Your 2020 Gaming Diary

[Hero-of-Time]

Great read, @Julius.

I played Valkyria Chronicles for the first time back in 2018 and really enjoyed it. It has such a great story and I found the gameplay to be really unique. Also, you can break the game quite easily by using Alicia. It made getting the best ranks quite easy.  I really need to pick up the 4th game at some point.

The Last of Us is such a great game. Everything about it just felt perfect. You mentioned the areas never feeling too large and this is a big reason why I have yet to pick up the sequel. My eldest brother is a huge fan of the original game but dropped the sequel due to how bloated it felt. I've heard others say the same. 

Yakuza 3 is the next game in the series that I need to play. I picked up the collection at Argos a few months back when they were selling it for £22.99 but I've yet to get around starting it.

[Dcubed]

3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Great read, @Julius.

I played Valkyria Chronicles for the first time back in 2018 and really enjoyed it. It has such a great story and I found the gameplay to be really unique. Also, you can break the game quite easily by using Alicia. It made getting the best ranks quite easy.  I really need to pick up the 4th game at some point.

The Last of Us is such a great game. Everything about it just felt perfect. You mentioned the areas never feeling too large and this is a big reason why I have yet to pick up the sequel. My eldest brother is a huge fan of the original game but dropped the sequel due to how bloated it felt. I've heard others say the same. 

Yakuza 3 is the next game in the series that I need to play. I picked up the collection at Argos a few months back when they were selling it for £22.99 but I've yet to get around starting it.

Obligatory post incoming...

I have to because it’s true.

Other than that one incredibly exploitable flaw, Valkyria Chronicles is a good time.

[Hero-of-Time]

Lego Ninjago Movie

 

I've been silently picking away at this between the other games i've been playing. Warner Bros Games were kind enough to give the game away for free during the first lockdown and seeing as it's been a while since I played a Lego game, I figured I would take a break from playing indie games and concentrate on finishing this off today and get it off the backlog.

I watched the Ninjago movie last year on Sky and quite enjoyed it. The game follows the movie pretty closely, with movie clips being scattered throughout the game. There are times where things are skipped though, probably for the sake of time. There's probably only so much they wanted to show from the movie without giving the whole thing away for free.

I've spoke about this in the past but I will say it again here. I used to love the Lego games. The original Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean Lego games were great fun. They were nice and simple, stage by stage games with little hub worlds to explore. Slowly but surely the games started to become more and more bloated and eventually they moved into a more open world type of game. The main stages were massive and then you had a huge open world to explore. The size of the things weren't the only issue. With the games becoming so large then that would mean more testing would be needed but clearly this process went out the window because the games became very buggy, especially for achievement/trophy hunters. It became pot luck whether you would be able to 100% the games without any issues.

I happy to say that this game has certainly scaled things back a lot and streamlined the game, whilst adding things to the mix. You have around 10 stages to play through and after that you get to explore each of them with any new abilities you have. Replaying the stages in explore mode combines the open world gameplay and the standard stage gameplay into one and it's a much better experience for it. One of the annoying things in the old games was that you had to play the game once, then play it again in freeplay mode and then play through the open world stuff. This trims the fat and because of this the game doesn't end up feeling like a chore to play.

The new things added to the game are the Dojos and multiplayer modes. The multiplayer modes are 4 player competitive mini games and are quite throw away experiences but the Dojos are great. These are challenges where you have to earn so many studs certain high score to unlock characters and gold blocks. If you get a gold rank on these then you will get characters that have abilities that will unlock new areas when you go into explore mode. Basically, if you play through each of the Dojos straight after finishing the game then you will be completely set to unlock everything in explore mode. Again, this has been nicely streamlined from previous games because in the past you may have been missing a certain character/ability and you would have to search through each of the levels to find and unlock who you needed.

The combat system has also been changed in this game. It's nothing fancy but it does add a little something extra to the game. If you can keep your combo going you will earn a multiplier for the studs you are collecting. Dodging, making enemies dizzy and then unleashing a combo attack will give better results and amount to a higher combo. Past games just had you run around and randomly hitting the attack button, with stud multipliers been activated by the cheats/red blocks you unlocked but with this game you actually need to try think a little about how you engage with the enemies. 

