GRcade

FEAR 2 - 5/10

+ Good mix of locations
+ Variety in the action
+ Guns are satisfying to use

- Plot is a mess
- Very contrived
- Some frustrating enemies and areas
- STOP TURNING MY TORCH OFF FOR strawberry float SAKE

This was okay. Probably a bit longer than it needed to be, especially when the plot's a nonsensical mess. Seems like one of those series where the first game was decent and they probably should've just left things there. I do have FEAR 3 waiting to play though

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

I loved it. I grew up with that exact kind of Dad and I thought this short story was so heart felt and real. It's given me a right lump in my throat.

Just finished Shadow of Mordor. It took a while for me to warm up to it, but once you start unlocking more abilities, the combat becomes fantastic fun. I didn't bother with all the planet collecting and the hunting challenges, but did every main quest, every outcast mission and every weapon mission. Don't usually bother with much more than the streamlined campaign these days but I was really into it.

I thought the story was a bit all over the place and could have been done a lot better, but that is my only complaint.

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:Just finished Shadow of Mordor. It took a while for me to warm up to it, but once you start unlocking more abilities, the combat becomes fantastic fun. I didn't bother with all the planet collecting and the hunting challenges, but did every main quest, every outcast mission and every weapon mission. Don't usually bother with much more than the streamlined campaign these days but I was really into it.

I thought the story was a bit all over the place and could have been done a lot better, but that is my only complaint.

The sequel is better, and was kind of dismissed at launch because of the loot box gooseberry fool they put into it. Fortunately, that was patched out when I played it, had a great time with it.

Yooka-laylee and the Impossible Lair 8/10 - Had a great time with this, basically a new Donkey Kong Country game. The Impossible Lair Itself was a good challenge, I'm just glad I played it with the checkpoints update.

Darksiders 3-PS4-Man what a game. It's solid B tier. The camera is occasionally janky, and it's not a looker but I could not stop playing this. I started Monday afternoon and I've put about 21 hours into this. There's more for me to find and I may go for a NG+ run at some point. Not right now though as my priority is clear the backlog while I'm furloughed as I won't get this opportunity to sit on my arse guilt free for another 19 years

Final Fantasy IX - 8/10

With the QoL improvements, it holds up. I really enjoyed revisiting this, after 15 years or so.

Fruits Punch Samurai wrote:Yooka-laylee and the Impossible Lair 8/10 - Had a great time with this, basically a new Donkey Kong Country game. The Impossible Lair Itself was a good challenge, I'm just glad I played it with the checkpoints update.

There's a checkpoints update??

OrangeRKN wrote:

Fruits Punch Samurai wrote:Yooka-laylee and the Impossible Lair 8/10 - Had a great time with this, basically a new Donkey Kong Country game. The Impossible Lair Itself was a good challenge, I'm just glad I played it with the checkpoints update.

There's a checkpoints update??

Yeah, they've split the lair into 4 parts. If you reach a checkpoint it saves how many bees you made it there with. You can keep retrying each part and improving your checkpoint bee totals.

Dark Souls 3

I think I prefer it to the first game, although I'm still not a huge fan of 3's wide open areas. Bloodborne still reigns supreme but this had some of the best boss fights of the entire catalogue. The only boss I didn't beat was Slave Knight Gael from the end of the Ringed City DLC. I could've done it but after beating Nameless King, Blackfire Friede and Soul of Cinder one after the other, I was mentally drained.

Not sure what to play next now DS3 is done. I wouldn't mind finally giving Sekiro a go but I might be better playing something more laid back first.

I actually think DS3 is better than DS1 as well. It's way more consistent, the difficulty curve is better judged.

Mark of the Ninja - 8/10

Love this game. This is the third time I've went through it. I wish they would make a sequel.

Life Is Strange 2

I loved it so much. I felt awful by the end though. I just wanted to keep my brother safe but felt like I'd used him and failed him when the finale came around. Really good story.

I might play Before The Storm again now as Chloe is the best.

Zilnad wrote:Life Is Strange 2

I loved it so much. I felt awful by the end though. I just wanted to keep my brother safe but felt like I'd used him and failed him when the finale came around. Really good story.

Which ending did you get?

In my game Daniel jumps out of the car at the border, Sean heads through into Mexico.
This leads to an ending where Daniel is back home living with the grandparents and gets a postcard from Sean who is happy in Mexico and spending time with Cassidy.

Vermilion wrote:

Zilnad wrote:Life Is Strange 2

I loved it so much. I felt awful by the end though. I just wanted to keep my brother safe but felt like I'd used him and failed him when the finale came around. Really good story.

