Your 2024 Gaming Diary

[Julius]

Hey all, hope everyone had a nice Christmas and, of course, Happy New Year! 

With 2024 upon us and time finally being called on 2023, one of the greatest years for playing from the tippity-top of AAA gaming to the über niche and sleeper-hitting indies, the constant remains clear: N-E's love of video games and, more importantly perhaps, talking about them! Discussing the games we love - and those we don't - with nothing but respect! 

So, heading into this year, of course the question on my mind is: are there any gaming-related New Year's Resolutions you'd like to declare at the top of this thread? A particular game or series or developer you'd like to scream out your intentions for playing or digging into? A particular console you want to dig out of the No Man's Land that is your storage space of choice? Or a new approach to how you play? 

Whatever it is: I can't wait to hear it, and I look forward to discussing games aplenty in this thread this year 

 

...after I catch up on the 2023 threads, ahem

Edited February 5 by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

2024 - The year of the JRPG. Other genres need not apply.

One thing I would like to do this year is to dig into my retro games some more. I was looking at my Gamecube collection and a lot of the games I've got I've not played for 20 years. It would be nice to put them to use instead of just sitting on the shelf. Maybe even finally buy a broadband adapter for the Gamecube and play PSO again....that could be dangerous. 

I mentioned in another thread how I would also like to play more on my 3DS. The backlog of JRPGs I have on that thing is scary. Dragon Quest VII, a couple of Mario & Luigi games, DBZ Fusions, Fantasy Life, Ever Oasis, Final Fantasy Explorers, Bravely Second, Radiant Historia...the list goes on. 

With the 3DS and Wii U online services going offline this April, I may fire up Triforce Heroes and go through that again.

Yeah, lots I would like to play but finding the time to play them is another matter. It's been great being off for the past couple of weeks over Christmas. I got so many games finished. Sucks I gotta go back to work tomorrow.

[Hero-of-Time]

I finished my first game of 2024 this morning. 

I was hoping to get it finished last night but I didn't manage it. That being the case, I quickly mopped up everything I needed to do, before I  headed off to work. 

I skipped Assassin's Creed: Valhalla due to how big it was. Both Origins and Odyssey were big enough (still too big for my liking) and so going even larger put me right off it. When Assassin's Creed: Mirage was announced I was thrilled to hear that they had scaled down the map and were taking the series back to it's roots. When publishers say this it's sometimes hard to take their word for it but Ubisoft were right on the money.

The game is definitely back to the size of the early games and has gone back to basics in terms of combat and weapons. There's no real RPG systems in this other than upgrading weapons and armour but then that was always in these games. It was nice to play an open world game that wasn't big for the sake of being big and could be finished in 20 hours. It takes about 15 or so hours for the main storyline and the rest was just mopping up the collectibles. The game was never going to win any awards or break any boundaries but it does what it set out to do and that was give the player a smaller scale Assassin's Creed game. 

One thing that did make a return from the past games were the tailing missions. There aren't that many of them and the ones that are there are pretty breezy affairs, but I still groaned whenever they did pop up. Still, there weren't half as bad as past entries where they would last for ages and it was very easy to get caught and fail the mission.

Well worth picking up for those who were tired by how large the games had become and weren't happy with the RPG direction it went in.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

On 01/01/2024 at 8:43 PM, Hero-of-Time said:

One thing I would like to do this year is to dig into my retro games some more. I was looking at my Gamecube collection and a lot of the games I've got I've not played for 20 years. It would be nice to put them to use instead of just sitting on the shelf.

And that's exactly what I done yesterday evening. I set up the old up the Wii (best I can do for Cube games on a HDTV as I have a component cable for it), looked through my collection of games and settled on this underrated gem.

I have a lot of fond memories of playing this with 3 of my mates. We used to have gaming nights at each others houses every Friday evening. The Gamecube got a lot of play time during these evenings due to a lot of the games being 4 player. When this was released we played the hell out of it. Over the space of a couple of weeks we set about the task of unlocking all of the checklist challenges the game had to offer. I used to think this was the game that started my love of achievements and trophies but looking back it was probably a combo of Super Smash Bros Melee trophies/hidden messages and the Skill Point system in the original Ratchet and Clank.

Before firing the game up I decided to check my memory cards to see if I still had my 100% clear data and hopefully see when was the last time I played it. I know some games in that era stamped a date on the saved data and I was hoping that would be the case here. Sure enough it was there.

Yup, nearly 20 years ago was the last time I played the game. Crazy! After checking the saved data, it was time to delve into the game and see if it still holds up after all of these years.

