37.Detroit: Become Human - 12 Hours - 7/10 - PS4 Pro

Loved this. Walking sim, heavy on QTE’s and god awful motion controls but loved the simple age old story and cardboard cutout characters.

Sound was great and of course looks absolutely stunning. Some boring sections but then reversed to good story or action sequences and by the end I was engaged in the stories of all the characters and genuinely cared for them and their outcomes.

Always love a good story driven walkathon with the Mrs and this had us both reasonably captivated.

Started DBH with the wife not long before losing all my saves on PS4. Got a soft spot for games like that.

Heh, Tilly & I loved Donut County.  Not that I got to play it much with all the pad hogging.

38.Evil Within - 11 Hours - 8/10 - Xbox One X

Only the second play through of this after I completed it on its release. What a fantastic game. Great characters, interesting crazy story, the different ways they drive the story through the ever changing environment is aces, and playing through again on an OLED on the X made it look absofuckingloutely incredible. Real survival horror classic, got the DLC to play through now just to spend more time with it. Awesome game.

101. Touhou Luna Nights - Xbox One (3-4hrs)

Saw this pop up on Game Pass recently and earmarked it for a go.  Character movement and attacks felt good, so I pushed on past the 'maybe I'll come back to that later' zone and three hours later I was still going.  It's a really solid Metroidvania clearly indebted to Symphony of the Night, but coming from someone who played both for the first time this year I can opine without rosetints: it's actually a smidge better than SotN for a non-hundo playthrough.  Yep, one of the greats is actually comparable to a no-mark indie release buried in the deluge.  That's not a dig at Castlevania - it's still a good game by modern standards and would've undoubtedly been fantastic at the time - but the indie scene these days is just chef's kiss divine.  Indies, I fucking love 'em.  

Straight off the bat this introduces an interesting mechanic - Grazing - which grants a minor health/magic recharge for narrowly avoiding contact with an enemy.  As save stations (telephone boxes here) can be quite spaced out, the ability to regain or farm health with an element of risk works very well.  You can slow time, you can freeze time, and you'll acquire a few secondary weapons if you keep an eye out for hidden rooms.  Standard attacks and sub-weapons drain magic, freezing time drains your clock, and attacks during frozen time feed on the clock rather than the magic bar.  It's all pretty simple once you get going, and it's all well implemented.  It's not an envelope pushing Metroidvania (this wouldn't be out of place as a late Saturn game), but it's well crafted, very playable and mercifully devoid of the I'M STUCK moments I tend to hate it map based/ability gated games. Having multiple sub-weapons and tonics selected by the bumpers was fiddly as you can only access one item at a time, but it's possible I missed a quick select wheel.  Some of the music was a bit weedy too, despite the name of the tracks appearing at the bottom of the screen to suggest it's noteworthy.  Plus it's a bit short, I can't see more than 7-8hrs on offer for anyone looking to mop up every last thing.  

Overall if you think you could enjoy a blue-haired girl witches anime style homage to Symphony of the Night without getting the weeboohoos at the cheek of it all I think you'd find a quality 2D action title here.  One more thing: it looks superb too.  [8]

Cheers mate.

Last Campfire Update - a 1.96gb patch is installing, so I guess that's that one tidied up.

39.Evil Within 2 - 12 Hours - 10/10 - Xbox One X

Just perfect. I seriously can’t find a fault with it. In fact I’m not sure if it was bettered for the X or if extra options were simply inserted at another point after release but it has a performance mode which didn’t miss a beat or drop a frame. It’s absolutely stunning and the sound is incredible. Good story, terrific gameplay perfected since the first with so many combat and stealth options, a little open worldly feeling but not too big at all, and the perfect length for a game if it’s type.

One of the best games of the gen. Simple.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Lovely stuff. I played that one and mostly liked it.

I literally just can’t think of any way it could be bettered. I hope a third is considered now they’re under the MS umbrella.

Don’t think I’ve said it yet Moot but you have absolutely owned it this year. Gonna have to do something special for you as this can’t be bettered.

Cheers mate. The numbers are almost arbitrary, I just love getting through stuff these days. Not sure if it's the 52 aim that did it or the console indie boom, but I was looking back on GotY threads the other day and I barely played a handful of new games in 2013 or 2014. I used to have to set an egg timer to enforce a full hour's play on anything.

Was it Outrun?

Haven't updated for a while. Not sure if I can remember everything.

24. Marvel's Avengers [4]
There's an OK campaign here. OK. The main character is likeable and they've done a decent job of fitting various Avengers into the new God of War style combat system. They're all pretty good to control and feel different from one another.

But. It doesn't offer anything remotely original. And then, the longer it goes on, the more it's designed to set up the GaaS model that's supposed to take over once the credits roll. Big empty maps full of loot lying about the place, with a handful of enemy patrols here and there, and a base area full of shops and providers of tedious quests. And once you're in a team, the combat turns to chaos, as dozens of robots are beamed in at once, chipping away at you from off screen. It's also a techical mess. Apparently, the online multipayer still barely works.

