Just completed - The Bear and Badger

Tempy

Hollow Knight
I decided to go after the final boss last night, and ended up with a completion rate of 67%, at just shy of 20 hours.

That's a ridiculous amount of stuff left to do, and a quick look at the wiki and faqs about it show I've missed at least one major chunk of the game, as well as a lot of optional bosses and achievements. It's a great game. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if there are one or two areas that have some ridiculous challenges that are down to how it deals with damage recoil and environmental damage, and one or two of the bosses that are very, very hard.

Ori is certainly the better platformer, and has far more grunt in its artwork and rendering, but Hollow Knight has a better world, actual combat, and a nice mix of tone, mechanics and story that show the influence the Souls games can feed back into the genre that birthed them. The story almost feels ripped entirely from Dark Souls in places, but it's easy enough to follow and the 2D world maps surprisingly well into a real world space in your head.

Thoroughly recommend this. PC only at the moment, but a Switch release is imminent.

regmcfly

Yes but did you get a boob hickey

Blue Swirl

Nina wrote:

Finished Breath of the Wild. I'm at a loss now, had such a good time with that game and now it's done. 140 hours of fun and views. I've still missed things, haven't fought all of the different enemy types or played with different armour sets.

Such a great game, think it's time to dig up the list your 100 games thread.

I'm in a similar boat. All I've got left to do, main quest line wise, is go fight Ganon. But fuck that, I've got mushrooms to farm and clothing to upgrade. Saving the world can wait.

acemuzzy

Super Mario 3D World (WiiU)

Well "completed" as in "got to the credits", so eight worlds down out of 12...

Took a while to get going (like five worlds or so), but pretty good once it hits its stride, with the slightly annoying skyscraper finale the only mis-step IMO, coupled with checkpointing based on stars not level completion. But yeah, at it's peak it's got some great levels / hidden bits - and I expect I will push a bit further (even though missed green so far means the infamous Champions Road is a way off yet...).

Hard to give a score given I've kinda blasted through, but I'm gonna go [8] on the expectation of fun ahead. It may rise higher depending on how the bonus bits pan out...

hylian_elf

So you've yet to start the proper bits...

Blue Swirl

As with many modern Mario titles, it really comes alive post-credits. Keep going, but expect the challenge to ramp up exponentially. I didn't 100% M3DW, but I'm glad I kept going.

JonB

Rive

Moot, look away now.

I didn't enjoy this at all, and it's just not very well made IMO.

Control doesn't feel right, and lacks the precision for quick dodging that the game demands; mapping the jump button to the left triggers couldn't be more awkward (and you can't reconfigure); when you get hit there are big explosions and you often get knocked into other things, which either means disorientation or instant death; your own special weapons can damage you; checkpoints are badly timed so that restarts can put you in immediate danger; enemies fly straight at you from off screen, with no time to react; and stuff just kills you all the time before you even know what's going on - it's like being told off constantly with no idea what you did wrong.

To top it off, there are 'comedy' meta/4th wall-breaking quips from the main character that are really not funny, especially when you're repeatedly dying and having to hear the same one over and over again, and on numerous occasions they even reference other, better games that you'd rather be playing.

Towards the end there are actually some nice imaginative sections, and even the final boss is quite good, but it's never fun because the way it plays is still frustrating.

So, yeah. No.

acemuzzy

Reads like an [8]

hylian_elf

I'm surprised you picked it up, Jon. It didn't review particularly well, did it?

JonB

It was highly recommended.

And quite cheap.

regmcfly

splatoon 2 (sp)

Christ on a bike. It felt like playing a new Galaxy game. Levels churn out one idea and then fuck it into the bin. Bosses are as mad as they come (shout out especially to world 2). I had an incredible time playing it. Hilarious, exciting, and genuinely hard at points. If this game was just the sp, it'd be worthy of a recommend. As is, there is a shitload of stuff to fix in the MP, but bagarru, when it's on, it's the only game I want to play. There's a phrase I really dislike, which is "moment to moment " gameplay, which really is about how it feels to play something. Splatoon feels good. Fuck the 1.5 haters, this is the real deal. Goty .

Nina

Ok, so it wasn't my lack of skills that at times found SP pretty hard work. You had the same. How did you do on collecting stuff? Or is that a second party through for you?

Its such a wonderful package full of content, I might have fallen in love.

regmcfly

I was about 30% on grabbing things. They're surprisingly well hidden. When I did find a scroll though it was genuinely a moment where I felt smart. It is a real hard game, no messing. Let's get this sucker to be goty Nina. TACTICAL VOTING

Tempy

Tentacle Voting

Bollockoff

Oh god I'm getting the Switch shakes again.

Syph79

It's a work of genius. I've just got into ranked battles and it's ace to have the variation from turf war. Had never played the tower game or rainmaker, but they're really fun.

