Gaming What was the last videogame you beat?

Spoiler

I only did that on my second play through. I said the hell with the Bay; I went through to much with Chloe over the course of the game to lose her forever. I'd recommend another play through choosing different options. And of course there's the Before The Storm game that is essentially a prequel of events from Chloe's perspective just after Max left for Seattle. There's a comic series out now, and it actually takes up the story from saving Chloe.

 

I much prefer the ending I chose. Felt right.

 

I haven't even played LIS 2 yet.

 

I also did what the other two did. It wasn't a very hard choice for me. It just felt right.

 

So Replayed and beat Ghostbusters 2009. I love he game except for one bit... the stupid gate you have to smash with the possessed angel statues. I want to find the person who's idea it was and punch them in their mouth.

 

Replayed Portal, the original game that is. While the puzzles are much simpler than the sequel's, there's still an undeniable thrill from the central mechanics, that never fails to make your head spin with the possibilities. And it's absolutely dripping with atmosphere the whole time. Unlike the sequel, which is more of a broad comedy, this first game is absolutely a horror game at times, which such dark moments sprinkled throughout and a real sense of unease during much of the runtime.

Only took me 2 hours, but it was a very strong 2 hours.

 

Since my last review, I beat Uncharted 2, 3 and 4 two more times each, and 5 once (but onto another playthrough for 5 currently).

This was supposed to be a treasure collecting playthrough, which it was, but I got so hooked into the story yet again, that I ended up missing treasures. Guess I’ll have to do another full playthrough to collect them all properly.

So overall I’ve played:
Uncharted 1 - 3 times
Uncharted 2 - 5 times
Uncharted 3 - 5 times
Uncharted 4 - 6 times
Uncharted 5 - 4 times (will be 5 in a couple days)

I end up loving the soundtrack for the fourth game each time I play it. When I first played it when it came out I thought it was too simplistic, but now I can definitely call it a masterpiece. It just suits the tone of the game so well. Example below:



Death Stranding needs to hurry up and come out before I burn out these discs out from playing them so much.

 

I need to replay Uncharted 4 as it's the only one I've only played once (okay, Lost Legacy as well. But that's not Uncharted 5 )

 

I like to refer to that as Uncharted 4.5.

 

Yeah I mean it was originally just a DLC until they made it available as its own thing once it ballooned.

 

Assassin's Creed Odyssey: The Fate of Atlantis

OK, let's get the worst bit out of the way first: Layla. She is awful. What's more the game practically bends over backwards to try to tell me that, despite the crap she's done, the sun doth shine from her arse.

Spoiler

True, I expected finding that healing device to be setting up a resurrection for Victoria but nope. Instead Vic's corpse gets raided by her killer. Up until then, the game is trying to claim Laya will get to redeem herself for killing Vic. She doesn't, nor does she give a damn about killing her friend. The voiceover in the Atlantis DLC at certain points was truly grating, especially Layla claiming to be accountable - she isn't, it's bollocks.

The final ending for this part of the gaming was also very, very weak.
Fortunately, this is a minor aspect, but when it turns up, it eclipses all others.

This gets me to the second major weakness - the story itself. For each of the three episodes it was weak, reliant on simplistic and forced binary choices that really show up Ubisoft's understanding of what a RPG entails. There was also some quite nasty stuff that Kass was permitted no answer to. The main game story had these same weaknesses too, but this DLC was an opportunity to learn from that and improve, it didn't take it.

What did work exceedingly well for the set was the design and depiction of the realms. Each looked amazing, even the crap-pit that is the Underworld. The other major success was in some of the optional quests.

Spoiler

The Phoebe and Brasidas quests being particular standouts.

