Last Game You Finished and Your Thoughts MKII

Last night I started and finished Bound on PS4, the game is one of these artsy indies but with actual platforming. It's not the best platforming by any means but does add more of a game around the central films whilst you play as ballerina with some of the best animation in gaming.

The rest of the game is nice part from one thing which I won't go into because spoilers, out of the recent of indies I've played this is better then Beyond Eyes but worse then ABZU.

7/10

Ratchet & Clank (PS4)

So I beat this in the early hours this morning, all the characters have a fun charm to them - Clank especially was a big favourite & the weapons are great to use but I just wish the game leaned more to the exploring platformer side of things rather it's shooting side.

It done this once about almost half way into the game on a planet called Gaspar & it was by far my favourite level in the game, fun overall but I think most games journalists blew this up to be much better than it actually is.

Score:

out of

Golden Sun



Slow to get going, poor at explaining itself and text heavy, Golden Sun nevertheless manages to be a lot of fun. The combat system is very rich - I might go so far as to say "the Bravely Default of its day" - with numerous bonuses and joys to find if you experiment with different combinations of stat- and magic-boosting sprites called 'Djinn'. Storyline OK to good, though the game really is just getting into its stride when the credits roll. Ho hum.

14/20

Hatoful Boyfriend



Hmmm.

Spoiler:

14/20

I just beat the final boss in Ape Escape 2, a PS2 Classic on PS4. I suggested that everybody go download it in another thread, before I'd played it for the first time in over a decade. Aye, well, nostalgia is a bastart. The gadgets, locations, unlockables and especially the music aren't as good as I remembered, and the camera and controls definitely shows the game's age ...but still, it has a very unique personality that makes it just about makes it worth a download, if you're into your 3D platformers. Just understand that it's 2016, and not 2003. I rate it a low-ish 7/10.

I'm struggling with older cameras, that's for sure. It is mighty hard to get into Donkey Kong 64 when you have to wrestle with the camera during timed challenges and such. Rose-tinted glasses falling off... Anyway, I came here for this.

Nova-111



A neat RTS with a big dash of puzzling elements, Nova-111 is a lot of fun with a mild tendency to frustrate. You control a small spaceship whose mission it is to rescue scientists stranded around the levels as a result of an explosive accident. You move about the grid whilst various beasties and bots do the same; the twist is that some enemy actions are turn-based whilst some take place in real-time. Figuring out what to do to proceed was involving though, as with most downloadable titles, things just start to really get going and then it ends. Nonetheless a great morsel of gaming entertainment. Recommended.

16/20

Asdivine Hearts



A Wii U eShop JRPG par excellence... at least, that's what I thought after a few hours. Then the game's issues start to betray it: the translation is occasionally off and the controls sometimes don't respond properly. Poochy & Balladeer would retch at the generic five or six tunes that play out over the game's 32 hours (on my playthrough, at least). The palette swapping monsters begin to bore you and the utterly game-breaking boss-beating technique means none of the fights are threatening until the very end. That said, the jaunty story - the world's Light Deity is being hunted down by the Shadow Deity and, weakened, ends up in the body of a cat; hijinks ensue - and reasonable gameplay mean it's almost worth genre fans checking it out. Others will not be converted.

12/20

ZeroJones wrote:

The palette swapping monsters begin to bore you

A pet peeve of mine in this day and age - I understand that memory restrictions forced older JRPGs to utilise pallete swaps, but in the modern era it's just laziness that forces developers to resort to palette swaps.

It's probably a legacy of the fact that it was originally a mobile game. Space is always at a premium on my phone...

Ah, that may explain it then! That does raise another issue though... mobile to console ports rarely work well.

What about console to mobile, do any of them work well?

Mobile to console: yet to play a really good one but the sample size is too small to present any proper conclusions.

Console to mobile: we've got a (super old) thread for that. Again, I've not played many, but I did enjoy FFV. The issue is always how the buttons are replaced: the FFVII overlayed PS buttons are not conducive to playing on a tiny screen.

