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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 16:04
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Findus Fop wrote: that's reassuring to hear, Mr Chonks and Bamba. WIll try again this evening.
Though I did find myself falling asleep to visions from Bloodborne, which is NWINRN.
If you want to actually clear it out properly then just take it slow and go round the edges trying to aggro enemies one at a time. If you've actually made it through there before and just want to see what comes next then fuck it, just sprint through. At the risk of being patronising that's basically the core gameplay loop; you rarely bother fully clearing an area out more than once and sprinting through stuff you've already done just to get to the next area is absolutely de rigueur. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 15:06
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| That bonfire section always seemed particularly punishing for new players because (a) there's no small amount of enemies both at the bonfire and patrolling around it and (b) it's such an open area that it's hard to control aggro properly past a certain point. Yeah, yeah, 'git gud' and all that, but there's a surprisingly accessible game hidden behind that initial spike. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 14:59
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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73. Journey to the Savage Planet: you're an explorer working for the sort of company that would happen if VaultTec did spaceships, and the allegedly uninhabited planet you were assigned turns out to have a gigantic tower architected on it. Your bosses are unsurprisingly excited at this turn of your events and you're instructed to get to the bottom of it all and return to tell the tale.
The core gamplay is basically '3D Metroidvania with light crafting'. You harvest common elements from local flora and fauna which--in addition to one-off formulas generally hidden behind boss fights or other challenges--allow you to 3D print new equipment. The new equipment lets you access new areas, and round we go again. The entire planet is also stuffed to the brim with secrets to find and areas to explore, to the point that I finished the final boss fight without even finding some of the teleport points which generally represent a specific area of the gameworld.
The look of the thing is a fairly lurid cartoon-ish visual design which isn't my preference but suits the light-hearted tone of the piece very well. That tone is set in general by the verging-on-juvenile humour of both the world itself and your video interactions with your boss. For example, the first alien creature you encounter is a harmlessly hopping bird thing which can be shot instantly to death for a small amount of carbon. However, if you throw out some of the bait you carry then wait until a few seconds after one of them has gulped it down it will noisily fart out a much bigger portion of carbon than you'd get just from killing it. Also, from visiting your home base you build up a collection of videos adverts which are almost certainly trying to put one in mind of Rick and Morty's inter-dimensional cable segments. It's nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is of course, but it's also not so far off that it's actually offensive or boring.
I generally enjoyed my time with the game a lot, and it's combination of exploration, combat and platforming puts in generally in my wheelhouse. The only real issue with it is that it's a bit average at the individual things it does:
- There's only a handful of proper combat encounters, and your character isn't neccesarily nimble or quick enough to make them into what was intended. I ended up more or less tanking my way through them due to have found enough hidden upgrades that my health and stamina were decent.
- The crafting is basic. You generally require a single element which is gated behind proper progression + a random spattering of common elements. Picking up the latter just seems like pointless busy work and because the former comes from proper required progression it feels like they'd be better of just handing you the upgrade outright at that point. There are optional upgrades for your abilities and your gun which I'm fine with because they are genuinely optional, but they're built using a generic 'alien element' you earn from optional challenges + the random spattering of common stuff so again it's not really crafting so much as 'spending upgrade points with some pointless shit tacked on'. Don't get me wrong, none of this really gets in your away at all, but it's not adding anything either.
- There's almost too much stuff crammed into the game. Or, more accurately, there's so much more stuff than you need that it becomes sort of pointless. The weapon upgrades just serve to un-handicap the fairly shit gun or extend the rangs of bombs or whatever, but you never really need any of that. There are ability upgrades that sound awesome (e.g. triple and even quadruple jump) but the only thing they'd be useful for is to get to more secrets so you could unlock more abilities. The gameworld is also swimming in these hidden orange orbs that upgrade your health/stamina, but I was able to tank my way through everything to the very end whilst picking up less than half of these.
All of that said, it's specific combination of stuff is still very fun when it's brought together and I was thoroughly entertained during my time with it. Had they restrained themselves a bit with the design, or given you more of a reason to care about/need the stuff they crammed in there, it would be a total winner. As it stands, it was a very welcome 10 hours or so exploring an imaginitive and ridiculous world while abusing it's all-too-trusting wildlife for personal gain. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 14:24
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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72. The Gardens Between: lovely little time manipulation puzzler that I played on the Switch, but is available for seemingly every platform under the sun. Each level sees you controlling two friends as they wind their way around and generally up an island, with the victory condition that you arrive at the top in posession of a ball of light which allows you to activate the exit.
You can move the characters forwards and backwards and as this happens various other aspects of the landscape move/reverse accordingly. One of the characters can sometimes change the state of specific aspects of the level while the other character can pick/place down the light balls which, in addition to be being required to exist, also change the state of the levels. From that small set of interactions each level is built; it mostly comes down to observing the movement of level furniture to work our how you can manipulate it to your advantage.
As always these are beautifully simple and elegant mechanics in action but are impossible to describe without making it sound awful. So, to give one example, I was stuck once on a level themed around tools. My characters could only move so far through the level before hitting up against a plank of wood that was raised in a way which rendered it inaccessible. As I moved time forward and backwards there was a saw blade which moved against the plank, but nothing seemed to actually change as this happened. The solution, as is probably obvious now, was to move time forward and backwards enough that the blade sawed fully through the plank thus dropping it down for the characters to walk up. Even that doesn't seem like a great example when described so plainly but at the time it was a lovely 'aha' moment.
