Topic: Games you've recently beat

@RR529 No, I thought the art style was lovely. I just hate dungeon crawlers, and so I'd disagree with your assessment of the game being "never too difficult or complicated" because sections of it, particularly in later dungeons, had me shaking with exasperated rage.

Like I said, it's a personal issue because if I were better at the game, I'd have enjoyed it more! There's no denying that the whole thing is a quality experience from start to finish.

With the vision being good again, I had some fun with WipEout recently and thought it time to get back on the shmup-wagon!

Finally 'finished' Jamestown+. Beautiful game. Nowhere near trophy completion, but I might give it a try 😊

The Touryst (Switch) - Indie 3D platformer with a tropical vacation theme, with many of the worlds (islands in this csse) being loosely themed around real world locations (such as Fiji & Hawaii, in the forms of Fyjy & Hawayy, for example).

Pros:

• It's kind of a mix between a 3D platformer & Zelda-like (each island has dungeon to tackle in the form of the Monuments), and for the most part it works pretty well.
• It looks fantastic. I'm usually not one for boxy looking games like this (voxel style, I think), but it has a really high level of polish in this area, with the lighting in particular being gorgeous.
• While as barebones as they come, it does feature a photo mode.

Mixed:

• There are quite a bit of side activities on offer, and while a handful of them are great (such as the fantastic F-Zero, Bomb Jack, and Breakout clones in the arcade, the latter two of which are pretty full featured), most are simple distractions that you won't be interested in once you've done them once (such as quick fetch quests, a drone obstacle course, soccer target shooting, pull-up challenge, drum themed rhythm minigame, etc.), largely because they only last a minute or less.
• While I personally don't like knocking a game for this, I think it's fair to point out that it's a quite short experience (it took me longer to complete games like Devil May Cry, Onimusha Warlords, & Blaster Master 0).

Negative:

• There's some platforming challenges in the Twyn Monument that were bad. They feature you having to jump on balls no bigger than your character to progress, and what makes them so hard is that you have to land on each one at least once in order to clear the room, they change positions each time you jump on one, and they explode if you land on them more than once. It's the kind of pixel perfect platforming that isn't really intuitive in a 3D space (made worse by the fact that you have limited camera control in the Monuments).
• A couple of the bosses are terrible as well, specifically those of the Lyfta & Gravyty Monuments. The Lyfta boss is a real test of patience, as in order to pass you need to cover up 5 geysers with rocks, but as long as you're on the ground with the boss it will instantly knock any rocks off the geysers, so what you have to do is put all the rocks up on an elevated platform & try throwing them onto the geysers from there, as the boss won't move when you're up there. However, if you miss judge even one throw, even the last one, the boss will knock off all the other rocks when you go to retrieve the one missed rock, resetting the whole thing. As for the Gravyty Monument, it's boss is the final one, and sees you trying to ride floating platforms over glowing spots (you need to cover each spot with one of the platforms to hurt the boss), and you have to do it a total of three times to beat it. The first phase isn't too hard because the boss will simply try to block your path (though trying to line things up is also a bit unintuitive due to the limited camera control), during the second phase the boss will shoot lasers at you to knock you off the platforms as well (it's the only time in the game anything actually attacks you, and while you have no way of knowing this because you don't have a life bar, you die if it hits you too many times, I think 5), and during the the 3rd phase boulders will start falling from the ceiling as well, one-shotting you if you get hit (these are easy enough to avoid in the one other fight they show up in, but are harder to avoid here because you're trying to guide around the relatively slow moving floating platforms). Any time you die, you have to restart the boss at the first phase.

Overall, despite some really irritating sections, it's overall quite the well made game. Not a must play, but maybe worth looking into if you're into 3D platformers.

Reached the end credits on Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It's an excellent game and I really enjoyed it. There's a lot of depth to the world and the plot, making it easy to care fod the characters.

I might have a few days or a week or two break from it, then I'll like to give the expansions a go. After all that I may write a longer post detailing my thoughts.

I beat Forgotton Anne yesterday. It took me a bit longer than I expected from the five hours or so mentioned on How Long To Beat, but still a small game and nice palette cleanser.

Liked:

• Handdrawn graphics. This game looks amazing, the drawings themselves as well as the game in motion.
• Fitting music. A pretty good accompanying soundtrack, that added to the total experience.
  The world itself. What a great idea for a game world: the world of all things forgotten, that want to return to the real world.
• The characters and their design. This is especially true for the main characters, that I really enjoyed.

What I didn't like:

• The trophy list. I mentioned this already didn't I? I just put this here as a reminder for anyone that trying to achieve all trophies or even the collectibles, will detract from your game experience quite a bit with this one.
• The ending. It didn't feel like it tied together everything. I was left with a lot of questions, and for the last two hours or so I expected a final twist, that just didn't come.
• "Illusion of choice" This is something that is bothering me more and more in modern gaming. Some choice matters and some doesn't. It was really hard to tell which of these had any effect on the story, or what the consequences of certain dialogue choices would be. I would have rather had just no choice at all, instead of this. Especially since the end didn't deliver on it anyway.
• In a game that is full of choice, missable trophies and features a chapter select, you would expect a Skip cutscene option. It isn't there unfortunately, and replaying this game is just... worse for it.
• The controls. This is "the bad one". The controls were just really, really bad. Often Anne wouldn't respond to button input at all, or way too late to matter. Anne can run, which is great, but all other movement feels so slow. You constantly are waiting for one of her animations to finish. Aside from Anne not being enjoyable to move around, it also distracts immensely from play.
• Gameplay? There hardly is any gameplay and most of it I couldn't really care for. There are some nice sections, but...

