Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, Galaxy 2 weirdly feels more like a predecessor to 3D World than it does a sequel to Galaxy.

I doubt Nintendo will remove the actual games. The collection itself will probably just be delisted with individual downloads replacing them. It'd be pretty dumb of Nintendo to not keep the games up for sale, and they could still say they weren't technically lying, because they did, indeed, take down the collection.

@Jackpaza0508 I hate when characters are slow in platformers. The best thing Nintendo did for the SM3DW Switch port was boost the speed of the characters dramatically compared to the Wii U version. Platformers are about movement and physicality. Slowness just works against that.

@RogerRoger I would recommend it because I think it's actually a prequel about how sackboy became the hero of littlebigplanet/Craftworld

Game: Spider-Man Miles Morales
If I could describe the first spider-man in one word, I would use the word Free because of the small but dense open world where you're free to do whatever you want. The word I would use to describe Miles' game is Community. This is because instead of all the side missions being crimes, you help neighbours. From getting a man's cat back to helping someone who lost their car to even just having a selfie with someone. It makes the city feel alive in a way the first game didn't do for me. But that doesn't mean this is a better game.

Let's start with the gameplay. Instead of having the first game's focus meter, this game uses a venom gauge. If you fill it up you can use a venom punch which is basically a lightning powered punch. As the story goes on, you can store more venom in your gauge. If you fill it up all the way when It has been expanded, you can let out a devastating venom blast. You also have a camouflage meter which turns you invisible which is very useful in stealth missions. The normal combat is almost the same as the first game.

Next is the music. The ost in this game is pretty great. The first game used orchestral epic tunes to set the mood but this game goes a different direction by using orchestral music with some hip-hop mixed in there! It works really well for miles!

The graphics. MY GOD, the graphics. As soon as you turn the game on, you're greeted by a model of miles which looks so realistic! My first reaction was "OH MY GOD YOU CAN SEE EVERY INDIVIDUAL FINGERPRINT ON THE HEADPHONES OH MY-". The snowflakes even fall and melt individually on everyone's clothes!

While I've been positive about the game so far, that doesn't mean I can't bitch about it! This game is way too short! I got the game for christmas and no joke, I finished it on the 27th of december. THAT'S ONLY 2 DAYS!

Conclusion
This game is almost a 10/10 for me. Everything about it is great except the length. Please play it if you have a ps5!
Pros
-Nice music
-Fun and zippy combat
-Out of this world graphics

Cons
-Way too short
9.5 Excellent (Almost outstanding)

I have some other games on PS5 like The pathless and Immortals Fenyx Rising but I haven't finished them yet so I'm gonna review them as soon as I'm done with them. So far, Pathless gets an 9/10 and immortals gets a 8/10.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy, spot on review of DMC. I played it for the first time ever (on Switch for me), and I'd say my experience was similar to yours. A bit rough in spots today, but still pretty fun with nice atmosphere. I hated that dark blob boss too, which I assume is the "Nightmare" you spoke of.

@Jackpaza0508, nice series of reviews! I honestly don't get the appeal of Bugsnax at all (seems like it's only getting hype as one of the few true PS5 exclusives currently out), but Astro's Playroom, Sackboy, & Miles are all games I'm looking forward to when I get a PS5!

@Ralizah, I think I remember hearing about Puzzle Agent back in the day (probably in Nintendo Power or Game Informer, as I didn't frequent forums back then), but that's the extent of my knowledge. Sorry to hear it didn't live up to your expectations (the gum thing sounds like it'd absolutely gross me out, lol).

@RogerRoger, cool review of Everything or Nothing. Don't think I played too many licensed games on GBA, but it looks pretty cool.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I actually learned quite a bit from your review, it’s been a while since I played the first DMC! Griffon, Shadow and Nightmare actually come back as playable characters in 5 which makes a lot of sense once the main twists roll around! Really great review and fair, the game is great but also pretty hokey in places due to its age.

Y'all coordinate a review party? Lots of good stuff to dig into today.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Nice to see you contributing again!

I appreciate the historical/development history component of the piece. I've avoided the Devil May Cry until now thanks to my dislike of most of the character action games I have played (mostly developed by PlatinumGames), but the creepier setting and mild similarities to RE have made me wonder on one occasion or another if the first one might be worth getting into. I don't like that there's such a small window of time in which to keep up combos, but it sounds like the scoring system in the game is more about finishing quickly and less about pulling off "stylish" combos, at least. I like the music as well.

