Wariospeedwagon wrote:

d I'd love to see a Sonic Mania kind of game that takes those designs and mixes them with 3's slick animations for a new 2d SF.   

I would pay good money for an Alpha/Zero 4 - especially after the abomination that has been SF5

5. Metroid Dread (Switch) - 25/10 - 16hrs
100%ed. A good Metroid, but not quite Super. A bit of a slow start, but once it got going and you had some power ups under your belt, it’s great. Movement is fluid and responsive.
What I wasn’t a fan of was the constant funnelling from place to place, sometimes feeling like you’re just being pushed to the next item and then the next, not being allowed to figure out the route for yourself. The EMMI sections, while break up the action, just felt a bit dull and annoyed me. I also felt the general atmosphere and the music was lacking.
But once I had everything, going back to wander and explore and get 100% with some deviously placed items was great. A good effort.
[8]

118. Metroid Dread - Switch (8hrs 37mins)

I only have recently gleaned opinions to offer on the Metroid franchise, having completed two of them and bounced off one (three times) in the past few years.  Without dwelling on it, my hot takes: Super Metroid: clearly way ahead of its time, not going to dispute whether it deserves the praise but I just can't click with it.  Metroid Fusion: Super.  Metroid Zero Mission: Good stuff, not great.  If I had to sum up the trio I'd use descriptions like atmospheric and intricately designed, but probably moan about slightly treacly controls and iffy bosses.

With the preface out the way, the first thing to mention is how well Samus controls for this particular excursion.  The basic movement is an absolute joy - largely thanks to a slide The Boss would be proud of - and the way she pegs it around the map is nimble and responsive.  For the first time we have a Metroid game that could hold its own as a linear run & gunner.  And speaking of bosses, most of the big ones are top tier ever for side scrolling videogames.  That's a lot of games and a lot of bosses.  

I was fully prepared to loathe the EMMI sections, but against all odds they improved the experience for me.  None outstayed their welcome and they were a welcome change of pace, plus I enjoyed the mini-puzzles of lining up takedown shots too.  Whenever they catch you, they will kill you - but first they must catch you.  The cloaking device means there are two viable ways to approach these sections, and as death drops you immediately outside the patrol zone it never felt like too much of a problem.  Thumbs up, says I.  The thumbs apply to the graphics too, which turned my stomach when first revealed but are actually quite tasty.

There are times where the abilities are ladled on so liberally it can feel like a bit of a Metroid montage.  For long term fans I expect this might rankle, given that roughly speaking the quest is streamlined and the hundo hunt is where the exploration is required, but I loved it.  It's like the bit in Prince of Thieves where Friar Tuck speedily loads up the bad bishop with too much gold, but instead of pushing him out a window he's allowed to just hare off around ZDR.  So not really like that at all, but I'm not one to back out of an analogy once I've started typing.

Complaints?  Go on then, I have a few - The music is merely there, which just isn't good enough for a mainline entry in what many would consider a flagship franchise.  This deserved better, and I daresay a fan mod with superior music would be well worth a hobbyist's effort.  The controls do get fiddly by the time you're carrying the majority of Friar Tuck's gold, particularly the grapple and the bomb move that Charlie's cross about in the other thread.  Performance wobbles in places too, although I haven't seen this mentioned much elsewhere so maybe my overworked Switch is packing its bags for the glue factory (I had a few problems with Foregone too, did I mention that?).  The framerate noticeably stuttered from time to time, especially on the gold Chozo boss.  One more moan: the recurring giant eye miniboss is a damp squib - if this were an indie game it'd be patched/title updated in eight months and you'd find new medium-sized beasties in their place.

Enough of all that though, the blemishes don't take the shine off and this is easily the second best game I've played this year.  A-Game stuff from Nintendo that hopefully heralds a sea change after their run of complacency. [9]


The only gif I could find....

119. Procession to the Calvary (Xbox Series S, 90 mins)

Quirky Pythonesque point and click adventure based on Renaissance paintings.  Much like the games it draws inspiration from the puzzles are a mixture of reasonable and mildly illogical.  I consulted a guide numerous times as there's a fair amount of toing and froing required in the admittedly small play area.  There's one puzzle in particular that I think I'd still be still be stuck on without cheating.  Still, it's an enjoyable experience and thankfully the isn't this funny? script genuinely is in places.  If you like the genre and find yourself hankering for a spot of Holy Grail style silliness it's worth taking a look, especially if you have Game Pass.  Probably the weirdest game I've played all year, which earns it an extra point. [7]

