Game opinions thread (what did you play, what did you think?)

[k'_127]

Blasphemous:

Nice short game that feels linear and shallow in the beginning but gets more fun once the path opens up and you gain new abilities to explore the map for upgrades. The objectives and quests are designed like a 2D Souls game, although it's not as deep. Difficulty vary depending on the order you do things, and the number of upgrades you get.

Takes about 25 hours to platinum (one playthrough and a half). If you are in the mood for such a game, it's worth giving a shot.

7 / 10

 

[ggallegos1]

I remember backing this one on KS and then forgetting about it. Glad it came out and it's close to the original artistic vision.

 

[NeoSneth]

I've been playing SuperGiant's newer one,
HADES

It's a high twitch Rogue-like set in Olympian mythology. It's not at 1.0 so some small features are missing, but the game feels very complete overall. The game is unforgiving if you try to brute force it. You must learn to use each weapon differently, and you must get skillful at dodging attacks. You do continually unlock permanent bonuses which help to progress further each time.

The replay value for a rogue-like is very high. Each god and character continues to add new information to the story in every play through. The main hub continues to evolve as well. I did manage a lucky run and completed the game on my 11th run, but that's just the beginning. New enemies and major characters continue to show up with each run. It's very engaging.

It's Supergiant, so the art and music is amazing. They capture each god very well. Voice acting throughout, and their narrator is still present as well.

I'm excited for the 1.0 release. The biggest piece that is missing is the end of the story.



This game reminded me I had not played their previous game,
PYRE.

So far this game is like a fever-induced hallucination while watching Yellow Submarine. Mix that with gameplay that is focused Rugby-Basketball. It's all so very strange, but the visuals are out of this world. The "combat" is essentially a mini sport game. It's bizarre and I'd rather probably rather be swinging swords. I get the impression they were hoping for an E-sports following as it can be rather fast and tactical. The problem is most times it plays like a Mario Party mini game on steroids. It has grown on me, but only as the challenge spiked. The whole game is so weird, i'm surprised it didn't turn people off immediately.

 

[k'_127]

Owlboy:

Ok, breaking my rule here. I haven't finished the game. I'm about 60% ~ 70% through, but I can't enjoy anything in it. Not the exploration, not the battles, and definitely not the story. Aside from the graphics, there is nothing that I find fun in this game.

Blasphemous:

7 / 10

Btw, this is getting a free update with new content and balance adjustments, which I think is exactly what it needed.

 

[jro]

Nioh 2: The Tengu's Disciple - first of the three planned DLC packs for Nioh 2, and it follows the model of the DLC for Nioh 1 pretty closely- two main missions, one that includes a mini-boss as well as a regular boss, and then a handful of submissions.

The new bosses are easily the best part, with all three being well-designed, interesting, and very challenging while also being completely fair. The levels themselves aren't great though and felt too derivative of the sea level in Nioh 1 and the cave level in Nioh 2, in particular.

Difficulty seems to be toned down a little bit compared to the DLC from N1.

 

[jro]

I finished Hellpoint on XB1 - the basic gameplay was enjoyable enough to keep at it, but the amount of jank was so very high. Best example is the main story-related bosses (there are about 12 or 14 bosses in total), but four (five, if you do everything and get the complete true ending, but I didn't care enough to bother) that are more important, kind of like the Lord Soul bosses in Dark Souls.

Anyway, the first of those beat me about 6-8 times in a row, then on the next try my character became invincible when I should have died, so I just mashed attack until I won since I couldn't die.

Second key boss literally just floated around the arena and never attacked me, like he was Gandhi or something.

Third one worked properly, and was actually pretty well designed.