I'm happy that WB Games gave me the opportunity to play this as it does fill me with a little hope that the Lego team will implement some of the these changes into the new Star Wars game that releases next year. If they keep the level formula that they have here then it may be a day one purchase for me.

[Londragon]

Got a code for an early look at a unique tower defence game, with a lot more going on than a first glance suggests.

[Together] Steampunk Tower 2 (Part 1)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son test out this action strategy tower defence game. There’s more than meets the eye with this one.

[Julius]

Catch-up post #2. 

JUNE

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES | 2010

DEFINITIVE EDITION | 2020

I'd been holding out for a few years when Nintendo announced last year in a Direct that Xenoblade Chronicles would be making it's way to the Nintendo Switch, with a fresh coat of paint and a number of quality of life improvements. 

This game starts out rough, in that it is almost overwhelming with so little progression in its opening hours. Tutorial screen after tutorial screen, massive areas where you can get lost in any direction, quest markers and green dots (NPC's with something supposedly important to say) filling up the map. I found myself questioning whether I was ready for a long haul JRPG, which I can honestly say is the first time that I've ever asked myself, especially after looking forward to a game for so long. Just give it another hour, I thought to myself.

And I'm glad I did. 

The opening hours of this game are light on story but quite heavy on exposition, but a short smattering of it later, finding myself familiarised with how to traverse Colony 9 - and the areas immediately surrounding it - and doing a couple of quests, and it all just clicks. Don't get me wrong: it is overwhelming. But once you've adjusted, once the frequency of tutorials popping up dies down a little, the quests and sense of exploration take hold, and quickly became this loop I craved to run around in over and over again. 

Experience for finding a new area. A treasure trove of experience for finding a secret area. A map which is simple to read (if a little confusing in terms of bridging levels at times), more than happy to lead you to directly to the next area to critical path the story, but is filled with exclamation marks to boot once you've stocked up on quests. You might not remember which quest you're taking that monster down or picking up that item for, but it's the perfect way to guide your wider exploration of the world and level up.

It rarely felt like grinding. The feedback loop of arriving at new settlement, talking to the locals and taking on a load of side quests, explore a new area and tackling a load of side quests, raking in items, EXP, materials, etc., is honestly one of the best I've encountered from the perspective of making you want to explore. I don't need these items, and I don't need this EXP, but it's on the way/just slightly off the beaten path, so I might as well check it out, and I would be grinding in a JRPG anyways. The UI is simple to navigate, and not having to make my way back to complete all of the side quests and being able to be told that I've completed them mid-fight is such a simple but respectful thing to do. That's without mentioning the generous checkpoints pushing you to explore, or how there aren't any traditional healing items (at least that I've come across yet) but instead your health regenerates insanely quick while exploring after a battle, and battles feel like they're in their own vacuum, like when a protagonist in an anime recovers from a fight in one episode to be back at it again against someone else in the next. And then there's jumping (or rather, falling, much of the time!) and taking fall damage which quickly recovers, but balances out the adventuring of the world with the fact that this is a JRPG. 

And speaking of adventuring, the sheer scale of this game put a grin on my face time after time, it made me feel giddy and almost like a child - you know, that sense of awe and wonder every time you saw something enormous, or cool, or remotely interesting? It's such a powerful thing for a game to put you back in that mindset, and it's one of the best reasons to play Xenoblade Chronicles. This game is MASSIVE, and it does such a great job of conveying that. Not only that, but time after time, I was blown away by just how diverse and unique locations were, massive new zones which are basically their own biomes with their own acclimatised fauna and flora, and extremely memorable by just how far this game goes with its colour palette and scale. At times, it almost feels as if it's taunting you: I mean, you bought that the world is massive, right? You'll probably buy the trees glowing at certain times of day too. I think a big part of that is the verticality of this game, and the scalability of those vertical components: climbing up vines, descending down ladders, jumping from a cliff above a massive waterfall, it's something I haven't really found as a focal point in world design in other JRPG's, or honestly, many other games in general. You see the head of that titan up above you? You can go there.

I want to share an example of the game's scale giving me that sense of awe, which I shared in the game's thread early on into my playthrough, but want to share again here, because it was probably the most memorable time it happened. 

