Topic: Games you've recently beat

Life is Strange: True Colors

As a fan of the series, I knew going in that I was going to enjoy it. After beating it yesterday, True Colors is probably my new favorite of the series. I have yet to play Life is Strange 2, but someday I will fix that so I can say I've played the whole series. I also don't consider that "canon", but I still do with this one since Steph was in Before the Storm, giving True Colors a link to the past Arcadia Bay duo of games.

Anyways, the game gets pretty dark quite a few times, but never overwhelmingly so. The darkest being obviously when Gabe dies at the end of Chapter 1 and then in Chapter 5 when Jed turns out to be a villain and tries to kill Alex, sending her into a time loop of her worst childhood moments. I will also give them credit as I didn't see the Jed twist coming until right before it was about to happen. There's also plenty of lighthearted moments as well, and the things you do with the side characters and some of your choices you make actually matter, as there's several different ways parts of the final chapter can do along with several different endings (some things similar, but still, at least several variations of scenes and such).

I would love a spin-off with Steph as the main character like they did with Before the Storm with Chloe, as Steph was easily my favorite character of this game. I haven't played her Wavelengths DLC yet, but it's not supposed to be anything substantial from what I remember reading, so a full-fledged story with her would likely be pretty fun given her spirited personality from Before the Storm and now True Colors.

@JudgeDredd Thanks. Ok, then that's what I get for not playing the game. Assuming, and you know what assuming does...

@RogerRoger That's a very good question, but Life is Strange is one of the IPs Square Enix kept in the sale, so I guess they still have plans for the series.

It seems to be doing well enough. Pulled this from Wikipedia...

"On 13 September 2021, Life is Strange: True Colors debuted at #6 on the UK games boxed sales chart based on physical editions alone, with 54% of sales coming from the PS5, 28% from the PS4, and 18% from the Xbox Series X/S.[57]

In The NPD Group September 2021 games report, Life is Strange: True Colors ranked at #10 for top selling games within the US, which is the "highest launch month dollar sales for any Life is Strange title to date."

I guess I was also wrong about Wavelengths (Steph's DLC). It has a 79 on Metacritic from 8 reviews. I may wait until it's cheaper to get ($12.99 for the Deluxe Edition add-on, which is essentially Wavelengths), but my expectations for it are a little higher now. Not expecting something beyond a couple of hours still, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy it given the character.

@RogerRoger You're welcome. You are right that there wasn't much of any hype for the game at any time, but I guess it didn't really need it.

I usually only play one game at a time now as when I tried to do two at a time, one started to take away from the other. If I did though, I doubt I'd want to play them both at the same time either.

True, it won't be. If I remember correctly, previous Life is Strange games went on sale often enough. The other option would be just buy it now and then wait and play it whenever you're ready to. Your call of course.

In the US, the physical copy is on sale now for $24.99, which is about $10 cheaper than what I paid for it. I'm guessing it's not on sale there too though. Oh well, as I'm glad I played it. It was a nice palette cleanser in between Cyberpunk 2077 and now Assassin's Creed Origins with the 60 FPS patch.

@KilloWertz @RogerRoger Yeah the LiS games have traditionally dropped in price fairly well. True Colors has actually held its value longer than any of the former games, I think. The current sale price is tempting but I have LiS 2 so I’ll start with that.

Does True Colors have things separated into episodes like the other games? I know it didn’t release episodically, but I don’t think LiS2 did either and they still have it so episodes 1-4 are on the disc and episode 5 is downloadable only through a code given in the box. A clever tactic to discourage the second hand market, for sure. Part of why I like buying physical where possible is because of the trade-in value, so I was hoping True Colors has the whole game on disc.

@Th3solution The story is told in 5 chapters like previous games, but yeah, the whole game is on the disc. There was a small patch as well, but that was to add a 60 FPS mode.

Just seen the credits roll on Celeste (PS4). Though there is another chapter so not really finished it all but I think I may be done with it nonetheless.
Been playing it on occaision for a few months now but hard for me to play for extended periods due to its difficulty level. I can honestly say it's probably one of the hardest games that I've completed in recent years, but that may be as I lack the dexterity and reflexes of some. Though I think it is supposed to be rock hard otherwise it wouldn't be much of a game. Definitely straddles the line between fun and frustration which I therefore label frustration type of gaming. Also I think the struggle is important as it makes the plot make more sense.
Total time around 9.5 hours, number of deaths around 2300!