@RR529 Nice SM3DW piece! I agree that the boss lineup in this is surprisingly strong. At least on par with Galaxy, although under Odyssey, which has the best boss gallery in the series to date. Lots of decent power-ups as well. Even if it lacks the more ambitious scope of certain other 3D Mario games, I feel like it took the sort of gameplay seen in the 2D entries and pretty much perfected it.

How far did you get into the post-game content?

@RogerRoger You know, I've never heard of this game, Rog! It sounds fun, though (rooms where attacks instantly kill you aside), and I like the personal history element you've woven in here. Releasing a Wolfenstein clone (if it can even be called that) a week before the revelatory DOOM is, indeed, quite rotten luck.

This is going into my Steam wishlist, where it definitely won't rot for another decade because I already own way too many games on this service.

@Ralizah, I got to World 👑 and completed it's Captain Toad level, but haven't completed Champion's Road or that super long Mystery House.

@RogerRoger, Blake Stone looks like a fairly interesting change of pace for shooters of it's era thanks to it's bright colors. Not an area of gaming I have any expertise in, but I think a cereal brand (I think Chex?) even released either a Wolfenstein or Doom clone, that was entirely kid friendly.

@RR529 Chex Quest!!! It’s so good 😂😂

So I managed to play and finish Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I was originally intending to write a full review (I might drop one later on), but tbh I'm quite exhausted with the series at this point so could do with a break!

Some quick thoughts generally:

• The game started off really strong. The strengths of this game are its setting (South America's jungle and villages are much more interesting than the barren Siberia of Rise) and its improved mechanics (pretty much every mechanic is improved, especially exploration and stealth; the swimming is perhaps the best I've seen in any game).
• This is the closest the reboot trilogy has come to feeling like the Core Design games, with a focus on exploration and, unlike Rise, an environment I want to explore. The crypts and tombs are generally quite interesting.
• That said, a lot of the puzzles were very tedious. Moreover, I encountered two puzzle-breaking glitches in my playthrough on PC (one fixed by simply resetting, the other resulted in me completely abandoning a sidequest). This really discouraged me and made me develop a distrust for the puzzle mechanics within the game.
• Although discovering new villages (e.g. Kuwaq Yaku, Paititi) was interesting at first (and also a first for the series - we'd never really seen much civilisation in previous entries), the overabundance of sidequests really put the game to a halt - affecting the pacing in a manner similar to Rise (and arguably worse - although fortunately this is all optional).
• The story again was fairly cliche and bland. I wasn't really sure, nor did I care, what the villain was trying to achieve, and the final few acts seemed a bit rushed. I did like the inner conflict of Lara having caused the natural disasters - but this was only sporadically brought up, and feel her inner turmoil was resolved too quickly.
• Similarly, the character development could've been better. This is the best relationship building that we've seen between Lara and Jonah, but Jonah again sat only the sidelines for most of the game. Other characters don't get much development or memorable moments.

Overall, a lot of issues I had with Rise carry over into this title, however I think the new setting and the improved mechanics go a long way to making me prefer this title overall. I feel that Shadow is the best realisation of classic Tomb Raider in the reboot setting. However, as a game, I feel that 2013 is most memorable to me and is the one I'd most likely go back to.

If I were to grade them:
2013 - B+
Rise - B-
Shadow - B

Thanks!

Yeah the glitched puzzles really soured what was overall a good experience. Luckily the first was easily overcome by reloading my checkpoint, but I was almost afraid that the second had completely broken the game for me (long story short - I was only able to continue by reloading an old save - luckily the game keeps your latest save at a campsite to help prevent you from getting trapped in difficult areas).

With the pace-breaking...as mentioned, this at least is optional. Unfortunately I go in with an "all-or-nothing" mindset, and once I start chasing sidequest markers...I start trying to go for them all. I definitely don't recommend that in this game - maybe choose one or two sidequests to get a feel for them, and quickly move on. Otherwise the entire game becomes a bunch of fetch quests for villagers, distracting you from the main experience.

@timleon I'm one of those people who gets anxious when side-content starts piling up, so, for me, it figures into the overall pacing of the game. In the best games, such content is meaningful and enhances the overall experience, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here.

It's good to hear the developer's built in a workaround to prevent players from losing too much in the way of progress, at least, but I think I'll probably do some investigating on how often these puzzle glitches crop up.

@RogerRoger Interestingly, the expanded options menu wasn't available at launch. But people with hacked Switches started messing with settings and showing off how much better the game looked with certain settings disabled, and the company actually responded by patching in the option to enable or disable a variety of post-processing settings. Very cool post-launch support.