Bringing back some of the characters you fought in the main game as vengeful shades was a great use of the setting. The new Isu enemies mostly worked, though I found both the Isu Commanders and Atlantean Polemachs to be the definition of overpowered, health sponge enemies in the worst way. Yes, they died, all you have to do is stab them... enough. Those fights got boring fast. Most of the boss enemies in the Underworld suffered from the same effect, though duffing up some of those again was fun. On the evidence of the Cerberos fight where she was the old version, I freely admit that without respeccing Kass I wouldn't have finished this lot. At times the sheer defence was hilarious - Agamemnon kept setting her on fire, it did sweet feck all as she kept hitting him.

I did like that, having likely

Spoiler

watched her duff up Hades, Poseidon decided not to mess with Kass.

As to the game's final, final boss... urgh. It functions as an excellent example of both the standard DLC boss - bigger, harder, meaner - and the weakness of that: Not better. That last boss fight was a bore.

Spoiler

It would have been far more satisfying to smash the crap out of Aita and Juno than a lab experiment gone wrong.

Overall, it's a real mixed bag, but since I practically paid £6 for the lot I can't be that cheesed off about it. I got my money's worth, exploring and taking out the new locations in each realm, with the required change of strategy, was a lot of fun. It was only when I went back to the main quest content that it sometimes faltered badly.

For whatever the next game is? More player choice and less railroading, less 'gotcha' moments on how quest choices play out if you get them. Oh and that "morality" meter has to go. Origins was so much better without that.

 

World of Final Fantasy
It's actually a nice game. For years, I had only thought of it as that cutesy game introduced at the 2015 SDCC right before Square Enix shook the world by the Final Fantasy VII Remake teaser. But it's really a sweet game. The best part of it is that it features a hodgepodge of all of the primary Final Fantasy characters over the years; complete with many of their original voice actors (at least the ones from X on). It's kind of like a Pokémon-esque game; where you capture various creatures and can battle with them at your side. It gets a little strange in that instead of running around during the battle with your companion creatures you're all stacked up on top of each other; and you combine the powers. There is a post-game and "New Game +"; so there's plenty of replay value to it.

 

Spider-Man

This was a game which is on a par for Monster Hunter World for being a game I bought, but didn't expect to be able to complete. The two are quite distinct, MHW is simply a rock hard game with no difficulty settings and some rather brutal difficulty spikes. This one? In that respect it is all over the place in a way I don't think any game I've played has ever been.

Reason for my expecting failure in terms of completion is that I've found some of the random fights to be bloody difficult, so if the random fights are - or more accurately, can be that way - sometimes it can work really well - then it follows that the boss fights are going to be pretty brutal right? Especially if you have to deal with a supervillain team-up boss battle, which the game throws at you twice. Wrong. Turns out the boss fights are much easier. Even the Scorpion-Rhino one where the camera can't really keep up with the action was easier than a Spiderman-versus-10-random-thug-mix battle. A large part of this is that even a two-on-one boss fight, never mind one-on-one, is just far easier to keep track off. I had expected trouble on the Electro-Vulture fight because the preceding mission was a pain in the arse but since that fight didn't have a helicopter lugging around a transformer with a bazooka goon with infinite ammo, yeah they went down. The Li boss fight was also very satisfying and very smart, as you duff him up Li reverts to his prior persona, then reverts back to Mr Negative. And then there was the final boss.... That worked very, very well and is a good way to move onto the story.

It is the story that really kept me playing this. Unparalleled facial animations for the cutscenes with very sharp writing made for an excellent tale. Even if you know how it plays out, even if you've read a spoiler or two, it makes no difference. The plot hits home right through whatever emotional shields you may think you have in place. And it does that multiple times.

The gradual powering up process for the main character works well, the abilities, each time you gain one, does change your gameplay experience. The difference is quite tangible - getting a couple of big upgrades changed those random fights from can be murder to mostly just very violent, but with the odds a bit more tipped in my favour

As to the combat - it can range from great to awful and back again within a single fight or two. Things like the ground pound are very hard to aim due to the map and screen not being able to give you sufficient three dimensional sense of your location. Similiarly, the minimap for enemies is of limited use, as is stealth unless you're in an environment designed for it. All in all, I'd rank Arkham's combat above this game as it does a few things to just help the player, like smart auto targeting, which this game sort of does, until it decides not to. A couple of fights I'd taken out the majority, one or two left but had to play hide 'n' seek.