Which ending did you get?

In my game Daniel jumps out of the car at the border, Sean heads through into Mexico.
This leads to an ending where Daniel is back home living with the grandparents and gets a postcard from Sean who is happy in Mexico and spending time with Cassidy.

That sounds like a happier ending than mine. Although mine wasn't all bad.

In my game,Daniel went full on Magneto, destroying the police blockade in a display of pure super villainy, presumably killing all the officers involved as well.

It then cuts to 6 years later and Sean and Daniel have started a Diaz Autos repair garage in Mexico. It seems they are in deep with the criminal underworld though as a group of thugs come by to extort Sean, who is subsequently saved by Daniel and his telekinesis. Then they both share a beer and spend the evening watching the sun set over the beach together.

AI: The Somnium Files 8/10 If Ace Attorney was sci fi, and Phoenix Wright was a sex pest, it would be Ai: The Somnium Files.

Windjammers 8/10 - Who knew competitive Frisbee pong could be so fun? Excited for the sequel.

Mega Man 7 8/10- First time I played this I felt it was a step backwards after X and X2. But playing it again thanks to Legacy Collection 2, I appreciate the simplicity of it all.

Squinty wrote:Journey to the Savage Planet - 6/10

Poor man's Metroid Prime. I had a few issues with this. The combat never really meshed with me, player movement is slow, the pistol is slow and it's hard to avoid attacks. It starts to ask a bit too much of you near the end with the more complex attacks the later enemies do.

I felt that the platforming could have been a bit tighter, it's not like Metroid Prime where you have a good bit of maneuverability in the air.

Also didn't really like the tower section at the end. It felt long and pretty boring.

To say some positives about it, I liked the humour. The video skits in the base ship thing were interesting. The graphics looked really nice at times as well.

I just completed this last night as well having played it on Game pass.

I'd personally review it quite a bit more positively as I really enjoyed the sense of exploration and freedom it afforded you, even if at times it felt a little unfocused and directionless.

I agree with many of your criticisms. Both the platforming and combat could be a little better, and the way the game leans more on the combat as it goes on is a bit of a disappointment as that's just not its best feature. I didn't mind the player movement or pistol speeds too much, plus some of the upgrades help reduce these concerns.

Overall I found it a hugely pleasant surprise for a game I knew little about and therefore expected little of. As a fan of collecting stuff in games as well this was a great game for that, with some of the collectibles proving pretty challenging to locate and/or retrieve. I'd love to see a sequel where the developers can expand on what made the game great and fine tune the issues. Probably one of the games of 2020 for me - not that I've played many new releases!

8/10

Fruits Punch Samurai wrote:
Windjammers 8/10 - Who knew competitive Frisbee pong could be so fun? Excited for the sequel.

I've found this so hard to get good at and click with - perhaps I'll try some single-player action for training instead of just jumping into local multiplayer each time - the game's so quick it's hard to feel we're really earning our victories!

I've spent the last month playing first to 3 wins each night online with my partner, with a bit of arcade mode to practise in between. Getting used to the specials and curves took some getting used to, but now I'm not letting so many easy points through.

Just beat Final Fantasy 8 - Remastered. 3.5/10.

There's nothing inherently bad about the game, it just has absolutely nothing good going for it.

The characters don't really have anything going on. I had no attachment to any of them by the end except Zell, and even then he was just the generic goofy best friend type character who's a happy idiot. There are little bits and pieces of things to work with here and there, but it seems to focus primarily on Squall's development (which is itself not that interesting, just being a standard coming-of-age, finding self-worth type thing) and the party are just kind of...there. The big reveal regarding them was pretty dumb and didn't really serve to add much except going on to treat the rest of the party, who are each way more interesting than Squall is (despite still being boring as hell), as a single unit. Laguna was cool, even if he really didn't need to be part of the story.

The plot starts out ok, if a little basic. Then it starts doing time bullshit and it starts getting dumb. Along with some annoyances with the gameplay (which I'll get to), Laguna's sections really don't add much to the game (apart from 'The Man With The Machine Gun', which is a banger). They're there to give you insight on what happened in the past and to get you attached to Laguna, but the parts they decided to show you are easily the least interesting parts of his story. We didn't need to know about that time he was hired to be an actor, or that time he talked to the pianist. The one in the crystal area could have been way more important, but it happens at a time in the story where they can't reveal anything to you, so it just turns into nothing happening. Of the 5 Laguna segments I recall, only 2 have any significance to the plot, and the character moments in 2 of the others are gooseberry fool.