Spoiler

After making my way through Tephra Cave, I was met by the starry night sky and looked out at the eerie piercing red of the Mechonis' eyes, way off in the distance. It was pretty terrifying. I turned and started making my way up the start of the Bionis' Leg, but before turning the corner, the sun rose and I instinctively turned back around, to be met with this wonderful view of the towering giant. 

And later that same "day", from Gaur Plains:

It's incredible. I lost count of the number of times I was in awe of this game. Sword Valley? The giant sword up above you, viewed from Gaur Plains? The sheer scale from the bottom of the Mechonis later in the game? It's amazing. 

And I haven't even got started on the level variety of creatures in these massive areas, which again, feeds into the feeling of this being a real, living and breathing ecosystem, and encountering a LV. 90 enemy rightly informs you that you are definitely going the wrong way - but load times after death are forgiving and very fast for a world of this size, they really want to let you loose and just explore, a far cry from what you would typically expect from a JRPG. Attacking a beast and then seamlessly transitioning into battle, the types of triggers which can draw them to you (sight, sound, being attacked), utilising Arts, preparing and making full use of Chains...the battle system is very unique, even if it does feel like its overstayed its welcome by the end of the game. 

This game is not without flaws. It has pacing issues in the second half. The story is pretty predictable...even by JRPG standards. Again, the battle system doesn't do much in terms of progressing in any meaningful way in the second half. Some quest chains are ridiculously long, or tedious, or both. Technically, not a spectacular game (frame rate dips and pop-in are consistent throughout). Some members of the cast are kind of tossed aside in the second half, which is a shame. The lack of a Photo Mode for the times in the game where you say to hell with the technical side of the game, the sense of scale is spectacular, I'm going to open the Settings, empty my HUD, zoom in until I am quite literally in the character, and the weapon on their back is no longer visible, adjust the camera - WAIT! the weapon is visible from this angle, turn slightly... - and then screenshot (and this is assuming that your Party Gauge is empty, otherwise enjoy waiting for that to drain, because for some reason it won't disappear with the rest of the HUD you just went into settings to remove). Being staggered out of the use of an Art (a similar issue I had with Final Fantasy VII Remake earlier in the year). Hilariously bad examples of clipping. And I do feel that the zones should have zoned in a bit in terms of scale much further from the end than they end up doing. Oh, and the game really pushing for you to do some crazy high-levelled quests towards the end (which I had a blast with), but then not having a scalable final boss (which, uh, given the context of what the final boss is, perhaps more than ever, makes very little sense) meaning that it's a cakewalk. 

And yet, despite its flaws, this is a game I would recommend to anyone, on the back of a rewarding gameplay loop, great world design and scale, and, you guessed it: a killer soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura, Manami Kiyota, ACE+, and Yasunori Mitsuda deliver a soundtrack which is an embarrassment of riches, covering a variety of genres, feels like it would be at home alongside some of the best and most diverse Final Fantasy soundtracks, and takes this game up another level. One such example of this is in most location tracks featuring day and night versions, which greatly fleshes out the vibe for the location, and goes a long way to defining your relationship with it; for instance, Satorl Marsh (Night) is this ethereal track filled with light piano strokes, strings, and an understated vocal element which makes you feel like you're floating in some fantasy, whereas Satorl Marsh (Day) brings a steady beat, bass, and heavier piano strokes to the forefront. Hometown feels like a starting Pokémon town in the best possible way, it captures a light and hopeful feeling extremely well; Gaur Plains is this epic adventurous track which makes you want to explore its wide open fields; A Friend On My Mind is a particularly beautiful composition, which always makes me a bit misty eyed; A Tragic Decision is an insanely diverse, rich, and haunting track; Riki the Legendary Heropon (yes it deserves to be here, it's a very silly but well composed track, plus the seriousness of the guitar is hilarious!); Thoughts Enshrined(/While I Think); The End Lies Ahead(/To the Last Battle); Ancient Mysteries with its slow and epic choir; the epic electric guitar riffs and awesome as hell trumpets in You Will Know Our Names; I could go on and on, and I'd probably end up listing half of the soundtrack, they did that good a job. However, there's a certain track which plays in an overwhelming amount of cutscenes, which builds slowly, has an intense guitar solo, a moment to breathe with a few piano strokes, and then, hits you with everything all at once: Engage The Enemy, easily my favourite track in the game. 

