MY BIG BO-NAIR

Superhot.

Neat idea.....for the first 45 minutes. I was bored senseless by the end. Ho hum.

Prey (2017, Bone)

I absolutely fucking loved it for around four fifths of the game. There's a few hours towards the end that drag a little as the sense of discovery and exploration kinda ends and you're tasked with a lot of back/forward through areas, but the story is strong enough that I didn't hate those sections.

It is, all told, a complete mash up of around five to six games, Bioshock, System Shock, Dishonored, Deus Ex, Metroidvanias etc. Takes all the best bits, although the combat will be shite for some (hello chalice) because until you upgrade some shit its deliberately sluggish, as is movement speed, to keep the game tense within the mimic gimmick. There's plenty scope to build your guy/gyal however you want with skill trees and all that typical jazz.

The recycling mechanic really fits the game, allowing you to pick up junk by the ton, whap it all in a machine which transforms it all into materials from which you can create ammo/health and a multitude of other cool shit. You don't have to do all this, if you're the kinda heartless, non-OCD bus riding wanker, but you'll be doing yourself, and me, a disservice.

The star of the entire show is the ship. Beautifully built, interconnected, full of areas you want to hack into/find a way into/do some super crazy awesome shit to get in (hallo 10p)/do it the obvious way and find a keycard like a fanny. The game, as a whole, is at its absolute best when you're exploring, very similar to the recent Deus Ex efforts. You've got ya hacking mini-games, emails to read, notes to pick up, multiple strands of plot to stitch together.

Essentially if you like games, like plot, like story, like exploring, like skill trees, like SUPER AWESOME RUN SPEED AND JUMPS (skill tree power) which makes the combat a lot more fun, aren't a nutter, aren't gonna shout SHIT THIS SHIT FOR CUNTS MATE within five hours and you like to smile, buy it. If not, don't chat to me fam.

Due to Breath of the Wild being potential GOAT, this sits very easily in my second favourite new game experience of the year.

[9]

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Think I ended up somewhere around the 300 hour mark. There's still loads of stuff to do, I haven't done all singeplayer, online HR7 and G2 and G3 rank are still unfinished and the DLC has only gotten a small bit of attention (Palico outfits mainly). I played this every week with a friend of Swirl (who gave up at some point, fair enough) and we wanted to at least get Gogmazios down. Which we did, twice. Needed that to have it both as a completed quest. Kept on it a bit longer, seeing if we could translate the texts that are given to you, but the grind just got too real. Only two of us in 4 player quests made it not the most fun we had. Resources where draining hard, money to upgrade swords was hard to get together so we switched to Generations.

I won't say I won't be back onto this to complete single player stuff, but the Monster Mondays will switch to Generations for now. Which is a nice change of pace, switched to a hammer in stead of a long sword, so completely different play style. Might need a sword of some sort if I'm going to need tails though.

Still, Monster Hunter is a great game if you can get into it. Switch version will be crazy. Same game on the telly and on the go? There goes my life. (They still need to officially announce it first, but I am prepared)

Facewon wrote:

FranticPea wrote:

Superhot.

Neat idea.....for the first 45 minutes. I was bored senseless by the end. Ho hum.

Hmmmmmmm. Just started. I'm high on it. We'll see.

How long did it take you frantic?

Hard to not sound like a dick, but it felt like the end credits came in about 2 hrs of play. It's sorta one note, but damn it was a good length for me and really did what it did well.

Nah, fair play.

Yeah, I dug it all.

My only fear was that once the Core mission was happening that there'd be section after section. I was hoping it wouldn't do the metro last night thing of feeling like it was ending for an extra 4 hrs of missions.

So while I agree on all those fronts, I just thought they paced it right and got out just in time.

Oh and I warmed to it somewhat - there remained times where the rolling / scenery was sligthly hard to read, but the one-shot-kill thing makes you forgive it easily when you do finally come good.  As Jon said, music was great, sound effects in deliberately short supply but perfectly functional, an aesthetics did the job.  Mechanic was fairly one-horse but didn't outstay it's welcome, so it's ended up a fairly solid [7] tights from an an.

Yeah i quite quickly worked out what was needed, and then got a sequence that always had it happen in a certain spot quite early on in the fight (as his movements seem semi-predictable).  And then got lucky that I actually hit it on like my second attempt once I'd figured all that out.  And the rest, they say, is history...

Did you do The Truth too then?  I guess I should.  But not tonight...

So I played through COUNTERSPY (Vita), and it was all a bit dull.  Stealthy infiltration stuff, it's basically a clunky crossover of other games that are better than it.  The Defcon stuff isn't hugely well implemented (basically acting as lives, but you can kinda abuse it by sprinting through levels), and the whole 2D/3D thing didn't really for me (pretty similar to Shadow Complex, but less good looking & less fun - particular the whole needing to duck to change the shooting direction stuff.

Overall, just a bit boring - not helped by ludicrous loading times (over a minute to carefully randomly generated a level that's basically exactly the same as all the other levels - genius).

Meh, I don't think I can go higher than a [5], despite Andy's lyricism.

JonB wrote:

I did, yeah. There's 3 parts to it, so it can take a while, but it's not too tough once you've figured it out.

Now done. Still only 227 deaths , phone the third stage the most annoying but managed it in the end, so hurrah that's done done (cos fuck iron mode!)

Mayber

Murdered Soul Suspect. Someone else finished this recently and my thoughts on it are pretty much the same. Standard B movie sorta game. Had a few nice ideas but a few bad ones too. Hard to recommend in all honesty.

Hyper Light Drifter (PS4)

Pixel-graphics ARPG, which seemed to subscriber to the "difficulty through obscurity" school of thought, not helped by a geographically inaccurate pair of maps.  But the sword-wielding and dashing worked really well, and (most of the time) the sense of adventure led you really well through sensible routes of progression.   It's just a shame that when they stumbled, you were left floundering.  

The gun seemed a bit unnecessary too (I barely used it - and never bought grenades), and the warping and shops and occasional hassle getting medipacks could with a modicum of further tweaking all pushed this up to a [9].

I'm humming and harring, but think it's still an [8].  There's a chunk more I've not seen, but a nice mix of adventure, aesthetics, reaction gameplay, and some high-skill dash sections was a pretty winning combo overall despite the grievances.  [8] samurai from an apocalypse.

Journey.
Nearly gave up on this again. Have tried to play it twice and given up in 15 minutes each time. Nearly gave up after 25 or so tonight. Had even typed up a post in the 'Just given up on' thread.

I persevered.

This was a beautiful game. There's a lot I could say about the importance of the companions you meet but all you really need to know is I was lucky and they played their part in something absolutely lovely.