Your 2025 Gaming Diary

[nekunando]

 

[BowserBasher]

Right, finally finished the first game of my pledge. Mixed feeling through this one.

Overall a good game but shows its age in how we have become accustomed to so much in games today. I'll get to these in a bit. The game starts off with the usual training level, all characters present (you get to play as 6 in total, one being in a team environment and not solely alone) and each one gets a short introduction into what they can do. Apart from Willow all characters use their fists and feat to attack, along with getting weapons along the way. Willow uses magic.

Once the training level is over the main game starts and you are playing as Buffy. The main part of each level will see you just kicking vampire butt. over and over. This is then padded out with some puzzles, though not lengthy one, that task you to either move on to the next part of the level or activate something in the level. From the first main level you start to see the issues that I started to hate. First up, fighting can be OK when it's 1v1, punch punch kick stake! However later on you'll get a vamp and his friend attack you. No worries it's just two, ah but there is no way to target one and stick on them. the best thing you can do is line up to one and then go in fighting, and hope the other one doesn't get too close. kill that guy, then you can focus on the other. Again though just focusing on a bad guy was a pain as you don't always face them head on and punching will not auto focus to them, so again you have to kind run away a bit, turn, then go attack. Like I said, when there are two guys this makes fighting a bit of a pain, especially when they are both together and you can't really just focus on one guy. first 20 minutes or so when there was more than one guy I found myself being killed a lot until I started getting used to things. This is where another small factor comes in. the Y button. It's a do all button nearly. It acts as the button to pick up items, button to open doors, interact with objects, and the final stake to kill enemy button. Whilst it doesn't cause too many issues I feel it did when I wanted to pick something up off the floor and others where around me.

Sticking with the Y Button. OK, so this all joins into my next gripe about the game. Length of levels. Oh dear lord they take ages, and I mean ages. Now maybe it was cause I've never played it but the average time to complete a level was probably 50 minutes. this comes down to a number of factors. Not knowing what I was doing is of course one, but your objectives just aren't clear. You get the main objective and maybe parts in-between, so you may not know what you need to do to get somewhere. Whilst the first few levels weren't too bad, I started to resort to a guide as some things just weren't clear on what to do. Example: High School level. You are having to ward off a spell by placing bunnies on a number of pentagrams around school. in the library there is one of these locked behind a door. Xander says, "now where was the key kept". That's it, no more info, no clues as to what or where it is. Where was it, it was in a safe in the principals office. Easy enough. Well first you have to find a computer that gives you the code. Now you may have already come across that computer and it did nothing, but you wouldn't think to to go back to it. So I spent ages to walking around, going to the guide, I found which computer it is (and yes it was a previous one I'd checked which did nothing at the time) so got it. Headed to the office and just couldn't see any safe. Well it was a tiny square on the wall that is so easy to miss. Which adds that these parts you interact with, there is no button prompt like we are used to today. You just have to hope you are in the right place in front of it and press Y. A lot of the time later in the game when I was stuck, I'd just go around walls pressing Y incase it did something. there were a number of other situations like this that I came across. Anyway because of all that my time on that level was over an hour.

Well over an hour!

After that level I decided that I'd play blind up to where I just couldn't see what to do, and this happened on each level after a number of times. From where to go next to what something opened or operated. It just wasn't always clear.

Each level gies you plenty of weapons along with stakes to kill but I found myself just kicking and punching then staking. On occasions using a hell fire or holy water item to clear a few enemies at once, but these items are just not seen enough to waste. As such most were never used. Oh an on the fighting, there a "handbook" in game that shows you a list of all the moves you can pull of when fighting. The simple AAB or BBA combo, to others that you do by aiming towards the enemy then BBA or something. But when it comes to it, you just end up using the easy AAB, ABA, BBA types and it seems to do the trick.

The boss of each level, well kind of a boss, as you are tasked to collect body parts of an accent demon or witch to help you get the final weapon to defeat the final boss. Each level boss has a part of the body. Most of these fights weren't too bad, one gave me a bit fair bit of bother but was done eventually. And the final boss, well a few attempts and he was done. Didn't put up much of a fight when you get used to it.