Most of the levels have a theme or gimmick that sets them apart from each other and the visual design, animation, etc is top notch stuff so it's lovely even just to watch these vignettes play out as you move through them. It's not the most challenging game in the world depending on your prospensity for puzzles--the odd instance of required 'outside the box' thinking notwithstanding--but it's something that can be picked up and put down in nice bite sized chunks. After the first couple of levels I was concerned it would end up being simplistic and relatively boring but it ended up being one of the most charming and enjoyable things I've played in a while. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:06
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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71. Mutazione: decades before the beginning of the game an asteriod struck a holiday resort; those that didn't instantly die were slowly mutated by its effects. Fast forward to present day and your character arrives on the island to visit her estranged and ailing grandfather who, as a member of a visiting science team years previous, had stayed on the island to help the inhabitants.
So, an intriguing setup but what follows is, by it's own admission, focussed more on the day-to-day lives of the denizens fo Mutazione than it is on the wider mysteries. I mean you do end up getting briefly into that stuff but it's done as a slightly confusing rush right at the finale with mimial hints or discussion of it during the rest of your playtime.
The meat of the gameplay then is talking to the people in the community, forming bonds with them and getting into their stories. Each conversation does give you dialogue choices which help to bind you to the experience but I get the feeling nothing of consequence would change no matter what you picked.
There's also some time spent gardening. Which is to say picking seeds of a specific type from your inventory, sticking them where the game tells you they can go, then playing a song a few times until everything blooms. The marketing blurn and the reviews made a big deal of this aspect but mechanically there's pratically nothing to it. I initially assumed a level of depth would be introduced by requiring you to mix different plants while balancing all their requirements to meet certain goals but nope; there's never anything more to it than the very first time you plant stuff.
From the above you'd probably think I came away with a negative opinion but I actually really enjoyed my time in Mutazione. Mechanically there's no real meat on its bones for sure but it's all about the characters which are well-drawn, engaging and often quite funny. Admittedly it came along at the right time for me, my brain was being somewhat of a dick last week so something gently compelling like this was probably exactly what I needed. Oh, and it's also fucking lovely in places. The graphical style doesn't get enough room to breathe in the crowded environs of the main town, but during some of your sojourns to the outskirts it's genuinely very pretty indeed. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2020 11:26
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 70. Layers of Fear 2: the original Layers of Fear was a pretty haunted-house of a game, weighed down massively by repetition and a narrative with ideas way above it's station. Sadly the sequel goes in hard on all the worse parts; so the story is a barely conceived and irritating pile of confusing pretentious bollocks which does nothing to compel you through the levels and the game itself is just boring to trudge through. Only the very last level gets anything like an interesting visual twist while the rest of it is 99% the same mindless fucking corridors. But this time it's on a ship! Christ, who gives a fuck. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:34
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Mr Chonks wrote: I always had a rough idea of when stuff happened. Granted you don’t the first time it happens, but I would say 99% of my loops were full of doing stuff. I did not do much sitting around at all.
In fairness I probably only had to do it a handful of times for specific stuff but it was still annoying; and the fact that in my playthrough all those occasions were at the end around the same time possibly means they loom larger in my memory.
Mr Chonks wrote: Anyway I’m glad you persevered as it looked like you were going to bin it off at one point.
Aye, I'm not a fan of the inertia-heavy spaceflight stuff and don't generally play 'space' games so it was a steep and annoying learning curve just to nail the general traversal. It makes up so much of the game of course so that wasn't brilliant for me initially. I also had a couple of bad early experiences ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! (fell instantly down the huge trench on Ember Twin and got stuck, landed on Brittle Hollow just as the bit I was standing on fell into the black hole) |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:09
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Mr Chonks wrote: Quote: This means that at some points you're literally sitting for like ten minutes doing nothing just waiting for shit before you can advance, which is balls I realise it’s not ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! meditating I was thinking of, but ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! resting at the campfire where you wake up. You don’t have to sit around waiting for ten mins at any point, I just thought I’d challenge that.
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! I actually only found out after I'd finished it that you could rest at the campfire. Although, if you're hanging around there you can't see what state stuff is in (e.g. you don't know whether the tower you need has been uncovered on Ash Twin or if the Tower of Quantum Knowledge has floated into space yet) so I'd argue you still pretty much need to head to the location and wait for stuff to happen. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:51
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Mr Chonks wrote: Did you not ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! learn how to meditate so you could skip to the end of the loop ?
Sure, though you can accomplish the same thing by just ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! quitting to the main menu and reloading
Mr Chonks wrote: At least three people I know (including me) managed to finish it with no guides at all. So it’s not impossible, perhaps it’s just not the way your brain works. I cannot do point and click adventures without hints, for example. But even when absolutely stuck I always had something else to do here, and when I came back fresh I usually cracked it.
I realise it's not impossible or anything, just didn't work for me and might not for other people. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:36
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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69 (dude!). Outer Wilds: you're a newly qualified astronaut sent out to explore your (fairly small) galaxy. 22 minutes later the sun goes supernova and everything dies, but you're mysteriously brought back to life right where you started. Your mission then becomes to explore and work out what the hell's going while these 22 minute loops plays out.
