Topic: Games you've recently beat

@RogerRoger Ah, no need for a tag. I'd been keeping one eye on your Inquisition progress, both on here and via the trophies you were picking up, even if I didn't say anything. I didn't trust myself not to accidentally reveal a spoiler.

I don't think I'd go mage again (although it meant I had no real use for Solus and thus didn't have to go through the same emotional wringer my wife did). Too much micromanagement when, like you say, I'm happier charging in and wrecking folks.

@Gremio108 I've never had a stalker before. Do I have to do anything?

In all seriousness, your concern over spoilers is hugely appreciated, thank you. I feel like there were a lot of major moments in all three games, not just Inquisition, that I should've known via osmosis, or might've even heard about in a random "top ten moments" video on YouTube once but dismissed out of hand. There's no substitute for seeing them fresh. Some twists and / or scenes will stay with me forever.

I actually thought that Alistair needed the release of death, because the taint was slowly driving him insane like all the other Grey Wardens. He was a very different Alistair because of that, beautifully acted and written, but I said to my friend as I played "this is properly depressing to watch, because he isn't the happy-go-lucky bundle of quips and sarcasm that I remember" and rightly so. I like to think that I released him from his torment even if, like you, I didn't see that decision coming, either.

Yeah, the one downside about having so many great characters is that I couldn't take them all with me every time! I missed so much party banter between some folks, and will have to mix things up a little in future (because after I'd made Cole human it was pretty much him, Dorian and The Iron Bull locked in; Sera was my rogue of choice beforehand, she's awesome). I'm sure my opinion towards Solus and even Blackwall might've changed if I travelled with them more often.

Still thinking about the game all day today. Still miss it.

Farpoint (PS4/VR) - A Sci-fi themed FPS, where you're out to find your way off an alien planet after crash landing.

As a VR Experience: The few times you rode in a suttle (such as the opening scene where you were flying around a space station, plus the following crash landing) were really cool. The way the jumping spider enemies (the first enemy type you encounter) move is just right enough that they creep out your subconscious and make you jump everytime you encounter them (at least for the first few hours), and the sense of scale during the game's one boss encounter is truly mesmerizing. There is one stealth section that is pretty intense as well, as you'll constantly be looking over your shoulder to make sure a drone isn't swooping down from behind as you hightail it to the next area of cover. However, while there are a few interesting setpieces, most of the game takes place in a sort of canyony desert theme, and while I suppose it makes decent use of the depth effect, it's not a particularly interesting place to be, though a couple of later missions shake things up a bit. Oh, and there are also video logs (at the end of most missions) that make good use of the effect as well.

As a game: It's a pretty standard FPS. Kill things in a larger area, settle down as you walk along the path where you're either treated to a hologram that moves the story along, a setpiece, and or maybe a jumpscare ambush by one or two enemies, before coming to the next open area where you'll fight another large group of enemies, rinse & repeat (later levels tend to have less downtime with more constant large enemy encounters, but I honestly preferred the balance of the early game). It's not particularly great as a game, but they regularly introduce new enemy types & weapons so things never get boring (your gun is tied to the motion of your controller, so you physically have to look down the sight correctly in order to accurately shoot anything, which you'll know you're doing correctly when you see a lazer sight in the middle of your reticule, which is pretty cool). The main story has 8 missions which on average are an hour long each (at least for me), plus there is a challenge mode that sees you tackling the story missions in a time trial like environment, standard online multiplayer, plus a co-op mode of some sort (I assume online for that as well). I wasn't a big fan of how the story ended up, though.

Just finished Deltarune Chapter 1. It was... alright. Definitely a good time for a free game. I wasn't hugely impressed, though. The world that was introduced just wasn't developed enough to give it a sense of character. Most of the new characters, outside of Susie, weren't terribly memorable. Making the sparing mechanic a constant part of the plot itself takes away from the subversion of typical JRPG tropes and the personal responsibility the player felt for behaving like they would in any other game (what unspoiled player didn't initially kill Toriel, only to feel a gut-wrenching sense of guilt when they realized what they had done?). Figuring out how to negotiate enemies out of a battle is still cute and fun, but it's too reminiscent of Undertale's system, and there's nothing quite as memorable as, say, getting the two guards to realize their love for one-another (was very happy to see them later in the game!). And the way you interact with Lancer is far too similar to initial run-ins with Sans and Papyrus in Undertale. It was very Undertale-lite. Diet Undertale.

