieces but boring moment to moment play.

But those moments where it pops off are generation best.

Okay thanks for the info. I'm going to re-calibrate my expectations going forward and hopefully going forward if I'm prepared for the bits that might annoy or frustrate me then I may be more forgiving of them, especially if the things that surround it can do a better job of distracting me that they did in the first game!