Rate the last game you finished

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 28 May 2019 10:16 am

Gears of War 4.

Finished off the campaign the other day, the game has some really nice visuals and some fun set pieces, JD is ok but not as likable as Marcus is, besides some new weapons/vehicles/bosses the gameplay for the most part plays it safe and sticks to tried and true gears cover shooting. The story feels more like a setup for something grander which is what I think we'll get with Gears 5 and Kate later in the year.

Overall it's a good game, you can tell the coalition is just getting their bearings with this game and I'm really excited to see what they do with Gears 5.

8.5/10.

Rorschach · Post by **Rorschach** » 28 May 2019 06:14 pm

Story wasn't particularly memorable but it was a good looking game and one of the few left offering split screen co-op. Looking forward to 5.

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 28 May 2019 08:29 pm

I remember nothing of the Gears story except Dom dies and that Gears 1 had no story.

Rorschach · Post by **Rorschach** » 28 May 2019 08:49 pm

Gears 2 probably had the best story (simply because it had one), the best trailer and Dom's wife dies in it. After that it's just a bunch of mindless grunting.

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 29 May 2019 10:21 am

Spider-Man - (Superior PS4 version)

Probably the best licensed superhero game out there imo. There is a little bit of unnecessary filler but overall I found the game really enjoyable despite the shitty stealth sections of the other characters. The combat was extremely satisfying once you had upgraded your abilities, it wasn't too technical and seemed to focus more on feeling like you were in control rather than learning technical combinations. Also, the little quips and comments never seemed to be repeated too much which was really welcome, voice acting and production was top notch.

Amazing.

9 fans wanting selfies out of 10

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 03 Jun 2019 10:51 am

Shadow of War.

Was a big fan of the original shadow of mordor, the original had a good game loop and combat/skills that felt really good as you unlocked/leveled. Nemesis system was also quite original and fun. Here for the sequel all the bits you loved from the first are back but everything is just bigger and grander.

You have a lot more skills, you get loot and gear from Orc captains and you can build armies and conquer regions. The good thing with this game is far more variation in maps, you have 5 areas that all look quite different versus 2 in the first game. The boss fights are done much better in this game, there are some epic fights which I won't spoil but you can guess if you're a LOTR fan.

The story I felt was pretty well done, trying to build a story where you have to take on sauron but not ruin what happened in the books is done well here. The ending is pretty satisfying with some twists, talion turns into a badass at the end, I really loved how they finished this off. I know purists scoffed at shelob being a woman but hey for the game it works and creates an ally for the story to progress.

Even when you finish the main game, all those skills and gear you unlocked doesn't go to waste, I like they put a fun end game into it that allows you to keep playing.

If I had one complaint, it would be that sometimes it can feel a bit too Grindy. To move on from one region to the next, you not only need to do the quests but you need to conquer the fort and that means grinding away and dominating all the captains. I'm really curious what the game was like before they patched out the MT, I get the feeling this grind might have felt far worse because in general I had plenty of money and resources. My play time clocked in around 40hrs.

Overall great sequel to the first, if you loved the first game you'll really love this one.

9/10.

Deef · Post by **Deef** » 15 Jun 2019 03:38 am

Star Control: Origins

I completed Star Control: Origins quite a while ago but had too much to say, so said nothing. However the recent good news about the legal battle between Ford & Reiche, and Stardock motivated me to puke out an overdue rant. This is totally the quick version.

For those who don't know its history, a quick summary:

Spoiler!

That's all there is to say about that. This post is about Stardock's take on things -- Star Control: Origins.

Summary: Quite poor from a Starcon 2 perspective.

I go into a bunch of areas here: story, content, melee, landers, etc. I'm starting with the landers because they're the only real good thing I have to say about the game.

Planet landing

Surprisingly the planet landing was actually very good to play in terms of balance. Before the game's release I had been concerned that they'd put too much into this part of the game; too intense for what is supposed to be the somewhat-relaxing grind.

But no, it controlled well, was fun to just fly around, and settled on a good point between action and relaxation; grind and leisure.

