@RogerRoger I checked wiki carefully to make sure it wasn't a spoiler and was sure it's from that game. That is one of the hardest parts of the overall story to get your head round though.
Beat the Torgue's Campaing of Carnage DLC tonight for Borderlands 2. Just like with Captain Scarlette DLC this was my first time playing through it. I didn't enjoy it as much as the Captain Scaette DLC and to me it didn't feel as long either. The only thing it has going for it really is the fact that you can grind for Torgue Tokens and buy legendaries with them in this DLC.
RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.
@Thrillho I therefore sincerely apologise for my mistake; it must've twigged for me whilst playing MGS4 first time through but now that I think harder, you're right, it does get mentioned in MGS2. Darn it, I need to replay the entire series again soon... it's been too long!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Finally finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider. What a ride! Very good game, and sad to see it end. It didn’t last too long, and I finished it wanting more. But alas, time to move on to the next great adventure. Here’s hoping we’ll keep getting new TR games. 🤞🏼
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Assassin's Creed Odyssey and really enjoyed it. My favorite AC to date. I had to start ignoring side quests which I hate doing but I was never going to finish it before RDR2 if I didn't. After 75 hours I still have a ton left to do. The amount of content is insane.
I recently fully finished Nier: Automata with the best [E]nding. What a fantastic game with a beautiful music score to boot. I must admit to buying a few trophies for the plat but only because I chose to sacrifice my save data. I've been humming Emil's theme tune ever since. Also, I might be in the minority here but 2A was my fave character.
Slime-san (Switch):
Skill-focused platformer ala Super Meat Boy or Celeste. There's not really much to this game outside of the challenge of the gameplay itself, though. There's a lot of characters, but they're not terribly memorable and only get a few lines of dialogue each. The music is unremarkable. The visual design is... weird, with hollow-looking characters and clashing colors all over the place. There are shops to buy new slimes, themes, and accessories, though. The new slimes actually change how your slime feels, although I found myself preferring the default character.
The saving grace of this release is decent level design and a LOT of free DLC content. In addition to the 100 levels in the base game (all with collectibles and time trials), there are four or five additional worlds to play through. Combined with the low cost of admission, it's a good value. I collected the majority of collectible apples throughout the levels and also completed a handful of time trials before hitting the end credits. While I'll probably dip back in here and there, I think I'm mostly done with it. Not an amazing game, but I'm happy enough with it.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC):
Finally got around to playing this. I knew I would have to try this eventually after playing through the excellent Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. It's alright. The core mechanics of the game are pretty solid, of course, and it's fun gradually building up your troops, although I feel like the pool of available skills and abilities for each type of soldier was a bit limited. The presentation is good in battle, although, for whatever reason, the cutscenes seem to top out at 30fps, which is a bit of jarring transition from the smooth 60fps gameplay.
Two things kind of held this game back for me. The first is the sheer repetitiveness of the gameplay. Once I cycled through the four different types of events in this game (UFO sightings, terror missions, panic management quests, and main story quests) a few times, the lack of a feeling of forward progression began to wear on me. This is very much a game where you do the same things over and over again, with little in the way of surprises. The first five or six hours are very strong, but afterward, it just feels like the same thing continuously.
The second thing holding this back for me is the lack of a compelling story. There's a narrative here, for sure, but it's razor thin and primarily communicated through boring and very short cutscenes. I continuously interacted with a handful of characters, but I barely even remember them after finishing. The campaign just kind of felt like it was going through the motions.
I also didn't like the limited control I had over managing panic in various nations. Other than completing missions, requests, and launching satellites, there's often not a lot to do when countries are on the verge of leaving XCOM. Thankfully, you can lose at least a few countries and still be fine, but the whole process was less than ideal.
I did like gradually building up my base over the course of the game. You kind of want to plan out how you lay out buildings, as adjacent ones of the same type grant bonuses, which can definitely add up over the course of the 25-hour-ish campaign.