I wasn't sure what mode to start off with. City Trial was always a favourite of mine and the obvious choice to start the game with but I decided to play all 3 modes a couple of times and then settle on one for the evening. After playing each mode I decided to go with Top Ride, which always reminded me of Super Off Road.

It took some getting used to the controls for this. When I finally got my head around them I then realised there was another control option that suited me much better. Doh. Once I finally unlocked my first checklist achievement, I then set about doing my best to make it so I could at least see all of the challenges that the board had to offer. I ended up doing some crazy things, like doing 99 laps on a couple of the tracks and taking on level 5 CPUs and winning the race. I found easier to accomplish if I put it on 1 lap and 1 opponent. Worked a treat.  One challenge wants me to finish a race whilst swinging a hammer and I've yet to pull this off. I always get screwed out of it by the AI.

I like the variety of the challenges that are on offer. I was playing the main mode a lot where I was racing against the AI. I then switched to Time Attack mode to try and rack up some quick times and then I played some Free Play mode to knockout some misc.challenges. The challenges that involve beating certain times were very fun to tackle. Learning how to corner correctly in order to maximise the boosting effect takes a bit of trial and error but once you get the hang of it you can smash some of the times needed.

After the session was over, this is what my checklists looked like.

I was happy with knocking out half of the ones from Top Ride, which I suppose isn't surprising given it was the mode I was playing the most. I certainly had some fun with the game and will no doubt be back on it again this evening. Whether I am able to beat all of the challenges this time around will be another matter. I seem to remember some of them being multiplayer focused which was obviously easier to pull off 20 years ago during those gaming evenings. 

[Cube]

I'll be mainly focusing on my N64 games, but I will be playing a few odd ones. Finished Alan Wake II on the 1st then moved on to Sonic Superstars (which I'll post here rather than bumping the All Sonic games thread)

Alan Wake II

• Release Date: 27th October 2023
• Developer: Remedy Games
• Publisher: Epic Games
• Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series
• Version Played: Xbox Series S

I enjoyed the first Alan Wake a lot. Even though the gameplay wasn’t anything special – it was a decent action game – there was something about the atmosphere that captured me. It told the story of a writer that ends up getting his horror story twisted by a “dark presence” and finding himself getting trapped in it. A sequel was eagerly awaited and then teased inside Quantum Break, although it still didn’t come until after Control – however, Control had more direct links and even an appearance from Alan Wake in one of its DLCs.

Now, 13 years later, we finally get a sequel to Alan Wake and it’s even better than I could have imagined. The combat is much smoother (although still not something that could hold up a game on its own), but the story and atmosphere are where the game truly shines. This time, you play as two characters, with Alan Wake’s part taking place in the dark place as he tries to rewrite his stories to escape, and FBI agent Saga Anderson investigating some murders happening in the town of Bright Falls.

On top of Saga’s surname ringing a bell for fans of the series, her partner is Alex Casey, who coincidentally (or perhaps not) shares a name with the fictional detective in Alan Wake’s earlier books. He was originally a reference to Max Payne, renamed due to rights, and this is even more solidified by casting the same voice actor as Max Payne (James McCaffrey) while creative lead Sam Lake provides the voice model, just like he did from Max Payne. There are also a few characters from Quantum Break that are in a way reused in Alan Wake II in different ways – but it isn’t just lazy reuse, as different revisions is a big theme of the game.

I won’t get into too many details of the actual story. It does leave a lot of unanswered questions, but all the inconsistencies and oddities along the way all seem important and purposeful – one character from the first game is completely redefined, for example. On top of that, while the first game was horror-themed, this one is an actual horror game.

The game uses every method to create a sense of unease. While the game does utilise jump scares, the jump scares themselves aren’t supposed to scare you, they’re just part of the atmosphere to create the feel of the game – the only jump scare that made me leap on its own wasn’t even a horror moment. Other parts of the cauldron are the lighting and shadows – with the shadows moving – and sound effects. In the first game, you knew to expect an enemy after each “talkie” bit, but in Alan Wake II you don’t always encounter one (and in some cases, can be actually avoided), yet it’s a much scarier as a result. The possibility of an encounter with something unknown is immensely more frightening than a fight with another generic enemy.