So it's essentially a mystery game with each planet containing part of the story and clues as to where you should go next and what to do. The game's almost entirely stateless with only two pieces of information retained by your character that are required to progress and literally everything else resets with every loop. You don't get any new abilities or gadgets so everything is open to you right from the start and you can go anywhere in any order. As such the galaxy and it's planets are brilliantly coherent and it's just such a tightly wound piece of clockwork machinery.
The joy of the game is discovery. You find a new location or a secret entrance or just a new clue that sends you racing to uncover something else and those instances never get old. Your investment in the universe and it's mythology is high because you become so familiar with everything due to the detailed exploration you absolutely are required to do. The game doesn't hold your hand in the slightest, all knowledge is hard-won and useful. And each planet is an intriguing, even sometimes frightening, playground.
The downsides are the corollaries to everything I've already mentioned:
- The loop is often frustrating because you'll be in the midst of doing stuff when you're killed. It never takes long to get back to where you were but it quickly begins to feel like needless busy work just slowing you down. By the end of the game that run to the ship and then the navigation to where ever you needed to be was absolutely grinding me down.
- Some of the planets change in various ways as the loop progresses and you need them in certain states to accomplish certain tasks. This means that at some points you're literally sitting for like ten minutes doing nothing just waiting for shit before you can advance, which is balls. This is made worse when that wait can be followed by a fucking instakill sending you back to the start again.
- There were definitely things you were required to do that I would never in a million years have worked out for myself. This is the nature of a game like this of course, but the lack of hand-holding can definitely tip into frustration when you're stuck.
So, an absolutely unique little thing with a genuinely incredible amount of craft baked into it. I think it would be worth anyone having a go at it because if it grabs you it'll grip hard; but just be aware of the potential frustrations baked into it's very fibre. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 23:07
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Grim... wrote: Can you change part-way through?
Not sure, the option didn't exist at all when I played it so I've no personal experience. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 16:30
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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DavPaz wrote: I'm giving SOMA a go. Sounds like the sort of thing I'd like.
Note that it's got a bit of the usual "run/hide/stealth your way around an unkillable monster" which is as boring as these things (almost) always were. The devs capitulated to everyone moaning about it and added an option to do away with all that shit. It's up to you which way you go on it but having played through it the original way I'd have been happy to see the back of it all. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 13:42
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 68. Great Escapes: another pointy-clicky-escapey game from Glitch but instead of their usual longer form games it's a collection of shorter experiences. This makes it easier as it reduces the mental load but they're still generally as fun and well designed. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 20:17
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| The story of SOMA is brilliant, there's a couple of moments of proper existential horror. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2020 15:54
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 67. Sludge Life: freebie on the Epic store which looked entertainingly batshit enough to grab my attention. It's an open-world exploratory/platforming sort of thing in which your graffiti artist character is trying to tag as many of the allocated spots as possible. The game's set on an island in a sea of sludge and has an unique sharply low-fi looking aesthetic which I really enjoyed, plus a warped hip-hop style soundtrack that's very good indeed. As you move through the world you can pick up interesting and weird gadgets that help you get around and there's an underlying theme of corporate dystopian shenanigans. You can interact with most of the NPCs and while none of them have extensive dialogue it's almost all amusing and/or weird and/or charming which massively helps draw you into proceedings. It's also weird and silly enough to be pretty compelling e.g. the guy in the towerblock who's 'hiding' amusingly in plain site from his aggrieved roomate after redecorating their room with hideous wallpaper. It's only a couple of hours long and wouldn't hold your attention past that because the gameplay is relatively basic but I really enjoyed the time I spent in it's world. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2020 11:13
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 66. Draugen: you and your young ward visit a remote Norwegian fishing village during the 1920s looking for your reporter sister who's gone there investigating a story. When you arrive the town is completely empty with evidence of some kind of rift between the townspeople; very slow shenanigans sort of ensue. The gameplay boils down to looking for items and picking conversation options with your companion so there's not much to it and in practise it feels more like a walking simulator, especially as it's got an atmosphere in common with Dear Esther. The story starts of relatively strong as you investigate what happened in the town but it pretty much falls apart to nothing near the end and one of the major 'twists' was obvious almost right from the very beginning. It reviewed well based on the setting and the characters but the village, while very prettily rendered with a sort of watercolour aesthetic, is bare bones to the point it didn't really capture me and your character's a boring whiny tit so that wasn't helping. There just wasn't really much to it when it ends. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2020 16:58
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 65. Three Fourths Home: a 'visual' novel 'game' about a girl driving back to her family during a storm and the phone conversation she has with them. It's barely a game because you just make dialogue choices and the 'visual' aspect is pretty much just an animated background. The actual dialogue is very well written and it's quite surprising how much a set of characters can be rounded out in your mind in such a short space of times but it's barely worth the time it takes to go through. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2020 9:36
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 64. Omega Strike: run-and-gun Metroidvania with a look and feel that reminded me massively of the Random Heroes/League of Evil mobile games from back in the day, but slightly more fleshed out. Which from Googling it while writing this I realise isn't surprising because it's made by the same developer and was in fact initially released for iOS. It's still very basic as Metroidvanias go and wouldn't necessarily pass muster if lined up against 'proper' games but it was ideal for pick up and play sessions while bored between tasks at work. And apparently I spent six hours or so playing it since buying it on Monday so that's a recommendation in itself. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2020 14:13
