mooty wrote:Also Tinykin (due this month) is by the Splasher team, demo was quite good.
Moot_Geeza wrote:Hmmm Grindstone is on my watch list. Not quite sure how it got there as I don't tend to like that sort of game. Must've been a forum rec at some point. Great review of Buddy Sim.
acemuzzy wrote:Cheers Cinty, these reviews really feed my neediness & insecurity
Moot_Geeza wrote:124. Midnight Fight Express - Xbox Series S (5hrs)
I tend to like games like this. Bloodroots, Mr. Shifty, Redeemer, Ape Out, Hotline Miami, Ruiner - I'd put all of them sonewhere between 'worth playing' and outstanding. Brutal screen clearance with a focus on close combat, plus range weapons thrown in for good measure. This shares its DNA with that lot, but uses the Arkham combat as its basic template (see also: Sleeping Dogs, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Spiderman), while attempting to implement elements of SIFU. It should be a winning mix, but it's a poor game on the whole. Certainly compared to any of the titles listed above. There are fleeting moments when it feels like it's working - as it should really, it's a tried and tested formula - but just as many where it comes across as an unfinished mess. As a rule of thumb, any stage that adds additional dangers (such as careering motorcycles, laser snipers or crates that move around trying to squash you) are terrible, and the rest of it is so slapdash the good bits feel like they exist through happy accident as much as design. There's potential for a decent game in here somewhere - it does occasionally flow quite nicely - but it's squandered. And that's coming from someone who laps up this sort of thing, so the mostly positive reviews for this are baffling to me. If anyone was going to give this a bit of leeway it'd be me, surely, but I can't abide its flaws.
I complained about the block/parry instruction from the tutorial in the Xbox thread, and having finished the game - unlocking the parry master achievement along the way, I might add - I'm not ashamed to admit that I wasn't able to pull the move off on a single occasion once the campaign started. So I'll stick my neck out and say that the game teaches you a move while displaying the wrong inputs, which is hardly an auspicious start. Y to block, LB to parry it says. Nope. Honestly, I tried for ages. Straight after the first stage I unlocked a parry move with a skill point, listed as Y to block followed by X to parry. It worked fine, so that's what I used as my counter for the entire game. I've decided that the Y/LB thing is a big fat lie, indicative of the messiness of the experience on the whole. Such as the fact that finishing moves are assigned to the same button as your secondary weapon, or that range weapons are hugely OP, the rope feels like it was bolted on at the last minute, the grapple is a waste of time, the difficulty is absolutely all over the shop and the bullet selection of your revolver seems almost deliberately obtuse. A quick word on that last one: bobbins. Eventually you pick up a revolver and you trade skill points for bullet types. If you fire it the barrel automatically rotates to the next bullet type, and a cooldown begins. If you misfire (shooting before a full charge) a cooldown begins. If you change bullet type manually, a cooldown begins. So it's not worth the hassle as you have to constantly fiddle with the dpad in an attempt to rotate the barrel until it settles on the shot type you want. In the middle of a screen full of mass carnage. You can slow the action down, but not in the traditional bullet time sense - it's just a visual aid to help you identify which parts of the scenery can be used as weapons. Not useless I guess, but not useful enough to bother using.
To make matters worse, I don't think I've ever played a game where I've been less interested in the story. It makes Ladder Pig look like Kentucky Route Zero, and after the first ten minutes I made a concerted effort not to read any of it. This is mostly the work of one guy, and of course he backed himself to co-write thetheme tunecut-scenes too. So you get an infantile, gratuitously OTT version of Hotline Miami meets John Wick with a tombola of nods to everything from Fight Club (you fight a chap called Kyler Turden, no lie) to The Warriors to Bojack Horseman to the airport massacre in COD MW2 to Road House. There's even a Bourne Identity quote in there (and one from Alice in Wonderland), but Mr. One Man Band either wimped out at the last minute or it's just a typo he forgot to double check, as the quote is actually listed as being from 'The Bourne dentity'. There's no I in team.
Overall this is a borderline stinker, despite the fact that it flirts with being enjoyable from time to time. The 5hr runtime is way, way too long for a game with such little variety (no, the terrible vehicle stages don't help), and despite the fact that challenges appear as you beat each level in an over-confident stab at adding replay value, I've already gleefully uninstalled it. Something in me almost snapped three quarters of the way through and I very nearly binned it, but in the end I dropped the difficulty down a notch and saw it out. For everything good about it there are two things it does wrong. Avoid, even on Game Pass. [5]
Don't believe the GIF.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!