Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Voltan Hopefully you didn’t get too frustrated with the combat in the enemy rush sections!

But yes, I was very impressed with it, especially as a PS+ freebie.

@Voltan It is a great game so good to see you enjoyed it. The game was so similar to TLoU in terms of the way it played, well except for all the rats. Definitely a welcome surprise for a PS+ game.

There were a few bits like others have mentioned where the combat gets a bit frustrating but I’ll forgive that considering the budget.

Even weirder is that in Genshin Impact it actually tells you the voice actor for every single character on their bio screen except for Aloy @Kidfried.

They have her official Japanese voice actress too apparently for the japanese voice set which is even stranger as to why Ashley doesn't...

Lol that was pretty much the point of my review way back when wasn't it @Ralizah? Actually really fun and enjoyable to play with it pretty much ticking all the right boxes aesthetically with some nice world building, decent enough main storyline and gorgeous music...

... but the TERRIBLE Gacha elements and mobile game design ruin it for me.

I went back to it a bit before Aloy and got sucked in pretty hard but once she dropped I got her and then I was out and don't plan on going back again no matter who else is added to it 😅

Not quite sure what's gonna happen with Genshin to be honest in regards to China's new rules with gaming they released a while back.

They singled out Venti for being very feminine and that it's against the new laws put in place in that it's "inappropriate" content... 😕

@KilloWertz @Thrillho I needed probably 6-7 attempts for that one. My biggest problem with some of the combat sections was that you would often respawn just before some unskippable cutscene and also if there were some resources in the area you’d have to collect everything again.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy A few of the males in this game probably violate the CCP's new standards on depictions of gender, but Venti is especially interesting since he seems pretty integral to the plot thus far. It's not like miHoYo can just strip the character out to comply with chinese regulations.

I guess they could always substitute pronouns and voice actors to 'change' the gender of the character, which would suck.

It is a little depressing seeing China's patriarchal communist government trying to drown the country's burgeoning game industry in the bathtub.

Well, for the moment, I'm able to ignore the 'wish' menu and it's fairly indistinguishable from $60 open world RPGs I've played in the past otherwise, so we'll see if the gacha stuff ends up tainting the experience for me.

Good shout on that review you did. I think I'm going to go back and re-read it!

@Voltan Yeah, both things did kind of suck. That also didn't help the cart section that you had to keep watching the cutscene over and over. I wish I could have done it in 6-7 tries though.

Overall, still a pretty good game. It's more or less just unfortunate that there were a few issues, obviously the last chapter of the game being a bigger deal for me.

Yeah there's definitely a couple of very effeminate looking men in Genshin ... I think In my review I even briefly mentioned Venti looking quite girly (No way is that a problem for me but I did think he was a girl when I first saw the design... 😅)

I believe they singled out "Shin Megami Tensei 4 Final" (Apocalypse I assume?) in those new set of rules too for it's decpiction of religious figures @Ralizah...

If it isn't the gatcha stuff that ruins you in GI it'll probably be all the grinding for ascension materials and all the other mobile nonsense crap like the resin limit and re-doing bosses over and over and over...

As for a game I've actually beaten... I zipped through Dead Rising 2 during my week off work (Thanks half term!)

I really rather enjoyed it actually (I did play it before once on PS3) . I know it's not really like them but this is about the closest I can get design wise to Dynasty Warriors.

The combat is basic and there's a billion enemies on screen.. But the maps for each area of DR2's Las Vegas expy aren't too huge and it's not completely mindless button mashing.

Probably the only game where weapons get destroyed after a certain amount of usage makes sense due to the slaphdash/haphazard nature of the combo weapons being made.

And the combo weapons can be pretty fun too with you making a light sabre with gems and a torch, a Blanka mask that electrocutes zombies, knife gloves from a pair of boxing gloves and a bowie knife and so on...

Plus I do like the 3 day time limit system that actually makes you think and prepare for what objectives you wanna shoot for or go scrounging for items, health and so on.

Bosses are a little weak gameplay wise but overall I rather enjoyed it.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I'm not surprised at all. Years back some sort of Hindu group got angry at the game for depicting the deity Krishna wearing a fedora and allowing him to be fused and used in battle.

😂 IV: Apocalypse is a gem.

