Topic: Last Game You Beat

Robocop Rogue City. For the most part, it was such a great experience that I absolutely loved. The gameplay, the dialogue, the authenticity. Having Peter Weller reprise his role as robo was awesome. It felt like another movie that you were apart of. Blasting enemies, punching them, finding evidence, giving tickets, all great.

My only real gripe were 3 sections. They were boss fights which I won't mention due to spoilers. But they were a SLOG. Bullet sponges with robo being slow as all get out, little ammo, no health. It was a giant time waster that really dampened the experience every time you faced this boss. I hated it. The final boss took me an hour and a half, on easy... I finally switched the last couple of missions so I could finally move on.

If not for those time wasters, and frustration enducing sections, it wouldve been a great game, like a 9/10. A couple of regular enemies were bullet sponges too, which was also annoying. But overall, a solid 7.5-8/10. I can still recommend it. But it was just a tad annoying at some parts.

@NintendoByNature Sounds good. After I finish Yakuza: Like a Dragon, that will be next on my plate. I didn't realize they brought Peter Weller back. That is really awesome.

@Tasuki yea, it's truly awesome. The entire game is awesome actually, with the exception of those few sections. You'll know when you get there.

Just finished Gears of War 2. Really great time, much like the first game. Marcus Fenyx might be one of my favorite video game characters.

Granblue Fantasy Relink (PS5).

This was really fun. Combat is very fast & slick (a lot of people compare it to Tales, but it honestly felt more Ys like to me, which I enjoyed because that's probably my favorite Action JRPG battle system).

The main story mode manages to feel just as exciting as FFXVI at it's best points, but without hardly any of the downtime or time consuming fetch quests holding it back, and this assuredly at a fraction of the budget. It's an all killer, no filler, 15-20 hour adventure you won't want to put down as you can't wait to see which wrinkle it'll add next (during battles on the deck of your airship you can man the cannons to shoot down foes before they board, there's a boss fight that calls to mind the kind of scale you'd expect from Shadow of the Colossus, even boss fights where you'll take control of the series' version of Bahumut & fight other massive beasts akin to FFXVI's showpiece Eikon battles, and more).

Now, it does seem to expect you to be somewhat already familiar with the cast (from the previous mobile game) as your party is already complete from the get go, and aside from a very brief moment in the prologue are never separated. This means that I never really got quite as invested in the group as other JRPG parties, as you really don't see them narratively grow as they normally would (also in part due to the fact that the big console game is the spin-off, it's a footnote in terms of the narrative of the franchise as a whole). That said they're a likeable enough group & I liked spending time with them. I'd levy similar thoughts to the story as a whole, as it hits all the cliches you'd expect to find but isn't as thematically rich as a Final Fantasy or Xenoblade Chronicles. However it's very wonderfully produced (the fantastic art direction goes a long way as well), and easily holds your attention for it's duration. If you do wish to learn more about a character's backstory, they each have "Fate Episodes" you unlock as you progress (most of these are text only affairs, but a few offer a playable segment) that brush you up on their history (and they give stat boosts upon reading/completing them, so you might as well).

Of course, if you really get into the gameplay loop the story mode is really only the opening salvo, as the real meat is in the extensive quest system (a few of these see you taking on waves of enemies under various conditions, but a good 90-95% of them are rematches against the game's many bosses with ever increasing difficulties). Easy & Normal rank quests are available during the main story, but once you clear the story mode you can work your way up through Hard, Very Hard, Extreme, Maniac, & Proud rank quests, where the grind really comes into play. There are about a million & one different ways to buff up your party (and heck, there are about a dozen different new party members to unlock as well, even though they're not story relevant), and while you don't have to explore these much to see story mode to the end, you'll need to get to grips with it all if you want to clear harder quests (at least clear them with good scores), and it can get pretty grindy when you need to start taking on certain quests multiple times in order to grind out drops. Seriously, each character has two seperate skill trees, one for offensive buffs/abilities, the other defensive, and each one is absolutely gargantuan (each one is just as large if not moreso than what you'd expect a character's entire skill tree to be in any other JRPG). Seriously, my main party members are all level 88-92 and yet each of their two skill trees I only have 60-70% complete. I haven't worked on anyone else (let alone the myriad of optional unlockable characters I mentioned), and that just accounts for one way you can power up characters (Fate Episode stat boosts. weapon crafting & upgrading, which BTW each have their own tiny skill tree. Sigils, which take the place of armor/accessories here, you can equip up to at least 10 and you can upgrade those as well). Heck, even once you do have a character's skill tree maxed out you can apparently still spend skill points on them to raise stats randomly (I'm not sure if there really is a hard cap on how strong a character can get).