The other weakness is multiple control schemes - having one for the game except when hitting vehicles makes no sense whatsoever and hurts those sequences, which is a shame as they can be great. The other optional stuff? Bases are pretty good. Some random crimes can be good. The research stations and Taskmaster challenges rely too much on timed content that, combined with that weakness of location in 3D terms isn't fun. As for chasing the ****in' pigeons....

Also, for all I can see what they were going for by giving you a different character viewpoint, the MJ and Miles instant fail stealth sections sucked. By all means use those characters but give them better missions next time. And what was with giving MJ a taser on the final stealth mission? Which is one of the most surprising things about the game - a lot of the pre-release preview content they showed off was actually pretty late in the game, would not have expected that.

The best elements of the game is the webswinging and the recreation of New York that you get to do it in. This is a marvel of graphic design. One of the reasons you want to finish the game in Act III is to get the city back to how you know it should look. At each of the three different times of day it looks different too. Maybe it's not the biggest game worlds, but it's certainly one of the best.

One of the interesting innovations the game does is allowing you to skip puzzle content, recognising that not everyone either thinks in the right way to enjoy these or doesn't like them full stop. On some of the puzzles I got further than I thought, but hit a brick wall where whatever logic it may be using was utterly opaque. Cue skip. The move-sticks-to-align-frequency ones? Always hated those ****ers. The voltage ones Quickly became incomprehensible.

The biggest weakness of the game for me is that there are times when just about every supposedly human enemy you encounter comes across as superhuman. The brute enemies are harder than the game bosses to take out! Although my limits on manual dexterity won't apply to everyone else, maybe it'll be easier for you.

Overall? I have to go for very good. The flaws stop it being a great game, but everything else works well enough for it recover from its various self-inflicted clangers.

 

Tales from the Borderlands (2014)

Before I started Borderland 3, I wanted to go back and replay one of my all time favourite games, Tales from the Borderlands. Out of all the Telltale games, I think this is the most well made, with the best narrative and best characters. That's saying a lot, because Telltale has produced a lot of amazing games. I'm going to take that even further. After the Uncharted series, I think this game has the second best cast of characters in gaming history. Yup, they're that good. Rhys, Fiona, Sasha, Vaughn, Loader Bot, Gortys, Handsome Jack, Athena, Scooter, Zer0, etc. I ended up falling in love with each character after the first episode they were introduced in. I also have a huge crush on Sasha. So by the end of the game, I had a huge connection to them, and because it's a choice based game, I was doing everything I could to give them all the best possible outcomes. That's one of the main things that I love about Telltale games, lots of the decisions are in your hands, so you constantly feel some pressure in the back of your head that you need to protect everyone. Side note: I remember the most stressed out I've ever been in a Telltale game is the final decision in Mira's storyline in Game of Thrones, which was quite possibly the hardest decision I've ever had to make in a game.

I felt like my choices actually mattered in this Telltale game which is exactly how it should be, whereas this is less prominent in some of their other games. For example, I loved heck out of The Walking Dead series, but some of the times I found your choices didn't matter a whole lot, as you'd get the same outcome anyway. The storyline itself is perfect, and one of the most fun gaming adventures you'll ever go on. I have a weak spot for stories that start off with characters hating each other and not caring if they live or die, but eventually becoming close friends and risking their lives to save each other. I find it really satisfying and always gives a great chance for some amazing character development and conversations. Some other great examples that come to mind are Sam and Nadine from Uncharted, the Fast and Furious crew, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Asajj Ventress and the Jedi in The Clone Wars, Clementine and most people she meets in The Walking Dead, etc. I love it. Each episode of this game constantly surprises you with where the story goes and the crazy stuff that happens. You'd never be able to predict what's coming next. I love the Borderlands universe because it's just so weird and wacky that the game developers can get away with doing anything, which leads to some absolutely hilarious moments. I'm gonna say this is probably the funniest game ever made. The script writers are comedic geniuses, because the banter between each character is amazing. And there's so many memorable funny moments, like the eyeball, the face pizza, the finger gun battle, and everything with Loader Bot, etc.