Unfortunately, at the same time its technical performance was hard to comprehend in how poor it was. Really simple scenes presented in really low quality would drop to 15fps at times on a GTX 1070. And by low quality I mean it was barely above undergrad level stuff. Fat textures, bland enemies that could have come out of Spore, pick-ups and effects you'd expect to see in a Tafe project. It was really unbelievable.

But yes, despite all that, the planet landing was actually the most balanced and "settled" piece of gameplay in Origins, imo.

And now for the bad bits.
In terms of many other main areas -- story, content, melee -- there were serious problems. You can pretty much name any conceptual area of Origins' design and find big, fundamental problems.

Content

Stardock made a deliberate design choice to cheap out, and cheap out often. They created a lot of "textbox aliens" filler, meaning that not only were half the alien interactions completely devoid of character visuals, but every one of those textbox interactions also had absolutely no relation to anything. They were pure, unashamed filler; text box side quests that only rewarded in cash, no story play, existing only to hide the game's skeletal story otherwise.

In comparison, every single communication with an alien in Star Control 2 was visual & animated, and every interaction had a stake in the story. What gets me about the approach Origins took is the knowledge that the development process was literally just someone typing a few paragraphs here and there, explicitly instructed to make sure nothing connected to the real story in order for it to work as a free layer of filler. I really can't express how little respect I have for that decision.

Speaking of an inability to express and also on the topic of content, the sexual innuendo was just ... hrgh. Lame. Immature. Really weak writing. Jesus the writers were so bad; it's like they couldn't find other ways to add humour to the game. Of course it's not that sexual innuendo is bad in its own right. As with everything else, Star Control 2 already demonstrated how to use it properly: the Syreen went all in *cough*, and the Slylandro dabbled a little also. Not only does SC2 use it in a measured way, it also does so without breaking context or lore to do so. It completely fits and works.
But over in Origins, every 2nd alien is dropping the 13 year old's equivalent of potty humour, made worse by knowing that it just isn't what that alien is about. With the Tywom it is funny, and honestly their characterisation is borderline brilliant for it. That's their thing. But everywhere else it's immature and disappointing, and really just looks like the writers didn't know how to ... write. (This isn't just my opinion; other players have complained about it.)

Melee

Just another area where it's hard to grasp how much Origins dropped the ball.

In principle, Origins' melee was the same as that of Star Control 2, with a few new perks thrown in like powerups & portals.

But oh my god did they make it play so poorly. The overall control of all ships is much more floaty and sluggish, and this is really at odds with the tight arcade action it's supposed to be capturing. Instead of ricocheting off an asteroid, running into one is a speed- and soul-sapping disappointment. You'll stop and have to wait to speed up again, unless you bump into the next asteroid thanks to some collision masks that are special in their own way.
Meanwhile the new rules of Origins' melee battles mean you're both in an enclosed area; long chase-downs aren't a thing anymore, but collecting powerups and using portals is, so maneuverability matters even more than in SC2. So it's only annoying that there's so much less of it.

And it's not just control (and I swear I'm not looking for problems to pick at here)... the weapons and abilities of the ships were heavily skewed towards encouraging players to not-engage. So many ships have weapons that force the fight to be boring in order to win. This is a problem across the board; it looks as if playtesting forced them to do this. They nerfed the first alien ship you come across for this reason, but for me it was already clear that this was the problem with the range of ships as a whole.

Meanwhile, the death-by-poison that so many fights result in is just a terribly dull ending to look forward to for any battle, yet it's commonly the winning strategy. It's such poor thinking. They definitely wanted to avoid the possibility of never-ending battles, likely because they'd be unable to control them with player-designed ships, but what Stardock went with was... well the solution was probably a fine one, but the implementation is rotten.

So put all that together and we have Origins' melee. It is just a failure compared to the classic titles, which shone for their arcadey, reaction-heavy, footsies-playing battles. I jumped back into Star Control 2's melee mode and the difference is like a slap in the face. I could make a bet that if someone accustomed to Origins' melee were to play SC2's melee for an hour, they'd go back to Origins and regret that they now knew better.