25. Hotshot Racing [7]
Whatever 'completed' means with this. I won one of the GPs on Expert, so that'll do. It's a good old-school arcade racer. Virtua Racer+ visuals, Ridge Racer drifting etc. Tying boosts to drifting and slipstreaming is a smart idea, especially when you just drift enough round a corner to fill the metre up and turbo out. It's a shame the online mode was unstable when I tried it, and the AI can be irritating on GP races.

26. MO: Astray [8]
Despite some minor niggles with late-game challenges, this is a supremely well-made and innovative 2D horror platformer, with a slowly unveiled story gluing it together. It's wonderfully macabre, especially the way you deal with enemies, expertly designed with its puzzles and platforming, and full of unexpected twists.

27. Telling Lies [8]
Once I was done, what I liked best about this was probably the idea that I might have pieced it together in a very different way. At one point near the end I accidentally circled back to the very first clip I'd watched, and the added context by that point gave it completely new sense. I could imagine coming to it from different angles, and still reaching the same conclusion, but going through another journey to get there, perhaps sympathising more with certain characters. But I also just really liked the story too - it's dealing with some interesting themes - and the performances are very good, even if you can catch them overreacting sometimes.

28. Hades [9]
I've only completed this once so far, but will likely keep going back. It's rare for this kind of Roguelike to stick with me, with its prorgression systems and repetitive levels. But the action is superbly hectic and the weapons and boons make every run significantly different. Even so, I doubt it would be so addictive if it wasn't for the clever way it fits its story round the Roguelike structure, or its witty take on Greek mythology.



I think that's it for now. I was also playing Spelunky 2 a lot, but never quite finished it before moving on.

103. Revenge of Shinobi - Megadrive (1hr)

Infinite shuriken save stage run, still loved it though.  Probably one of the first absolutely monstrous arcade-in-your-living-room 16-bit games, this was immeasurably superior to the Master System port of the arcade original.  Great controls, plenty of enemy types, one of the best chip soundtracks of all time and top quality stage design add up a game that arguably wasn't even surpassed by the more advanced Shinobi III.  Absolute peak on the cusp on 90s gaming, a huge step up.  94%



104. Shinobi - Master System (45mins)

It's not a resplendent port by any means but this was absolutely legit as a home title.  I distinctly remember this being one of the reasons why I chose a Master System ahead of a NES.  A school mate had both, and I was nearly swayed by Kung Fu Master, but this and Miracle World helped me sidestep a HeChosePoorly.gif.  The bonus stages - a big wow at the time - are brutally harsh and the magic is a damp squib at best, but the core mechanics are sound.  Yes, later stages are on the fuck off side of dastardly, and I still don't quite get the technique for the hellish third boss (or why the fourth boss is such a cinch), but overall this is a decent 8-bit game.  82%.   

Yep, look at him there with all his cunt pals. Took me multiple save states last night.

105. Inertial Drift - Xbox One (4hrs)

This can go in because I'm done with it, at least for now.  I've reached the credits with two characters in the story mode and had a mess around with the arcade mode/challenges.  I wanted to love it, but I think I've settled on 'quite liked it' with a pang of regret for spending the full £16.99 on it instead of Bloodroots, Knights & Bikes or something else on my wishlist.  

It's a twin stick racer, which sounds like peak bunkum but genuinely isn't.  The idea and practical execution isn't far off game changer territory, I just wish the game built around the controls felt like less of an afterthought.  The left stick steers your car like a tank, but the right stick is used to flick the back end out into a drift.  Combine the two and off you go.  After mere minutes it all feels legit and you'll be careering around corners wondering why on earth no-one has done this before.  It's Motorhead, Auto Modellista, Outrun 2 and Rage Racer with the tight Mario Kart 8 skid control chucked in, and it should be glorious.  It's such a shame that the track design feels so rote rather than playgrounds designed within an inch of their life a la Sega Rally.  In a way it's testament to the controls, as they're so good they still shine on the mostly lacklustre tracks, but this deserved to be a much better game.  Actually, now that I've mentioned Sega Rally - picture the Lakeside track in that.  It's not a classic is it?  Certainly not compared to the sumptuous main tracks.  Later stages in this feel like procedurally generated Lakesides with tastier skids, but without an announcer telling you which turns are coming.  Or a map.  So just winding roads and intermittent harsh corners, often hard to see because of the aforementioned moody setting (alleviated by learning the track of course, but still annoying).   

The cars are markedly different to control, which is a nice touch, but by the third one I found myself unwilling to learn the new nuances.  Difficulty seems set to random - some events are a piece of piss first time, others (*cough* Corey) suddenly feel like they're asking you to be the zen master of wheels.  Then it's back down to no sweat territory for the next event, spitting out a platinum medal for throwing the back end around corners a bit in a style race.  The restart option on the pause menu seems to only be offered at random, meaning that quitting and restarting an event from the menus is often the only way to have another bash.  More moaning: It's in desperate need of some brightness.  Yeah, it's got a moody streetlights and foglights thing going on, but blue skies wouldn't have hurt for at least one setting.  

I've done far too much moaning for a game that's fundamentally very good, but after the initial giddy rush of 'oh shit this really works!', the more I played of it the more the tasks felt like a a succession of chores.  Reads like a [6] but it's actually a [7].  Deserved to be an [8] though.