Xenoblade Chronicles is not going to be for everyone, and it's far from a flawless game. That being said, in a vast sea of JRPG's, Xenoblade Chronicles - with it's epic scale, world class soundtrack, and wonderful gameplay loop - is perhaps one of the most ambitious, keeping me hooked for the better part of the 70+ hours I spent with it, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.  

THE LAST OF US PART II | 2020

There is so much, yet so little, I want to actually say about The Last of Us Part II. A lot has been said - good, bad, and even sometimes in the middle - about this game, and I truly believe that I could write page after page about this game, like so many have, and so many will. But I think doing so would genuinely rob those who have yet to play the game of one of gaming's most intriguing and most complete experiences, and if anything, this is one of those rare games I'd rather people just experience, so while the rest of this will be focused on my opinions and thoughts about the game, I'm not going to be spoiling anything. Not even in spoiler tags. 

Let me get one thing out of the way: The Last of Us Part II is perhaps one of the most intense and emotionally draining experiences I have experienced in any form of entertainment. It is unrelentingly ferocious in its violent imagery, incredibly vivid in its depiction of love and hate, and horrifying in its insight to the potential malice of humanity. Blood spatters and sprays as the enemy clutches their neck, the blood audibly gurgling in their throat, before collapsing heavily in a heap; wailing on the enemy, cutting through them like butter as your breath grows tired and your face is dyed red; the unanswered screams of the enemy looking for their friend, now face down in a pool of his own blood. Every facet of combat is visceral, from the audio design of a machete meeting the long handle of an axe as it protects its wielder, to the fluid animation as you dive into the grass after being spotted while you searched for a way around, scrambling as you reach for something - a gun, a bow and arrow, a distraction - to protect yourself with. The production values of this game are on a level I don't think we've ever seen before, with faces and the Infected looking as detailed as one could possibly be comfortable with, and it's ironic that a game this beautiful is so grotesque and unremorseful in its depiction of violence. 

The story to this game is absolutely epic, in terms of its scale, design, and structure. It does an awfully good job of putting you in someone else's shoes, making you see Ellie's perspective, but then shifting the perspective and then asking questions of you: is she doing the right thing? Is Ellie going too far? As important and as well characterised as Ellie is in this game by Ashley Johnson, a lot of the heavy lifting in this game is done by the excellent work of its secondary characters, who, like the game's story, are constantly questioning why Ellie is willing to go so far, and be so brutal. Is it love? Or hate? Which is it that is driving her in this moment? While I do think that the game can be a bit heavy-handed when it comes to its core themes at times, it does so with such ambition, and such great range, that it's hard to not praise Naughty Dog in how they wrote this game, Neil Druckmann, of course, in particular. There were easier routes to take as a writer, but above all else, Druckmann is true to this game's characters and world - for better and for worse. This all being said, I do think that while the game has an abundance of memorable and great moments and interactions, it can oftentimes feel lonely when compared with the first game, as we control the hands of a much older and much more independent Ellie. That being said, the guitar mini game (a really fun use of the touchpad, and a great way to involve us in what could have easily been a cutscene), and hearing Ellie play the guitar and sing covers of some songs - mostly when she has someone around to listen - are especially touching, and Ashley Johnson has a brilliant voice. 

And I do think that the game - the second half in particular, though it is noticeable throughout - has some serious pacing problems, and while a large part of this is down to the story structure and writing itself, it's also down to areas being much larger, too. There is an area early on where you have free reign to explore a few blocks of a city, which is an amazing and open experience, and I want to make it clear: I have no issue with that part. It made sense in that the characters were searching for clues on what to do next, stock up, and so on, that this part of the game should have been more open. But throughout the game, everything just seems much larger than it needs to be, from the number of buildings you're free to explore in an area, to the number and size of the rooms in that building, to the size of that building's hallways - it always feel like you're reaching for something, which is a little further away than it would have been in the first game. This isn't to say that areas are scarce on supplies - far from it; in fact I would say the opposite turns out to be the truth - but rather, the physical space between those supplies seems further than it perhaps needs to be. Areas are big and fill up so quickly with enemies that stocking up after a battle makes the most sense, and so the game is clearly pushing you to explore to stock back up, but it feels like you're searching multiple buildings here, whereas in the first game you might be searching only one or two. 