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| AC: Origins makes extensive use of a horse for distrance travel and I found it to be totally fine. You can whistle for it and it'll appear wherever you are and it's easy enough to control. I haven't played any of the other horse-heavy games you've listed there though so don't know how it compares. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2020 11:53
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Findus Fop wrote: Bamba wrote: 63. Assassin's Creed: Unity: it's sort of an odd way to experience these games given the order I've played them (9, 10,11, and now  and it certainly makes you appreciate the improvements in traversal and combat that were made. Origins and Odyssey were relatively big changes so really the best comparison for Unity is to Syndicate which directly followed it and is very much the same type of game. Syndicate improved directly on Unity by adding the grappling hook which made stealth encounter much more fun and it's presence is missed here. I also personally felt London was a more compelling setting than Paris, possibly because I've never visited the latter. All that aside, the game's still decently fun, though you are absolutely fighting the controls for a lot of it's runtime. Even by the very end of the game your character would still utterly refuse to enter a window right above him or dive entire storeys to the ground instead of nimbly leap to the rope less than a metre in front and all that sort of aggravating shit. Also, I'm definitely reaching the end of my tether with open world maps covered in fucking icons because I basically yomped through the main story here and did the bare minimum of side quests. Although that was partly because they were almost always the same sort of shit so it's not like they actually provided any kind of diversion from the main game which is somewhat missing the point of them I feel. So, yeah, decent enough stuff if you haven't already played loads of this kind of thing and if you can forgive the sometimes-terrible controls. I stupidly bought Odyssey at the same time as starting Far Cry 5, so I suspect I'll have had my fill for a while before I can stomach another Ubi open world. But I'm looking forward to it as I love the setting and I'm interested to see what these major changes to the game are (last AC game I played was Black Flag which I bounced off because the ship combat could go fuck itself).
There are definitely going to be changes from Black Flag but if you hate the ship combat then you probably should've picked up Origins instead (which is actually the better game to my mind anyway); Origins has like two ship combat encounters and that's your whack but Odyssey bakes the fucking ship right into the game. You have to use one to navigate around all the islands and there's some mandatory ship encounters and you need to use it if you want to complete one of the major side-quest chains. It's also way, way, way, way, way, way too fucking goddamned long. Origins was a big game but was nowhere near as bad. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:51
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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63. Assassin's Creed: Unity: it's sort of an odd way to experience these games given the order I've played them (9, 10,11, and now 8) and it certainly makes you appreciate the improvements in traversal and combat that were made. Origins and Odyssey were relatively big changes so really the best comparison for Unity is to Syndicate which directly followed it and is very much the same type of game. Syndicate improved directly on Unity by adding the grappling hook which made stealth encounter much more fun and it's presence is missed here. I also personally felt London was a more compelling setting than Paris, possibly because I've never visited the latter.
All that aside, the game's still decently fun, though you are absolutely fighting the controls for a lot of it's runtime. Even by the very end of the game your character would still utterly refuse to enter a window right above him or dive entire storeys to the ground instead of nimbly leap to the rope less than a metre in front and all that sort of aggravating shit. Also, I'm definitely reaching the end of my tether with open world maps covered in fucking icons because I basically yomped through the main story here and did the bare minimum of side quests. Although that was partly because they were almost always the same sort of shit so it's not like they actually provided any kind of diversion from the main game which is somewhat missing the point of them I feel.
So, yeah, decent enough stuff if you haven't already played loads of this kind of thing and if you can forgive the sometimes-terrible controls. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2020 15:13
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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62. The Touryst: a generally wonderful exploration game with platforming elements and a unique high-res voxelly art style which has a sort of tilt-shifted thing going on, a lot like the recent switch version of Link's Awakening. You're dropped on an island and through exploration, dialogue and puzzle solving you work you way onto and around a number of other islands picking up side-quests and main story progress as you go. You can, and indeed have to, move back and forth amongst these islands as you find items and new abilities which unlock story progression or advance side quests; the latter of which often involve simple mini-games like surfing or drone-racing. The highlight of these is probably the arcade where you need to beat the high score in three arcade homages (Bombjack, Arkanoid and an F-Zero style racing game I'm not familiar with).
The only downside is that one of the dungeons involves some platform challenges that made me want to fucking murder the developers. 3D platforming can get all the way to fuck in general (aside from the glorious Astrobot of course), but there's something about the visual style and camera in The Touryst that makes it even harder than usual. Not a problem at all in 99% of the game but a few rooms here were utterly teethgrating. Oh, and there's a single physics-y puzzle in the very final dungeon that took a lot of footering around to sort.
Anyway, aside from the above I had a lovely time with it and it's well worth playing. Definitely one of the best things I've played on the Switch (though I realise that's not a high bar because of the kind of stuff I'm avoiding on there). |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2020 16:51
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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61. Glass Masquerade 2: unsurprisingly, a sequel to Glass Masquerade about which I said this:
Quote: a jigsaw game for the Switch (and other platforms) if jigsaws weren't made of small cardboard tiles but instead large, gorgeous, intricate stained glass installations. It's very much the sort of casual nonsense I'm looking for in a Switch games and I thoroughly enjoyed it, though you mileage would vary massively depending on how much you liked that type of thing in general.