 

One good thing is the game is fully voiced acted by the cast (90% of them probably) it seems Willow is done by someone else and whilst she does a good job, you really can tell it's not Allyson Hannigan and it does get to you, lol. I believe everyone else was voiced by the actor who played them.

Also the game has small videos you unlock from beating the levels which show interviews and VO sessions with the actors, a nice touch which I think a few other games did but you just don't see any more.

So even with the downfalls or level length, poor fighting, and puzzles that shouldn't take that long just because you can't actually find what time you need to interact with, I think the game was good enough. Id love to see this game given a modern treatment making some aspects easier and generally making QOL changes to help the player. 

6/10

Right. Updated image for front page. Think I'll be playing a Switch game next. I did purchase Stray so may play that.

[bob]

 

I was forced to remember last night why I stopped playing PC games and switched to consoles. Due to me not getting a PS5 (as I could not justify the cost given how much time I generally spend gaming), I was extremely excited that Spider-man 2 was finally announced for PC!

 

I spent a while clearing out the space to download it (140GB hard drive requirement!)

 

Last night I finished downloading it, and tried playing it. I was using my PS4 controller on my laptop (which was surprisingly easy to set-up - bonus points there). Bear in mind that my laptop has a RTX 2060 graphics card, so it's firmly in the middle of the minimum and the recommended hardware requirements. It auto-selected the medium graphics settings, which looked ok to me, so i was happy with that (i'm not a graphics whore particularly, as long as i can see what's going on, i'm happy. I don't really give a shit about frame rate either to be honest. i can't really tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, as long as it isn't turning into a powerpoint, I reckon it's playable.)

 

The first cut-scene featured an invisible character, holding a clipboard. Bit of a weird start, but then i knew that Miles Morales can turn invisible, so not out of universe....however, the next character that turned up was also invisible...except he wasn't - he was represented by a small ball of hair floating at around head height, that buzzed everytime he spoke.

 

The next scene featured loads of floating heads and other strange glitches. Which was when i twigged that perhaps something wasn't quite right...

 

I read online that one way to fix it was to turn your settings to 'Very Low', save, restart your computer, and then load it up again. Once you're in, you can bump your settings back up again and Ben's your uncle. So I tried that, and sure enough, all the character models came back in (with horrendously low res hair - all the characters have dreads). 

 

I played again for a few more minutes, and actually got to web swing for a bit, until I realised that a couple of buttons on my PS4 controller weren't working, the 'jump' button being one of them. Now I don't know if anyone here has played a Spider-man game, or encountered the character before, but jumping is kind of his thing - I'm running down the streets of New York, trying to keep up with Miles, until I realise that this is silly. So it's another save, close, restart, load it up. Now my controller is working! Yay! I can jump! I can swing! I can save the city!

 

So I'm swinging downtown, looking for Sandman, and I see a huge sandstorm. Get a bit closer, and Miles is talking about how we've managed to find Sandman, but I'm looking around trying to see him amidst all this sandstorm, but I can't see him. And then it hit me. The giant invisible hand of Sandman hit me. Damn it! The Sandman model hasn't loaded in, because I forgot to turn my graphics settings down to Very Low before I quit the last time. While it was amusing to see Spider-man clinging onto an invisible giant, I knew I couldn't play this section if I couldn't see the enemy, so it meant another save, close, restart laptop. 

 

I finally get back into the game, Very Low graphics settings (which I leave on because I can't be arsed having anything else go wrong), and I complete the opening sequence of the game. The whole thing has taken maybe an hour and a half, at which point it's time to go to bed because the kids are going to be up in 5 hours.

 

Still, 10/10 fantastic game, no complaints. 

[bob]

On 2/19/2025 at 8:13 AM, bob said:

 

I was forced to remember last night why I stopped playing PC games and switched to consoles. Due to me not getting a PS5 (as I could not justify the cost given how much time I generally spend gaming), I was extremely excited that Spider-man 2 was finally announced for PC!

 

I spent a while clearing out the space to download it (140GB hard drive requirement!)