In terms of exploration, this means that the collectibles - which told so much of the story in the first game - are also very spread out, and while I think they did just as strong a job here with things like the safe puzzles and with other items or visuals in fleshing the world out, it all felt awfully familiar: scribbled notes, lengthy diary entries, and light puzzles. Another big part of exploration is that it all feels very natural, and gone are the white lines of the game to give you a sense of direction, instead relying more on the visual cues and logical hints the folks at Naughty Dog have left for you to follow. While it's generally very seamless, and does a great job of pointing you in the right direction, there were admittedly one or two times where I did find myself questioning if I was going the right way; as areas are generally larger and more open to exploration this time around, it meant that I would often find a way out only accessible through a short QTE (you know, the ones where you hammer square to push a door open, or triangle to pull a garage door's chain down), recognise this as being the way forward, and tap circle to back out of the QTE so that I would be free to continue exploring; this admittedly did go quite some way to breaking my immersion while looking around abandoned buildings and closed off exteriors. 

I could speak about the music until I'm blue in the face, but all you really need to know is that Gustavo Santaolalla once again knocked it out of the park, but the addition of Mac Quayle and his unique, almost Hans Zimmer-like touch with the wailing of strings, brass, and guitar blaring scenes into life, screaming at you to take action, is also excellent. It adds an entirely new soundscape to the soundtrack when compared with the first game, a whole other dimension of music to demand your attention on a whim. 

I also think that what Naughty Dog has accomplished with this game with regards to accessibility is nothing short of brilliant, and it puts many other meagre AAA efforts to shame. I found myself spending 5 minutes just looking through them at the start of the game, and I seriously do hope that it shines a beacon to those less abled gamers that there are studios who are more than happy to put in the extra time and money so that you can share in experiences those more able than themselves often take for granted - myself included. It's worth checking out this video (don't worry, no spoilers there either) if you weren't already aware of the accessibility options in this game. I really think it's worth the time to take a look so as to appreciate it, but also, I think it's just great to have that perspective of how fortunate many of us are. I know I take it for granted a lot, especially in my love of playing games, and so I hope this only continues to be something we see trend on a larger scale in the coming years. 

The Last of Us Part II is a game like no other. Heck, at times, I think it's unfair to compare it to other games, it almost feels like it's redefined what a video game story can be. Time and time again I found myself being offered a string of QTE's in important cutscenes, struggling against characters this game told me were the bad guys, but with its sense of perspective and its attempts to challenge your own desires to "be the good guy" and "do the right thing", more than once I found myself looking away from the screen, lost in this grey moral area, hesitating to press square. If that doesn't speak to the power of video games as a storytelling medium - to gain perspective, empathy, and introspective moral questioning - I don't know what can.

Yes, you have to be in the mood to play this game; yes, it is going to take a toll, in a number of ways.

But, by its end, it is a brilliantly stunning, horrifyingly human, meandering epic of a game, and despite its flaws, I implore you, if you haven't already, to experience The Last of Us Part II. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Julius

[Aperson]

Pokemon Sword and Shield obligatory objective complete

 

 

Crown Tundra wound up distracting me from trying to do the Galaxy 2 Green Stars, need to get back to that sometime...

[Aperson]

In other news, been playing the usual side games as well as going back to Super Mario Galaxy 2. Man, I forgot how hard Melty Monster Galaxy is and these Green Stars are especially tricky. The third one is proving to be problematic...

 

While playing Magic Arena I decided to take it to the next level and started recording my experiences, the result is this video, the first in a multi card game experience of a Youtube series where I play kitchen table level decks online. If you think that sounds like it would be a disaster... you'd be right. But you may also be surprised...

 

 

[Londragon]

Managed to get a code from High Tea Frog for Ckae Bash.  They saw our demo videos and wanted a few more of the full game.

[Together] Cake Bash (Part 1)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son take their first run through the Main Mode, Get Tasty, to see what delicious extras the full game has to offer over the demo.