It's basically more of the same so I think basically the same thing about the sequel. However playing it did highlight annoyances that were present in the original, while also bringing new ones to the table. The core issue is that everything that isn't actual gameplay is over-designed and ridiculous.
- Navigating around is slow and clunky and difficult to make out what you're doing because it's apparently more important that everything in the level hub swirl and animate magnificently. If you leave a level and want to re-enter it you need to wait for the transition to the level hub to stop all it's needless dancing around before the controls actually become usable again so you can go back in.
- It's also a sort of map layout, even though the location of each of the levels on the map is meaningless and the crappy layout means you can only ever see a fraction of the map at any given time. A simple list of puzzles to flick through would've been a million times nicer to deal with.
- You don't initially even realise that there a second higher difficulty for each level because explaining that would just be too friendly and useful.
- Even when you do eventually notice the little 'Difficulty' label in the bottom right corner and then realise you can toggle it, you're not actually sure what difficulty you're playing. Is 'club icon' hard mode? Or is it 'spade icon'? One of them's red and the other's green, should I take a lesson from that? God forbid it's actually spelled out anywhere.
- In fact, what even is actually the difference between the two difficulties? Spoiler: on 'hard' mode the pieces aren't necessarily the correct orientation and you can flip them around using the shoulder buttons. Neither the mechanic itself nor the actual controls are ever explained though.
None of the above are deal-breakers because it's usable enough once you've figured it all out, but it's so utterly unnecessarily awful and you do feel the game's fighting you ever step of the way. Also, some of the above stuff wouldn't be as big a deal when played on a TV, but on the Switch Lite screen it's annoying as shit. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 13:44
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 60. Blackthorn Castle 2: another point and clicker from Synaxity who's stuff I generally enjoy and this is no different. Maybe one or two puzzles that were a bit WTF--and a couple of scenes that were in no way marked as being interactable but were--but generally good logical stuff. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:05
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 58. Ministry of Broadcast: narrative puzzle platformer for the Switch which combines very nice pixellated graphics with gameplay that's basically a combination of OG Prince of Persia and Rick Dangerous. It was apparently compelling enough to get me to finish it but it was often frustrating, fiddly and irritating. Also the story was all over the fucking place; the constant 'humour' under-mined the attempt at an Orwellian narrative but the general goings-on were just serious enough to mean it couldn't be taken as a comedy game either. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 10:27
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 57. Random Heroes: Gold Edition: Switch conversion of an old run and gun platformer that was originally released on iOS/Android and was followed up by a host of similar styled games (League of Evil 1 & 2, Devious Dungeon and Random Heroes 2). I thoroughly enjoyed all of those on my phone and fancied a nostalgic playthrough but with the benefit of proper controls. Which is exactly what I got, although it revealed that (a) the later games were a lot more interesting than the original Random Heroes and (b) what was just challenging enough on a mobile screen was rendered incredibly easy with a proper joypad and buttons. So, fun enough given my love for that style of game but they'd have been better porting one of the later games and maybe tweaking the difficulty. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2020 16:48
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 56. Bad Dream: Coma: weird point and click thing with generally logical puzzles but a mildly annoying amount of pixel hunting in environments crammed with stuff. I got the 'bad' ending and from poking around there's a neutral and good one which significantly changes puzzles and outcomes so fair play to the dev for designing it with such a lot of replay value. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 18:06
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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53. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan: spiritual sequel to Until Dawn from the same devs. Mechanically pretty much exactly the same so the real difference comes down to the story and characters; and MoM comes off very much the worse in the comparison. It's much shorter than UD at only about four hours to play through which means that it feels like things are just hotting up at the time it ends, and this isn't helped by what feels like way too much of the run-time spent on the boring setup which still barely does anything to flesh out the characters. Certainly nowhere enough to make you give the slightest shit about the 'traits' menu which shows you a set of sliders for each character that allegedly respond to the choices you made when playing as them. I mean it possibly did correspond but as it has precisely zero bearing on the game itself there's no reason to give a fuck. My real annoyance though is that I lost one character in a 50/50 choice with no way to predict the outcome and a second one because I was supposed to do something that you'd never done before in the game. I realise that's sort of the baked into the format but it's still annoying because it feels like it undermines your agency as a player. And, of course, you're supposed to play through it multiple times but you'd need to sit through hours of stuff you'd already seen just to try and do a couple of things slightly differently and it's not compelling enough to incentivise that. So, fun in places and worth picking up if (a) it's cheap and (b) you really liked Until Dawn; with the caveat that it's not a patch on it's predecessor.
54. My Brother Rabbit: ostensibly one of these hidden-object adventure games so beloved of casual players (and, sometimes, me) but it changes up the formula by giving you access very quickly to all the screens in a level and only prompting you to look for the hidden objects when you get to specific points in that stage's puzzling. In fact the way it fitted together reminded more of ancient and gentle puzzler The Little Bang Story than the more modern hidden-object adventure fare. It's all still very casual stuff but it's compelling and charming with a level of presentation beyond what these games usually serve up.