120. Wuppo: Definitive Edition - Switch (6-7hrs)

A regular fixture in the hidden gems lists I like to sift through online, probably not as good as it's cracked up to be in some places but still a fun little story driven platform shooter/lite puzzler.  It was billed as Metroidvania but that's a bit of a stretch imo.  The actual shooting is poor, the jumping isn't much better and the inventory is needlessly fiddly, so it was weird to find myself playing for the plot rather than the gameplay.  In terms of storytelling I'd probably have it almost on par with something like Wandersong, it really is a nice little well told tale with dozens upon dozens of genuinely nice touches, and while the mechanics are nothing to write home about they don't really detract from the experience. [7]

Co-op is bolted on and the sort of thing where any sane player would hate to control player two, but Tilly loved it anyway, and I enjoyed reading out the dialogue/selecting her conversation choices.  I expect she'll be up for reviewing it tomorrow, but for now this guy loves it, and it's a nice watch:

Lolwut

121. The Last Stop - Xbox Series S (6hrs?)

I'm not proud of it but I am willing to admit it - I liked Virginia.  Walking sims were fairly new to me when I played it.  I liked the bold choice of having totally shtum characters, appreciated the way it played with the flow of the narrative and didn't even wince at the heavy handed Lynchian stuff.  I must've missed a memo or two because it became a bit of a joke fairly quickly - on these boards at any rate.  General consensus is that Virginia was not a good game by any stretch of the imagination.  I'm pretty sure I gave it a [7].

The follow up effort from Variable State then.  It wants to be many things, but unfortunately falls comically short in most departments.  In a nutshell it attempts to be an interactive dialogue-centric kitchen sink Sci Fi drama with three separate-yet-woven narratives.  Someone was probably thinking Mike Leigh directs Under Your Skin with hat tips to something like Shortcuts, but the finished product is more Paul Danan directs a school production of Waterloo Road after watching Vice Versa.  I laughed too much while playing this.  Genuine guffaws in places (Spider might be the greatest fictional character of all time). The problem is - if it actually is a problem - I was laughing at rather than with it 90% of the time.  At the way the characters run.  At the way the interactivity is simultaneously redundant and woefully implemented (rotate stick to mend broken tea cup!  Press B to eat cereal! Walk to the left of the screen ahaha I meant the right!).  At the way every child character sounds like Morwenna Banks squirming in a big chair.  At the way one of the characters is an irredeemable turbocunt.  At the duet on the piano, jfc.  The London slice-o-life shtick misses the mark by a mile again and again, and every time I sniggered I liked the game a little more.

In terms of story I had absolutely no clue where it was going, and when it arrived at its destination I was more than happy to lap up the absolute ladlefuls of WTF.  I'd probably pay to watch a How Did This Get Made.

I shouldn't recommend this game, but that's what I'm about to do anyway.  Please play it.  It's not fun in spite of the wonkiness; it's fun because of it.  Like a videogame version of The Room, this is the sort of experience that deserves theme nights in pop-up cinemas.  'And you take the piss out of me for the stuff I watch?' was my wife's sneering input after witnessing a ham-fisted scene of interactive management comeuppance.  And this is coming from someone who actually watches Waterloo Road.  And Paul Danan's Celebrity Lock-ins. The bottom line is it's genuinely awful in places - there's almost no good reason for it to be interactive past the (mostly inconsequential) dialogue choices, yet it's relentlessly interactive - but overall I had so much fun I found it impossible to dislike. [6]

48: Beat Star (Android) 8/10

This is a free to play guitar hero where you tap the notes on your mobile rather than on your guitar.  It plays very well and looks smart.  Big glossy, self explanatory buttons to press.  It has a pretty good variety of songs.  There ARE quite a few stinkers to my 38 year old Tasmanian ear but also some good ones that I'd never heard before, and some old classics.

You also have different difficulty songs - the hardest songs (EXTREME, it says, and the songs' thumbnails have a little flame watermark on them so you know they're not fucking around) are proper hard.  It took me WEEKS to beat Rammstein's Du Hast but when I did, it was, all jokes aside, as big a rush as when I beat the Returnal final boss earlier this year.

As said it is a free mobile game with all that that implies.  You can only play it for so long before it locks you out and gives you a loot box  that takes 3-5 hours to unlock.  The loot box contains points that you put towards a different loot box with a song in it.  They get quite stingy as it goes on, and when you have to wait a week for a new song, I can't tell you how devastating it is when it's Papa bloody Roach.  In any case beating Rammstein felt like a final boss moment and it hasn't really been the same since, just going through the motions.  Some really good stuff here though.

I'd be happy with just the 2 lanes to be honest haha

53. The Legend of Tianding [7]
A great little platform brawler, loosely inspired by a real-life Robin Hood type character in early 20th century Taiwan. It's all very slick - the comic book style presentation, controls, combat (instantly tying enemies up and stealing their weapon, before kicking them across the screen), platform challenges and some tough but fair boss fights. It's only really the balance between story stuff and missions that lets it down - a little less running around doing errands and one or two more full-size levels and it would be right up there.