[Cube]

Played My Time at Portia for a while. A resource gathering, crafting game with relationships and dungeons (kind of a bit like a 3D Stardew Valley). 

 

I was enjoying it, but it definitely feels like an early access game. Some thinks are well made, others seem lazy. It only saves at the end of each day, I got fairly far into the game and had a very long dungeon. Finished it, built some other things, then the game got softlocked and I really don't feel like going through that dungeon again.

[Aperson]

So yesterday I finally got around to completing Mario Galaxy 2.

 

 

 

Grandmaster Galaxy was an absolute pain to get through on the Perfect Run, in spite of having seen this level done multiple times on Youtube. I grinded to 99 lives twice and still lost lives well more than idea. The main sections of particular difficulty were the flip panel sections with the shcokwaves and the end section with all the Hammer Bros. I found for most of the level if you get a rhythm goingyou can consistently pass many sections but that Hammer Bros section isn't like that an does seem to require a bit more dexterity and looking at where they're throwing the hammers.

 

At any rate, I'm probably going to move on to Super Mario 3D World and try and complete that next. At least after 10 years of starting the game I finally got round to getting 100% on it. So only 3D World and Odyssey on the list of Mario games I've yet to 100%.

[Londragon]

Onto the third and final of the co-op multiplayer games in NintendoLand.

[Together] NintendoLand: Zelda Battle Quest (Part 1)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son battle their way through Hyrule. Lee on the bow (GamePad) and Morgan swinging his sword all over the place (levels 1-8).

[Cube]

Played about 7 chapters of Killzone Shadow Fall and it's absolutely atrocious. Level design is a complete and utter mess, it's an absolute pain to navigate and work out where you're going (especially when the range of the grapple varies massively based on where you're "allowed" to grapple.

Combat is not particularly fun, enemies are really dull. Spawning of enemies just seems unfair (you can carefully approach areas but enemies won't actually turn up until you're in a designated ambush location). It's just not fun.

 I have zero idea what the story is about and it makes no sense. Googling previous games doesn't seem to help.

[Londragon]

[Together] NintendoLand: Zelda Battle Quest (Part 2)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son battle their way through Hyrule. Lee on the bow (GamePad) and Morgan swinging his sword all over the place (levels 8-12).

[drahkon]

Played about 4 hours of No Man's Sky on PS5 this week to wind down in the evenings.
Such a relaxing game (aside from the first 30 minutes when it's a constant struggle for survival ).

Deleted my base, i.e. the one you have to build for the main quest, so my mate and I will be able to build one from scratch together.
Yesterday we tried coop. Setting it up is simple: Just invite your friend.

However, the coop kinda suffers from one major flaw: Quests only progress for you. Which means you gotta do everything yourself. It kinda makes sense, given the amount of stuff the game teaches you, but it's a pet peeve of mine...

Anyways, my mate's first arrival on a planet, narrated by him and me (loosely transcribed by me):

Spoiler

 

"Ok, what the fuck?
I'M DYING, WHAT DO I DO? RADIATION DAMAGE? REPAIR WHAT? HOW?"

"Relax, you gotta follow the instructions"

"BUT I'M FUCKING DYING"

"Dude, stop screaming at me. I'm here to help." (I'm constantly laughing )

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, THIS IS BULLSHIT.
And I'm dead. SHIT.
Ok ok, I repaired this. I NEED SODIUM, WHERE CAN I FIND SODIUM?"

"Use the scanner...the game tells you to..."

"BUT I'M DYING AGAIN!"

"Yeah...use the scanner to find sodium. That'll keep you alive"

"OH MY GOD, what is this weird creature?
Ah, there's sodium, cool. So what do I do next?"

He then proceeds to follow the quest, read up some stuff and eventually finds his spaceship.

 

This is gonna be fun  

Regarding Sniper Ghost Warrior 3: I think I'm halfway through the main quest.
Also found at leat 50% of the collectibles. Looks like I'm going for the Platinum after all.  

What do I think about the game?
Gameplay is quite fun. Very slow, but the gunplay is great. At least for the sniper rifles. Sidearms are very clunky.
Not sure if the open world is doing the game any favours. I feel like structured missions in large but enclosed areas would suit the game more.