But it’s not just the horror feeling that’s done using a mixture of different parts, the story itself is told in many different ways. The game mixes in live action parts (which, due to the graphics, blend in surprisingly well), such as a talk show and a 15 minute Finnish short film. Music also plays a large part, both within gameplay, with my favourite band Poets of the Fall reprising their role as Old Gods of Asgard – this time even portraying their live action versions, which was partly foreshadowed in American Nightmare – and some songs from other characters, with one particular moment causing me to create a separate save file just so I can go through that section whenever I want. The songs played at the end of chapters are also very important to the game and, if you pay attention to the lyrics, can reveal new details, as most were specifically created for the game.

Alan Wake II is a phenomenal experience. It’s packed with details and is incredibly suspenseful the entire way though. I’m already eagerly awaiting the DLC, Control 2 and the next Alan Wake to find out more about this bizarre and wonderful universe. Alan Wake II is easily one of my favourite gaming experiences.

(I had issues with screenshots at some points, due to sharing settings not being right, plus for a lot of it I was so immersed I forgot to take screenshots)

---

Sonic Superstars

• Release Date: 17th October 2023
• Developer: Arzest, Sonic Team
• Publisher: Sega
• Platforms: PC, PS5/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch
• Version Played: Xbox Series S

Sonic Superstars is a new 2D Sonic game, but in a wonderful looking 3D visual style. The core gameplay is similar to the original Sonic games, with Sonic’s movement and physics replicated extremely well, making Sonic Superstars feel right at home to fans of the originals.

While the game is designed for local co-op, the levels in the game don’t feel compromised in any way and work perfectly well when playing on your own. You can also swap characters between levels if you wish, and a few bonus acts focus on specific characters, being fully built around their traits.

Level design is great in Superstars, having lots of alternative routes and featuring lots of gimmicks. There is no reliance on blind jumps, although some obstacles can be difficult to avoid. Most missed jumps and falls will send you down to slower routes. You will eventually reach bottomless pits, but they feel well deserved rather than cheap tricks.

Chaos Emeralds have a bigger use in gameplay than in previous games, as each one (found by entering hidden rings and completing a decent special stage) will provide Sonic (or Tails, Knuckles or Amy – plus a new character you can unlock) with a new ability, which can be activated during a stage. These abilities are interesting and fun, but aren’t integrated into the game very well and I found myself completely forgetting about the system – but on the other side of things, it also means they don’t get in the way either (in a way that some people feel Wisps did).

The biggest issue with Sonic Superstars is the bosses. In terms of design, they’re a nice mix of different and interesting bosses, however as the game was designed for co-op, you can only hit them once during an attack sequence – no getting any sneaky extra hits in. The bosses spend most of their time invincible as you wait far too long between potential attacks. To make matters worse, some bosses are extremely long with platforming sections in between each stage, with no checkpoints throughout the entire thing. The frustrating thing is that it wouldn’t take much to change the bosses into incredibly fun ones.

Sonic Superstars is an extremely solid 2D Sonic game and feels like a great modern take on that style of gameplay (as opposed to Mania keeping things more in the past). It’s a shame that the bosses spoil the fun, as if those were improved, Superstars would be among the best Sonic games.

[Dcubed]

1 hour ago, Cube said:

I'll be mainly focusing on my N64 games, but I will be playing a few odd ones. Finished Alan Wake II on the 1st then moved on to Sonic Superstars (which I'll post here rather than bumping the All Sonic games thread)

Bu, but how will I know you've played everything in the series after you play through Sonic Dream Team? You can't leave your thread incomplete now, can you?

After all... you're here forever...

Edited January 4 by Dcubed

[Cube]

41 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Bu, but how will I know you've played everything in the series after you play through Sonic Dream Team? You can't leave your thread incomplete now, can you?

After all... you're here forever...

Sega freed me from the curse when they made a deal with the devil to lock Dream Team away.

[Hero-of-Time]

15 hours ago, Cube said:

The biggest issue with Sonic Superstars is the bosses. In terms of design, they’re a nice mix of different and interesting bosses, however as the game was designed for co-op, you can only hit them once during an attack sequence – no getting any sneaky extra hits in. The bosses spend most of their time invincible as you wait far too long between potential attacks. To make matters worse, some bosses are extremely long with platforming sections in between each stage, with no checkpoints throughout the entire thing. The frustrating thing is that it wouldn’t take much to change the bosses into incredibly fun ones.

Did you play through the bonus campaign and tackle the true final bosses? Both are really tough and drawn out. I think it's a big reason why the player trophy percentage takes hit when you compare the percentage of players who finished with the standard ending and the percentage who finished the game with the true ending. It's pretty brutal.

