Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@LTsarge I have not played Hellblade but I know that Ninja Theory is a very very good developer (and so is Tango Gameworks) so it would be cool to look more into Hellblade at some point in time. I honestly dont know what Hellblade is about though.

Still Wakes The Deep (Series X) - Impressions

Just finished Still Wakes The Deep on Series X after about six hours of playtime. Absolutely brilliant game! There are two things I want to praise this game for. The first is just how much variety there is to the gameplay even if it's first and foremost a walking simulator. The gameplay never gets stale and each section never overstays its welcome. It's always terrible when you play a horror game and you get stuck for a long time during a sneaking section. It just ruins the pacing. But that's not the case with this game as it constantly switches between stealth sections, platforming sections and so on.

The second thing I want to praise it for is its progressive game design. An example of this is how you enter a room and you see lockers and other hiding places but then you exit the room and realise that no enemy showed up in that room. Same thing in the next room, but then an enemy shows up in the room after that. I think this is brilliant game design as whenever you see stuff like this in video games, you always know that an enemy is going to show up in that room and because you're always expecting it, the tension gets ruined. But having rooms where no enemies show up just to throw you off is such a brilliant concept.

The story was fantastic as well. I love how the game starts off by showing you how normal everything is and then it becomes absolutely bizarre by the end of the journey. I always adore when games have supernatural elements in them. The story just becomes more interesting as opposed to a more grounded tale. Also, the setting of an oil rig is just unique and cool. You'd think there wouldn't be a lot of variety in terms of environments, but there actually is.

I also have to mention how great the voice acting is. I never knew how much I liked Scottish English! They should make more games with Scottish voice acting, it just sounds so cool.

All in all, this might be my favourite walking sim as it was simply such an engaging experience from start to finish. I just couldn't stop playing it! I highly recommend checking it out.

@LtSarge Like I said in the comments section for the review of that game, I look forward to playing it someday. I'm not sure when it will be as there's a lot of games, but I hope to remember to check it out at some point as it looks like it should be pretty enjoyable (if you are into that kind of game of course). It deserves attention.

@LtSarge Glad to see some positive reactions, I’m hoping to start it tonight, rather quite excited. Glad it was a winner for you mate 👍

@KilloWertz It's very enjoyable. I've heard that the other game The Chinese Room has made, Everybody's Gone to Rapture, is cool but very boring. I didn't find Still Wakes The Deep to be boring at all and like I said in my previous post, it doesn't overstay its welcome. Hope you'll like it whenever you get around to it.

@AgentCooper Be sure to share your thoughts about the game! Would love to hear what other people think about it.

@LtSarge Yeah I found Everybody's Gone to Rapture a complete bore to play lol. Glad Still Wakes The Deep seems to have a bit more to it then walking around and listen to the odd ghost.

@JohnnyShoulder I've been on the fence numerous times on buying Everybody's Gone to Rapture when it's been on sale. But I've always decided against it based on what I've heard about it. Safe to say that it was probably a good idea lol.

@Malaise I loved What Remains of Edith Finch. Some truly harrowing scenes. Also really enjoyed The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Firewatch, but didn't like Gone Home.

@Malaise I never did finish it as my save file got corrupted right before the end.

@JohnnyShoulder @Malaise I should play Firewatch soon. It's been in my backlog for ages now but I haven't been in a mood to play it. Considering how engrossing I thought Still Wakes The Deep was, I'd probably enjoy Firewatch right now.

@LtSarge @JohnnyShoulder @Malaise
I used play a lot more walking sims, but have been too caught up in all the action games out there. Of those I’ve played, I’d rank them thus:

1. What Remains of Edith Finch
2. Firewatch
3. The Stanley Parable
4. Gone Home
5. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
6.Virginia
7. Tacoma
8. Dear Esther
9. Proteus

I’ve seen Stray referred to as a walking sim… not sure if I agree with that but if so it would take the #2 spot on my list.
Also have heard people call Abzu, Journey and Death Stranding walking sims. In the purest sense I would say no.

Still need to play:
Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Soma (also a walking sim…?)
and Still Wakes the Deep looks good so it needs to be added to the list. There’s not many of these being made anymore.

@Malaise Thanks, I had forgot about Adr1ft. I remember reading a review from Rog he wrote. I’ll add it to the wishlist to track it for a sale or future PS+ inclusion. 👍🏼

As for Tacoma and Virginia, you can probably finish both in one weekend. Maybe even in one afternoon, honestly. Each are just a couple hours, and easy platinums if that’s your thing.