 

Last night I finished downloading it, and tried playing it. I was using my PS4 controller on my laptop (which was surprisingly easy to set-up - bonus points there). Bear in mind that my laptop has a RTX 2060 graphics card, so it's firmly in the middle of the minimum and the recommended hardware requirements. It auto-selected the medium graphics settings, which looked ok to me, so i was happy with that (i'm not a graphics whore particularly, as long as i can see what's going on, i'm happy. I don't really give a shit about frame rate either to be honest. i can't really tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, as long as it isn't turning into a powerpoint, I reckon it's playable.)

 

The first cut-scene featured an invisible character, holding a clipboard. Bit of a weird start, but then i knew that Miles Morales can turn invisible, so not out of universe....however, the next character that turned up was also invisible...except he wasn't - he was represented by a small ball of hair floating at around head height, that buzzed everytime he spoke.

 

The next scene featured loads of floating heads and other strange glitches. Which was when i twigged that perhaps something wasn't quite right...

 

I read online that one way to fix it was to turn your settings to 'Very Low', save, restart your computer, and then load it up again. Once you're in, you can bump your settings back up again and Ben's your uncle. So I tried that, and sure enough, all the character models came back in (with horrendously low res hair - all the characters have dreads). 

 

I played again for a few more minutes, and actually got to web swing for a bit, until I realised that a couple of buttons on my PS4 controller weren't working, the 'jump' button being one of them. Now I don't know if anyone here has played a Spider-man game, or encountered the character before, but jumping is kind of his thing - I'm running down the streets of New York, trying to keep up with Miles, until I realise that this is silly. So it's another save, close, restart, load it up. Now my controller is working! Yay! I can jump! I can swing! I can save the city!

 

So I'm swinging downtown, looking for Sandman, and I see a huge sandstorm. Get a bit closer, and Miles is talking about how we've managed to find Sandman, but I'm looking around trying to see him amidst all this sandstorm, but I can't see him. And then it hit me. The giant invisible hand of Sandman hit me. Damn it! The Sandman model hasn't loaded in, because I forgot to turn my graphics settings down to Very Low before I quit the last time. While it was amusing to see Spider-man clinging onto an invisible giant, I knew I couldn't play this section if I couldn't see the enemy, so it meant another save, close, restart laptop. 

 

I finally get back into the game, Very Low graphics settings (which I leave on because I can't be arsed having anything else go wrong), and I complete the opening sequence of the game. The whole thing has taken maybe an hour and a half, at which point it's time to go to bed because the kids are going to be up in 5 hours.

 

Still, 10/10 fantastic game, no complaints. 

I ended up refunding the game. I tired again last night to play, but none of the fixes I tried would even get Spider-Man to show up, and playing with an invisible character just felt a bit shit.

 

I might try buying it again in a few months when they've sorted out glitches like this, but for now I think I'll concede defeat.

I'm really sad now, because that was the one game I was really looking forward to playing.

[Glen-i]

Yep, I already talked about Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia before. I played it again. Not exactly the same way, mind.

Here's my original write-up for this game.

The DS Castlevania games all have at least one alternate mode you get for finishing the game that has you play through the game as a different character. The locations and enemies are mostly the same, but the tools available to you are radically different. In Order of Ecclesia, this is called "Albus Mode". Albus is main character, Shanoa's, brother, he can't absorb any Glyphs, he can't use items, and he can't get any equipment.

He doesn't need them, because when it comes to evil vampires and the many horrifying beasties said vampire employs, the real question we should be asking is "Why don't you just shoot them?"

That enemy is normally really scary.

Albus has a pretty sweet gun! It's really powerful, even against unliving things! Albus has about 5 different attacks he can do with that, and he's really OP! Do it right, and you absolutely melt through bosses. There's something cathartic about fighting these bosses I struggled with in the main mode, and breezing through them with a gun.

That's not even the end of it, the dude can immediately snap to any location you touch! Suffice to say, this is very useful!

I have a soft spot for games that give you an unlockable mode that lets you play as a completely different character, especially if they're far too powerful. Kirby games like to do this as well. I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'm looking forward to giving the other alternate character modes a go. Even if @Dcubed has informed me that they're nowhere near as ridiculous as this guy.

Albus was right, he could've taken on Dracula himself.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Omori
Pokémon Scarlet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (Albus Mode)

Edited Thursday at 10:19 PM by Glen-i

[bob]

 

Well i guess I can update my pledge, unless they fix the PC version or I somehow end up buying a PS5, i consider Spider-man 2 done and dusted. 

