@Tjuz Yes, actually the Reconstructor does remind me of the Cyberpunk mini-game, I think it’s called ‘Brain Dance’ or something. I didn’t play Cyberpunk for very long so I might be misremembering it, but that activity did seem similar to what you do in NWtD.
And I think you’re talking about Return of the Obra Dinn. 😄
Oh gosh, don’t ever feel obligated to take my recommendations. Now I’m worried about you playing Bloodstained and you’ll probably end up hating it! 😅
But actually, I have a minor allergy to 2D games and specifically Metroidvanias, so the fact I liked Bloodstained should comfort you. (And I should clarify and make sure we’re talking about the same game. I’m talking about Ritual of the Night) I’ve tried and fell off of several Metroidvanias over the years, and Bloodstained: RotN is one of the few I finished. I did play it as part of the Game Club we used to have on these forums, so I had other players playing it at the same time to swap thoughts and experience with, and I think that helped me push through the early obstacles of the game genre being out of my comfort zone. Feel free to hate the game and be disappointed but I do honestly think it was quite good.
Out of curiosity, I used our new(ish) search function to look for any posted thoughts about the game that I may have made, and I wrote some almost 6 years ago after I finished it. I didn’t do a review, but I was having conversation with the user previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy, if you remember her, and she asked me what it was about Bloodstained that made me enjoy it whereas other ‘vanias failed. Here is a copy and paste of my reply:
“…why I did enjoy Bloodstained so much despite clearly being beat down by previous attempts at these style of games?
First, I think the community engagement was helpful. The ability to read and share thoughts, experiences, and helpful hints really served me well; as well as the overall feeling of community, connection to a group, and emotional support to get through it. Peer pressure is a powerful influence! 😅
Secondly, I think I liked the aesthetic. I’m not as enamored with retro 2D graphics as a lot of other hardcore gamers are, and a pretty game can carry me a long way toward sticking with it. Bloodstained, although 2D, has really nice visuals and plays quite smoothly. It doesn’t look retro.
Third, I think the variety of shard powers and the feeling of constantly having new abilities to try out was helpful in keeping me captivated. Honestly, there was really too much in the way of abilities, but I didn’t get overwhelmed by them because I just experimented with new shards at my own pace and had my favorites that I stuck with.
And fourth (and perhaps most significantly), I didn’t shy away from using good ol’ google to look up videos, walkthroughs, hints, and strategies. My main gripe with ‘vania style games is the convoluted and confusing nature of the map layout and the “read the developers mind” aspect of finding the next place to progress and open up the map. I never would have reached the good ending without help. It’s just so ridiculously complex to get where you need to go. So I felt no remorse to use some guides (along with advice from this forum) and that made my experience much less stressful, and therefore more enjoyable. For example, when I played Guacamelee a couple years ago, I was lost as to where to go next within the first few hours and I felt like I was just wasting time wandering back over the same screens over and over looking for an exit. It was not fun at all. In the case of Bloodstained, at the first feeling of being lost I looked up online where to go next so as to keep things moving along. It’s a tactic I first grew accustomed to when I played Bloodborne where I just swallowed my pride to look up videos of boss fights and tips quickly after losing a couple times and I’ve continued to employ that strategy of not torturing myself trying to “figure it out” on my own. Life is too short for that!”
So there you have it, straight from Sol’s brain in August 2020! 😄
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Yousef- Yikes! First Mafia, now Bloodstained! Lately all my endorsements are not measuring up! 😅
What’s was it about Bloodstained that made you dislike it?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Yousef- Fair enough. As I mentioned, I’m not a fan of the genre either. It really takes just a special circumstance to make one stick. You might have more success trying a Metroidvania that has a setting that appeals and maybe it will pull you through the steep learning curve. Like the Prince of Persia one that TJ mentioned has a very different and attractive setting and style all its own.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Just finished Trails in the Sky: 1st Chapter after about 55 hours. Absolutely exceptional game and almost perfect pacing except for the final dungeon which dragged on for a bit too long and was very uninspired. The ending more than made up for it though. What a ride this game was! I'd put it up there as one of the best Trails games I've ever played. Considering how safe the first game in an arc tends to be, I was surprised by how engrossing the first one in the Liberl arc was.