55. Flipping Death: newly deceased Penny is mistaken for the temp reaver coming to relieve Death so he can go on holiday. You're given his scythe and quick intro on it's powers then left to your own devices; shenanigans ensue. Specifically you're working your way closer to solving the mystery of your own death by helping the spirits in each level move on from their own. So it's a character-driven puzzle game that sees you possess the living characters in each level and using their abilities in order to advance the puzzles for the dead. You flip between the dead dimension (in which you can move freely as Penny) and the live side which required you to possess a living person. There's some minor barriers to that (each initial possession requires a certain amount of various 'currencies' you gain on the dead side) but it's trivial stuff and each level really comes down to (1) possess all the living people to unlock them and see what their abilities are (2) mix and match those abilities to progress the puzzles. It's pretty funny stuff and generally engaging, though the navigation can be a bit confusing and I got lost inside a level on more than one occasion. Nothing mind blowing, but solid stuff. Made by the same devs as Stick It To The Man if anyone played that last gen so expect the same sort of thing. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 17:32
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 52. 11-11 Memories Retold: narrative game about a Canadian and German soldier and the relationship they build as they make their way through World War One. Aardman Animations are heavily involved so you'd expect it to be a looker, but the graphical style they go for--a weird pseudo-watercolour sort of thing--just doesn't work and mostly just makes everything look blurred and crap. The 'gameplay' is basic as shit and the plot is genuinely dumb at times. So boring, ugly and stupid is the takeaway here. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 16:12
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Satsuma wrote: Not to ruin your fun but didn’t we have a thread for games we didn’t finish and then abandoned? I’ve tried looking but can’t find it, mind.
Yeah, I think I might've even started it but can't find it now either.
ETA: aha https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... f=3&t=8228 |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 15:14
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Mr Chonks wrote: I need to add loads of games I haven’t finished too
 If you were very close to the end and would've definitely finished them if not for reasons completely out of your control then I'd support you in that. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 14:11
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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zaphod79 wrote: Bamba wrote: Also, the controls are really irritating in places and it seems to have been designed by someone who's willfully ignorant of the fact that a mouse has more than one useable button. So a pleasant enough experience but a missed opportunity in terms of not having a bit more meat to the repair sections plus the needlessly stupid controls. I played this a while ago on the iPhone , I think it was probably designed with phone / touch screens in mind which will be why it does not realise you can have multiple buttons on a mouse
Oh, yeah, that's definitely the case. But letting you, say, use the right-mouse button to spin objects and the left mouse to interact would've just been so, so much better than what they did and is such a trivial thing to do that I can't really forgive them for not doing it. It's just so lazy and needless. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 14:09
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 51. Uncharted 4: technically I didn't finish this second playthrough because my PS4 finally died completely before I could, but I was only about an hour from the end so I'm counting it. Most of it was as fun as I remember--stealth murdering a whole load of guys just never gets old--and certainly it remains one of the most incredible looking things I've ever seen. Also, aside from Nate's wife inexplicably and suddenly forgiving him for being a massive prick, the character work and overall plot is just brilliant. The dreaded 'combat arena' stuff though throws a bigger shadow over the entire thing than I remember from the first time around. Specifically one of the final levels is just one horrendous encounter after another for ages and it frustrated the shit out of me before I just dropped the difficulty down and carried on. The armoured shotgun guys are a know entity, but this game introduces armoured chain gun guys which is just cuntery above and beyond the usual call. The shotgun guys need to have their armour wittled down but the balancing factor is their lack of range. The chain gun fucks have the same armour issue to deal with but now they can destroy your health from halfway across the map. Throw two of them into a relatively small area plus the general harassment of normal enemies and the entire thing can just get fucked. Basically you need to be some kind of headshot king or you've got no chance and it's pretty miserable stuff. No doubt it's made worse here because that was the last level I did before my PS4 refused to boot up so it's left that taste in my mouth, but if you do finish the game then it doesn't end on such a sour note. Anyway, still a brilliant game but just be aware of this nonsense. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 13:59
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 50. Assemble With Care: repair-em-up from the creators of Monument Valley. Your character is travelling around repairing stuff (everything from broken statues, old cassette players, watches, etc) to pay her way and you take control as she hits her final destination and begins contemplating returning home to patch up her relationship with her parents. Each stage gives you an item to repair and fills in some backstory of the owner of the item before and after the actual repair. The look and sound of it's polished to high heaven as you'd expect from Ustwo but the actual gameplay is a bit lacking. I wasn't expecting much depth and was happy just to tinker with the broken items but there was even less challenge that I was expecting in that aspect. Also, the controls are really irritating in places and it seems to have been designed by someone who's willfully ignorant of the fact that a mouse has more than one useable button. So a pleasant enough experience but a missed opportunity in terms of not having a bit more meat to the repair sections plus the needlessly stupid controls. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2020 9:52
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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Satsuma wrote: I’ve heard a few sources talk about the Shantae games so I figured I’d play one of those; see what it’s about. It’s a cute anime inspired western developed metroidvania wannabe but rather than one map it’s 6 odd levels that you keep returning to. It’s simplistic, has a ton of heart and some lovely drawn characters that are nicely, if a bit sparsely, animated. It starts off really tough but about 1/3rd into it I collected an item that gave me 1/2 damage, a few heart containers ala Zelda and loads of health items that I could tank through a ton of hits and trivialised the game to the point that it wasn’t challenging and became a bit boring. Returning to the same levels became tedious too. It was still lovely to look at and has some really nice jolly tunes and some genuinely funny dialogue so it was fun to continue with but without the challenge I didn’t get much out of it. The platforming was a bit simplistic too, like many western devs have a habit of doing, and layouts wouldn’t have lit any fires back in the 16 bit days. Unfortunately I won’t be seeking out any more of these games in the series. Competent but not exciting or interesting enough. Soz.