Story

Since it's more subjective than other areas, I'll just be quick here.

The story wasn't a quarter as involved as SC2's. I remembered webbing together the various races involved in the Khor-Ah history, or gaining the Sun Device. In Origins, there was a clear and blunt line of dialog spoken by one race, where I immediately knew that the story had just ticked over from weird connections with little relation, to a linear march to the end.

The story did have a twist and an end threat that was cool. It did not have a game-full of allusions to this threat that slowly unravelled with the adventure. Instead it just blows its load near the end and hopes you're impressed. The number of interactive races is also close to half that of SC2.

The one other thing to note while on the topic of story is the game's intro. More specifically, the premise that puts you there at the start. It's just so dull. Instead of noticing how hype the intro was in SC2, and how cleverly SC2 crafts the position in which the new player is left when they start the game, Origins basically tells you that you got called in to work due to some signal being picked up. Star Control 2's opening setup, and the way it uses history to tell you why you alone are a pretty big deal yet also the massive underdog, is compelling and cool before you have even flown your ship. It's a fun story before the game has even started. Origins doesn't bother, and so is way behind from the get go. Again, the writers really dropped the ball; they just didn't even try or - as is often the truth behind these things - they weren't given the resources to try.

Other

I could go on into other areas too. For voice acting they decided that recognisable accents of nationality were the way to go. Star Control 2 won some award for its alien conversations. Origins, however, literally has you picking the English alien, the New York alien, the Australian alien, the Scottish alien... it's stupid.

The bugs in the initial release were game breaking and infuriating. Several not-bugs-but-just-poor-player-direction were also just as bad. These things hit an unlucky combination for me personally, and as a result the game delivered possibly the worst gaming adventure experience I've ever had. I was pretty livid at the hours wasted with a couple of deliberate decisions related to collecting one particular element, and the hours wasted at the non-deliberate bugs in a main quest. Not all players copped the quest bugs, but some of those deliberate design choices were bonfires on the Steam forums. It was some legit bulls*** because of their terrible decision making & testing.

The lore! Oh I forgot how badly that was presented too. I won't go on; instead I'll just say it's literally a uni assignment. Pages of text sitting off to the side that does nothing all game, has formatting issues, and is totally forgettable.

Even the charactersation, just in its own individual right, was a fail in the master class given by SC2. As I mentioned earlier, the Tywom in Origins are actually borderline brilliant. Jesus do they walk the line between stupid joke race and hilariously creepy slugs, but it's the walking of that tightrope that makes them brilliant. The Tywom frequently catch you unprepared for what they say, and it is simply hilarious at times.

That's the good.
It's just that there's also quite a bit of bad and when it's bad, it's rubbish. One race is literally "Let's act like English fashion designers". The human commander is female (to the male protagonist you control), and the writers just didn't know how to work the relationship. Origins struggles with a problem SC2 didn't have; the player in Origins has a boss, but rather than figure out a refreshing way to embrace that, especially with the female-male dynamic, the dialog and interactions simply treat the relationship like an inconvenience. This is a little nitpicky I'll admit; it's more grating than terrible.

It's the bad guys though that really let things down. In Origins, the big bad guys carry on about how big and bad they are, then literally call you names as if they're a bit intimidated. The thing is, it looks clear to me that this isn't deliberate. It really looks like the writers thought this is how you make a bad guy look indimidating. Like everything else, it feels rushed. They didn't have the space to flesh out their character over the full set of interactions; instead they just appear and need to ram it down your throat asap that they are indeed big, and bad, and not at all noobs.

Again, SC2 delivers a master class in comparison. The Ur-Quan are the bad guys, you know it, then you meet them and they are completely unphased; it is simply time for you to die. They intimidate by being angry yet nonchalant; there is no thought that you'll ever get the mental one-up on them. The Ur-Quan never call you names, since that would be like you un-ironically calling a caterpillar names. it doesn't need to, but SC2 even explicitly acknowledges this, working that character trait into a key piece of dialog.