[Cube]

4 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Did you play through the bonus campaign and tackle the true final bosses? Both are really tough and drawn out. I think it's a big reason why the player trophy percentage takes hit when you compare the percentage of players who finished with the standard ending and the percentage who finished the game with the true ending. It's pretty brutal.

Not yet, might try it again at some point, but the bosses really put me off. 

[Hero-of-Time]

Put some more time into Kirby Air Ride last night.

The final 2 challenges I needed to complete were to finish 10 and 50 games in mulitplayer mode. I couldn't be bothered to go up the attic and get the other Wavebird out of storage but for all intents and purposes Top Ride mode is complete, especially when I have 5 free purple blocks that I can use to unlock my remaining challenges.

I had a nightmare with one of the challenges. I had to finish a race whilst holding on to the fire power up. This just would not spawn for me and when it eventually did, I got screwed over by the AI due to them gunning for me and making me drop the item. I think I was on over close to an hour just trying to unlock this one challenge.

I wasn't keen on the Water stage. It took a while to earn the Time Trial challenges on this map due to the tight turns and placement of some of the special abilities. There were so many times I got close to the time needed only for me to fumble at the finish line. Doing over 100 laps on this map was also a bit of a chore.

I started playing City Trial mode next and have only put an hour into it so far. I imagine completing all the challenges in this mode is going to by a slog. The ones I have uncovered seem to be very luck based. 

[Hero-of-Time]

I was wondering where my other Kirby posts were and then realised I was posting in them 2023 thread. 

Spoiler

I was back on Kirby Air Ride today. Went up the loft and got my spare Wavebird. This helped me finish of my remaining challenges in Top Ride mode.

After that, I spent a lot of time in the City Trial mode. This thing is so random. There's one challenge where you have to create 2 riding machines at the same time. The problem is that it's completely down to RNG whether or not the game spawns them. It's the same with events occurring. One challenge requires me to steal 8 items from Tac. I've been on the game a fair few hours today and not once has this event shown up. It's ridiculous. If these had been trophies or achievements their respective communities would have been in an uproar over some of these challenges. 

Here's the progress I've made.

 

 

 

Spoiler

The little SOB finally showed up. 

I was very happy he did because I was determined not to use one of the purple boxes to get an instant win.

Two modes down, one to go. Onward to Air Ride mode!

I put a little time into Air Ride mode and it's a lot tougher than the other two. City Trial was hard mainly due to having to contend with the RNG but Air Ride is gonna take a lot of skill and practice in order to beat the challenges. A lot of the time trials are incredibly tight and most of them require you to use a specific vehicle. Each of them handle pretty differently and so I'm going to have to learn to drive all of them to stand a chance of clearing the challenge board. This set is gonna take longer than I thought to complete.

Edited January 8 by Hero-of-Time

[Jimbob]

Started my 2024 off with a complete playthrough of Life is Strange Remastered and Before the Storm Remastered on Series X.  For remastered, boy there's some audio and visual jank with it (and a few bugs).  Had a few occasions where the audio would cut out (which included voices, not limited to music).  I did think it was my speakers, but pressing pause and the menu music played no problem.  Visual issues, think playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate on PS5 before they fixed things.

But still, taking them out of the picture and there's the same games we love with a pretty solid and emotional story.

[Hero-of-Time]

39 minutes ago, Jimbob said:

Started my 2024 off with a complete playthrough of Life is Strange Remastered and Before the Storm Remastered on Series X.  For remastered, boy there's some audio and visual jank with it (and a few bugs).  Had a few occasions where the audio would cut out (which included voices, not limited to music).  I did think it was my speakers, but pressing pause and the menu music played no problem.  Visual issues, think playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate on PS5 before they fixed things.

But still, taking them out of the picture and there's the same games we love with a pretty solid and emotional story.

Sounds about right. Most remasters these days come out with worst/more issues than their original release. 

[Hero-of-Time]

You know what's been great about playing on the Gamecube again? I start a game and there's no patches to download or game to install. There's no faffing about with brightness settings or questions about HDR. There's no end user agreement popping up asking about accounts and data privacy. I just pop the game in the console and it freaking works. At times it really annoys me what gaming has become. 

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

You know what's been great about playing on the Gamecube again? I start a game and there's no patches to download or game to install.

It's all fun and games until you play Mario Sunshine, though.

[bob]

The credits have rolled on the first Mass Effect (legendary edition). And when I say the credits have rolled, I mean the game has ended, because you cannot go back and replay any of the levels or continue doing side missions once the final mission is complete. Now, I kind of ballsed the game up a bit, in that I had intended to blow through the main story, and then go back and do some of the side missions, but now I realise that I can't.