Syph79

Bollockoff wrote:

Oh god I'm getting the Switch shakes again.

I can't spend your money for you, but if I could I'd buy you a Switch. The thing is a little miracle.

Bollockoff

Yeah I'm focused on getting the pastel coloured one to buy me time.

Blue Swirl

Tempy wrote:

Tentacle Voting

I've got a film on my computer called Tentacle Voting. Well, I say 'film'...

regmcfly

I er completed adventure capitalist on my phone.

Blue Swirl

Did you get to be President of the US?

[Deleted User]

Too reg to fail.

JonB

Yakuza 0

Finished the story and did some of the optional stuff - but only 43% completion.

I've not played any Yakuza games before, so all of this was new to me. I quite liked this in the end after not liking it at all to begin with. It took a while to get over the crapness of the character models and animation, and the over long cutscenes.

The good stuff once it gets going is the characterisation of the leads (although Majima wins by miles - almost everything about his sections is better), the OTTness of the fighting, the sheer number of different mini-games, and the silliness, which makes for some properly funny goings on. The contrast between the main story that plays it completely straight and all the daft side quests and mini-games is a winning formula.

But still, the actual gameplay is a bit thin. Dull fetch quests. Side quests that involve making a couple of fairly inconsequential decisions, or another short and pointless fight. Mini-games that are worth trying once but aren't really worth sticking with. And the combat never really clicked. I had greater success doing little more than hitting the main buttons a lot than when I actually tried to get good at it. Even in the finale I was still basically button mashing and didn't have any problems getting through it. The camera is also pretty bad. It offers more catharsis than challenge (bad guy does something awful then you really beat the crap out of him), but that's not really enough when it's the meat of the game.

Anyway, it's certainly different and worth experiencing, and we had some good times, but I doubt I'll be playing more Yakuza games in the future.

[Deleted User]

Majima is my spirit animal.

Moot_Geeza

Cross posted from the 52 games thread. Haven't seen much talk about this one on here.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Aareo - PS4 Frequency meets Rez - rarely great, but a solid effort buoyed by bangin' bass heavy tunes that, when the game nails its pitch, really enhance the not-particularly-good gameplay. In all honesty, if this looked and sounded shit, two things it most certainly does not, it would be a poor game, but it doesn't so oddly enough I'm recommending it quite highly. I paid a fiver on PSN, and if you can grab it at that price (ends Aug 16th) you're laughing. Well worth a punt for anyone who plays with headphones, was a perfect match for the Sony Golds. Of its main gameplay parts, the shooting, although fine for the most part (if unremarkable), isn't as good as the rail matching. The latter is controlled by flicks and circular motions of the stick, and actually works very well as it's often married with the punchiest sections of the music track. The irritating homing missiles made me consider marking it down a touch, but I would've had fun with this at twice the price, so [7]

This vid sums it up quite well. Left stick controls the craft, right stick controls the cursor. You don't stick to the glowing rails, you have to guide the ship along them as closely as you can (even WR runs on Youtube don't seem to maintain 100% accuracy), and they're mostly tied to a layer of audio that drops out when you're out of range. Some of the stages look fantastic too, with bold high res flat polygon geometry. Definitely a looker for a game made by 3 people. Hey everyone, check out this 7/10, also on PC and Xbox.

regmcfly

JonB wrote:

Yakuza 0

Finished the story and did some of the optional stuff - but only 43% completion.

I've not played any Yakuza games before, so all of this was new to me. I quite liked this in the end after not liking it at all to begin with. It took a while to get over the crapness of the character models and animation, and the over long cutscenes.

The good stuff once it gets going is the characterisation of the leads (although Majima wins by miles - almost everything about his sections is better), the OTTness of the fighting, the sheer number of different mini-games, and the silliness, which makes for some properly funny goings on. The contrast between the main story that plays it completely straight and all the daft side quests and mini-games is a winning formula.

But still, the actual gameplay is a bit thin. Dull fetch quests. Side quests that involve making a couple of fairly inconsequential decisions, or another short and pointless fight. Mini-games that are worth trying once but aren't really worth sticking with. And the combat never really clicked. I had greater success doing little more than hitting the main buttons a lot than when I actually tried to get good at it. Even in the finale I was still basically button mashing and didn't have any problems getting through it. The camera is also pretty bad. It offers more catharsis than challenge (bad guy does something awful then you really beat the crap out of him), but that's not really enough when it's the meat of the game.

Anyway, it's certainly different and worth experiencing, and we had some good times, but I doubt I'll be playing more Yakuza games in the future.

There's a new one out in two weeks

JonB

Can't wait.

Moot_Geeza

Late to the party, but that's Oxenfree finished. Time to read all about it now, I thought it was a remarkable achievement overall.

tigersgogrrr

That's because you are a man of fine taste.

tigersgogrrr

You should find and watch Tempy's video on it. It's excellent.

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