With that said, I didn't dislike my time with it. I thought Susie's primary character arc was reasonably well-executed, even if it was a bit rushed. The game is still filled with the sort of wonderful humor that was so charming in the original Undertale. I also like how you gain TP when enemy attacks come close without actually damaging you, and there's an interesting risk/reward mechanic there. And the end of the game, where you get to travel around your home town and talk to the townsfolk, many of who return from the original game, was a lot of fun, and helped showcase the great character writing that is clearly the developer's specialty.

Also really liked the creepy cliffhanger at the very end.

If the rest of it was eventually released as a full game, I'd absolutely purchase, play, and enjoy my time with it. But I do feel like it needs to do more to distinguish itself from its predecessor.

Darn I was hoping this was the DDS review! xD

Still very nice @Ralizah ! Did you beat the bonus boss Jevil?

Also my profile picture/avatar... whatever... makes more sense to you now I bet

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Heh, that probably won't be for a while. That game got put on hold after the first couple of major dungeons. I need to get back to it.

I actually... didn't even know that was a thing until you mentioned it. Now that I've gone back and looked around more, though, I realize those keys actually had a purpose.

And, geez, this boss sucks. I'm going to need to upgrade my armor to deal with him peacefully. Reminds me of some of those hard-as-nails fights in the genocide run of Undertale.

I actually got to the end of it on my second try somehow @Ralizah... only to have run out of items & only suzie left in the party so I couldn't actually pacify them

Luckily I managed to do it on the fifth/sixth try with fluffy boy left

Found him quite fun to fight actually was genuinely surprised at the sound clips. Really is hectic though with all those bombs and stuff... Chaos Chaos indeed!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Re Policewoman Undyne, I like how she's apparently struggling to re-integrate into a peaceful society. It makes sense that it would be difficult for a warrior like her to transition to a productive role in an entirely peaceful society.

I forgot to mention this, but I do think the pixel art has improved since Undertale. It's easier to notice a lot of subtle details in the character designs. The environments can look pretty good, too. I really liked the lighting in the school at the end of the game after you return to the closet.

@bruhman well done persevering through the entire game plus DLC while not enjoying it, not an easy task with a Dark Souls game! Most people would just give up!

I actually started playing the remaster last night, i’ve just beaten the boss near the start on that long bridge and moved onto the next area. I’m enjoying it so far. I played through about 90% of DS3 and got distracted. I didn’t like DS2 much and only played the first couple of sections of that. I’m thinking about giving it another go after DS1 though as I played DS2 right after Bloodborne (and before DS3) so it was all a bit much.

As for your question, DS1 is often considered the best, but really all the games seem to be favoured equally by whoever you ask. So if you really didn’t think much of 1 I don’t think it’s worth putting yourself through the rest.

As for distances between bosses I did notice it was a bit of a treck between the bonfire and the bridge boss last night, but if you just sprint past everything it’s pretty easy to get back to him. I don’t know if it gets harder to do that moving forward. I sprinted to bosses a lot in DS3.

@bruhman I played through all of ds3 (not dlc though) and got to sens fortress in remaster before having a long break. My experience of ds3 was bonfires were a bit closer to boss fogs and other than a few levels (cathedral of the deep is an exception), most of the levels are more linear. I enjoyed 1 and would go back to it but 1 and 3 are very similar for me. Ds3 almost feels like a remake than a sequel sometimes. Bloodborne would be the one I would recommend, even though pvp is not as good as ds3, its brilliant!!

@bruhman :') Nah I'm not using a guide and don't really plan on it, while I'm having fun I'll keep plugging though, I don't really mind dropping it if it just becomes annoying I guess.

I do kind of like having multiple ways to go, some of which end up being impossible lol.

Well seeing as you said you already have the trilogy @bruhman there's no harm in trying the others out for like a few hours, see if you enjoy them more?

