Topic: Games you've recently beat

After rage quitting Sonic Mania this morning, I went back and finally reached the end of Transistor.
I enjoyed this game, although I think the cult following of the game and the high Metacritic scores are probably overselling the game a tad. It’s a reasonably short experience — probably took me about 6-8 hours. The art style is lovely and the music is top notch. The protagonist, Red, is endearing to play as. A singer who had her voice stolen by the enemy and is subjected to traveling through the dilapidating city of Cloudbank which has been over-run by “the Process” - a robotic futuristic force that creates mechanical enemies and altered humans for you to fight. The whole thing is all very artsy and bizarre, actually. The story barely makes a modicum of sense and the way it’s told is so cryptic that I don’t think I truly understood it all. The pinnacle of the outlandish premise is that your weapon to fight with is the ‘Transistor’ - a large sword-type thing (think Kingdom Hearts keyblade but instead of a huge key sword the Transistor is a huge SD memory card like you’d put in your digital camera) that houses the consciousness of a dead nameless man in whom it was impaled. It is this man, whose voice will narrate out of the Transistor throughout the game. And he talks, a lot. And Red can’t talk. So I got sick of his voice after a couple hours. I don’t mind the strange premise and the cryptic story-telling style, but the voice actor’s delivery just ruined it for me and some of it was the poor script he was working with. In the end, the story came around and I appreciated the conclusion. Again, there’s some heavy dose of suspension of disbelief to swallow, but I ended up liking the ending.

The gameplay and combat was really quite good. A strange amalgamation of action and turn- based strategy, you can pause time and line up some attacks, or just fire away in real time, and often you need to do a combination of both. Various powers unfold through the game and they are fun to mix and match to get desired effects and boosts. The game was never brutally hard, but it does have a steep learning curve.
The maps, although pretty, are barren of life and simplistic. At times the atypical 2.5D presentation has you having trouble knowing where the opening for the next area of the map is, but it’s impossible to get truly lost.

I’m glad I played The Transistor, and I think it’s worth the time, especially for the unique take on combat.

@Th3solution Glad you enjoyed Transistor, if you are into it the soundtrack is available on Spotify.

LMAO.

Yeah, I don't think classic Sonic games are for you.

You mentioned people overselling Transistor. I haven't played that game yet, but I actually felt that way about another game from the same developer that I did, Bastion. It has some praiseworthy aspects, but it was a very mixed experience for me.

Bastion also had a non-main character who would JUST. NOT. STOP. TALKING.

The dialogue was OK, but I don't want to hear a narration through the entire game, y'know?

Combat and the setting sound a lot more interesting in Transistor, though, based on your description, so I'll definitely have to check it out sometime.

@Ralizah I didn't get along with Bastion either, can't quite remember why, I think maybe I didn't quite gel with the combat. Really liked Transistor though, I imagine it is quite well suited for the Switch too.

@JohnnyShoulder They're low-impact indie games, so yeah, I imagine they run well on the Switch. I actually own Transistor on PC AND have access to it via PS+, though, so I'll be playing on one of those.

Bastion was... I dunno. The story was vague and kind of poorly presented, imo, and it relied too heavily on the folksy flavor of the omnipresent narration. The gameplay was alright, but I didn't get a lot of joy out of running along narrow paths in the sky shooting arrows at enemies. The presentation was pretty gorgeous, and I expect the same to be true of Transistor.

There's a lot of potential to be found in the game. Hopefully Transistor is better. That'll determine whether I go on to play Pyre or not, I think.

@Ralizah Very much in agreement, based on my experience so far. And as usual, you said it much better than I could. I’m doubtful to be able to finish it, but I’ll keep it on my hard drive for now.

@Th3solution How far did you end up getting?

@RogerRoger Ah, good to hear I'm not missing too much with the true ending. Honestly, this review could sort of function as a review of most of the older games in the series. I like this well enough, but I've always had some gripes with their game design, and I finally had an opportunity to articulate them here (versus shouting them into the void or annoying random Sonic fans with my opinions, LOL).

I've heard people suggest multiple times since this game released that SEGA should just turn the franchise over to its fans, and, while I agree that this is a really solid effort and better than numerous entries in the series, I feel like there must be a type of game design path for Sonic to follow and evolve into a truly good series. I don't feel like wallowing in the past forever is the correct way forward for this series. Christian Whitehead (or whatever his name is) clearly loves the series and knows it like the back of his hand, and that's great. I think this was an awesome love letter to classic Sonic fans, and I'm glad it exists. But I'm not sure I want any more Sonic Manias for a while.

Props to Sony for including games like Sonic Mania. I don't play online, and haven't bought much on sale lately, but the IGC is solid enough that I still feel like I'm getting my money's worth in gameplay out of it.

@Ralizah I’m embarrassed to say I only made it to the second stage (?), or world (?) I forget the term they use. It’s the chemical factory. I kept getting caught in the ... chemical, whatever it was. The pink or orange stuff that slows you down and then there’s the blocks that rotate and I’d end up there and get squished by a block and killed over and over and didn’t know how to keep from getting stuck in the pink goo. I’m not opposed to try again when I get an itch for a 2D platformer, but I have another PS Plus freebie waiting in the wings, Rayman Legends, which might be easier for a novice of the genre.