Super excited to play 2nd chapter later this year!
@nessisonett Is there a particular reason that you've been playing through entire series of games? It's particularly interesting as there isn't much overlap between the Need For Speed and the Tomb Raider games
Just finished Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). Another excellent CoD campaign and probably my favourite one thus far. It could be due to recency bias, but I was just so immersed into the story and the characters. There were a lot of "sensitive" moments throughout the campaign, which I appreciate because that's just how reality is. Nothing's ever simple in war and you have to make hard choices. I'm glad that the developer wasn't afraid of showing that in the story.
It also helped make the experience more memorable for me considering I've played so many games and there rarely happens anything that stands out to me in the new games I play. This was most certainly a thought-provoking game.
I'm very excited to play the next Modern Warfare now and that might be sooner rather than later!
@Werehog I seem to have beaten Tomb Raider Legend in 2 sittings. That is not a long game at all. The PS2 emulation is sort of atrocious on PS5 but I’d rather just play them all on the TV rather than play some on the PC. Even though the game looked like it had Vaseline smeared over the lens at all times and the framerate was heinous.
It’s sort of… not brilliant? Like a microcosm of all of my issues with mid-00s game design. Every level is basically a straight line with the occasional (bad) physics puzzle. It really is proto-Uncharted in many ways, the sticky platforming and the genuinely bad gunplay being prime examples. Lara needs to work on her accuracy. Vehicle sections are yawn-inducing and blatantly copy and paste the same 3 sections of road over and over. And the QTEs are awful, the button prompts flying across the screen in the middle of cutscenes makes you on edge during every single tiny cutscene as it’s an insta death if you fail them.
I didn’t mind Zip in Chronicles but oh my word, he and Alistair in this game are annoying. Literally every 5 seconds you get a one liner through your radio. Without fail. At no point do you get that feeling of isolation in this game, it’s a constant stream of quips, Lara blatantly telling you puzzle solutions or telling you to scan things with your binoculars so you can get wise advice like ‘I can push that box’.
Plot is OK I guess, fairly standard and the retcons give Lara higher stakes with her parents and such. Keeley Hawes is decent as Lara but I honestly think her voice these days suits the character more now that she sounds a bit older. The egregiously horny art direction at times did make me laugh, such as Lara’s arse swaying in a dress with cloth physics that clearly pushed the PS2 to its limits while her boobs remain rock solid like she’s had bad silicone implants. Plus the baddie woman taking time out of her nefarious plotting to get GBA Tribal Edition tattoos that visibly extend down to her minge. Truly of it’s time.
Is it a bad game? Not especially. By design, it takes almost zero risks in an attempt to right the ship after AoD. It does everything relatively competently. Almost like it was aiming to be a 6 or 7 out of 10. But the game’s limitations are felt every time you do anything. Tomb Raider having precise, manual platforming and levels designed for exploring is what made the series great. Turning it into an on-rails action game with minimal adventuring is practically an insult to the series. 4 hours of completely middle-of-the-road action is not really a great game. I think this review is longer than any of the levels in the game. Anyway, due to it being semi-passable across the board if utterly uninteresting in most ways, it’s hard to really rank. But I’ll try.
Tomb Raider 3: The Lost Artefact
Tomb Raider 2: The Golden Mask
Tomb Raider 3
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2
Tomb Raider Chronicles
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
Tomb Raider: Legend
Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business
Also, there is a hysterically wide man in this game. Brutally wide.