Then you meet the Khor-Ah, and despite their ships being pretty much on-par with the Ur-Quan's in terms of threat level, it's the Khor-Ah that are the scary ones. You can see that you'll never shake them, just like the Ur-Quan, except they're also running this calmly psychotic blood rage kind of dialog. It's amazing just how well the 2 sibling races excel at both being completely intimidating, yet in such different ways.
And then you discover they aren't even the real bad guys, and you discover their story, and you're like PWWFFOOOOAAARRRHFFF (mind blown sound).

In contrast, Origins' bad guys get into arguments with you. It's laughable.

Ok sorry, that was a bit of a SC2 hype ramble there. So, on that note rant mode disengaged.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, Star Control: Origins is probably ok for people who haven't played better. The game has a lot of love in its own community, but so does everything else. The faults I see compared to Star Control 2 are really blatant and simple in concept in my opinion; I'd call them objective but I'm sure someone would argue that.

It's apparent that much of Origins' downfall is simply that it was rushed way too much. From quality assurance to story and writing, to design decisions, to blatant content padding in the form of literal text boxes, the game needed at least a good half a year more of solid work; not so much to polish, but to really improve it in substance.

So, good foundation but poor implementation. They could have made a nine out of ten game with the base they have here but as it stands, the acceptable-but-wasted foundation is making up the bulk of the score I give it:
6/10

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 15 Jun 2019 05:29 am

Fuck me, I thought Candy, I mean GH was back! My heart almost skipped a beat.

Deef · Post by **Deef** » 15 Jun 2019 05:38 am

Just the increasingly-uncommon Deef bomb.

I wish I could write about more games, but as you can see it's a big time killer. I have to deliberately tell myself not to bother trying to make it cleaner/clearer/etc.

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 16 Jun 2019 11:30 pm

Far Cry New Dawn

FC3 still holds the mantle for plot and characters but for gameplay and fun FC New Dawn is the best Far Cry of all. I'm amazed how much I loved this game. Was totally going in expecting a polished game, an extension of the excellent FC5 and 'more of the same' which in most reviews was framed as mild criticism. The reskinned FC5 map looks amazing and it's fun to revisit in this form, as are FC5's characters. Yeah the plot isn't up there among FC's best but still works, in particular when FC5 characters are involved. New Dawn is astonishingly gorgeous.

There are the usual outposts as well as separate, smaller maps called expeditions the player is dropped into. Both can be played then replayed at a higher difficulties. You have to upgrade your weapons to corresponding levels in order to be effective - level 1, 2, 3 then Elite. Other facets such as vehicles and your companions can be leveled up too. Expeditions provide good variation and an escape from the open world. They're well crafted with a tonne of entry and exit points. Objective is to infiltrate, obtain a package then survive until your ride out arrives.

There's still plenty to do in the end game. Highway men are still around to toy with unlike FC5 where cult members disappear after map areas and ultimately the game are completed.

This is a beautifully made, stable, well optimised game that runs, looks and plays brilliantly.

9/10

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 21 Jun 2019 02:49 pm

Blood & Truth - PSVR

An epic shooter where you play as an ex Special Ops in the city of London. Opening mission is a throw back to your Op days in the Middle East while you get used to the controls and gadgets before you're back in current day and the story starts unfolding.

Yes there are a few tracking issues and the game is designed to be played sitting down if you choose with the height adjusted for standing or sitting but you can manually reset the view when standing if you prefer. I opted for that and some of the levels are a real workout as you duck for cover or lean in and out from behind pillars and doorways. You can dual weild or just have one gun with your free hand grabbing clips from your chest if using the Move controls.

There's base jumpiming, parachuting, lock picking, monkey bars, scaffolding climbs, exploding elevators while holding a cable that's launches you up, car chases, boarding moving planes, this game is awesome. The fact I pretty much finished this over a few days is a a testament to how much I enjoyed it. GOTY contender for me and probably the best game on VR to date. If Time Crisis and Virtua Cop had a baby, it would be called Blood4lube or Blood & Truth.