@Th3solution Ah, the Chemical Zone from Sonic 2. That stage is a classic. <3 Getting trapped under the water is always stressful, though, especially when you start drowning and the world's most stressful music starts playing.

Rayman Origins and Legends are very accessible, and two of the best 2D platformers ever made, so you're in for a treat!

@Th3solution Rayman Legends i found starts easy enough but I quickly hit a brick wall. I've not gone back as I've got be in the right mood to play these 2d platformers, and whenever I look at it I can't face playing it again.

The main thing I appreciate about Shovel Knight is how much support it has gotten since release. I bought it at launch on 3DS when it was just the main campaign and, since then, two of three other full campaigns have released for me to play for free. Very cool.

It's an alright game. Not one of my favorites, but it's a fun experience.

@Th3solution @JohnnyShoulder Rayman Legends is excellent and I especially loved the musical levels at the end of each world. The bonus “remixes” of those at the end of the game are really tough though.

That game has a couple of ridiculous trophies though; one of which means having to log into the game repeatedly for at least a month to get.

@Kidfried Congratulations! Yeah, if you go back and look, I think several of us share the sentiment that the epilogue was just too much in a way and may actually detract. It’s got a very ‘DLC’ feel to it, as the ‘first ending’ is quite impactful and satisfying and the rest just seems like extra bonus content. Some people have come in the defense of the extra Marston storyline after Arthur dies saying they thought it was great, but it dragged a lot and affected the pacing of the overall experience to me. I give Rockstar credit though for including all that content (and RDO to boot!) in the base $60 game where most developers would hold back anything outside the core story and sell it separately to us as DLC or add-on packs. So, I try to look at it through that lens and it makes me feel better about it. Because otherwise, I was starting to get rather upset at the game when I was playing it because it just wouldn’t end! 😅
You may find it interesting to go back and read some of the discussion in the game-specific thread where different people weighed in about these issues a few months back.

Regardless, I bet your happy to have seen it through to the end. What’s your next big gaming project? Assassin’s Creed? NieR? Persona 5? Another Yakuza game? God of War? A Soulsborne game?

[Edit: I did go back to the RDR2 thread out of curiosity and revisit some of our discussion back in February when I was finishing the game and I wonder if you still feel as you did back then. We were comparing RDR1 and RDR2 and discussing the pacing and whatnot even then. Interesting read.]

@Kidfried @Th3solution Congrats on finishing. I think, given time and space to think about it, I kind of feel the same way about the epilogue. The 'ending' of the main storyline was so good, that whatever followed was going to struggle to top it.

I'm glad I played the epilogue, though. I thought it was superb in its own way, it just had a completely different vibe. Looking back, I should have had a break from the game before playing it. The epilogue would have worked very well as DLC, but had it been a separate thing, I'm not 100% sure I would have ever got around to it, so I'm glad it was included with the main game.

Finished Contra (NES) on the Contra Collection last night. Of course I used the 30 man code but I just wanted to do a quick run.

@Kidfried Oh? Is there a significant chunk of gameplay between RDR2's climax and the end of the epilogue?

@Kidfried It sounds like the game is one big rebellion against the idea of less being more.

I do intend to get around to it someday, but I'll confess, hearing about the terrible controls and weighty movement really put me off of it. I like my video game movements to be snappy.

Guacamelee 2 - I loved the first one - which I replayed last summer - so very much looked forward to playing this. Like the first game it is a Metroidvania luchador inspired beat-em-up and plays extremely similarly, even retaining the same moves (which are gradually unlocked as you progress through the game).

Despite the familiarity there are a lot of new ideas and the gameplay is considerably more complex - particularly in its often elaborate level design. At times I thought "wow this is clever", but others I swore repeatedly at the TV. Some of the platforming sections are difficult if not downright frustrating, giving the impression that the developers assumed players will have completed the first game beforehand. There is quite a lot of satisfaction in eventually completing a difficult section.

The biggest criticism I have is that controls are a little slow, with a slight delay when using certain moves. In a game that often requires moves to be used in quick succession, it's something that could be a little tighter.

Aside from level design the area that has seen the most improvement is the "chicken transformation". In the first game it was largely a gag and used to move through small paths, but here the chicken has its own moveset and is very effective in combat.

Like the first game there are a lot of "optional" rooms and areas where after completing a particularly difficult platforming challenge you are rewarded with a prize (typically coins, heart or stamina pieces). One late game "chicken illuminati" dungeon is perhaps the most difficult platforming I have ever done in any game.

On the subject of chicken illuminati (yes, a chicken cult), the game has a rather offbeat script that is infused quite a lot of humour.
The game has a pleasing visual style that has been embellished since its predecessor. The vast majority of the music is the same as the first game, however, which I found a little disappointing.

Overall, despite its often high difficulty I enjoyed Guacamelee 2 a lot.

@Kidfried It's about the same, though I thought dodging was slightly off at times - particularly with enemy projectiles. However, because many of the platforming sections are a lot more intricate - requiring lots of different moves to be used in quick succession - the slight delay is sometimes more of an issue there.