"Hey drahkon, what about the story and characters?", you ask.
(spoilers follow...not that you'd want to play the game for the story anway...)
"Sit down and let me tell you what I know:
I play as a military/marine/whatever the fuck guy. I have a brother. I see him being taken away during a mission. 30 seconds into the quest of finding him I realized that the only outcome will be: My brother is somehow the enemy.

There are other characters in play: Some blond chick who apparently was the love of my life but something went down and fucked everything up. Other characters include: a couple of voices I hear on a communication device. Neat.

 A war is currently taking place, too. Or a fight between some factions? Or there's some bigshot motherfucker pulling some strings? I don't know, I don't care. I skipped all the cutscenes and barely listened to anything those boringass characters keep talking about.

Also: There's some weird genetic manipulation thing going on...23 society. I'm dead serious...my brother apparently is a super solider now."

Anyways, that's where I'm at with the story  

[Cube]

The Spectrum Retreat. It feels like two quite jarring games smashed together. Half of the game is about a mysterious hotel which is actually a simulation, you are trying to hack out of it while repeating the same day over and over, you have no memories and are trying to remember what happened to you (although the mystery isn't very engaging, at the start you find "memories" of medical bills relating to your daughter, and with that I pretty much had it figured out). 

The second half is a Portal-like puzzle game. The concept is interesting. There are barriers in different colours, your not-Portal device has to be a matching colour to go through (although some are bridges, so you want to avoid that colour to walk over it). You "shoot" blocks of colour to swap the colours between it and your device, so a lot of the game is turning the right blocks into the right colour to enable you to get through a corridor of barriers.

I do quite enjoy the puzzles and the concept of them. there is, however, a major flaw: soft locks. It is far to easy to mess up something in a puzzle in such a way that it's impossible to proceed (so you need to go to the menu and restart that level). If this was 100% the fault of the player it wouldn't be too bad, but often these soft locks can be the result of making a swap which means something later on in the level (which you can't see or know) needs. Other times, it's because you needed to remember a certain order from 5 minutes ago. These soft lock issues just come across as bad level design. It just felt frustrating and I didn't feel like it was worth it to try and finish it.

 

The Unfinished Swan is very charming. There isn't really that much to the game (a lot of it is kind of just walking forward), but it's very pretty to look at and is quite short, which kind of helps it. I would love an expanded take on the gameplay, turning it into a puzzle game of sorts. I was kind of expecting a bit more "trickery" as well. 

[nekunando]

 

[Londragon]

The third and final co-op multiplayer game fully completed.  Onto the Single player games next, actually finished recording them today.

[Together] NintendoLand: Zelda Battle Quest (Part 3)

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son battle their way through Hyrule. Lee on the bow (GamePad) and Morgan swinging his sword all over the place (levels 13-14).

[Aperson]

Ever so slightly playing more Pokmeon Trading Card Game Online recently than Magic Arena. Got quite invested in the economy over the weekend.

 

On that note, I made a video of me actually playing with newer Pokemon cards on said online game, was released a couple of days ago! Playing my real life deck in this video. Spoiler... it doesn't go very well!

 

 

[Scratch]

No way, on my first try, I actually found an online game of Super Bomberman R on Switch! Took a few minutes, but considering how old the game is, and that I've never found a game on PC that's pretty good! Game's a bit slow to respond to input online tbh (although that might be cause I'm using a wireless connection for my Switch :P). But it's playable.

[Jonnas]

30 minutes ago, Sckewi said:

No way, on my first try, I actually found an online game of Super Bomberman R on Switch! Took a few minutes, but considering how old the game is, and that I've never found a game on PC that's pretty good! Game's a bit slow to respond to input online tbh (although that might be cause I'm using a wireless connection for my Switch :P). But it's playable.

The game is currently on a heavy discount (I've never seen it so low), so there may have been a recent influx of new players.

[drahkon]

There it is. The second Platinum I got while playing on a PS5.

This time it's from a PS4 game: Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, the missions and shooting gameplay are good fun.
Did I enjoy going for the Platinum? Kind of. The collectibles were a tad annoying.

Anyways, the game is a solid 6/10. Good gameplay, but the open world is entirely unnecessary.

 

Already know what to play next: Persona 5.