In general, I remain impressed with how many games run well on the Switch. Even the base campaign of The Witcher 3, which, as mentioned, seemingly took less of a hit than the Blood and Wine campaign did. Granted, the drawbacks when playing on the system compared to something more powerful are obvious, but we're talking about simple differences in texture quality and framerate rather than the games needing to be entirely different to run on dramatically weaker hardware. I could see an updated Switch making use of some sort of DLSS solution to run games dramatically above its pay-grade, so to speak.

With that said, sometimes one is just flying too close to the sun with these ports, and I could feel the wax starting to melt with Blood and Wine.

And yeah, it's definitely a better than average experience overall. After 100+ hours of the base game and Hearts of Stone, though, the formulaic nature of the game has started to wear thin for me. Thankfully, it has the excellent narrative and character dialogue to fall back on.

I don't doubt CDPR will survive. I'm sure they still made mad profits on Cyberpunk, even with the huge number of returns, and consumers have short memories. CDPR will put out another game with a note thanking the player for buying it or something, and gamers will melt into a puddle and eat out of their hand again.

Thanks for the feedback! Yep, definitely agree that the first third of the game is the strongest - in fact, I was quick to write this up as my favourite in the trilogy until the rest of the experience pushed it down slightly. I think 2013 is a lot more consistent in quality, but is the least successful in capturing the Tomb Raider "feel", whereas that is what this entry excels most at.

I think the sidequests could go either way for you in that case. They actually do quite a good job of fleshing out the world and the civilisations that Lara encounters...but they bring the story to a grinding halt at a time where the story should be moving a bit faster, so they're really at odds with the rest of the game. In a way the main story and the sidequests almost feel like two different games. Personally I enjoyed the first few sidequests, but they became quite cumbersome after a while.

As for the glitches - specifically, I had these in the oil puzzle (which is the main story, but fixed by reloading the checkpoint), and path of fear (this is a DLC tomb, and the bug lost me the whole tomb's progress). There's quite a few reports of these bugs on Steam.

@timleon Great write up on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think you covered all the gripes I had. Oddly, I was really invested after the Tomb Raider reboot and played the heck out of it, then I played Rise and thought it traded the narrative for larger open world and side missions and then Shadow seemed to do the same but with a weaker plot and character development. Not a bad game, would say it is good but it was treading water imo.

@Ralizah Another excellent review. I've just gone back to Heart of Stone after finishing the main game a year back. I've been taking advantage of cross save with the PC version so been hopping between platforms. I still think The Witcher 3 on Switch is the best place to play because of the weakness of the open world design, being able to hop on and off on Switch fitted it better and was a trade off for good looking. It is a nice looking game on PC at Ultra settings but it isn't the prettiest game anyway. Think I will finish this DLC then wait a bit for Blood and Wine though I understand it is the stronger of the two.

I have been playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey for over a month and boy will I have some thoughts on that game when I finish it (nearly 45 hours in and I'm maybe over half way possibly?) so I haven't had much to add to this forum. However, as a break of fresh air, I played a game called South Of The Circle on Apple Arcade. Developer my (mainly) mobile developer State of Play, the game is a narrative adventure about a young academic working on a scientific mission in Antartica in the 1960's who is stranded in an airplane crash in the snow.

Approaching a review of a game like South Of The Circle is a challenge. It is a narrative story and one incredibly well told. However, so much of what the game is about is locked into its themes and story decisions that it is hard for me to pick apart how I feel about the game and how I felt about the narrative.

So I'm going to split this into two parts. The black and white description of the game itself and then some thoughts about the dangers of the narrative affecting reviews. I played the game on an Apple TV using a controller via the Apple Arcade service but can be played on any supported Apple device and touch screens will be simple enough. The story is set in an intriguing period. You play as Peter and involved with dual narratives. Via flashback you see him as an academic at Cambridge who has a good idea for a thesis but is struggling to flesh it out and gain acceptance of his peers in the early 1960's. At the same time, it charts his relationship with Clara a forward thinking academic who may be the key to unlocking his thesis with an angle that has international consequences. At the same time, you are charting Peter in Antartica trying to save a wounded colleague and find out where he is in the Antartic tundra. Against both threads is the backdrop of the Cold War, where it intrudes in both Cambridge life and the Antartic experience.

The gameplay, like many narrative games, is limited. You can control Peter in some sections but it is very much a forced path you must take. You can interact with some items, such as radios, but this is really done to break up the story slightly. The most interaction is where you choose responses in conversations based on mood, indicated by coloured options. These then affect the conversation. If you don't like these type of narrative games, then I've probably already lost you.