54. Chicory [8]
A very pleasant 2D Zelda-like with loads of clever ideas based around painting colour back into the environment. The way paint solves puzzles is often ingenious, and it's easy to get distracted just trying to make each screen look nice. The story and themes are laid on too thick (Celeste tackled similar stuff much better), but it's hard to dislike even for a grizzled old cynic when everyone's so nice and supportive.

Was poised to type that it sounds woth a shot while reading the review, ta. Hadn't heard of it.

123. Rush Rally Origins - Switch (3hrs)

Very good budget rally game that nails the essentials.  There's not a lot of window dressing - just Time Trial, Championship and Race modes - but considering it only costs five pounds any bellyaching could be turned into a first world problems meme.  Straight from the off it's clear the handling isn't much deeper than any puddles you might splash through, which is absolutely fine by me; it's an arcade leaning time trial racer that wants you to chuck the cars through drifts on the hairpins and shave split seconds off your own times.  Create an account in-game (painless) and you can download individual leaderboard ghosts to race against too, which ups its longevity considerably.  The graphics options are also worth mentioning as it offers a huge array of sliders to tinker with to get the game running to your tastes.  Target 30, 60fps or 'highest' while reducing tree density, upping the weather effects, dropping texture quality down to medium and so on.  Plus it has separate options for handheld and docked mode, which deserves a round of applause.  As far as I could tell everything ran perfectly on mid-tier settings undocked anyway, but I did do the vast majority of my racing on empty tracks.  

It lacks analogue triggers, which is a shame, and the top time trial medals seem to need upgraded cars to conquer, but I would've enjoyed this at thrice the price.  [8]



124. Backbone - Xbox Series S (4-5hrs)

Excellent interactive post-noir novel dripping in grimy neon rainswept pixel art goodness.  It resembles a point and click adventure at a glance but it's not the kind that requires you to find scissors to remove sleeping gnome's beards - progression is mostly achieved via dialogue exchanges and clickable object elimination, you have no inventory as such.  You play as Howard Lotor, a trenchcoat wearing racoon PI who gradually becomes embroiled in a deeper plot that involves a sketchy establishment related to your first case.  Any further information would enter spoiler territory, but it's an intricately told tale that rattles along at an agreeable pace.  Games like this often nail the atmosphere but fudge the dialogue in my experience, but this scores extremely highly on both counts - I'm a skipper and a skimmer when it comes to videogame stories, but even the most basic exchanges in this felt worthwhile (it's rare to see a game that offers dialogue options that feel natural, and conversations flow nicely).  There's an element of wonkiness to the way it plays on occasion, but for a game of this ilk that's not a deal breaker.  

Much like Kentucky Route Zero it's wiped its feet on something in my head and I can't stop thinking about certain scenes.  Very impressed. [8]

6. Bowser's Fury (Switch) - 8/11 - c5hrs
100%ed. A good Mario. A bit too short and easy, but really fun anyway and well designed. Co-oped it with my boy who ocontrolled Bowser Jr - the co-op isn't much to speak of at all, might as well not have bothered, but at least we had father and son gaming time with it. If they had made it even remotely challenging and a little bigger, it would have been so good.
[8]

I'm still holding out hope for another mainline 3D Mario on Switch.  Tbh I'd happily pay for more Odyssey kingdoms but Bowser's Fury did seem to be a dry run for something else.  I'm not convinced the Switch could quite handle whatever that may be though, Fury did seem to be riding the hardware pretty hard.

49: Forza Horizon 5 (PC) 8/10

This 'completed' means I've done all the big events (I think).  Obviously haven't done all the races and challenges, and will still pop in once a week or so to keep an eye on what's new.

Horizon is very reliably good at this point and they can probably put the game out on a new map every couple of years and I'd be fine with that.  Have to admit I was hoping for more though.  The racing is great, the variety of shit you get to go keeps things relatively fresh from race to race, even getting to races is really fun, going cross country with very few genuine obstacles in your path.

It looks pretty good but was hoping for more.  My computer had a fair bit too much shrubbery popping in and textures that were slow to load.  Pointy elbow stuff but still.  I'm not sure this is miles better than like FH3.  Even though this is a game about cars, aurally it is a bit pedestrian.  No new songs caught my attention and the story is mostly just good natured bland people being alright to each other for a bit too long and you can't skip it.  I think racing culture needs a brooding emo makeover I'm a bit sick of this happy good times bright party stuff

It's a good game just hoping for a little more.