Just completed - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

Nice, inside has been on my To Play list for a while - will deffo check it out now.

[Deleted User]

Andy wrote:

Inside

Well, played through the story. Not sure I'll do it again to find all the trophies, I enjoyed it for the story, and working out the puzzles, and that'll have diminishing returns on repeated playthroughs. What an absolutely cracking game, though. I absolutely was not expecting that end sequence. Brilliant. One of the guys on One Life Left (I struggle to tell them apart) was complaining that it was too long and repeated to much, but I have to disagree. Occasionally I felt like I was made to drag boxes a little too far, but largely it taught you a mechanism, tested you on it then moved on without, imho, needless repetition. Played it over a couple of sessions, about half each night. I think it'll have to be in my top five of the year.

Quoted for page turn.

acemuzzy

Inspired by @Moot_Geeza, Sine Mora (Vita)

I actually basically quite enjoyed it - there's certainly a lot to like. Fun darting your little ship about, responsive controls, great 2.5D settings & nice variety in the settings. And the difficulty (on Normal) was about what I'd hope for, in general at least.

Mechanically, some interesting things going on. A variety of power-ups, the funnest of which was the red ones, which powered up your guns (with slightly different effects depending which ship you were in). When hit, you lose some of these, but they fly out of you as red orbs again, which you can attempt to pick up. But that puts you in more danger, and being hit also costs time, which can run out. (It gets restocked as you shoot stuff - meaning you can't ignore all enemies - and further doesn't slow down if you enter "bullet time".) There are then shields and special weapons on top. All good stuff, though the whole time mechanic felt a bit laboured.

The main down-sides were the two diffulty spikes - one shitty "follow some boxes through a maze", and a particularly tedious boss, each of which costs me many more lives than the whole rest of the game put-together. (You get some 'credits', but lose those & you have a fair way to retread, from the start of the chapter.)

And that's Normal. There's also a "Challenging" mode. And some of the trophies are ridiculous - e.g. 1CC Challenging doing various shizzle along the way, getting "A" grades on all levels. (I was consistently ranked "E" :-(

)

So... that depth is a definite thumbs up even though I'm not gonna touch it with a barge-pole, and the majesty of its visuals on Vita (reminding me that's it's one hell of a console!) also weigh in it's favour. So - [8] crimzons from a clover, despite my whinges.

Moot_Geeza

Good stuff, the music was pretty good as well, I thought. I had it on 360, but it's not BC. It's gone into some sort of Vita black hole, it's been £7.99 for two years and never seems to go on sale. Would definitely grab it again for £3ish.

Syph79

Doesn't help, but it was a PS Plus game on Vita.

acemuzzy

Yup that's how I got it!

JonB

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Good stuff, the music was pretty good as well, I thought. I had it on 360, but it's not BC. It's gone into some sort of Vita black hole, it's been £7.99 for two years and never seems to go on sale. Would definitely grab it again for £3ish.

Yeah, I've always fancied a go, but missed it on plus. Would grab at half price.

Dinostar77

Dishonoured 2
20 hours on a stealth run. A really really good game, lots of options to attack situations in different ways, more than you could probably try in two or three run throughs of the game.

Two absolute classic levels in game design (so much so they will be talked about for years to come). The Clockwork Mansion and the Stilton Mansion. Just genius levels. Only minor grips was the two major game crashes at the very end, one which rebooted my PS4.

Onto new game plus to play it through as the other protagonist, but this time all guns blazing, murder, death, kill, carnage.

9

regmcfly

Hilarious final boss aside, that's Gears of War 4, a thoroughly average game, done. Fuck my life does Gears need an upgrade. I was done after Judgment and I'm double done now. Beautiful but fucking ploddo.

JonB

I only played 2. That was enough for me. About 5 hours of game, the middle 3 of which was fairly entertaining, the beginning and end less so.

I assumed people mostly only played it for the MP.

regmcfly

That's Virginia done. Not going to bother with the "is it a game" malarkey, but just to say I enjoyed it, especially the music, as it was so damn close to the X Files that it hit a certain wee pleasure point in my game. Good fun.

regmcfly

Also yer man

Spoiler:

gets a shout out at the special thanks

Scout

I played that too over Christmas and also quite enjoyed my time with it. Loved the cinematic cuts.

Bob

regmcfly wrote:

That's Virginia done. Not going to bother with the "is it a game" malarkey, but just to say I enjoyed it, especially the music, as it was so damn close to the X Files that it hit a certain wee pleasure point in my game. Good fun.