Fourth one took me about 15 or 18 tries to beat. It's a massive flying scorpion robot thing that shoots at you constantly. It was glitched to hell also. Started every fight by shooting a few times then slowly flying directly at the spot where the player spawns, regardless of where my character actually was, while doing zero attacks, and then flying/clipping right through the structure you spawn on top of to start the fight. I finally won by exploiting the transforming floor and hiding behind the walls that would raise and then clipping through the floor/wall with the largest weapon in the game to hit him and just dodging like crazy and praying not to get one-shot by his missiles or laser when the wall would drop.

Overall, I'd only maybe recommend it to those who already love Souls-likes and want to play another (very mediocre) one. It would be a horrible entry point to the genre even though the levels are generally small/simple and most mob enemies are weak. There are a few mechanics that are punishing and vague even for a Souls-like, a very odd difficulty curve, and just so much awful QA.

 

[Naika]

So I'm still on my Saturn kick and have finished vampire hunter thrice on normal (once with Demitri, once with Gallon and once with Donovan) and damn, it's such a good game. The characters that kick my butt often however are Zabel and Morrigan but once you figure out their patterns, it's all good.

I just finished Panzer Dragoon 2 Zwei for the first time and it's a really nice game. better looking that the first game for sure, with faster gameplay and more livelier stages....but am I weird in saying that I slightly like the first game better?

 

[jro]

I still adore Control in general. But fuck me, its DLC is awful. The Foundation was alright, but also completely boring, pointless, and uninteresting.

AWE, however, is actively fucking terrible.

I can't remember the last time a game I really liked had DLC that was so bad it made me reconsider the whether or not the main game was as good as I remembered it.

edit: really, Code Vein is the closest equivalent I can think of here. Decent/good game, followed by garbage DLC that's basically a middle finger to everyone dumb enough to buy it.

 

[Naika]

I recently finished Virtua Cop 2 on the Saturn (9 credits and 9 lives however). It's waaaay more challenging than VC1 but somehow, I like VC1 better. The music and even the ending on VC1 was a bit more Sega to me, if that makes sense.

 

[ggallegos1]

Just finished through Thor: God of Thunder for the DS. Short sweet beat em up, lots of versatility in the combat once you get used to the hit boxes. The formula doesn't change at all for 7 chapters, same bad guys with the same attacks. Played in doses, it's a good time.

 

[jro]

Finished Marvel's Avengers - it has a pretty borked version of God of War's combat system (same combat director and all) surrounded by godawful "games as a service" mechanics. Shit mission design, bad pacing, same terrible camera from modern Tomb Raider games. It's 10 hours long and feels like a goddamn slog to get through. The idea of playing it, continuously, for months on end, buying Season Passes by the character, etc, is just, no.

The combat makes the campaign just maybe barely worth it to finish, but it's not good. One of the best examples of a dumb publisher ruining what could have been alright.

 

[jro]

Finished Party Hard 2 - I really enjoyed PH1 and was pretty stoked to play PH 2 on console. It was mostly very similar, with a few changes:

-there are a couple of boss fights that work better than I'd heard, but still don't really fit the rest of the game. Taken on their own merits they both actually work pretty well, IMO. They're also both far easier than most of the regular levels.

-almost all of the levels have a second set of objectives you can complete to complete the level instead of just killing everyone every time, like you have to do in every level in PH1. You can also still kill everyone to finish levels, but it's almost always harder, other than one level with no police, and most of the levels aren't set up at all to accommodate that playstyle.

-the levels are based much more on using traps and items to kill people than just stabbing everyone outright. Works well on some of the levels that have enough items and traps, but then others can vary far too much based on the RNG and spawn few, if any, useful traps and items.

The game is fun, in general, with the basic concept still being a good mix of strategy, stealth, and reflexes. It has a major problem, though, much more so than in the first PH, with the game's logic not being consistent with itself. You can get a one-hit kill with a given weapon easily 10 times in a row, then have it not work the next. There's also very little consistency in the logic that determines whether or not bystanders know it was you who killed any certain victim. Those combine to make for a lot of failures that don't seem to be the player's fault at all.