Marvel's Spiderman Remastered PS5 Review
Finished up Marvel's Spiderman Remastered PS5 yesterday. To me, the story only picked up in the last third - as a nonstop boss run - and the ending was good. To get there, I had to endure endless repetitive monotonous tasks to collect tokens, photographing landmarks and Black Cat spots. If they weren't connected to trophies, then I would've skipped most of them.

With the backpacks, they constantly disappeared, and I had to be forced to reload the save file just to make them appear. This really irked me, and considering this was present in the PS4 game, Insomniac Games could not fix that? Even after patches? Personally, I find this around above average and not as good as the general consensus makes it out as. To me, the Rocksteady Batman games are more enjoyable than this.
7 / 10

Control Ultimate Edition (Xbox Gamepass)
Also finished up with the game, except the Foundation dlc. Apart from the terrible astral challenge to get the dodge ability, everything else was fantastic.

Don't know how Sam Lake and co. at Remedy comes up with such trippy, paranatural narrative but it works. Their use of live-action projector reels, along with tape recordings, and all documents connected to the Oldest House is excellent. The gameworld is phenomenal, although the map was hard to follow. At least the signage pointed me to the right direction.

I did the AWE dlc, and that was excellent. I think you need to play at least Alan Wake to get the narrative, otherwise you'll be lost. BTW, I've played all Remedy titles except Alan Wake 2 and Quantum Break.
9 / 10

I casually discussed this game in a different thread, so now I inclined giving it a more thorough look. Appropriately, in the “User-reviews” thread.

Game: Kirby: Return to Dreamland: DELUXE

Platform: Switch

BREAKDOWN:

• Gameplay (Mechanics and Level Design)

RtD: Deluxe is a return to form for Kirby and a general refinement of the classic 2D Kirby formula to its absolute core. Classic in this case would refer to the Dreamland 1 Gameboy game, the adventure NES game, the gameboy advance remake of said game and the super star SNES game. Thus, it borrows no elements from the Dark Matter trilogy.

But this is still classic Kirby at its smoothest, with movement being better than ever, movesets being as expanded as ever and each power up being incredibly unique and diverse and addicting to use with its own learning curve. It can be reeeeeally to get the most out of them. Level design has essentially no wasted space whatsoever. Since it builds upon pre-established trends in the levels, it has a lot of room for improvement and takes as much advantage of it as humanly possible, with every pixel feeling like it had purpose, every power up placed for a reason and feeling it was deliberately placed there cuz it was the most suitable one for the given room you’re in, etc.

• Presentation and Visuals.

Beautiful visuals all the way through. The Wii game was already stellar, but this has a lot of love and craft put into it. It’s a very appealing game to binge through and it’s got stellar sound design which is really important for me in games in general.

• Final Thoughts

I’m really happy we got at least one quality 2D Kirby before the switch goes yeetus deetus, though that’s even expecting the Switch 2 to come out next year. While The Crystal Shards remains leagues above this for me I’m every conceivable way, I believe that this is still easily my second favorite Kirby, unless the 3DS robobo game dethrones which I actually very much expect it to since it looks like exactly my vibe.

• Final Score: 7.8/10

Welp, I wasn’t expecting to put the game on my wishlist and then immediately have it pop up on sale. 😅 It just got discounted to $5 in this most recent sale, so now I’ve got a decision to make. For the price of a taco and a soft drink I might consider nabbing it for the backlog. @Malaise

@Th3solution It would be fun to play a game like this on Game Club. I haven't participated in a long time, but I'd love to start now with a game like Adr1ft as I also have it in my backlog.

@Malaise I’m happy to use my cosmic wishlist powers. I also have the power to have something immediately added to PS+ if you want me to purchase something. 😅

@LtSarge Yeah, Walking Sim type games would be good for the Club. We did Stray a few months ago and it was well received and it motivated me to try and and I ended up really liking it.

@Yousef- Nice. I never played the Wii original, but enjoyed my time with RtD Deluxe when it was ported. Very traditional Kirby experience, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Definitely one of the better Kirby games overall, although it definitely sits under Planet Robobot and Forgotten Land.

This last decade has been very, very good for Kirby games.

The original Kirby's Dream Land is near the top for me, but almost exclusively because it was one of my first video games and I'm incredibly nostalgic for it.

I finally made it to the end of Dragon Age Inquisition - possibly the most boring RPG ever made.

It's an overlong, grindy, slog of a game, with combat, skill trees and progression that seems designed for a game about a third of the length it actually is. How people were able to invest hundreds of hours into this, I do not know.