I can definitely see the appeal in the grind, and I do enjoy it in doses, but I definitely enjoyed the exciting cinematic story mode moreso than the post game grind. It's important to note too, as completing story mode only puts story completion at 95%. You see, without getting into spoilers, there are few loose ends, and in order to tie them up and hit 100% story completion you are required to advance through Extreme rank quests (you'll slowly acquire lore notes as you grind your way up through the rankings, and along the way you'll unlock the last couple big cinematic story moments, the last of which is truly awesome). This leaves Maniac & Proud rank quests as truly the only optional ones if you really want to see the story to it's ultimate conclusion. It took me 20 hours to complete story mode, and a further 16 grinding my way up the quest ranks just to knock off that last 5% of the story. Definitely enjoyed the first half of the experience more, though it admittedly felt good seeing the story to it's true end.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps... and that's me done with hard as nails 2d platformers haha!

Actually found it harder than Blind Forest, which doesn't seem the general consensus... but getting a bit old for these sorts of games now, my poor heart can't take the rage

Return to Grace. 2 hours or so to play through, quite enjoyed it though got the baaaad ending haha

Hot Wheels: Unleashed Technically not quite finished it, I've only got a couple of time trials to complete, but I'm done with it. Overall a really enjoyable arcade racer which looks great and controls pretty well once you get the hang of the drifting and the physics.

The only real issue I have with it is the difficulty, which seems to be all over the place. The general race stages are pretty hard - even on normal setting, where a single mistake can easily lead you to a last place finish, although are do-able with a bit of practice. The 'boss' races are even more difficult though and require a 1st place finish to progress - I resorted to dropping the difficulty down to 'easy' for a couple of them after multiple failed attempts. Dropping the difficulty down to 'easy' makes it far too easy though, and you can crash multiple times and still win comfortably - it needs something in-between I think. The time trial tracks generally pretty hard too, but strangely, the difficulty setting only applies to the AI racers, so the time trails still have the same punishingly difficult target times regardless of the difficulty setting.

Change of pace for my next game - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is up next...

Finished Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice last night. I really liked this - probably the best game I've played so far this year. I thought the Viking setting was interesting and the story was really good too. I also felt the length (took me just over 8hrs to complete) was perfect - it didn't out-stay it's welcome at all and felt just right. No side-quest padding to speak of apart from collecting the 'backstory' Runes which are don't appear to be too difficult to find - I think I missed only about 5 or 6 of the 40ish runes and wasn't particularly looking for them.

The combat was one of the few things that I didn't think was great. It wasn't terrible, but it got a little bit repetitive after a while. Thankfully, there wasn't really a huge amount of combat for the most part and it did break up the puzzles and story quite nicely. There was a fair bit more in the last hour or so than there was in the rest of the game though.

Oh, and I also didn't like the insta-death-fire-demon-chase section during one of the shard trials. I died on that bit more than every other part of the game combined. In fact, I think I might've only died once outside that section - got caught by one of the creatures during the blindness trial.