 

[Naika]

I finished Tetris Attack's stage clear mode for the first time last weekend. Stages 1-5 are pretty doable but goddamn does Stage 6 is a beast. Bowser wasn't as bad as I thought but I spent so much time on Stage 6 that I thought I'd rip my hair out.

 

[jro]

I finished Minoria a few nights ago. It's a psuedo-sequel to Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, and it's generally pretty similar. It ditches the pixel art for smooth lines, and that's a so-so change, not really good or bad, just different. The biggest change, by far, is the way the combat is structured. Whereas Reverie was just straight-up hacking, slash, dodge, occasional projectile, this re-jiggers combat to revolve pretty much entirely around the new parry system. Almost every attack can be parried, and parrying is basically required to beat the harder enemies- parrying damages the attacking enemy and opens them up to a riposte that's stronger than a regular attack, and parrying also damages every other enemy that's on-screen. At first I didn't like the shift from dodging to parrying but after some practice it worked really well and made for good gameplay.

Some very large areas that could have done with being a little shorter, but thankfully item placement was nowhere near as obscure as Reverie's often was.

Really solid game, certainly worth playing if you like Metroidvanias.

 

[k'_127]

Waiting for a PS4 port for this one. Momodora RUTM was fun, and could potentially be great (needed more length, content, depth ... Etc).

 

[jro]

Crash Bandicoot 4 is awful. I could've designed better levels than this has.

Stay far, far away from this garbage.

 

[jro]

Against my better judgment, I'm only a few levels away from beating Crash 4. It's sadistically difficult, but not impossible, which I'm pretty sure is why I can't quite quit playing it. It's a little like Dark Souls, only platforming.

Anyway, I finished Mafia Definitive Edition last week. It's a really good remake effort of a mediocre game. Hangar 13 took the original and updated it to run on the Mafia 3 engine, but for some reason they didn't quite fix the gunplay to match M3, so that part still isn't great. All the story dialogue was re-recorded, and most of the performances are good, and M1 always had a pretty good story. It has a handful of bad missions that show its age, but overall well-worth the $40 and the time to play through the game.

edit: the driving physics are surprisingly well-done. The cars have a noticeable sense of weight to them that makes the driving gameplay quite a bit more fun than it has any right to be.

 

[k'_127]

Legend of Legaia - PS1

Nice RPG with unique story and settings. I would only recommend it for those are heavily into RPG's, or those who enjoy game stories and got nothing else to play. Would have been more enjoyable if it was shorter though.

Story:

The writing is excellent. The settings feel unique, there are plenty of characters with good depth, and the events can be unpredictable. Not on par with the best RPG's out there, but good enough to warrant a playthrough if you are into the genre.

Gameplay:

Combat is a more coherent version of Xenogears battle system, except that there isn't much strategy involved, beside grinding to level up and managing equipments. Learning magic is almost completely useless apart from healing spells. Some areas can be very tough (especially the beginning, until you learn a healing spell). It may feel fun in the beginning, but it eventually becomes a chore, and regular battles feel unnecessarily slow / long.

Exploration is where I wish the game had more to offer. There ARE some side activities and hidden items here and there, but they are so scarce. I just wish there was much more to do outside of the main story. Because of that, the game generally feels too linear for a good and long RPG.

Presentation:

Graphics may seem rough at first. Everything is rendered in 3D and it seems to be pushing the PS1 to its limits, with some minor frame drops sometimes. It slowly grows on you as you visit more locations though. There is a good variety of locations and monsters that keep things fresh and interesting.

 

[roker]

Picked up a random NES game called Burai Fighter at the local game shop because it's made by Taxan. The guys behind GI Joe and Low G man.

It's been a lot of fun so far and it has the right amount of challenge. Can't believe more people don't talk about this game actually.

 

[oliverclaude]

Picked up a random NES game called Burai Fighter at the local game shop because it's made by Taxan. The guys behind GI Joe and Low G man.