I finished it in around 50 hours - well, that is sort of a half lie. It was more like over a hundred hours, in total. Both times I have tried to play this, I hit the same wall in the last 20 or so hours. The first time though, there was no new Dragon Age just a few months away, so simply cutting my losses and doing something more exciting like watching paint dry was an option. This time, not so much. As such, I engaged with a 20 or so hour battle to not give into the tedium and play literally anything else.

You need to finish this, I kept telling myself, you need this knowledge for The Veilguard! But it's so boring I’d whine back to myself, I just don’t know if I have the strength to keep doing the same static combat encounters and the same two world activities over and over again, I would plead with myself. I’d take a deep breath, grip my controller firmly and look ahead - I know, I know, I would say to myself like All Might trying to reassure a civilian trapped under rubble - But have no fear, my friend! You’ve only got to kill ten more rams and we can do the next story mission!

I dunno, maybe in 2014 this open world design was considered good, I appreciate the open world fatigue we have today was not the same ten years ago, I also appreciate we had recently come from Dragon Age 2, which took place in about four or five unfinished environments in a loop. If you had lived in a basement your whole life, even a carpark must seem quite exciting if its got a blue sky above it. But all I can say, is 2024 me doesn't like that Inquisition is just a big, empty, parking lot filled with MMO style busywork to create some sort of unneeded pacing mechanism that makes the whole game worse by existing.

And I mean Inquisition certainly reviewed well on release, so clearly some people stepped out of the unfinished walls of Kirkwall and looked upon Inquisition with wonder. But if you do a search for Inquisition online in 2024, many results are negative. I mean it's the internet, so that probably hasn’t shocked you. But I feel like the devil is in the details here.

You see, many of the replies aren’t the usual - I must run to the defence of a game I like and I must take your criticism of a game I enjoy, whether fair or not, like it's a personal attack on me and respond with that context in mind! No, most replies are a sort of silent, indirect no eye contact nod as they say something like “hey man you know, not everyone’s definition of fun is the same man. Heheh.” and then slide you a piece of paper across the table all secret agent style, eyes darting around the forum hoping no one is watching.

You look and see its 20 links to NexusMods, all of which are mods which introduce either basic quality of life additions that are baffling to not be included or mods that have been created over the years to address and carve out much of the game's most tedious aspects. The guy then gives a half smile, nods knowingly at the document in your hand, and shuffles away with sad slumped shoulders.

And while this whole review may all seem like wry bile, I promise it comes from a good place. I love the Mass Effect trilogy. A series I revisit every few years. The cinematic BioWare RPG just isn’t really something that exists any more. And also sorta never had, especially not within the triple A space, anyway. We don't really have any other game series quite like Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

At the heights of Inquisition's biggest story beats, its grand set pieces, its dramatic staging, its operatic score and then in all those quiet moments in between with your wonderfully written and performed companions, you’re reminded of that now much meme’d “BioWare Magic” and just how special it once was. How it once meant something and was the glue that held these games together.

You never played the original Mass Effect for its combat, as chucking a biotic dropped your framerate into single digits and your companions ran into walls, no, it was for all the moments in between those moments. Combat and missions were just something to overcome, to get to the good parts. The story, the next dramatic choice and the next quiet moment with your favourite companion.

Inquisition tries to fix this problem, to try and make the whole package reach for the same high bar. To make the set pieces not something you'd just rush through to get to the meat that came after them. But the problem is it also for some reason came with this mountain of MMO busywork tedious filler, and while mods do an excellent job of cutting down on a lot of this, there currently exists no way to remove this entirely, as its too woven into too many systems to be completely cut out. Like a tumour on the stem of where one's brain and spine meet.

If it was possible to remove all of that stuff, then you would have here BioWare's opus. One of the greatest RPGs ever made. One of the greatest achievements in gaming. But that isn't the game we have. And I can't weigh my feelings on a game based on the 30 hours I enjoyed, if there was another 20 hours of boredom so overwhelming it risked swallowing me whole. Maybe you disagree and that is okay.

And while there are plenty of holes you can poke into Inquisition, I'm still sort of in awe of how well it all holds together, despite the visible duct tape barely holding the skeleton in one piece. Unlike Mass Effect which felt like a trilogy of games with a clear vision, the Dragon Age trilogy is kind of a big mess, with Dragon Age 2's problematic development well documented (it is also way way better than I think the reviews give it credit for, but that is a conversation for another day). As Inquisition referenced things as far back as the first game - probably the most disconnected from the trilogy - as old faces returned to play major roles and close out past threads, as new developments threaded backwards into previous games, you just gotta take off your hat I think.

In a way though, that just sorta makes it all the more heart breaking that the main descriptor I'd levy towards Inquisition is that its honestly just sorta dull.

Oh well, onto Trespasser I go and then I am finally free.