Let's just stop here and conclude that this could have been a great animated movie. However, Anne doesn't seem to succeed at any of the "game" parts. Developed for the wrong medium, I guess.

7 out of 10 (I could be too generous here)

@Arugula Ha, good effort! I'm still so annoyed from my play through that I chose to kill Apostate the dredge in the second game so missed out having him in the third.

That series really does show Telltale how to make decisions have consequences though!

@Kidfried Glad I'm not the only person who checks How Long to Beat before starting up some smaller, more casual games. Your seven does sound quite generous, after reading your detailed thoughts, but at least you found some stuff to like in there somewhere!

@Thrillho Psst. Buddy. You're missing a forward-slash from that last spoiler tag.

@crimsontadpoles I've said it many times on here and I will always say it again; the DLC alone would win GOTY most years, it really is that good. They're quite meaty too; a quick look at my trophy list and it was two months between my first trophy on Heart of Stone and the last in Blood and Wine.

The price you can get them both for as the season pass (if you don't have them already) can be scandalously low too.

@RogerRoger The game was clearly a labor of love. It oozes charm and authenticity every step of the way. I even shed a tear at the end (despite the ending itself being underwhelming). Had they also put that much love in its gameplay, then it would have been an amazing game. I guess it depends on how much you value great gameplay, whether you give this game a 5 or a 9.

@Kidfried I mostly enjoyed Forgotton Anne (no idea why they spelled it that way) and would probably play it again, but there was his niggling feeling that it was missing something. The world is gorgeous to look at and the music is really nice so they nailed that aspect. I also liked the themes regarding consumerism and the modern throw-away nature of society. Still don't really get the bits with the talking crystal with the silly voice, which felt out of place. While the thin gameplay in and of itself didn't particularly bother me and I'm fine with light puzzles, I like to explore areas and make sure I don't miss anything - yet this is a game where if you even go a step too far in one direction you're locked out from going back. The controls were definitely my main issue while playing, and the player choices are sometimes poor and don't always relate to what actually happens.

@Kidfried As somebody who doesn't mind it when gameplay shortcomings are compensated for with emotional worth, I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

@KratosMD I agree with most of the points there, and it's similar to what you wrote the other day before finishing the game. I thought the story was fine but got a little silly towards the end as everyone seems to turn out to be Korean mafia.

The music I didn't think was any different to the other games which I quite like in some ways but in others it doesn't help make the games feel overly different to one another (although quite hard to do with the same characters in the same cities).

I think you have to remember that Y0 came out well after Y1 and Y2 so it is more likely to have had more in depth gameplay etc as it did come out almost ten years after the first game!

I finished Life Is Strange 2 last night. It was ok, but no where near as good as the 1st one. I felt like the ending was very bitter sweet.

@ZeD Thanks for that impression, as I've got that queued up ready to start soon. I'd never expect it to be as good as the previous season, but knowing that it's okay enough is, well... enough!

@RogerRoger my biggest issue was that the episodes felt very dis joined between each other.
I felt like I had missed something between a few episodes but it was just how it was written

@ZeD Yeah, this is a common thing I've picked up on. Probably didn't help that it was released with such huge gaps between its episodes, but then those who are now playing it all in one go are saying similar, so it must be something in the core writing. Or they were just written as they went.

Finished the story in Assassin's Creed Origins last night. Although I thought the story was just 'ok', I'm gonna continue playing and clear the rest of the map. Which is unlike me as once the story is over I'm usually done with the game.

@JohnnyShoulder What do you estimate your play time was to get to the end of the main story? And how many more hours do you figure you’ll spend mopping things up? I am wondering because I’m not done with the story yet (probably around 20 hours into it) and I can’t decide if I want to just power through this one or spend a bunch of time wandering around chasing icons.
I think howlongtobeat had it at around 40 hours for a basic run.

I recently finished Days Gone, Cat Quest 2, Dark Souls 3 and Pode. Next on the list to get through is Death Stranding and The Last Guardian; also maybe Dark Souls Remastered and Dark Souls 2 if I have time.

@Th3solution You can check on Club Ubi (or whatever it is called) and it will tell you all kind of stats, including how long you have been playing. Last time I checked it was at about 59 hours, so I reckon it will be close to 70 hours. I will have a check when I get home later, as I meant to check last night. I reckon there is a good 10 - 15 hours left to clear the map, but that all depends on how much is left whay you have finished. But I was generally leaving most of the side quests and stuff towards the end, and only doing them when I felt like it. I reckon the platinum is quite achievable too.