The voice performances were top class, but what do you expect when the cast includes Troy Baker, Laura Bailey and Nolan North. I like to refer to them as the holy trinity of video game voice acting. They kept the art style and world building from the main Borderlands series, so the game really felt like it belonged in that universe. The song choices for each episode worked really well. The original score was fine, but nothing memorable. Then again, Telltale has never been a company known for their scores. So yeah, I don't really have any complaints. It's an amazing game, so play it if you haven't.

Ratings

Narrative - 10/10
Interactivity - 9/10
Soundtrack - 8/10
Characters - 10/10
Performances - 10/10
Art direction - 9/10
Game world - 9/10

Overall - 9.5/10

 

Ben I am glad you made it all the way through Spider-Man. That story just can't be missed.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider

This is a real mixed bag of a game. Graphically it is superb, it is a very pretty game - may not seem so at first but later when you get to the Geothermal Valley, you get some quite stunning vistas. Audio is pretty damn good too. Story? Probably it's strongest card.

Gameplay loop and difficulty spikes. Yes, this is where it falls apart as there will be times when a wall comes out of nowhere, like that ****in' bear at the start, gives you a huge amount of aggro and then, when you've somehow got past it, you easily do the next several sections of the game until it throws another wall out of nowhere in your path. It's not good doing this because it encourages a certain justified paranoia with the game. What's going to happen when I walk around this corner? I'm not convinced they were going for survival horror paranoia. For all the game wants to be this adventure story, its gameplay works against that.Also the camera angle it adopts too often stops you having a sense of which enemy is where which you do need because if they do get a good line of sight you're pretty much dead.

Combat options. It sounds strange to say it but, in a way, this game gives you a few too many solutions - to the extent that it's hard to keep track of them - you have arrows, poison arrows, bomb arrows, fire arrows, ice pick, shotgun, super-special shotgun, rifle, grenades, pistol. Plus all the stuff that, if you unlock it, allows crafting weaponry on the fly. If you can remember all of this then you may well be in the"it's too easy" camp, as if you do recall what takes out who, it probably will be. The one weakness of this series as a cover shooter is it doesn't always remember that it is. On the other hand, it integrates the fights with the exploration and combat far better than its predecessor.

Overall? Probably pretty similar to its predecessor but better in that it has far less QTE bollocks - couldn't resist indulging in that on that so-called endgame boss fight- but on the whole, they are mostly gone. The instant kill death traps, complete with gory animations are also reduced. Both of those raise it above the 2013 game. For both games I probably enjoyed a good 85-90% of them, but that 10% of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking-moments really does, when you're in one of them, utterly eclipse that greater part. So, weighing that up? Let's go for very good.

 

Hitman (2016)

I’ve always wanted to play this game, but didn’t want to pay a lot. Thankfully I got it for free. I’m still glad I didn’t pay for it, only because it was far too short. The game itself was great! I really enjoyed five out of the six levels, so I’d call that a big success.

Let’s talk about the big three things in gaming: story, gameplay and characters. In one word, the story was forgettable. There’s six missions, and before each of them an agent gives you a briefing on the problem and the targets you need to eliminate. I loved that as it made you felt like an actual secret agent. But the story that spans over the six missions isn’t very interesting. It just feels like that was a last minute thing they worked on after the game was already complete. I understand the gameplay was their primary focus, but the game would’ve definitely been better if there was a great story. The characters also suffer from the same problem. They’re underdeveloped and don’t feel very important. I can’t even recall a single character’s name, besides Agent 47 obviously. 47 was pretty cool, but they gave me no reason to get attached to him, so he’ll never make it onto my best gaming characters lists.