 

I have since started playing Zelda BOTW2 on the Switch. As I mentioned before, i've had this game for a while, but never opened it. My opinions on the first game were mixed, and they remain mixed on this one so far. I'm enjoying exploring the world quite a bit - there always seems to be something new and exciting just over the horizon that you want to head to. I am surprised at how well the Ultra-hand gimmick works. Given that I work with CAD software for work, i thought that building structures and machines etc in a Zelda game would be far too fiddley and difficult, but it's actually quite intuitive to join parts together and build something with it.

That said, i find that the game overall is a bit too fiddly. The whole combat system is a bit frustrating. Pulling up swords/bows/shields and trying to join items onto your arrows/throw items at the same time as locking onto enemies and jump away is really fiddly. It seems like they tried to make the combat system as varied as possible, but at the expense of ease of control.

It also (like all other Zelda games) seems to punish you for using anything other than a sword. Why does throwing a bomb at someone do so little damage compared to hitting them with a rock on the end of a stick? Why does hitting them in the face with an arrow do nothing?

Anyway, i've fallen to the ground floor part of the world, and have opened up some of the region. Currently going into the Rito part and about to go into the blizzard cloud with the bird dude. 

[Jonnas]

On a similar vein as bob's Spider-Man 2 woes, SNK has actually launched an Open Beta for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves just yesterday. I giddily signed up and...

...it doesn't run on my PC Low video card memory. The true price of keeping my hobbies relatively cheap and frugal. Other realistic options that will allow me to own a playable version of this game include getting myself a Steam Deck (or similar handheld PC), or cross my fingers that this'll get a port for the Switch 2. Will have to give either option some serious thought.

I knew this was a risk when I first put this game on the pledge, but I really wanted to have faith.

Kinda sucks that this is the first update I have for my pledge. On a brighter note, I'm already playing another title that's also on it (and this one, I can play on one of my current consoles).

[Cube]

I made it to my second game: P.N. 03

 

 

The gameplay is decently enjoyable (once you get used to it), but it's very lacking. The whole dancing part of it turned out to have pretty much no relevance to the game and only exists so the main character wiggles her butt. It's just not part of the gameplay or style of the game at all, not even the music is particularly strong, instead oddly muted. You can't move while shooting, but dodging works well but there aren't that many enemies and you can figure the patterns out quite easily (again, they aren't linked to the music - there's just no rhythm to the game). The roll move is completely useless because the developers made sure she crouches with her butt in the air before she can roll. 

The game actually feels a lot like an on-rails shooter (even though you can move freely), in terms of having to mash A to fire (you can unlock automatic fire), the combo system and it's a fun shooter in this style. Unfortunately, it's lacking in the spectacle that shmups have, with most of the game taking place in a load of lifeless grey rooms (which are often repeated) or a brown wasteland. 

It's a bit disappointing, really. It needed to delve into the whole dancing thing more in terms of style, movement, music and enemies. 

[WackerJr]

Pikmin 4 (Switch)

A game that really tries to cater for both new and existing Pikmin players.  It doesn’t reinvent itself, but Pikmin 4 provides more gameplay, more Pikmin, more pilots, more ‘treasures’, more enemy types, and more luscious garden landscapes!

I’m unashamedly a big fan of the core Pikmin games (sorry “Hey! Pikmin” and “Pikmin Bloom”), and everything seemed instantly familiar, almost too much so.  Being able to customise your pilot is a neat touch, and then you’re thrown straight into the usual Pikmin routine.

Of the new aspects, Oatchi is a welcome addition, albeit quite powerful at times.  It’s a pup who acts a companion to your character.  I assumed Oatchi would simply be a replacement for a 2nd pilot ala Pikmin 3, but your pilot and Pikmin can leap on his back, it making traversing the ground so much quicker and easier.  It can be made into a 2nd pilot, vital for some of the later gameplay, but it’s also powerful in battle and is equivalent to multiple Pikmin when used to carry objects.

The above ground levels felt quite relaxed, with explorative environmental puzzles.  The enemies here never really felt too threatening and despite the fairly low difficulty of them, I still enjoyed the thrill of opening and exploring new areas.