I've only played one of them (and I can't remember which one now) but I've read that there's a decent bit of variance between them in terms of difficulty, game structure, etc as the devs have fiddled with the core over the years; and certainly any discussion I've ever seen has resulted in no consensus about which game in the series is the 'best' so it's possible there's another instalment which would suit you better. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 11:31
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 49. Bad Dream: Fever: macabre point-and-click with a unique graphical style, which basically meant I was hoping for something as awesome as the Rusty Lake series. It wasn't. It had the odd nice idea and went all meta about half way through--and I played it to the end so it can't have been that bad--but ultimately it wasn't massively interesting. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2020 11:50
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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48. Moons of Madness: horror game inspired by Lovecraft's 'Mountains of Madness. Which gets a nice nod right at the beginning of the game when it's revealed that although your crew of scientists are on Mars, the secretive corporation they're working for has them maintain a cover story that they're actually in the Antartic, right down to using a green screen to film video updates. Aside from that it's just the usual 'eldritch horrors from the dimensions between' and whatnot.
It all starts off relatively strong with your character alone in a claustrophobic base with your only other human contact the radio chatter with people in other locations on Mars. There's some purposely mundane activity to set the scene and familiarise yourself with the controls and then Shenanigans Ensue, as you'd expect. It's not a bad game per se, it's just not brilliant at all the things it tries. The few jumps-scares don't land, the overall atmosphere never quite gets going because the rote gameplay hollows it all out, and while the plot has a couple of interesting beats it's too much of a mish-mash of stuff you've seen before to really stand out. Can't really recommend. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2020 11:11
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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47. UnpuzzlerR: sequel to excellent puzzle game 'Unpuzzle'. It's pretty much more of the same with a couple of new mechanics so I'll just quote what I said the first time around:
Quote: Brilliant little puzzle game for Android that see yous taking a jigsaw puzzle apart. It starts off incredibly simply with just a few pieces to slide out from each other then steadily introduces new mechanics (pieces that are linked in various way, pieces that can only be taken apart in specific directions, pieces that spin, pieces that can be shifted around the board, etc) until you're at a point where someone looking at the board who hadn't played the game before would be utterly fucking baffled by the intricacy. Due to the smooth curve of new mechanics though you never notice this point arriving and it remains both interesting and captivating throughout. I was utterly, utterly addicted to this for the time it took to go through the generous number of levels and I'd highly recommend it.
And as with the first one it's available as a free browser game as well:
https://www.kongregate.com/games/kekgames/unpuzzler |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 16:50
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 46. Miniature - The Puzzle Story: you're presented with a series of dioramas made up of five scenes that you flick through and examine so you can place them in the correct order to tell a story. A nice idea but the controls are fucking horrible (on the Switch anyway, I suspect the PC version would fare better here) so it's a bit of a chore to actually move around. Despite that it's incredibly easy and boring as shit. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2020 10:33
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 45. Leaving Lyndow: a (very (very)) short narrative game which serves as a prequel to the developer's 'proper' game the exploration/paint 'em up 'Eastshade'. Leaving Lyndow looks nice and has a lovely atmosphere but at something like 40 minutes long it barely tells the ghost of a story before you're done. That said, it's only £2.79 at full price and I paid even less so I did arguably get my money's worth and it's done nothing to lessen my interest in Eastshade itself, which looks fucking lovely. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:33
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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43. A Short Hike: short and sweet little exploration game in which your character attempts to hike up a mountain. This requires a number of 'feathers' which power up your jumping and climbing abilities so you need to explore the island you're on and do side-quests for characters to get feathers and cash. It's lovely and quirky and the various characters are all fun to interact with with fun quests (though most of them do boil down to 'find and thing and return/deliver it'), and what seems initially like a small world turns out to have a surprising amount of stuff to find and do. I didn't 100% it but I got the majority of the feathers--certainly enough to get me up to the snowy peak of the mountain--and did all the quests I came across (aside from the parkour race as that could get fucked) and enjoyed every minute of it. If that sounds like the kind of thing you'd enjoy then it comes highly recommended. And it's currently part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality: https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial ... d-equality
44. The Spectrum Retreat: puzzle game where you 'pull' different coloured lights off of things so you can either walk through coloured doors or stand on coloured platforms. Has a framing devices of a virtual hotel staffed by robots that your character is trapped in. It's generally okay though uninspired stuff and the last set of levels has a couple of things that, to me, break the cardinal rules of such things* but I enjoyed it enough for it's six or so hour runtime.
*- One level requires you to move your character in mid-air after 'grappling' off a point so you can land on a specific platform. This technique is never introduced nor used ever again and as it's not any kind of proper platform game I honestly didn't even know you could do it until a video walkthrough gave me a clue.
- One aspect of the very final level is only solvable by practically pixel hunting for the sliver of a far-off coloured block that you can just about sort of see from one very specific spot. Pure horseshit in this type of game.
- The final level is very long by the standard of the game and the final room--which has a trivial solution--opens with a sheer blind drop to your death which forces a restart of the entire lengthy level. I very, very nearly gave up on it there and then but knowing I was like 30 seconds from the end of the game drove me to repeat all the shit the came before and then gingerly enter the final room as the developer had apparently intended you do.