As I haven't seen too many people mentioning Alan Wake I just thought I'd do a quick writeup now I've finished it. I was coming at AW from the point of view of being a big fan of Control, which for me had a great mix of gameplay and story elements. The environments in Control felt quite varied even though they were all taking place in one building, and as you unlocked the different abilities the gameplay really opened up.

Alan Wake definitely feels like the opposite of this in many ways. While the story is well done and the characters within are interesting I didn't feel that there was nearly as much mystery in the world as I was expecting. That was possibly due to me playing the AWE DLC in Control and that being centred around the happenings in Bright Falls but even so I guess I was just hoping for a lot more.

The biggest problem I had with AW though is that the gameplay is just really frustrating. The enemy types don't really change throughout the entire game, and the way you go about fighting them also remains the same. It gets especially annoying when there are bigger mobs of enemies coming at you from all around. Because the combat relies on two elements - first staggering them and then shooting them - you are constantly juggling between the two things and having to reload each of those elements gets really old quite quickly. There were some points were I felt I'd really got the hang of it and actually start to enjoy it only for it to be disproved a moment later when slightly more enemies than you can handle at once appear.

The environments don't help as there's not really any change between the start of the main game and the end of the DLC, it's all very samey - dull forests and wooden barns / cabins. There are collectables available but at some point I just gave up on those as I just felt I wanted to get through the game and see out the story.

Anyway long story short I did enjoy this game on some level just no where near as much as I was hoping I would. It's definitely not the classic it was made out to be but I'd still recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Control universe and enjoyed the AWE DLC. It's one I'm glad I played but not one I'm likely to play again.

Just finished Tearaway Unfolded on PS4. Such a great game, it was really relaxing to play, which is exactly what I needed now. I'd already played the original game on Vita so I was familiar with most of the game, but I did notice all the new content they added, which was cool! Furthermore, the transition from Vita to PS4 controls was well done. It felt just as natural to play with the DS4 as with the Vita. The only issue I had the game was the camera, which was absolutely atrocious some of the times. It would zoom in too much on the main character and I could barely see where I was going. Other than that, I had a great time with the game and it's definitely one of the most creative 3D platformers you can play on PS4.

I finished the first Wario Land. Imagine Mario except it wasn’t fun. That’s Wario Land.

@nessisonett I've been wanting to try it out for quite some time now but maybe I shouldn't, lol.

Have you played the other Wario Land games? I remember having a good time with Wario Land 2 and Wario Land 3 is probably the best game I've played in this series. Still haven't played Wario Land 4 or The Shake Dimension yet though.

@LtSarge No, it’s my first Wario Land game. I’ve got the others though and I was planning on playing them to see if they’re any better.

Just completed The Last Campfire (PS4) - a pleasantly short adventure/puzzle game where you control what may be a creature in a sack or maybe a sentient pillowcase to help other thingies?! to 'move on' by solving a variety of self-contained puzzles. Absolutely excellent atmosphere, musical score and narration keeps it compelling enough to keep me progressing in the hope I would figure out what the story was all about. One or two puzzles stumped me for 10 mins or so but non were mind-bendingly difficult.
Done start to finish (with platinum) in just over 6 hours.
If you are looking for a short game with little challenge maybe give it a go.

@nessisonett You should definitely give them a shot as the series starts establishing its own identity after the first game.

@Sorteddan I played it on my iPhone, nice little game

Just finished Persona 4 Arena Ultimax on 360. Or I should say, the first episode with the P4 cast. There's also an episode with the P3 cast, but since I haven't played P3 yet I decided to leave that for a later time. Anyway, this was a nice spinoff experience just like the first Arena but it wasn't anything special. You don't really need to play this game if you're a P4 fan and honestly, it made me drowsy most of the time because you're mostly just reading and fighting every now and then. Not a lot of exciting stuff in other words. The story is very basic but the whole appeal is to spend more time with your favourite characters and it was great. I'm glad I could spend time with them one final time but I think I'm ready to move on now.

With that said, I've now completed basically all Persona 4 games, including P4 Golden, P4 Arena, P4 Arena Ultimax, P4: Dancing All Night and Persona Q. The P4 cast is technically in Persona Q2 but I consider that game to be a P5 title, at least for me.

just finished guardians of the galaxy and man that is a fantastic game!

@LtSarge Wario Land 4 is great. It might just be nostalgia talking, as it was my very first GBA game, but I had a lot of fun with back in the day.

I've not tried the other Wario Land games, so don't know how it compares to them.