Because of this, I feel like I missed out on quite a bit of the game, but I'll review the bit I did manage to play: I thought the main story was pretty good - I enjoyed the plot, and I thought the writing was pretty good. There were a few glitches (mostly my teammates getting stuck and not following me until I'd passed a checkpoint, but nothing game-breaking. The dialogue options seemed to fall a bit flat however - other than a few of the missions, none of my choices really seems to make a difference. I kept choosing the 'nice' responses, but it didn't seem to do anything? Is there any advantage to being a 'paragon' or a 'renegade'?

Similarly, I couldn't work out how to get better at lock-picking (hacking?). The first few levels had button pressing puzzles which allowed me to open boxes etc, but after a few levels I just kept getting the 'skill level too low' message. Was this because I didn't do enough side missions? It was kind of annoying that I just couldn't open any weapons caches for most of the game.

I also never got the option to 'charm' or 'fight' my way with the optional dialogue choices - they were always greyed out, even though I had the 'charm' tree maxed out. Not sure what that was about.

Overall I don't feel like I got the most out of the game, but I am intrigued enough to play the 2nd game, but I think I'll have a break. Watching the Uncharted film has made me want to keep playing those games, so I think I'll start up Uncharted 3 as my next game instead.

[drahkon]

20 hours ago, bob said:

I also never got the option to 'charm' or 'fight' my way with the optional dialogue choices - they were always greyed out, even though I had the 'charm' tree maxed out. Not sure what that was about.

Looks like you lack what kids these days call "rizz"

 

Haven't played games this year aside from the occasional run of Halls of Torment and Slay the Spire: Downfall before going to bed.

My life's up in flames right now, but the good kind so my priorities are tipped to the non-gaming side

Still: Both the games I mentioned are great and I would recommend them in a heartbeat.
Even though Halls of Torment is still in early access, it does offer a surprising amount of content (4 maps, 9 characters, lots of equipment and abilities). It's my favourite of all the bullet-heaven games I've played.

[Hero-of-Time]

It's been slow going but I'm getting there.

There are a couple of miscellaneous tasks to do but the rest of them are time trial based. Some of them have taken me an hour to just do one. You have to use every shortcut and trick in the book to achieve them. It feels like trying to get the licenses on a Gran Turismo game.

Kirby Air Ride = The Dark Souls of racing games.

[Glen-i]

14 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Kirby Air Ride = The Dark Souls of racing games.

You've played Kirby games, you know how it is. Easy to complete, an absolute nightmare to 100%.

This is familiar territory for Kirby games.

[Hero-of-Time]

49 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

You've played Kirby games, you know how it is. Easy to complete, an absolute nightmare to 100%.

This is familiar territory for Kirby games.

Out of all the ones I've played I've never really had much issue getting to 100%. Time consuming? Yes, but not as hard as this has been.

[Glen-i]

2 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Out of all the ones I've played I've never really had much issue getting to 100%. Time consuming? Yes, but not as hard as this has been.

Even so, Kirby Air Ride is the debut of the Smash Bros. Challenge Board.

As someone who still has flashbacks trying to beat 5 opponents in Cruel Smash with Lucina, you should know what you were getting into.

[Hero-of-Time]

38 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Even so, Kirby Air Ride is the debut of the Smash Bros. Challenge Board.

As someone who still has flashbacks trying to beat 5 opponents in Cruel Smash with Lucina, you should know what you were getting into.

I'm curious, have you ever 100% the Kirby Air Ride board?

[Glen-i]

39 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I'm curious, have you ever 100% the Kirby Air Ride board?

Hell no!

Don't even own the game! It's one of those multiplayer focused games where I might as well just play @Dcubed's copy.

[bob]

As someone who still has flashbacks trying to beat 5 opponents in Cruel Smash with Lucina, you should know what you were getting into.

Are you saying that HoT has flashbacks trying to beat 5 opponents in Cruel Smash with Lucina? If not, how would he know what he was getting into if those were your flashbacks?

[Glen-i]

Just now, bob said:

Are you saying that HoT has flashbacks trying to beat 5 opponents in Cruel Smash with Lucina? If not, how would he know what he was getting into if those were your flashbacks?

 

Anyone who has tried to 100% the challenge Board in Smash WiiU will have flashbacks about that one!

Oh, and just looking it up, it's 8 opponents.

Literal hell.