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri May 29, 2020 17:19
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 42. What The Golf?: quirky and ridiculous (in a good way) puzzle game of sorts where everything is golf. Basically every bite size level involves you charging up the traditional power/direction arrow from classic golf games and firing stuff around in order to get to the flag. Sometimes you're hitting a ball, sometimes a club, sometimes a house, sometimes your own character model. It escalates ridiculously from there and some of the idea you come up against are very imaginative; even as they purposely and obvously rip off everything from Portal to Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy. There are the odd teeth-grindingly frustrating levels that rely more on luck or perseverance than actual skill, but I'm awful at games and I still managed to completely 100% everything. Pro-tip: a couple of the levels involving crabs are pretty much technically impossible using the stoik/buttons but become very easy when you use the touchscreen because it's faster to 'charge up'. Other pro-tip: space out your sessions and don't just play it for hours on end because at it's core it is very similar throughout and you'll get utterly burned out on it that way. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 16:14
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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41. Starman: a puzzle game for pretty much all the platforms which sees you doing the usual box/switch/portal/whatever manipulation to power up things and escape the level. Starts off very slow and boring but the puzzle variety and difficulty picks up after a bit and things get much more interesting, with only some iffy physics in a couple of levels holding things back. It's also really, really fucking dark on the Switch screen which was mildly annoying, something that's rubbed in a bit when you finish the game and it briefly blooms from it's monochromatic look to something beautifully colourful and you see what you could've been playing all this time if not for this weird art direction.
Arguably the most interesting thing about it is when you finish it and the 'Flow Mode' is unlocked. Despite the name though it's not a different approach to the levels you've played, it's pretty much a different game entirely. It's like a tiny wee open world that you can explore and dick around in that's filled with environmental puzzles you have to figure out from observing stuff. Despite some pretty obscure aspects it's great fun and a refreshing change of pace from what came before. It's main mechanic is being able to change the weather at will so you go from sailing your boat around during a lightning storm to freezing everything so you can eschew the boat entirely and instead ice skate your character around the lake that's at the centre of thing.
Don't get me wrong, it still feels a lot like a mobile game in places (probably because it started out there as far as I can tell) but it's much more fun than I expected it would at the start an certainly I got much more than my 99p moneys worth out of it. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 15:26
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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40. A Mortician's Tale: you play as a mortician going through her daily duties of embalming, cremating and generally working on corpses before attending the wake and listening to the chatter of the deceased's friends and family. The story plays out mostly from reading your emails each day before you get on with the job at hand. Each 'case' only take a couple of minutes of active interaction to run through and there's only a handful of them so the entire thing's done and dusted in half an hour. There's no fail state and you literally can't do anything wrong so no real agency; this is a story with some slight interactive elements. Which is fine in itself; and it's interesting to learn about the mechanics of embalming and cremation*--plus one of your daily emails goes into more details about new stuff going on like more environmentally friendly idea that some people are adopting when it comes to their death--but just don't go in expecting anything more than that.
*Did you know that after a cremation the urn of 'ashes' the family gets isn't ash at all, but actually the result of grinding down the left-over bones in a 'cremulator' machine? I genuinely didn't. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 13:59
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 34-39: another crop of bite-sized escape games from Android developer nicolet.jp. All of them logical, clever and generally very well done. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:48
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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GazChap wrote: Bamba wrote: If you've never played it before there's loads of free 2D picross/nonogram games around the place you can check out for a taste. Picross is a staple of mine, too. Never heard of a 3D one until this though 
Ah, you're in for a treat then! |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2020 20:44
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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GazChap wrote: Bamba wrote: This sounds like extremely my jam.
If you've never played it before there's loads of free 2D picross/nonogram games around the place you can check out for a taste. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2020 14:54
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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33. Voxelgram: picross in general is possibly the single game I've spent most time playing. Beginning with web based versions then onto LogicSquare which has been installed on pretty much every Android phone I've owned.
Nintendo released a version of it for the DS called Picross 3D which turned the grid into a cube and I was utterly fucked hooked on it for the time it took me to work through all the levels. A few random Android devs have taken a crack at that over the years but always pretty half-heartedly, and for some reason Nintendo themselves don't seem intent on doing anything with the concept. So I was very, very happy indeed when I stumbled across Voxelgram a while back and it was downloaded to my Switch with a fucking quickness.
It's clunkier to control than the original but the stylus of the DS was so ideal for the job that it's difficult to hold that against them. I did spend some time fighting with the controls but it doesn't take long to master them and then you've basically got fucking Picross 3D! The difficulty takes a bit long to ramp up with only the final few level sets really providing a challenge, but given the amount of time I've sunk into the game possibly I'm not the best yardstick for that. I've finished all 190 of the fixed levels but there's a 'random' option which generates puzzles on the fly with various themes so I'll likely still be firing this up for a go every now and again forever. Yas! |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 15:40
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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| 32. Samsara Room: Samsara Room was the 2013 precursor to the Rusty Lake/Cube Escape series of delightfully macabre and twisted 'room escape' games which has been given a remaster and update to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the main series. I'm not sure if I played the original version but this one's every bit as interesting, logical and weird as it's sibling games so just as worth seeking out, especially as it's free. |
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Forum: General Discussion Topic: Finish 52 Challenge (2020) |
| Bamba |
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 14:20
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Replies: 370
Views: 32717
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