Yeah I think the buttons are a issue but now with things like Xbox One controllers having bluetooth, hopefully they can be used in games on a smartdevice as androids at least can play likes of Resident Evil 5.

The biggest problem with mobile to console ports is the price bump the games get in the process. Otherwise I'd be all over Hitman Go.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

That was a cracking read Drunka, and easily my favourite Gintendo piece I've read to date (well, serious piece... feels unfair to put this and Jimbob's kitchen piece in the same bracket as they're entirely different beasts). Games can often be dismissed a just a bit of fun, but I think for a lot of us they genuinely mean a lot to us. I think your post-mortem on your time with New Leaf exemplifies that.

OrangeRakoon wrote:

The biggest problem with mobile to console ports is the price bump the games get in the process. Otherwise I'd be all over Hitman Go.

I didn't mind what I paid for Hitman GO at all, great puzzle game.

JayMoyles wrote:

ZeroJones wrote:

The palette swapping monsters begin to bore you

A pet peeve of mine in this day and age - I understand that memory restrictions forced older JRPGs to utilise pallete swaps, but in the modern era it's just laziness that forces developers to resort to palette swaps.

Bit late to be chipping my couple o' cents in here but the other reason they tend to do that as far as I can tell is because most jrpgs nowadays aren't the most high budget things around, and pallet swaps saves money.


Personally I'm cool with them as long as they can add enough tiny variations to make the monster stick out and the rest of the game is sound. Bravely Default and Second for example have tons of pallet swaps, but exemplify all of those conditions.

Depends on whether they have a lot of other monsters alongside for me. A really big problem I had with Skyward Sword was once you get past the Ancient Cistern, there are no more new basic enemies. Just more palette swaps.

Unless combat is very specifically the crux of game, pallet swaps don't annoy me too much. I just accept that this monster inhabits this world, so of course I'd see it in various places with some variations.

And yes I have the Selects version.

Not much to be said about this one. I did only beat Bowser with 60 stars but I'll count it as "finishing", rather than "completing". I've been playing this alongside the sequel (have about 30 stars on Galaxy 2 atm) so I've been experiencing them as one package really, and together they are probably my favourite game of all time. I say probably, because I've not seen everything they have to offer yet, and likely never will given just how many more stars there are in those games. If I was 10-15 years younger and could plough hours in to these every evening, I feel they'd leave a deeper mark on me, but the fact that the first Galaxy has wowed me consistently, nine years after its release is testament to how timeless the game already is.

Favourite levels: anything involving water. These all seemed so peaceful (which took me back to chilling out in Dire, Dire Docks in Mario 64). I've always enjoyed the water levels in Mario games (loved Sunshine's hub area) but Galaxy felt less punishing the deeper you went underwater. I also really enjoyed the desert levels, which are normally the ones I most fear.

If I was to be picky, I could do without Spring Mario and there did seem to be a lot of races. Also the final battle with Bowser was easy, although the level getting to Bowser had me clawing my eyes out. Lava will be (and has been NUMEROUS times) the death of me.

Nevertheless, I look forward to beating Galaxy 2 and chipping away at the remaining stars.

10/10

YES MATE!
Yeah, the Galaxies are definitely my favourite games ever, and I think they're best viewed as one package; a game and its expansion.

....................................

Bring on SM64 2.

Galaxy 1 was the s***! The second ever platformer (Crash Bandicoot 3 was the first) I ever collected everything in, brilliant game that somehow managed to avoid the trap of having too many collectables set behind chore levels!

Can't say I enjoyed the second Galaxy that much alas. I feel that where the first Galaxy made most of its levels a blast Galaxy 2 had a bit too many that felt like a chore to play, and the really good ones were often on the shorter side. Combine that with the harsher star requirements to progress and, well, lets just say I doubt Nintendo will ever top the first Galaxy.

Interesting you say that: one of my major gripes about SMG1 was that every galaxy had a Purple Coin star, and a lot of them weren't very interesting. I can't recall a single star in the sequel that was as dull as Sea Slide Galaxy's Bee Mushroom coin jaunt. And woe betide you if, like me, you fell into space with 84 in the bag...