Rolled the credits in Bioshock Infinite yest again. What a masterpiece! I am one of those people that actually prefers Infinite over the original and its sequel
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/random-doom-fan-has-a-novel-way-to-display-a-destroyed-switch-cartridge
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/07/random-fan-transforms-their-nintendo-64-into-a-starcraft-battlefield
My Sculptures
@nessisonett Apologies for the delayed reply, but a big thanks for continuing to share your Tomb Raider progress and thoughts! Despite a few areas of disagreement, I've really enjoyed reading both of your write-ups, and hope you'll return with more as and when (no pressure)!
Finally beat The Angel of Darkness and, well, it was interesting! It’s undoubtedly a mess, you can clearly see that the game was cut to ribbons and it’s chock full of mechanics that are used once or twice. But I sort of enjoyed it? The atmosphere is top notch, loved the gothic take on the series.
That's not to call you a lunatic, by the way! But I couldn't resist, because your opinion regarding The Angel of Darkness is one I'm pleased to see quite often. Anybody who sticks with it (even in its most broken state) often winds up appreciating its intent and recognising its enormous potential. Elements like its story, tone, atmosphere, and soundtrack are clearly where all of the effort was spent, which just makes it all the more tragic that the game itself never measured up. Even the remaster (which you're right, is a godsend and does a fantastic job with such busted code) can't repair all of the damage caused by the nightmare of its original development, but it's unquestionably the best way to experience the game nowadays.
I agree with you about the Parisian backstreets hub area. It's a real cool place to just wander around, even if there's not as much to do there as you might expect. I also agree that the Louvre is an all-time series highlight, and if you consider it along with the tomb hidden beneath it, that entire section is what I'd point to when answering criticism that The Angel of Darkness "doesn't feature any tomb raiding" and "doesn't feel like the classics". What could be more Tomb Raider than a museum built atop a tomb...?! Although you are right, the pacing in the Hall of Seasons does start to drag. You kinda have to settle in a bit.
I love that the remaster does Kurtis justice! For all the flak he's taken over the years, I've always loved the idea behind his gameplay section (although I have to admit, I vastly prefer his original character model... there's something about remastered Kurtis which just doesn't translate for me). And yes, had The Angel of Darkness been the first instalment of the planned trilogy, then that combat-free ending would've been far less anticlimactic. Can't remember where I heard this, so it might not be 100% accurate, but that extra bit of gameplay after defeating Eckhardt was deliberately kept "small and simple" so as to dovetail with the sequel's opening level and help bridge the games when playing them back-to-back.
Oh, good grief yes, the PS2 port of Legend on PS5 is a blurry mess! That's not the emulator's fault, though. Legend always had a bunch of heavy-handed post-processing effects crammed into it, and the PS2 version is trying desperately to match the visuals of the Xbox360 "next gen" version. You'll see a vast improvement if and when you play Anniversary (which looks great on PS5; the biggest leap was back on PSP, where Legend is borderline unplayable and yet Anniversary, running on the same engine, is one of the best-looking and smoothest games on the system). Crystal Dynamics needed a run-up, but they got there in the end.
I actually kinda love Legend. It's the game I reach for whenever I've enjoyed re-watching the Angelina Jolie movies, as it most closely emulates their "Indiana Jones via James Bond" style. In a lot of ways, Legend is a better Bond game than some of the Bond games from the same era, with its globetrotting variety and over-the-top action set pieces. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of classic Tomb Raider exploration and isolation, but in such a long-lived series, it's not like I can't get those anywhere else, so I'm a little more forgiving towards the attempt at something a little more mainstream. However, I can totally see how all those reasons I like it would be the exact same reasons somebody else might hate it.
And yet, here I am, nodding along with you saying that you preferred Zip in Chronicles and agreeing with you about Lara's utterly useless advice! There's a similar feature in Anniversary where she gets even worse, standing in front of complex multi-level puzzles and offering such essential input as, "Hmm... interesting." It's like, I get the idea, but sometimes silence would be preferable!