For sure it was an enjoyable experience and felt more gamey than life is strange

TheDJR

Reckon I'll like Virginia? @someone that knows me

Bob

TheDJR wrote:

Reckon I'll like Virginia? @someone that knows me

It's cheap enough and short enough that's it's worth a punt jim- it's very stylised and mostly you walk and observe

Dark Soldier

TheDJR wrote:

Reckon I'll like Virginia? @someone that knows me

Its bilge of the highest quality.

AJ

Transformers Devastation

It is not a good game. Extremely middling Platinum output, held up by Peter Cullen and graphics that look like the movie from my childhood. Unless I'm forgetting any, it falls into place as the fourth best Transformers game, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Bob

Wait until they throw some rpg mechanics into the mix

AJ

Ha. It's already got like three layers of them. I never bothered touching them cause it just seemed like a waste of time.

Aaroncupboard

Finally got around to completing the main quest of The Witcher 3 the other night. I had abandoned the game a year ago as I began to get fatigued by it. However, absence really does make the heart grow fonder and it has been a pleasure returning to the game. The final few missions were good fun and it reached a suitably epic finale. I was also really happy with the ending I received.

Spoiler:

Gone straight into the DLC now.

[Deleted User]

Oh, nice. Enjoy it - the dlc is fantastic.

acemuzzy

Didn't know there were multiple endings.

Did you restart or carry on from where you'd got to??

Aaroncupboard

Carried on from where I was a year ago. Couldnt face putting in another 60 odd hours to get to where I had been.

There are a few main endings that are influenced by one or two key decisions towards the end.

Moot_Geeza

Quote contained in Cinty's TLG review, taken from someone's review of the game:

Spoiler:

Paul the sparky

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Quote contained in Cinty's TLG review, taken from someone's review of the game:

Spoiler:

No joke, I spent fifteen minutes putting two barrels next to his mouth,
only for him to keep attempting to grab them and miss every time. They
were practically touching his mouth, yet for some bizarre reason he
couldn’t grab them, and in the end I had to physically stand with them
in my hand until he stole them from my grip.

Spoiler:

I assume they're talking about the room where Trico is incapacitated after his fall/battle? I tried to place a barrel in front of him, but after he knocked it away when trying to grab it I assumed he was too weak to reach them and feeding them by hand was a neat way to force further interaction (90 seconds, perhaps). I don't understand why anyone would either a) persist with something for that long or b) lie about how long they persisted to emphasise a negative point in a review. A reviewer admitting it took them 15 minutes to find a simple solution is an odd choice, like when my manager says out loud that he struggles to get his head around gmail 12 months after we switched from Outlook. How can it not be obvious to someone that Trico is took weak at that stage to take a barrel himself?

Spoiler:

FranticPea

Paul the sparky wrote:

Spoiler:

I had the same issue. I don't think it took fifteen minutes, but that section is compounded by Trico's animation and collision detection making a hash out of eating barrels for the majority of the game before you get to that point, and even when you do hold it up to his mouth he can still knock the barrel out of your hands and send the boy sprawling.

Yup.

JRPC

So I've been skimming over the thread - very surprised at the negativity.

On this particular point...

Spoiler:

[Deleted User]

JRPC wrote:

So I've been skimming over the thread - very surprised at the negativity.

On this particular point...

Spoiler:

I thought it was a rather beautiful moment (one of so many).
At the start of the game, you're cautiously throwing barrels towards him and then running away before he takes a bite. Here, you overcome that cautiousness to gently tend to this still enormous and dangerous creature you've developed this relationship with.
I think I attempted placing the barrels near him about 5 or 6 times (as I'd been feeding him all along). It 100% worked for me that he was just too weak and needed my help. This is exactly the kind of organic "puzzle" that actually informs the narrative that elevates this high above the linear puzzle-platformers like the Uncharted's etc.
It's actually a quiet moment that sums up so much of what's lovely about the game.

I think, in general, it's been very positive - after all, just look at its position in the GotY thread. Unfortunately a few people ran into some pretty serious, and well known, issues. Seems to have been the luck of the draw but most have had a good time.

Moot_Geeza

The boy being sent sprawling after I thought I'd figured out what to do might've annoyed me too/thrown a spanner in the works for that particular solution. Luckily it didn't happen during my run.

Spoiler:

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