It's been a lot of fun so far and it has the right amount of challenge. Can't believe more people don't talk about this game actually.

Great game and pretty challenging. It's probably less talked about, because the NES is filled with excellent action games. Try the GB version, too. It's just as good and luckily, a bit easier.

 

[jro]

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 Remastered - finished up 2 last night and it's really, really impressive to me just how well both games have held up over time (I know VV made some sneaky quality of life improvements, but still). It was also kind of fascinating to play 1 and 2 back-to-back and see just how much Neversoft improved the level design, in particular, in 2. Don't get me wrong, THPS 1's levels are still fun to play, but they often tend to lack cohesiveness and flow. THPS 2 almost completely fixes those issues. The levels still have clever gimmicks and hidden areas, but they're intuitive to find, and the items to collect, the letters, and the hidden tapes are all arranged logically instead of in weird, dumb places like they can be in 1.

All-around great remaster. Probably my third-favorite game of the year, behind only Nioh 2 and Hades.

 

[BlackaneseNiNjA]

Absolutely fantastic brawler/beat em up that I was unable to put down.

Great combat mechanics, great music, branching levels that made each playthrough feel fresh. I was pleasantly surprised by this indie game.

 

[k'_127]

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - GBA

Damn, I don't remember it being so good. It's probably my favourite 2D Zelda now (yet to play LBW or LA remake).

Everything from presentation to quests design is well made. I enjoyed almost all aspects of the game and was enjoying it the whole time. I used to think the scale of the game was too small compared to LTTP but that's not the case anymore. There is so much to do in the game and all areas feel distinct.

10/10

The game was only ported to Wii U via VC, and it was briefly offered during the 3DS ambassador program (can't be obtained now). The game deserves to be on Switch IMO.

 

[ggallegos1]

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - GBA

Damn, I don't remember it being so good. It's probably my favourite 2D Zelda now (yet to play LBW or LA remake).

Everything from presentation to quests design is well made. I enjoyed almost all aspects of the game and was enjoying it the whole time. I used to think the scale of the game was too small compared to LTTP but that's not the case anymore. There is so much to do in the game and all areas feel distinct.

10/10

The game was only ported to Wii U via VC, and it was briefly offered during the 3DS ambassador program (can't be obtained now). The game deserves to be on Switch IMO.

I haven't played through it in a while but remember enjoying it a lot. A lot of people give it shit because of the kinstone and bobblehead side quests but I felt the dungeons and puzzles were on point

 

[jro]

I finished up Dream of the Strong (NG+) on Nioh 2 and also finished the second DLC, Darkness in the Capital.

Nioh 2's NG+ system is designed like in the original where you can switch between the cycles at will, which is really helpful for being able to play the DLCs on NG while you still play NG+ for everything else (DLC is generally set one cycle's worth of difficulty higher than everything else). It also bases area progression on just finishing any number of missions, including sub-missions, which is nice for getting through the game faster and skipping some of the more tedious main missions.

Anyway, the final main mission in the base game is much more tolerable when you know where to go and what cheap tricks are coming, but it's still a slog overall. Final boss is still good. I started into Dream of the Demon (NG+2) after that and it's a sharper difficulty increase than from NG to NG+, and has different (powerful) enemy placement as well.

Darkness in the Capital was a lot like The Tengu's Disciple in that it's fine, but nothing amazing. The final main mission boss is one of the best bosses in the series- challenging as hell but very beatable if you pay attention and take advantage of the boss' insistence on staying in the dark realm for the entire second half of the fight. And there's also the now-traditional secret(ish) boss fight against Ryu Hayabusa in one of the sub-missions, which is awesome.

Oh yeah, I also finished The Dark Pictures: Little Hope. Bad. Man of Medan had a dumb ending, but the one in LH has an ending that's not only bad but manages to mostly invalidate everything that happens in the rest of the game. Until Dawn was great, but SuperMassive's new stuff sucks balls.