That's the trilogy all over, though. It's an effort to make the games match Lara's broad cultural impact and appeal, which they never have and never will. Lara's an icon known to millions, maybe even billions at this point, but only a percentage of that audience are gamers, and an even smaller percentage are interested in her specific type of game. It's weirdly telling that the Legend trilogy didn't sell so well, despite the fact that you're right, it really is a proto-Uncharted. A lot of Naughty Dog's apparent "innovations" over the years were simply refinements of stuff Lara had already done (such as the grappling hook) but that specific connection is rarely made, with folks instead focusing on how the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy was influenced by Uncharted... which again, isn't as blatant as the consensus would have you believe.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of your series playthrough and ranking! Hope you'll continue to enjoy. Are you gonna run all the way through to Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or do you reckon you'll stop before the reboots? There's another egregiously wide man in 2013 to look forward to!
***
@Thrillho Funnily enough, I went looking for something casual to break up my current playthrough of The Last Revelation last week, and ended up starting Need for Speed Unbound. Its frantic urgency and colourful style really complements the beige, slow-paced nature of the Tomb Raider series!
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
Right I recently played and well beated Coffee Talk which is like 80% graphical novel and 20% coffee simula
Now what did I think about [/b] Coffee Talk [/b] While I don’t want to spoil too much of the game I did think that Coffee Talk was a (good) coffee simulator. Not sure how much its thanks to the Unity game engine or like how much Unity have improved on consoles during the last few years. But here in a game released in 2020 Unity shines as [/b] Coffee talk [/b] runs very, very well.
Most things runs very, very smoothly. Coffe Talk also features a very nice soundtrack which like imo sync almost perfectly with the nice graphics in the game. The animation and audio sync most have been very much impossible during the PS3 era for exemple. So I think Coffee Talk is such a nice exemple of how modern tech most have made it possible for indi games to look and run so well. (and have maybe made it possible to make them like 1000 times cheaper if not more)
Now I could of course very much recommend Coffee Talk if you want to enjoy a nice game and have a few hours to spare. The dialog and writing in Coffee Talk was very cool and well "enjoyable". In coffee talk you play as a barista whose job it is bascailly to make coffee or ohter drinks that your consumers,, or friends are ordning. While you listen to their stories about things.,
How advanced did I think the coffee simulator part of [strong ]Cofffee Talk [/strong] was? Maybe not very but I did it think it served its purpose very well I honestly dont know or have played many games which features a *coffee simulator. In Coffee Talk you bascailly play as a barista whose job it is to serve your costumers coffee and you the ingredients for your costumers. I guess the game can actually teach you a thing or two about making coffee"
@Werehog I’ve started Anniversary and it really is a massive step forwards! Turning off progressive scan makes it look genuinely quite nice on PS5 for starters but the actual gameplay fixes almost every issue I had with Legend. It’s an odd one where I’m playing it thinking that most levels are undoubtedly not as good as the original but I’m very much enjoying the reimagining all the same. The QTE-Rex was a bit of a disappointment though, I love the moment you see it in the original as it’s just completely out of nowhere. I’ve finished up St Francis’ Folly so far which is one of my favourite levels in the series and while again, I do think the original is king, the Anniversary version is very much playable and good fun. I see what you mean about her notebook though, they prompt you to open it in front of a giant door and she basically says “I should open this door” 😂
@Zuljaras I'm a big fan of Infinite as well, perhaps as it was the first I actually played in the series (I remember trying a demo of the original PS3 and thought it was a cool opening but disliked the combat!).
The ending for Infinite is an all timer though; one of the few that had me thinking about it for a few days afterwards. The DLC is really good too and does a cool job of linking the games.
@nessisonett I almost used the "I should open this door" line in my reply yesterday, but thought I'd let you discover that one for yourself, as it's one of the most hilarious in the game! Glad to see you're enjoying it more than Legend and I agree, despite my usual affection for more cinematic flair, I'd definitely place the original above it in a series ranking. Not that it really matters anyway because hey, we get both! And there's about to be a third, too! I wonder if Pierre will be more or less of a pest next time?