DS2 is considered the black sheep of the series by fans but is actually the one that was reviewed best by critics. Didn't enjoy it when I first played it on the PS3 but I enjoyed it quite a bit more on PS4. I think there's a better checkpointing?
(It's never really bothered me though personally)

DS3 is considered a greatest hits of the series. It's my favourite barring DS1. It probably has the smoothest (baring the 30fps if that bothers you) gameplay. There's definitely quite a few bonfires that are nearer bosses if I remember.

Shame you didn't enjoy Dark Souls 1 much, hope you enjoy the others more if you give them a whirl!

I’m really glad to know that there are others out there trying to make their way through Lordran. I’m taking my first crack at Dark Souls Remastered. The only other From Software game I’ve played was Bloodborne, which I really enjoyed. There’s something I find really compelling about the Land of the Ancient Lords, even though I end up dying...like, everywhere. Still, I’m starting to get parrying down to a science.

@bruhman nah it doesn't sound daft, it's a freaky game!! Im the same about alien isolation, I've nearly bought it a few times and keep wimping out at the last minute. Hope you enjoy ds3 if you give it a bash, some amazing boss fights in that game!

Title: Star Fox Zero

Platform: Wii U

What is it?: A remake of the N64 classic Star Fox 64 (which itself was a remake of the much more rudimentary SNES original).

Level of completion: Unlocked all the extra routes, levels, and events, so I've beaten pretty much the entire game. Did not get the highest score on every level, however.

What I liked:

• The fun animated short that was included that functions as a prologue to the story in the game. It's not going to blow anyone away, but I always find cross-media storytelling techniques like this to be, if nothing else, quite interesting.
• So, in this game, you have two viewpoints: one on the TV that's third-person and gives you a sense of where your ship is, like in a traditional Star Fox game, and then one on the GamePad that's in first-person. Aiming in this game is totally liberated from the manner in which you fly your ship, so you use gyro controls to aim your blaster. And, despite my significant misgivings with this dual-screen set-up, I'll say that I really found the gyro aiming to be responsive and fun to use. As always, Nintendo reveals themselves to be the masters of the effective use of motion controls in gaming.
• Ditching single-screen gameplay allows you to pull off some interesting maneuvers, such as shooting at a target while flying away from it, for example. It also allows you to have interesting camera viewpoints in some of the huge boss battles, instead of the game forcing the camera to stay locked behind the Arwing the entire time.
• Some of the unlockable content is interesting. For example, there's one level that you can go back to after you receive a certain upgrade to your Arwing, and you can unlock a level where you play as Peppy Hare and take on a gigantic enemy battleship by yourself. It's not the best thing ever, but stuff like this is fun. You can also unlock some extra matches against Star Wolf's crew.

What I disliked:

Oh boy...

So there are problems in virtually every area of this game. I'll just start with the dual-screen set-up, which is the most immediate and obvious issue with this game: the unwieldy dual-screen set-up. Maintaining a sense of awareness of both is crucial, considering aiming is far too imprecise on the TV, but you still need to reference it to make sure you're not into obstacles or whatnot. This makes it where your attention is constantly split between the two screens, which is pretty much constantly stressful, even after you learn to adapt to it somewhat. Unlike a game on the Nintendo DS, where the two screens are extremely close, you're having to look down in your hands to up at a TV, back and forth, as you play. It's extremely unpleasant. What this does is rob this rail shooter of the operational simplicity that is the biggest appeal and hallmark of the rail shooter in the first place. It inserts this big, middling control issue directly in-between you and the game, and even after you learn how to manage it enough to complete levels easily, it definitely saps most of the fun out of the experience. It's even worse in free-range levels, with a lot of movement and dodging, as with certain bosses, where I constantly felt like I was fighting the controls more than the enemy itself.

That's hardly the end of this game's issues, though. For one thing, it's incredibly derivative. A lot of the missions in this game are just straight up lifted, aesthetics and all, from Star Fox 64, and, unlike that game, it almost never successfully introduces new level designs or engaging mechanics. There's a sense of "been there, done that" the whole way through. It's incredibly uninspired.