I also enjoyed the variety of weapons and armors that you unlocked throughout the game. The ghost suit, my favorite piece of armor, actually allowed my characters to become very temporarily invisible, allowing me to sneak up on otherwise annoying enemies.
The best aspect of this game besides the actual strategy gameplay is the lore, surprisingly. As you dissect and study alien remains at your base after recovering them from battles, you learn a lot about the sorts of lengths the aliens were willing to go to to be as fearsome as they were. It made for some very interesting reading.
All-in-all, a solid enough game, but it also has a number of glaring weaknesses that kept it from being a top-of-the-line experience.
@Ralizah My partner and I are still halfway through Mario + Rabbids, so I might be missing something, but mind if I ask why / how completing it led you to XCOM? It's probably my relative ignorance of the latter, but I'm struggling to see a connection!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@Ralizah If you're playing on PC, there is a mod called Long War which is known for improving the game massively in loads of different ways. I only ever played on console so can't attest for how it is though.
XCOM2 is fantastic though. It makes so many improvements on the original game and the War of the Chosen update makes it close to XCOM2.5 with a whole heap of improvements including soldier fatigue (so you can't use your same squad of super soldiers), XP which you can use to buy skills from outside of their class skill tree, team mate bonds etc. The Chosen are also excellent with nemesis-style strengths and weaknesses. The base game itself introduced more mission types and the terror missions are nowhere near as annoying (civilians even fight back!).
@RogerRoger The battle system in Mario + Rabbids is extremely similar to XCOM. Although the big difference there is that M + R is much more focused on giant bursts of movement, whereas, generally, your squad will inch across an XCOM map, as too much movement can easily mean an early death for your character.
I didn't mention the permadeath in my mini-review, I noticed. Your troops are kind of expendable, as you can generally buy as many as you want, and they can easily die on the field. I imagine the only big loss is the skills they've accumulated over the course of many battles. Although I'm unsure what happens to their equipment if they die, as I pulled a FE and reloaded my last save anytime someone kicked the bucket.
@Thrillho Interesting. I probably should have picked up XCOM 2 when it was in humble monthly a while back (unlike PSN, you actually get to keep those games when you drop the service), but it seemed pointless when I still had the original to play (and a pretty extensively large backlog as is). Another big thing making me nervous about it is I've heard missions are timed. Is that true?
Oh, and have you played Xenonauts? I've heard really good things about that from classic XCOM fans, but the level of complexity there sounds a bit intimidating.
@Ralizah Yeah, from how you described XCOM, I was struggling to reconcile the tone and words like "troops" and "invasion" with what I've played of Mario + Rabbids, which has a constant colourful, bounding tone and pace to it. I'm gonna look up some gameplay later and it'll all probably make sense then, and might even give me a new thing to play, as I've quite enjoyed my time with Mario + Rabbids thusfar (although not sure how I'd cope playing on my own; a big part of the appeal was figuring out solutions and tactics with my partner). Cheers for the details!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
XCOM2 does have some "timed" missions where you normally have a set number of turns to get things done. War of the Chosen reined them in a bit and they are a pain in the arse but mainly because they put you under so much pressure. Most of the time, those missions are about making planned escapes more than anything! Often the main goal is capturing a target but they are certainly the mission type I've failed most.
I think the Long War type mod for that allows you to remove those missions but I think they do have their place.
Mighty Switch Force! 2
I nabbed this when it first released, but I never fully finished it before now. It's a lot like the original in that the gameplay revolves around solving environmental puzzles and platforming, both of which are reliant on the block-switching mechanic. Like the original, the 3D is extremely effective and helps with the gameplay. Other than using your fire hose to douse flames, the gameplay is extremely similar to the first game. It can probably be completed within an hour if you just rush through it, but I got a good 8 or so hours out of it by speedrunning levels and trying to find all the hidden babies (which you humorously kick to safety).
Nothing incredible, but the pixel art is attractive, the gameplay is tight, and it's a good time overall. Also, the music is surprisingly decent. Especially the awesome ending credits theme.
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