Now the gameplay. Definitely the strongest element of the game, and the main reason for my enjoyment. I absolutely love how they drop you into the map and pretty much say “go eliminate your targets any way you can”. This gives you a sense of freedom and control, and you always feel like everything you do makes an impact. Yes, the game gives you multiple options to take down each target, but you still have to plan out how you approach these options and then execute them correctly. You can mess up, and I did plenty of times. It’s not a game you can rush, as you actually have to always use your brain. It wasn’t so easy that it felt underwhelming, and it wasn’t so hard that it felt annoying. The difficulty was perfect. The assassinations are very creative and so satisfying to do. And because there’s so many ways to do each level, it has a lot of replay value.

The game world was surprisingly beautiful. I didn’t expect it to look so good. Italy and Japan were the stand out levels for me. The view from your balcony looking out onto Mt. Fuji was breathtaking. If you can get this game at a reasonable price and are up for a fun challenge, I highly recommend it.

Ratings

Narrative - 6/10
Gameplay - 8/10
Soundtrack - 6/10
Characters - 6/10
Performances - 8/10
Graphics - 8/10
Art direction - 8/10
Game world - 8/10

Overall - 8/10

 

Outer Worlds

I was expecting great things with this game especially after being let down by Fallout 76. Is it better than Fallout New Vegas? No, but I didn’t expect Obsidian to pull that off.

Something that surprised me a lot was I only experienced one game bug throughout my twenty plus hours of playing. Probably one of the least buggy RPGs I have ever played.

The story is great the writing is what really brings it all together.

Now onto the two negatives

First the companions in the game which I like a lot needed to be fleshed out a bit more. They just are your best friend the moment you recruit them. That should be built up.

Secondly don’t make your villain so evil. At least make them gray. The “board” is so blatantly evil it’s sorta hilarious.

Overall Outer Worlds from Obsidian is getting

8.5/10

 

The Board is unimpressed with your 8.5 rating. Raise to 9.5 on pain of death and immense gravesite fees immediately.

 

Replayed all six Myst games. If I had to rank them:

1. Myst IV: Revelation
2. Riven
3. Myst III: Exile
4. Uru: Complete Chronicles + I played all the online-only content
5. Myst
6. Myst V: End of Ages

I'd say the first four games are broadly a cohesive and satisfying series, with each one improving visual fidelity until Myst IV is incredibly tactile and life-like. Still one of the prettiest games ever made 15 years after release. Riven probably has the best world-building of all the games, as well as the best puzzle integration and feeling of exploration.

Once you hit the 5th game in the series, Uru (with it's various incarnations and expansion packs), the series starts to fall apart at the seams. I've been trying to figure out the initial production pipeline. The original goal for the project seems to have been carved up into little pieces, released in various forms through the Uru versions and Myst V (made almost entirely of repurposed Uru content). There's glimpses of a fantastic concept in here, but a lot of it is left vague and unresolved. There's also a great layer of frustration since so much of this content is sort of retro-fitted into it's current state, whether it was originally meant for the online version or vice-versa, leaving neither incarnation able to quite stand on its own feet.

Then there's Myst V, with it's short length and annoying slate concept, that sadly ends the phenomenal series on quite a whimper. There was a lot of potential after Myst IV, but it seems Cyan got very bogged down in production issues before they could bring it to fruition. At least their later game Obduction shows they were still capable of working on a solid contained experience.

 

Jurassic World Evolution on PS4 plus all DLC's. Awaiting the new 1993 JP DLC soon.

 

The first is one of my favourite games ever so I've played it numerous times and I've played a decent amount of Riven but never got anywhere close to finishing it....haven't played the others. I contributed to the 25th anniversary kickstarter last year, kind of on an impulse, because I really wanted the linking book. So now I have all the games and eventually at some point I hope I can go through all of them as well.

 

I have fond memories of the first 4 Myst games, growing up. My mom would play them, and I'd watch.