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
@Werehog I just hope Pierre isn’t oddly bald in this new one, he looks like a completely different person in Anniversary! And I’m really not a fan of him just unceremoniously getting trampled, they seem to have made Lara much more adverse to shooting humans, I assume to soften her edges as it’s a prequel. But by Legend she’s mowing down waves of soldiers so it’s all a bit odd 😂
@nessisonett You'll see how everything unfolds, but it's interesting how Crystal Dynamics adapted and tried to integrate "Lara's first adventure" as the middle of the Legend trilogy. This was before 2013 and the reboot came along as well, which makes Lara's character arc in Anniversary even more of an anomaly!
But yes, justice for Pierre. I'm also hopeful that Legacy of Atlantis will embrace the popular fan canon that ships him with Larson, based on their old married couple energy from Chronicles.
"If I let not knowing anything stop me from doing something, I'd never do everything!"
I've beat a few games whilst I was away... I'll spread these out over the next couple of days so I don't spam a huge wall of text
Mass Effect 3
I stand by what I said before regarding playing the series for the first time over the past two years in that I enjoyed it greatly, more then I expected I would considering I'm not the biggest fan of space settings but it's not the be all, end all it's held up as in my humble opinion.
The fabled horrific endings were... Honestly okay considering where the plot was kinda going? Not jumping for joy over them but... Coulda been a lot worse... Granted I'm experiencing the better ending slides but still 🤷🏼♀️
I'm not gonna lie I really regret chosing Liara for Fem Shep to romance. I REALLY wish I could've chose Tali.
Oh and Edgelord McStupidface (I refuse to acknowledge him by his proper name) is quite possibly the stupidest addition ME3 could've had.
@HallowMoonshadow Nice! I actually was in an old forum thread this past week and came across some prior conversations you’d had with me and others about your trying the Mass Effect series and I did wonder about whether you ever completed it and how it went for you. I’m glad it ended up being better than expected, even if it fell short of esteemed reputation it garnered over the years. And I agree that when I played ME3 I didn’t feel like the ending was as bad as what the fan reaction was at the time. Apparently the DLC helps to wrap up the series to most people’s satisfaction, but I never got around to playing that. Did you do the DLCs?
As you may recall from those old conversations a couple years ago, I have intended on a replay via the PS4 remaster collection, but have still only played ME1 so far. It’s been hard to get time to play everything I want to play and replays of older games end up being some of the first on the chopping block when I have to choose priorities. Still, ME2 and 3 replays are on my ‘To Do’ list for when the opportunity may arise.
By the way, I think I happened upon that conversation because I was talking to @Tjuz about Metroidvania games to try and I recommended Bloodstained and so had to go back and look for my firsthand impressions after playing it and you and I had some dialogue about it that I was pulling and quoting from. (You’d asked me what I thought was the reason I liked Bloodstained so much despite not really liking 2D Metroidvanias otherwise, and my response was what I was passing along to TJ. Incidentally @Tjuz , how’s the game coming?)
Anyway, this new search function is great for finding some old posts like that (from 2020!) buried in the recesses of the forums. But yeah, I think that’s how I was reminded about your trying the Mass Effect series for the first time so I’m glad to finally hear (/read) the resolution of that gaming arc! 😄
Edit: And I’m anxious to read about your other gaming escapades you’ve been having lately. It feels like it’s going to be an episodic release schedule keeping me in high suspense! 😂
Just finished Keeper on Series X. Short but sweet game, it took me around 5 hours to complete. I just love how creative Double Fine is. I've always thought why we don't see more games with protagonists that aren't humans or animals for that matter. I mean, there's no limit to your imagination with video games, so why limit yourselves to the same kind of protagonists in every game. A sentient lighthouse is definitely one of the most unique protagonists in recent memory. Highly recommend checking this game out if you want a different experience.
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