Outside of the Laguna parts, the overall plot isn't great. The player party motivations are about what you'd expect from a bunch of military people: just follow what orders they get to start off with, then realise it goes a bit above what they expected, so they follow through with it of their own volition because "time compression" sounds bad. The villain motives range from mind-control through plain jealousy and self-pity, all the way to sheer incomprehensible gibberish: I haven't the slightest clue what Ultimecia's goal even was. We get told that she's a sorceress from the future who's mind-controlling present day sorceresses to find a way to go to the past to "compress time" so that the past, present, and future all happen at once. Shut up, don't think about it, it's fine, don't worry. It's not explained why she needs someone else to go into the past even though she was already able to go into the past to even get to us. It's not explained why she wants to compress time other than some faff about how she wants to reign.

And that's the bit that gets me the most about it: Final Fantasy has already done passable time shenanigan stories. Final Fantasy 1 is a nice simple time loop where a guy gets sent back in time, becomes godlike and then sends himself back through time etc. That's fine, you can follow that. FF3 has a powerful mage lose his immortality, so he tries to freeze time so that he won't die. That's fine, there's a clear end goal and motivation. More recently FF14: Shadowbringers had a time-travel plot where people from a future in which you fail come back to make sure you don't fail. It's pretty basic, but as a device it's good. Whatever we got in 8 is a mess. But sure, don't think about it, it's fine.

As for the gameplay: the battles themselves are fine for the most part, I just really didn't like the draw and junction systems. If we got one or the other it would have been fine. The idea that you have to draw consumable spells from locations or enemies is fine. I'm down with the idea that you have to draw Fire from an enemy, which then gives you 6 uses of Fire whenever you want rather than an MP system. The idea that you have to combine spells to your stats to boost them is fine. I like the idea that you would attach Cure to your HP for a boost, then upgrade it to Cura for a bigger HP boost, for example. Combining them just strawberry floats the game up as it leads to you spending the first 11+ turns of any encounter drawing 100 of each new spell from the enemies. And then because stat bonuses scale with how many spells of that type you have in your inventory, you can't even use the spells you drew because casting Flare now lowers your strength or whatever. It's been a while since I've seen game mechanics actively fight each other like that.

And then there's the issue with junctions during the Laguna segments. Because Laguna and his party share data with Squall and his party, they also share junctions and stock and the like. But because Laguna has fewer members there's the possibility that the party you're using doesn't have a match in the Laguna parts, and therefore all of their stuff is locked out for that segment. Hope you kept that one character stocked up with GFs and spells that could be used in your main group despite never using them.

Also, strawberry float the weapon acquisition in this game: I spent hours grinding for crafting materials for one of Zell's weapons and didn't get them. I'd much rather just give a shopkeeper some money and get a new statstick. Save the crafting or whatever for the ultimate weapons, or a game with a better system like Monster Hunter.

On the bright side, I now know where the Idol Of Darkness fight in XIV came from (for the whole 12 seconds it's a thing in this game) and I'm looking forward to the completion of the Eden raids when they drop in like 7 months.

Mega Man 8 6/10 - If I wasn't playing it via Legacy Collection 2 I'd be scoring it one or two points lower. The inclusion of checkpoint saves helps alleviate some of the frustration experienced with certain aspects. Such as the snowboarding set pieces, which can be trying to say the least. The game has plenty of variety, but none of it flows.

Mega Man 9 8/10 - Going back to basics was the right decision to make. I do miss the slide, and there seemed to be more 'gotcha!' moments than usual, but this is a fun challenging Mega Man. Can't believe it's 12 years old already, I could still remember all the level layouts.

Mega Man 10 7/10 - A solid Mega Man that goes through the motions. 9 was a great call back, but that nostalgia trick only works once.

Mega Man X 10/10- Still holds up. Just a shame the X series peaked with the first game.

Mega Man X2 7/10 - A solid followup, but bad habits start to form. One of the best parts of the Mega Man Series is to freely choose the order in which you complete the stages. But in X2 if you want the true ending, you have to follow where the X Hunters go, which ruins the spirit of it all I feel. And the items hidden in each level are more irritating than challenging, and anyone who can easily aquire such items probably doesn't require extra health. Still, I had fun.

Mega Man X3 8/10 - A bit of a scavenger hunt, but it isn't as cheap about is as X2. Plus playable Zero is a fun novelty.

Mega Man X4 9/10- Less back n forth collecting junk really helps this game flow.