When the game does attempt to do new things, it's pretty much always to its detriment. One area where this becomes especially clear is when the game introduces new vehicles to the mix. The worst of these is the Gyrowing, which is a clunky, difficult to control, and slow moving helicopter of sorts where you spend the majority of a level awkwardly navigating your way from one boring environmental puzzle to another. I'm not sure what the game is going for in these levels, but it's pretty much the opposite of what you'd want or expect from a high-speed space shooter. The walker (or, as I call it, the Star Chicken, because it looks disturbingly similar to a chicken) itself is a total nightmare to control, and any level that employees it heavily often sees me frequently crash into walls as I try to navigate the level geometry. The game pushes Star Chicken transformations in boss battles, but, more often than not, I find it to be such a hindrance that I'll opt for the Arwing even when its not suited for a level. This becomes especially the case in the obnoxious final boss encounter with Andross, where the challenge really comes from trying to juggle multiple different styles of control simultaneously to even do something as simple as move, aim at the boss, and shoot where you want. Apparently the Star Chicken was introduced in Star Fox 2 on the SNES, but, having never played that, I don't know if it's any more tolerable there.

Visually, the game is bland, and reminds me of what a launch GameCube game might look like upscaled to 720p. This is probably due to the game streaming two different views of the game at all times, which must be costly in terms of resource requirements. Of course, the game doesn't do nearly enough new stuff with this to justify moving away from the series' traditionally single-screen gameplay.

The narrative presentation is especially unambitious and does nothing that the original Star Fox 64 didn't already do decades ago. The music is serviceable, but the best tracks are all taken directly from SF64.It fails as a story, fails as a tech showcase, and even fails the basic test of being a fun, approachable rail shooter.

Final thoughts: Innovative in ways that didn't require innovation and unchanged in ways that make it feel stale, this game represents a solid backward step for the franchise as a whole. I really wanted to like it, but I just didn't. Definitely not the worst game ever made, but I do think it deserved to be savaged the way it did. This lack of polish is totally unacceptable for a major Nintendo property.

Score: 4/10

Yakuza Kiwami is finished. Inconsistent gameplay married to a consistently excellent story You can really feel that PS2 architecture lurking in the background. Some of the boss fights are a bit of a chore, but with the right abilities unlocked and a stack of healing items, they're all right. They overdid the Majima element massively - I'm sick of the sight of the guy.

@ShogunRok got a bit of stick for the review at the time, but six out of ten is bang on. I'm going to play Kiwami 2 next (though not just yet) and then probably Zero. After that, well it depends what happens with the western re-releases of 3-4-5. It's all gone a bit quite on that front. Anyone heard anything about them?

@Kyroki Undertale only felt like a "complete" experience to me when I got the true pacifist and genocide mode endings. And definitely don't neglect genocide: the best bosses and a solidly different approach to the gameplay and plot are locked behind it. It's also where the game's best satirical jabs at traditional JRPG game design can be found.

@Gremio108 YES! JUSTIFICATION!

THANK YOU.

@Gremio108 Unfortunately, no news on the remasters as far as I know.

Kiwami was where I started with the series. I figured the datedness I heard about as well as being a remake of the original would make it an optimal starting point for me. I enjoyed it a lot but it does have a PS2 game feel. I definitely agree with that.

I think Jingu was the most annoying boss, even as the penultimate one. Shooting potshots while his mooks do most of the work meant I spent more time than necessary on it.

@ShogunRok Ha, you're welcome. It's the gaming equivalent of a brand new Jag with a Reliant Robin engine under the bonnet. Anyone annoyed with that review hasn't played it.

Since you're here and you're a Yakuza veteran, a question - how confused would I be if I were to skip 3, 4 and 5 if these re-releases don't happen? Would Yakuza 6 still make sense?

@DerMeister My logic was kind of the same. I didn't want to go from the silky smooth (apparently) Yakuza Zero to Kiwami's antiquated engine. Prior to this, the only Yakuza game I've played is the PS2 original, and I never completed it, so I don't remember much of it. I'm very much looking forward to playing more.

The fight with Majima in the batting cages was my major hurdle. I'd been investing points into health and attack, and I was lacking in special moves. After that I made an effort to be just the right side of overpowered for every boss, as well as going in with plenty of healing items. For sure, the Jingu fight would've been horrendous had my Kaz not been an absolute machine by that point. When his mooks got up off the floor and came back for more, I sighed and paused it to go make another coffee.