[Aperson]

Finally got some new games to play. I have just gotten Spider-Man Miles Morales (the PS4 version).

 

Played the opening segment and a bit after that, the last thing I did was the train puzzle. So far definitely feeling similar to the original though I'm not sure about the soundtrack so far and liked the theme that plays when swinging in the first game a bit better than the first one but I guess they wanted this to be feeling a bit different from the previous game with a different Spider-Man. Also the early cutscenes have made the villain totally obvious >.>

 

I find it interesting that the new mechanic in the game is called Venom. In a Spider-Man game... wonder if he's going to show up?...

[killthenet]

Super Mario Galaxy is one of the first games I remember buying on launch day, putting my student overdraft to good use in 2007, but somehow I never actually completed it - I put off fighting Bowser until I'd got all 120 stars but other things got in the way and I never went back to it. Fast forward to this year and the release of 3D All Stars, it was the perfect opportunity to right that wrong. The game is still as magical as it was when it first came out, full of that Nintendo charm and polish, and just brimming with great ideas. The battles with Bowser are terrific, probably the best in the series, and the story is much deeper than other Mario games (thanks to Koizumi's stewardship) with Rosalina's storybook being one of my favourite things about the game. The only negative really is that playing this makes Galaxy 2's omission from 3D All Stars even more glaring. 

That was the only game I played in October, but I got through a few more in November starting with Dark Souls III. It's one of those games I've had on my backlog for ages and with PS5 on the way I thought I'd give my PS4 a send off by finally getting to DS3. It's crazy that it took me this long to play the final entry in the mainline Souls series but it was a bit underwhelming in the end, I don't have many complaints about the game (I still got into the swing of things, enjoying the gameplay loop and levelling up) but it does feel like its going through the motions at times - definitely the right decision to finish the series here. I feel a bit cross with myself that I couldn't defeat all of the bosses though, Nameless King and Darkeater Midir are left unvanquished as I just couldn't seem to figure them out and the game is so old that summoning another player was never on the cards.

I've been working through all the DOOM games on Switch because the first 4 were available for pretty cheap, it was DOOM 64's turn this time round and it feels like a definite improvement over the first two entries (probably owing to the use of actual polygons instead of just sprites, the levels are easier to navigate). I'm still not won over to the franchise entirely, the level design is a bit too obtuse at times and it just feels like it's solution for ratcheting up the difficulty is just throwing dozens of monsters at you, but I'm starting to really dig the music and enjoying myself enough that I want to play DOOM III and the 2016 reboot to see how the game translates to more modern design.

Next up was Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest on the Switch's SNES app. Not really much to say, the music is obviously wonderful and it's impressive that Rare managed such a quick turnaround from the first game but it seems super tough, I honestly don't think I'd have managed to get through it on original hardware. 

Finally I played Abzu, also on the Switch. I had been aware of the game and meaning to buy it for a while, but it took until the recent sale to get the impetus to finally take the plunge. I absolutely adored it, I was a big fan of Journey and Rime so I knew I'd be into the aesthetic of this but it was exactly the kind of game I needed - two hours of intriguing and absorbing deep sea diving with gorgeous visuals and a cracking soundtrack. I was worried the Switch port would be sluggish and output an extremely low resolution but it looked and ran great - there are a couple of stutters when a lot of fish enter the frame and the lower resolution is noticeable but those issues never distracted from the games presentation for me, I always felt immersed in the game world.

Due to PS5 supply issues it looks like it's going to be a while before I can get one, so my PS4 will be sticking around for now - Dark Souls III won't be the last game I play on it and, seeing as I started my PS4 journey with The Last Guardian, I figured that the remake of Shadow of the Colossus would be a fitting game with which to close out my time with the system so I'm finally playing through that now. 

[Londragon]

Onto all of the single player games in NintendoLand.  Don't expect us to finish all these though.  This was more a matter of revisiting them, and seeing how we do in a single run.

[Together] NintendoLand: Yoshi’s Fruit Cart

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son try out the first of the solo NintendoLand games, a two screen brain melter.

[Londragon]

[Together] NintendoLand: Donkey Kong’s Crash Course

Old Nintendo Gamer & Son love this tilt and slide game, but do they excel or crash out?