And I'm totally using assist mode (cheat mode) when I go back for collectables and trophies, but think I'll leave that for a later time.

@RogerRoger Yeah, you'll be fine. I probably ended up paying more than I should have, as the $34 I paid for the physical copy is almost as much as what the Deluxe Edition is on sale for right now, but oh well. It's smaller than what the PSN store said it was (the game sizes are wrong a lot in the PS5 store), which is why I bought the disc version, but I'll be ok. I really liked it, which is what matters in the end.

@JudgeDredd
Really. Most of the reviews and feedback I've seen have seemed quite glowing.you sound less impressed. Did it just not click with you? We're there specific reasons or am I just misinterpreting your comment?
I do know the feeling though!

@JudgeDredd
Fair enough. Know what you mean though, sometimes a game can just seen like it's funelling you towards the next bit without much agency on your part and when it feels like that it just becomes a time sinking grind. You maybe right when you say it's a mentality thing because at other times I may have been fine with such things. Thanks for the reply though and good to hear some balanced feedback on it.

@Bentleyma I have Akiba's Beat in my backlog but haven't started it yet. The only reason I got it is because I heard it's reminiscent of Persona. Would you say it's like that series after having played through it now?

Just finished The Quarry. Sadly I thought it was pretty rubbish tbh

I liked Until Dawn and love the potential of games like this but unfortunately it suffered from the same flaws as most of them

@roe That’s disappointing. I was looking forward to this for when I get a little of my backlog whittled down.
Do you even feel inclined to replay the game to get alternate endings (everyone survives, everyone diets, etc)?

@Th3solution not particularly tbh. I probably will at some point but the choice system felt unreliable to me so I quickly became detached from all the characters anyway

It's reasonably well acted and there are some decent moments it's not all terrible. Just disappointing

It must be bad if all the characters have to go on the no carbs diet. I'd imagine that would be pretty uninteresting to play in a video game though.

@JohnnyShoulder Haha! Actually, typo notwithstanding, the “everyone diets” playthrough sounds fascinating. Having seen people do the keto diet, they can lose their minds and get borderline maniacal pretty quick. 😂 Maybe it could be the opposite of Don’t Starve where you try to starve but not go insane while also trying to defend yourself against all your camp friends who are slowly losing their minds and trying to kill you because they are all crash dieting. There could be a “Cabbage diet” enemy type and a “Atkins diet” enemy type and a “Mediterranean diet” enemy type, etc. There’s been sillier game plots. 😛

Evil Genius 2

I was thinking of doing a longer write up of this but I can’t be bothered to give such an average game the time.

I’m a sucker for this sort of game and the setting of playing an Evil Genius sounds great but game is really flawed. The game is really repetitive and the fact you only every have one lair limits the building side of things; I think I hardly built anything in the second half of my 40hr play. It also means you’re kind of stuck with any mistakes you make in your layout early on (not a problem for me as I had to restart after a game breaking bug 10hrs in..)

I completed every side mission and there are a stupid amount that are all quite similar. And being able to do one at a time means it takes forever to get through them. It also means a lot of your play time is spent sitting around waiting for things to happen.

The world map is also a bit of a mess and trying to find the marker for specific main or side missions is much more of a pain than it ought to be.

Despite all that, there is a fairly fun game in there but I don’t think I’ll be going back to to try any of the other Geniuses out.

Just finished off the authentic playthrough of Sniper Elite 4. Loved the game so far and just a little bit of mopping up now for the plat. Can’t believe I’d completely missed this series before!

@JudgeDredd not too bad mate. I was speaking to @render earlier and saying that it probably helped that I was pretty familiar with the missions etc. but yeah, only started my authentic run yesterday, so made pretty good time like.

By the time I mop this one up, I imagine I’ll be all sniper’d out for a while… I’ll be back for Sniper Elite 5 some time in 2023 though for sure.

@colonelkilgore I can’t put an exact figure on how long it took me to do that run but I think you’ve put me to shame with that time 😅