9 grenades caught and tossed back out of 10

flipswitch · Post by **flipswitch** » 21 Jun 2019 06:05 pm

I cannot believe how much affordable PSVR is compared to Rift and Vive. They seem to be really pushing it out there and developing blockbuster titles like the review above me. Those bundles are great value for money and it’s getting them in more households.

And it works with PS5.

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 21 Jun 2019 06:49 pm

flipswitch wrote:I cannot believe how much affordable PSVR is compared to Rift and Vive. They seem to be really pushing it out there and developing blockbuster titles like the review above me. Those bundles are great value for money and it’s getting them in more households.

And it works with PS5.

I wish the current bundle was available here when I bought mine as we only had the VR Worlds bundle at $300 but apart from Astrobot I wasn't interested in the other titles (already have Wipeout) but the price was welcome. Now Sony really needs to do a PSVR and Move bundle as so many games work much better with Move.

Rumours going round seem to point to a V3 revision that's wireless. I'm pretty sure a wireless adaptor on the current one would be possible with a little R&D.

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 23 Jun 2019 09:08 am

Destiny 2 (campaign)

Impossible not to like a shooter that looks and plays this well. The vanilla campaign is a pretty spectacular show and more than I thought it would be. I enjoyed playing a Bungie game again. Formulaic good guys facing off against comically OTT bad guys against a backdrop of the best art and music money can buy. The texture work in this game - the detail in the enormous wall textures that span on and on. And I tip my hat to the team who pump out the weapons, managing to keep them varied in look and feel, each fun to use with excellent feedback, given most are discarded within periods of minutes.

The character building seems sound enough. I’ve just unlocked the Nightstalker subclass for my Hunter. Not sold on that particular Super yet vs the others but am looking forward to trying some of the stealth skills.

Gameplay is fun but the campaign is an easy run on PC. As lestat mentioned hit-boxes are generous. AI seems straight forward and the game’s attempt to further tax players amounts to throwing many more of the same behaving enemies at them. Boss fights are always the same add-spawning bullet sponges. Loads of cannon-fodder + spongy bosses = MMO, I s’pose. The Hunter is supposedly a squishier class but I find mine remarkably resilient under fire. She can often stand still in the open comfortably absorbing shots as I pick them off. If I keep moving they barely hit me.

Overall I really like it. I’m enjoying going back in to explore the different hubs, taking on missions and learning the various mechanics. I’ll be happy to play some rounds with GR people when the game relaunches on Steam in September.

Oh and I thought the vanilla game topped out at level 20 but I’m now level 23 and climbing. *shrugs*

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 23 Jun 2019 09:55 am

I started the Destiny 2 campaign and was loving it, then partway through got attacked by a whole bunch of bad guys I could barely scratch and couldn't make it to the end of the mission without being overwhelmed. It was like it thought 3 other peeps had joined my game in co-op so made the difficulty insane for a single player.

No idea WTF happened but I haven't been back to it since. I should try again.

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 23 Jun 2019 10:59 am

If you lay a single round on a mob from a heroic event in which higher level players are participating they will target you and you’ll get hit hard, yes.

When I mentioned textures spanning on and on I mean they don’t repeat, btw. It’s pretty remarkable.

Finally for a MMO, I like that Destiny is a game that’s fun in snippets. Likely the case for any good looter shooter - Destiny is the first I've put some time into. What’s considered grind in Destiny comprises high quality gameplay vs the tedious collect quests that make up other MMOs. It would get repetitive if you’re focussed on gear but no game doesn’t get repetitive. This is a game I enjoy playing. The gear is a bonus. Not unlike PUBG in that respect.

I’ll probably pick up Forsaken as the campaign is apparently superior to the vanilla.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 24 Jun 2019 08:53 am

Rage 2 (PC)

I'm pretty sure I've 100%'ed it, but without any sort of in-gamer tracker, it's hard to tell. Annoying.

Great game. Far better than the original (which I would give a 5/10), but not as over the top as its trailers suggested

The shooting is excellent, the nanotrite powers are great and make it a very acrobatic game ala Doom 2016 or Titanfall 2, but it's not as good as those games.