The underground levels were more challenging, restricting the amount of Pikmin and forcing you to battle and find treasures down a varying amount of floors. Many of the new enemy types are located here, with a lot of the ‘boss-style’ ones only appearing as one-offs.  Despite the larger volume there were only a few stand out ones for me (my favourites were variations on the ‘Beady Long-Legs’ enemy).  I did find that much of the time their threat was somewhat lessened by saving up nectar from previous floors and using it to power up my Pikmin before swarming the boss, who often wouldn’t last long being pummelled by the abundance of powered-up plant creatures.  This does lead me to my main gripe - the amount of nectar it’s possible to accumulate to power up the Pikmin.  I was able to collect a lot, and it did mean that I could use a similar strategy on many of the enemies throughout, as opposed to tactically defeating them.

There were also timed challenges, split between ones with a set goal (e.g., defeat all enemies) or trying to score higher than another character.

Getting platinum on the timed challenges was probably the greatest challenge, as you really do have to strategize and prioritise what to do when given goals and only a tight time limit to do so.  I enjoyed working out the quickest routes and tactics, even if sometimes things felt a little hectic.  

New to the series were short night levels.  These see you trying to keep your base intact while creatures march towards it.  It didn’t feel necessary, but I quite liked it for the variety it provided to the usual gameplay and just breaking things up a little.  That they were each fairly short was also good.

As I can’t get the spoiler tags to work, I won’t say what unlockables there were, apart from I enjoyed them.

I think it’ll prove to be a great introduction to those new to the series.  It provided everything I expected, and I did really enjoy it.  It provided small QoL improvements too, such as being able to rewind time, a great addition.  For a game I spent over 30 hours playing it seems strange to say I wish it was longer, but I do.  The challenges and trying to earn medals extended the length of the game.  Unlike previous games in the series, I’ve no inclination to go back to this, but I do look forward to the future Pikmin 5, and hopefully Nintendo see the sales figures as making it worthwhile to make.

 

Here’s my 70-second video review.

[BowserBasher]

 

Game two done and dusted. I had heard it was short so I went and did this one next. And yes, it was done in just under 7 hours. But was it worth it, yes. It's not a taxing game, it's not going to rack your brain, but sometimes you just need a game that you can put on and enjoy for what it is.

I likened it a lot to games like Limbo, Little Nightmares. It's a fairly simple point to point game with a few open areas in-between. You start out with a group of other cats and start to wonder off across the very simple "tutorial stage". And then after trying to follow the rest of them over a larger gap, the pipe you are on breaks and you fall into down into the dark of the sewers. 

From there you are going from point to point really traversing the ground and rooftops, railings and other assortment of stuff on the sides of buildings.

You eventually get to the first main area where you get your first idea on what the story is about and why things are the way they are in the underground world. You meet a little robot buddy that helps you talk to the inhabitants and helps you collect stuff along the way.

There weren't a lot in the way of side quests or alternate stuff to do outside of the main story, collecting memories of the robot buddy is pretty much it but this didn't bother me. You can still spend time finding all the memories in each chapter by exploring every little side street or house and room. 

There's a nice little twist halfway through which has you do some stuff without the robot buddy. I nice change of pace but nothing taxing. It's fun to just walk around as a cat jumping up on things and knocking stuff off. As cats do. 

The ending seems to creep up a bit quicker than I thought whilst playing. I knew I was at the point where the end was in view, but it seemed to just end when you did that one thing you had to do. Little disappointed there. Was hoping you'd get to see a bit more.

there are many spots on the game that just allow you to lay down and go to sleep as the cat. Adds nothing to the game and doesn't move things along but is just quite cute.

It wasn't all great though. This may just be the Switch but I on a few occasions the game started to stutter along like it was chugging at 5fps. It just seemed to crawl. At one point the game just straight up froze. I wasn't even doing a lot in the game at the point it did it. It just stopped. I also came across a number of glitches and visual glitches that whilst were funny (one shown below) didn't harper the game. I did have to reset when I got stuck inside some tires though.

Overall a lovely little game, I got 21/27 memories as shown on the game select screen, so it maybe worth another play through in the future. 

 

8/10

 

 

 

I got stuck

Visual Glitchiness fun.

 

Updated pledge