119. The Falconeer - Xbox One (roughly 8hrs)

Beautiful but clumsy, sparse, confused, inconsistent and occasionally infuriating small scale open world dogfighting game that somehow manages to emerge from the ashes of the dumpster fire with some dignity intact.  I can't pinpoint why it's not a disaster, but as poor as it is in a multitude of different ways, it's bizarrely moreish too, hence me finishing it within a few days.  Spoiler alert: I'll be settling on a hard won [6] overall, but a lower mark would be far easier to justify.  

When the game starts your warbird pretty much limps through the sky armed with a peashooter, and it takes too long to work out how to mitigate the strong feeling of weak sauce.  You'll gradually learn to cut through the shields put up by the muddled text, but non gibberish instructions and a proper tutorial would've been far preferable to the often mystifying UI.  Yes, it's frankly astonishing that this is mostly the work of a one man dev team - the hugely talented Tomas Sala - but he should've swallowed the humble pie and brought someone in with a better handle on this sort of thing.  I almost missed out on the game's most useful upgrade as its description erroneously mentions 'range' rather than 'rate' as its buff for collecting essential splinters, so I've got people moaning on Reddit to thank for even finishing the campaign.  I'll give a quick example of place/character names - the first area is called Dunkle, and one of the characters is called Captain Scummer.  Not exactly platinum tier, are they?  The story thinks it's Game of Thrones with its warring factions/double crossing house allegiances - to the point where one of the characters often repeats the line 'you know nothing!' - which is fine I guess, but the (un)finished article clearly isn't as epic as intended.  By the end of the game I have to admit I didn't have any inclination to pay attention other than keeping an ear out for the hilariously off the wall voice acting.  Back to the UI - the ammo system isn't adequately explained either, and the charms don't seem to work for proper missions (or perhaps they do, in which case the descriptions for those are poorly worded too).  Even things like the fish that you can swoop down to grab bring an element of confusion.  There's an item to 'increase effectiveness of fish', or something similar, but some sort of clue as to their usefulness in the first place wouldn't have gone amiss.  Plus there are various other minor niggles like not being able to see a weapon's stats until you've bought it.  It takes a lot of effort to push through the opening couple of hours, but it does start to reward perseverance by chapter two.

As mentioned, I'm going for an above average score for the bottom line, but it's not reading that way is it?  I could probably do with Tom returning that stone to my glass house, he could proof read this while he's here.  Once you get to grips with how things work there's a pretty good dogfighting game here.  Panzer Dragoon meets Crimson Skies seems to be the touchpoint for many reviews, the latter of which passed me by.  Your falcon is pretty maneuverable, even with the initially nerfed stats, as are the majority of airborne opponents, which makes for some exhilarating cat & mouse skirmishes.  A few of the standard enemy types are more tenacious than expected, banking and spinning around you with a constant desire to attack.  There's much fun to be had when it all goes off, especially for a player prepped with a 'how to play Falconeer' cheat sheet (something I'd strongly suggest for anyone considering giving this a bash - bypassing the 'what the fuck is going on?' period completely would massively improve the game).  

As also mentioned, it looks fantastic.  This has no business being an indie game, let alone a one man band offering.  The throat singing Mongolian chant style soundtrack is a perfect fit too.  There's no loading either, even when you fast travel (which seems to be randomly offered at the start of some missions just because) you pretty much jump cut to your destination.  It's hugely impressive, and it all runs at 1080p/60fps on a One S with occasional screen tearing pretty much the only blot on its copybook in terms of the overall aesthetic.      

Okay, we started with the bad stuff, but now the good stuff is mostly out the way I should probably return to my giant post-it note scroll of grievances.  Bullet point montage is go: the collision detection is laughable, there are no checkpoints within the occasionally lengthy missions, bombing is ridiculously bad, the epilogue is either broken or a deliberate trollfaced cunt, the character swapping between chapters makes no sense (you retain weapons and currency, wot?), the ability to select from the four chapters at the start smacks of brainfart brainwave, it's not worth suffering on standard difficulty with easy being the only sensible option, treacle paced escort missions (I actually wrote this in caps), speed boost air pockets are so high up it takes just as long to slowly fly towards your destination, the miserly stamina bar is an unnecessary hinderance that definitely detracts from the enjoyment overall.  I could think of another five on the spot.       

The whole thing just whiffs of 'due to be released in 6-8 months', which is a shame considering how enjoyable it is at its best.  Hopefully there's a sizeable patch planned, because there's a much better game here if it can brush the bogies out of its tail, unclip its wings or [to anyone who's bothered to read this far: insert something else].   Reads like a [6].  Not worth buying and probably not worth borrowing as of yet.  If it gets the patch it deserves the birds in the bush are potentially worth double the one in my hand.   

9. Spiritfarer (PC) - 9 Hours

Cute game about preparing for death. I had heard this was good, and it was on gamepass so thought I would take advantage.
I liked it, but I didn't love it. The base (boat) building aspect was good, and felt easy, the buildings kinda generated supports if needed etc, you dodn't have to micromanage that. It looks lovely, very cute cartoony style. My problem was that it felt very grindy, particularly with the requests for food of your crewmates, and the travel from one place to the next just took too long.
I lasted it out, and was glad I played it, but I can't see it being one I ever come back to [7]

10. Streets of Rage 4 (PC) - 5 hours

Long awaited return of the classic Beat em up franchise. This was another one I wanted to love and just didn't. I liked the updated graphic style, and the 'secret' retro levels. I played the original games when they were new and this was an unwelcome callback to that, especially when if you continue, you start the level again, and that just felt a little unfair.
Good, not great [6]

Was an 8 for me too. Free DLC is on the way, should be a good excuse to go back.