The game recommends playing with headphones and I have to say, I agree. I've got a fairly decent surround sound setup so thought I'd be fine with that and played most of the first stage without headphones. Tried headphones the next time I played and it was like night and day - so much more immersive. The voice of the Shadow proper freaked me out the first time I heard it with the headphones on, it was so deep and felt like it was speaking directly to my soul 😅

this is on the list of 4 or 5 games I'm going to play next... can't wait to try out my new headphones

Beat the main quest line for Arkham Knight on Friday. Decently scary final sequence, no wonder the Xbox store lists it as horror! I’ll probably go back and do all the other side quests and check out the dlc I got bundled with the game

Alan Wake 2

The Mobius Machine

Persona 3 Reload. After having beaten the excellent Persona 5 Royal, the somewhat boring 5 Tactica and the weird Persona 4 Golden, I consider Persona 3 Reload the best of the bunch, overall. What I appreciated the most is that the combat is slightly more entertaining and that there aren't any annoying characters like Morgana. I like the optional older songs and the fact that they are making DLC related to Aigi's story. The cut-scenes are incredible, too bad you can't replay them.

Polished remake, worth 9/10 points and still available on Game Pass.

Sea of Stars

Disclaimer: I do like RPGs. Sea of Stars is one that has its combat heavily based on timing, that gets repetitive and annoying five minutes later and still is repetitive and annoying by the end of the game. The story is mildly entertaining, but the gameplay is dull. The writing is so-so, with some video games clichés jokes and interesting stories by the campfire, but otherwise inane. No clear objectives sometimes, interrupted flow and no maps available in the dungeons nor in the world mean additional frustration. I didn't get lost. I beat the game in 25 hours, less than most people, but sometimes the dialogue leaves you wondering where to go next.

While the graphics inspired by 16-bit RPGs are really nice, the music is so-so, with some exceptions. Some of the songs are as tacky as Tee Lopes's original work. In any case, you can tell that this game was crafted with care, love and time. It's packed with tons of different enemies, a secret ending and it's charming enough to be played because of the graphics, animation and story but, ultimately, it's boring and routine. It didn't make me feel anything at all until the second half and I don't mean just emotions but also interest. The writing and the gameplay are its worst enemy, from the many it has in store.

6/10

Conker: Live and Reloaded

I actually completed this game three months ago in January, but it was the most recent game I completed from start to finish.

I actually prefer playing this version over the original for the controls and graphics. While I do think that the N64 version was impressive for its time and had lots of great ideas and concepts, the gameplay I felt was badly executed in some parts by how outdated and janky the controls were, which killed my interest in doing a second playthrough. In my opinion, one of the most important parts of a video game is having good controls, and the remake greatly improves upon this aspect. Two things I hated about the original was the poor camera (which made easy tasks harder to accomplish) and the shooting gameplay for the slow movement and lack of reticle, so the remake fixing those two issues made it all the more enjoyable. The game has some repetitiveness, but it attempts to remove some of it by making changes to parts of the gameplay, making some parts easier to get through.

The new graphics and textures are great too. They are really impressive for the console they were released on, and it helps make the game look less dated visually. A lot of the environments look amazing and outdo the original’s a whole lot! Even now the graphics still amaze me with how great they looked for the time they released it.

Prior to buying it, I heard people say that it was a bad remake, but I actually disagree with that opinion respectfully. I do understand people not liking censorship, and I agree that the game censoring various curse words like the s-word and a-hole is silly, since they are not on the same levels of bad as the f-word and have mildly vulgar denotations. However, in my opinion, I don’t really think the censoring is that heavy overall. I only think it is heavy and overused with the swearing, and there is censorship applied to other material (e.g. suggestive) but it isn’t so excessive, so the content in the game is relatively unchanged.