It's an open world game but with none of the crafting/hunting/scavenging for ammo/whatever BS that make that genre a bore (to me personally).

I suffered a gamebreaking CTD bug that would have prevented me from finishing the story, but a repair of the installation fixed it. I've never seen a repair actually fix anything before, so that's something.

I'd give it a 7.5/10 (Doom 2016 and Titanfall 2 are both 9s or maybe even 10s, I need to replay them). I wanted to give it an 8, but had too many minor annoyances (the lack of a completeness tracker, no achievements (in the retail PC version, the Steam and console versions would have them), Authority Turrets are bullet sponges with simple patterns to exploit so are easy to defeat but just boring compared to every other combat situation in the game), the trailers suggested it would be more over the top than it is.

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 25 Jun 2019 08:37 am

Yakuza Kiwami - (PS4)

Never played the original so this Kiwami release was well timed. Started this straight off Zero so obviously it's not quite as good as that, but still enjoyable. I heard complaints about the amount of times Majima appeared in Majima Everywhere but it wasn't a problem for me, just a shame I missed some of his appearances like as a Hostess. Game still played well, not really much more to say except its the shortest of the 5 games I've played so far (3,4,5,Zero and Kiwami) you're either into Yakuza or not. 3 is still the worst of them for me. Now onto Kiwami 2.

8 how many times can the Millennium Tower explode out of 10

Twiztid Elf · Post by **Twiztid Elf** » 09 Jul 2019 06:58 pm

Gays Done
errr, I mean,
Days Gone
NO! I REALLY mean,
The REAL Dead Rising 4

Wow. This game is so good, and miles better than Red Dead Redemption 2.
It really feels like it's a mix of Dead Rising, GTA and Horizon Zero Dawn.
The setting of Oregon is awesome and looks really pretty. The graphics are fantastic.
The characters, story and zombies (and zombie hordes) are all excellent.
I really had the feeling of being in a post zombie apocalypse world. Supplies are scarce, and the world feels dangerous and desperate.
The devs really designed the world well and made the map memorable in the same way old open world games like San Andreas are.
Cruising around on the chopper is really fun.

Sadly, it's not all awesome though. The game has it's technical faults.
It certainly has very Elder Scrolls like open world jank. I'm actually ok with this though, as it was never game breaking and usually funny. It was endearing the same way Bethesda open world jank is endearing.
The load times and frame rate though are unforgivable. Both are terrible.
Also, there were a few annoying, crappy missions.

Sony and Bend made the Dead Rising game I wish Capcom had.
If it wasn't for the unforgivable technical issues, this would be a 9/10 game without question.
8/10

Gamma · Post by **Gamma** » 22 Jul 2019 10:16 pm

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
PC/PS4/XB1/Switch

Ask me what my favourite Castlevania game is, and I’d struggle to give a straight answer. I might say Aria of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia, Symphony of the Night (of course), or even Super Castlevania IV, depending on my mood. I’m not ready to say Bloodstained is unequivocally better than Castlevania, but it’s at least as good as whichever happens to be my favourite Castlevania at any given time.

I could ramble on about how nice it looks, or how good it sounds (holy shit, the music), or how well it plays, or how all of the enemies and weapons from Castlevania are here give or take some minor changes, plus a bunch of new stuff… but basically the whole game is brilliant. If you like any Metroidvania games, stop reading and get this. God damn it’s so good.

If anything, there are more ancillary systems (crafting, food, upgrading shards) than there is game to use them in. That’s not to say it’s short- you’re looking at around 20+ hours for your first playthrough if you go in blind- but I more or less didn’t engage in any of these aspects of the game until I was near the end, beyond trying them out once or twice. I don’t think it’s even a criticism really, as it just means you can play the game your way. Focus on melee weapon upgrades and the Streetfighter-like weapon techniques and your playthrough’s going to be completely different to someone who runs with firearms, or with a heavier focus on magic, and you’ll find depth in each. If you find the game difficult, you can grind.