41.Astro’s Playroom - 5 Hours - 8/10 PS5

Wow, what a charming little game. Super glorified demo but shed loads of fun. I wonder if any game will ever make use of the DualSense like this? Controls were great, games fun and quirky, short and sweet and I couldn’t help but collect everything possible. Just pure fun. A Nintendo game on a Sony console.

Apparently a remake of 2 was announced alongside this.

Hopefully sales have been enough to see that come to fruition. Who knows, maybe we'll be lucky enough to see the whole trilogy.

15. MO: Astray (Switch) - 19/11 - 11hrs
Quite impressive for a small team. Oozes atmosphere with lovely audiovisuals and plays well. Went in not knowing much about it and thought it might be a Metroid-like, but it's not really. Linear platform action adventure thing. Found myself cursing quite a bit throughout at fiddly controls/jumping and couple of annoying bosses, and it seems to try too hard with the narrative/narration. Having said that, the setting is great and it retains a lot of mystery and intrigue. Not sure there is much left to do (save file on completion says over 97% I think) and I'm not too keen on the jump mechanics/controls, otherwise I would return.
[7]

15. Astro’s Playroom - [9] - 1hr

Purely joyful game. So well crafted and a great intro the dual sense that probably won’t be bettered. I don’t have the nostalgia for the older PlayStations like some of you (I was always Nintendo first) but the references are brilliant. Especially loved TLoU ref. Nice ending and lots to find. Will go back and get the rest of the artefacts once my hands have recovered.

Due to start that on Sunday, [7] will suffice.

33. Slay the Spire [9]
Went back to this earlier in the week and realised I hadn't played it since the extra character was added. So I played a number of games as the Watcher, mostly failing well before the end, but just then got an unstoppable build together and didn't get stopped. Fantastic as always.

56. Panzer Dragoon (Switch) - 1hr  

Gotta agree with moots points above, it's a decent remake of what was an impressive early Saturn game. It was improved in subsequent sequels to the extent this is a bit redundant, and unfortunately this remake doesn't change that. 

Everything here work's fine, which is massively improved over the reviewed pre-patched version for those on the fence about this. The graphics are hit and miss and range from quite pretty to pretty ugly.

There's not much else to say, it's fine and at the sale price is just about worth it imo.

6/10  

My list

Need to check out that video as the pre patch version must've been a mess. Nice reward for the superfans who paid full whack.

121. Wulverblade - Switch (2hrs)

Second playthrough of this, My 2020 scrolling beat 'em up obsession shows no sign of subsiding.  I went for 'beast mode' this time, which was a reward for the first completion and basically simplifies the already simplistic gameplay by letting you control a massive heavy hitting damage sponge brute of a character.  It's not a patch on the main game - it effectively turns it into a more straightforward early 90s Capcom effort - but still plenty of fun.  

*Checks notes* I gave this a [9] in 2019, and not much has changed since then...

...other than Streets of Rage 4 swaggering into town.  So maybe it's an [8] now, under the universal hard's only hard until harder turns up rule, but I still think it's fantastic.   

Woah.  A Zero and now an Eleven.  A year of extremes.

Did you notice much of a difference after the patch?

acemuzzy wrote:

Making a mockery of himself

If he had paid a little less for it, probably would be a [12]/[10].

Nice.  Might have to have a couple more run throughs - I just had a look at the patch notes and saw Cherry has been buffed too.  I liked using her but wasn't very good with her.

Also saw River City Girls is on PC Gamepass, not sure about Xbox 1.  Will play that first.

Also Also

56: Demon's Souls (PS5) 9/10

I never got far in PS3 Demon's Souls - It was a bit too alien and harsh, with the distant checkpoints, losing your EXP, not knowing if I was going the right way, or even playing it properly.  The series clicked with Dark Souls, when I way playing along side other people, comparing notes etc.  And by the time I got around to trying Demon's again, it seemed a bit too janky.  

The remake has some major draws - loading times are pretty much gone (a huge deal when you die as often as me), there's only like 6 PS5 games in existence at the moment, and it's a proper graphics show-off that runs really smoothly.  'Look at this!' - I exclaim, gesturing at the TV with one hand, twiddling the right thumb stick with the other.  'It's just a staircase.' says my friend.  'BUT LOOK AT IT!'.  Without going into detail it's the sort of game that makes Digital Foundry say things like Buttery Smooth and Full Fat, and make graphs that are just a straight line.  It's a lovely, scary, striking, FILTHY fantasy setting.  I love looking at it.

Beyond the good looks it was really fun to play a pure basic Souls game.  No gimmicks added to the formula.  I was surprised to see a few bits that had been repeated wholesale in later games (I'm thinking Patches's little trick, and the extra Gargoyle in Dark Souls).  Only bit I didn't go much on was the item carry limit, having to go back and forth to the Nexus all the time to change things up.  That got a bit tedious.  

Other than that though, loved it, and there's still plenty of meat on the bone, going back and looking for secrets, watching Youtubes to figure out WTF just happened, even just playing as a wizard or some shit.  Maybe it will convince me to go replay the old PS3 version soon too, check out the different enemy designs and such.  Top stuff.