Despite saying that, it isn’t entirely perfect, though most of these criticisms are rather minor and not quite big; although I think the graphics are great, I dislike some of the newer character designs. I feel the charm and cartoony-ness present in the original was erased with some of the graphical overhaul, and I think them putting semi-realistic fur on some of the animal characters (e.g. the main character) does play a role in that. The redesign I hated the most was the Tediz, since they don’t even look like teddy bears anymore when that was the whole point of their character. To me, it felt Live and Reloaded was trying to take itself seriously rather than light-hearted like Bad Fur Day (hence the added grittiness and redesigns) but I feel the tonal change they were going for doesn’t work. Related to that criticism, the facial animation system looks worse. It’s minor, but any character that isn’t the main character
either doesn’t emote or shows little emotion, and some details of characters moving their eyes were removed, though I should maybe add that the main character’s facial animations look significantly downgraded from the original, and it makes him look a little bit less emotive in the remake. It’s strange, since they previously nailed the animation system and expressive characters well on the N64 but couldn’t replicate it here. From what I saw, cutscenes can get blurry as well, but it goes away quickly and doesn’t really affect anything.

I also did hear criticisms about the multiplayer modes in the original getting scrapped in favor for a CoD-esque third-person shooter mode with weapon classes, but I thought it was fine since I never really played the modes in the original and didn’t get any real fun out of them since I don’t have anyone to play with. Plus, since I’m new to playing the games, I was expecting it already and it came less of a surprise for me.

Anyway, I thought it was a good remake. Not entirely a masterpiece for some slight gripes, but a great experience and an improvement upon Bad Fur Day!

@Pastellioli Excellent review and input. I didn't have many issues with the original one (on Rare Replay), but all you say is true. I'm a fan of this game, considering both versions essentially the same game, because it isn't politically correct. It would be impossible for something like this to be greenlit today, but yet we have much worse stuff overall. Actually, the only thing I disliked was the gore and that's the only allowed offence these days.

@Banjo- That is true. Compared to most media nowadays, Bad Fur Day/Live and Reloaded I’d say is far more tamer in retrospect. I still wouldn’t say it’s a kids game (obviously) but it’s less worse than most adult-oriented stuff nowadays, plus some aspects, like the poo humor, was done intentionally to be juvenile. I can understand and agree with the complaint towards the violence and gore; while I could handle it (mostly from the game’s older graphics and how some of the violence was exaggerated) I usually prefer to not play games full of violence or have violent material as a huge selling point. I actively avoid most modern games with detailed and semi-realistic graphics since some of the violence in those games look sickening and chilling to me from how almost realistic they look…

And yeah, I do think it would be difficult for a new entry or a game similar to it to get greenlit without causing a ruckus online or having a bunch of people dismiss it as being childish, especially since we live in an era where people online like to cause controversies over small things and harass and scandalize people over say a slightly “edgy” joke that wasn’t intended to be taken seriously or discriminatory. Although I am disappointed they did not do a sequel (especially after hearing it got cancelled despite having a finished story with a beginning and end), I can’t imagine how botched a modern sequel could possibly be regarding the humor and jokes, since I have a feeling they would sanitize it all as to not offend anyone or cause controversy, despite the fact there is other media that have far worse content and jokes that are deemed “acceptable.” If the sequel did get finished and they released it in the same era as Bad Fur Day (or at least in close proximity) I am sure they would’ve been willing to take risks with the material and do whatever the heck they wanted with the jokes and writing without anyone getting upset at it.

@Pastellioli I couldn't agree more! I was just a kid, those days. You too, perhaps. I miss those years. Yes, Conker's game is not for children and I played it later, but it's full of charm and intentionally juvenile. Audacious and direct like many things those days, not awkward and unnatural like most things now.

I don't understand what's the point in today's hypocrisy and self-righteousness, as if each person in the world was completely right about everything, but was not able to communicate nor respect anybody else. We see this everywhere, here too, but your vibes are good 😊.

Funnily, the first time I read you was earlier today on another thread and then I realised that I also played many Rare games years later on Rare Replay. Donkey Kong Country was a childhood favourite, though. I'm pretty sure it was my favourite game at that time.