The “best” ending took me somewhere around 20-30hrs, then it’s all an action-packed blur of trying out crazy builds, crafting a million things and getting my shit pushed in by optional end-game bosses until I got 100% at about 65hrs. I’d love an excuse to play it even more, which works out well because there’s free ongoing DLC. I’m particularly interested to see what the procedurally generated mode is like.

I’d really like to give this a perfect 10, but I encountered a few bugs. Most were minor and patched before I finished my playthrough, but four times in total I had the game completely crash. That issue has since been patched too so don’t let it put you off playing, but it still happened, and it sucked all four times. There’s also a particular boss that tanks the framerate (on all versions apparently), but it was just a bit of a blemish, still eminently playable. Bloodstained is a solid GOTY contender for me despite all that, so 9.5 SotN references out of 10.

P.S. Don’t get it on Switch if you can possibly help it. Half the framerate, poorer lighting, notable input lag, just generally inferior if you have the option to play elsewhere. Somewhat disappointing as this would feel right at home on a portable, but it’s still getting patched so who knows, potential double-dip in future.

Gamma · Post by **Gamma** » 22 Jul 2019 10:27 pm

Golf Peaks
PC/iOS/Android/Switch

Cool little puzzle game that’s golf themed but doesn’t really involve golf (sorry Pilon). It’s got a nice minimalist look to it, and some chilled out tunes, though these can get a little repetitive given the thoughtful, slow-paced nature of the game.

Basic gameplay involves guiding a ball to a hole across an isometric course by selecting a movement card from a predetermined set in conjunction with your choice of cardinal direction. What can I say, it’s not as exciting as Bloodstained! New types of tile like sand traps and mud are introduced gradually as you progress, and I found myself using a number of different strategies to get through some of the tougher stages. Infinite undo and quick restarts mean you’re free to just jump in and try things rather than spend too much time thinking and not enough doing.

I played this on Switch, but I imagine it would be every bit as good on a mobile. You get about 100 levels for your ~$5, if you enjoy puzzle games, check it out. 8 Bob Barkers out of 10.

Rorschach · Post by **Rorschach** » 23 Jul 2019 11:35 am

Just making my way through Bloodstained still - no bugs so far for me, I think most of the updates have fixed errors. Easy to see the SOTN DNA right through the game - the music, enemies and graphics just kills it. I technically finished the game at the 10 hour mark but soon realised from gaps in the map there was a lot of content left. Kind have hit a wall in the game as to where to go next (only fault with it). First time in years I've had to use a gamefaq. Overall, easily my GOTY at this point. I played all of the DS Metroidvania games plus this one now, definitely up there with SOTN as the best example of the genre. SOTN only pips it at the post because it was the first. Hoping Miriam generates her own series now.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 24 Jul 2019 01:50 pm

That Dragon, Cancer

It was short (2 hours). The graphics were basic (it was originally developed for the Ouya in 2016). It was buggy (I had to drop my monitor's refresh rate from 144Hz to 60Hz just to be able to get past one particular scene), and as a linear, story-based game it has pretty much zero replay value. Hell (

), it was preachy too. It barely even qualifies as a videogame in the traditional sense of the word. But That Dragon, Cancer is one of the best videogames I have ever played. It is art. There's no other word to describe it, it is "a work to be appreciated primarily for its emotional power". I literally cried multiple times as I experienced the true story of what Ryan and Amy Green experienced as their son Joel fought and ultimately lost his battle with cancer at the age of five, four years after his initial diagnosis.

I don't know if it hit me so hard because I have a one year old, which is how old Joel was when he was diagnosed, but fuck me. I am never playing this again.

10/10

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 26 Jul 2019 12:02 pm

I cannot do kid's suffering I'm afraid. Where possible I choose not to subject myself to it which is hard to do in this era of push headlines and the apparent newsworthiness of children's suffering. Glad you had a positive experience though.

Candy Arse · Post by **Candy Arse** » 27 Jul 2019 07:32 am

Finally got around to finishing Quantum Break (PC version, obviously) after starting it 3 times in the past year.

I'm pretty much a card carrying Remedy fan, have loved everything they've done and this is no exception. 8/10

The Games Ranch