The graphics and animation are simple but effective, with a wonderful pastal colour scheme and design choice that is quite beautiful. The scenes and flashbacks of the narrative interweve beautifully, fitting the scenes and locales. It is rather stunning in places. The music is pitch perfect, often quite but sometimes punctuating the scenes. The game is entirely voice acted with some excellent performances that feel of the time period but quite natural. You'll find yourself attached to these characters. The game is about the perfect length of a game of this sort, roughly 3.5 hours so you can do it in one sitting. Performance is strong, even on the Apple Tv which isn't very powerful in the hardware stakes. In its presentation, its execution and for evoking emotions, this game is truly masterful.

Still, there is a but coming, and that is the direction of the narrative. The game has a point to make in its narrative and to even mention what that is thematically could spoil it. However, it is one of those choices that you will either find satisfying or frustrating. It is well told, it isn't based on a some sort of clumsy 'twist' and is told naturally through the game. On a personal level, I wasn't sure I liked the way the story went but that is probably to do with the success of the game in having me invested in the narrative and characters. I've seen others online (yes, I liked it enough to google it) split on this and I can see why. The story, as a whole, is consistent but will you like where it goes narratively and thematically? You might, you might not. It will certainly evoke an emotional response in you but I think your response cannot help but affect how you view the game. It has with me.

However, if you have access to the service and can play the game, I would recommend. I think this will be nominated for more awards and rightfully so. It is a story masterfully told. Just be prepared for it to go in directions you may or may not like.

@RogerRoger Thanks! If you like indie games, I think Apple Arcade is possibly the best value subscription out there. At £4.99 a month, the quality and amount of new games added regularly is really good. Some of my favourite games of the last few years have been on Apple Arcade and they do fund a lot of games. The only downside is needing Apple devices and if you aren't a fan of mobile gaming then the reason isn't as strong. So the entry price is high and I couldn't say to go out and buy an iPad or iPhone just for Apple Arcade.

A lot of games do appear on other systems either at launch or months afterwards. However, the devs of South Of The Circle are primarily mobile devs so not sure if they will move it across. I hope so as more people need to see this gem of a game.

@RogerRoger Well there are some great Apple experiences are also available or are coming to other platforms so do keep an eye out! Creaks, Mutazione, Neo Cab, Necrobarista and lots of others are on PS4 or Switch I think. They just seem to fly under the radar a bit!

@Rudy_Manchego Hearts of Stone was surprisingly good. You don't get a new region like in Blood and Wine, but, for my money, it has the best set of story quests in TW3 as a whole. Good call on putting some time between Blood and Wine and the rest of TW3.

Also, nice review of South of the Circle. I've not heard of the game, which I'm guessing is in large part due to my the complete dearth of Apple tech or services in my home (although I'll admit I'm slightly jealous of people with access to Apple Arcade, since there a couple of exclusives games on it I'd love to play), but it definitely sounds interesting. Especially given the controversial direction of the narrative. Even if it ends up not really resonating with me, I've always found myself drawn to artistic experiences that stick to their guns and challenge the audience, as opposed to pandering to them.

If this ever gets ported to a device I own, or if I ever get access to Apple's gaming service, I'll definitely consider playing it.

@RogerRoger If nothing else, the controversy over Cyberpunk and their deplatforming of Devotion has done a lot to quiet the obnoxious, cultish circle-jerking about how "consumer friendly" CDPR is in pretty much every gaming forum and website I frequent because the company offers DRM-free PC games and butters up the community in public statements every once in a while. One of the reasons it took me years to get to The Witcher 3 in the first place is because I knew I'd judge it more harshly than I should if I played it at the height of its popularity.

@mookysam Thanks!

I think there's a place for Switch ports of games like The Witcher 3, DOOM 2016, etc. But they're definitely not as easily recommended as many other ports and releases on the system are. I tend to play less demanding multiplats on the system because I'm a bit of a fan of handheld gaming tech and also because I want to support the third parties who are investing into an ecosystem that third party devs have traditionally been skittish about, but I think something like Blood and Wine is definitely on the edge of what I'd consider acceptable for the system. It's better than not playing the game at all, which is just going to be how it is for some people, who maybe don't have much access to TV time at home, but I wouldn't recommend it as a hybrid experience. With that said, the best platform on which to play a game is the one you're actually going to play it on. I think it's fine enough if you leave it undocked. Just... keep this version of Blood and Wine away from a TV, lol.