[EVENT] PSNP Kaleidoscope Challenge 2024!

[lady-reze]

For pink, I played Punch Line.

 

This game surprised me. I have heard only awful or somewhat positive things about this game. The only reason I own it is because Kotaro Uchikoshi's name is attached to it (big Zero Escape enjoyer here). That was enough for me to give this game a try although I did not have high expectations for it. It is possible to platinum this game in 2-3 hours just by holding down R1 and skipping literally everything but I don't like earning trophies that way, so I did play through this legitimately.

 

It was a lot better than I anticipated. It starts off as a perverted and chaotic anime game.. I found it a little weird and boring at first. The story really does end up picking up though. There was a lot of plot twists and the story goes a lot deeper than what it appears to be. The characters are also very likable, and I found myself attached to the main cast by the end of the game. I felt satisfied with how the game ended, and in terms of the narrative alone, I thought it was good.

 

The one big thing I didn't like about this game is the gameplay.. if any? Seriously, there was a severe lack of gameplay. Punch Line's "puzzles" are so incredibly straight-forward and bland to the point where I just consider this game a full visual novel. It didn't really feel like I was "playing" anything. Again, I enjoyed the story so I didn't mind the fact that there was a lot of dialogue or cutscenes, but it is pretty disappointing comparing it the writer's other games where the puzzles are very challenging and engaging. I was also not a fan of some of the more lewd aspects of the game i.e the panty collection/gallery thing which is required for the platinum. I'm not too surprised this was a thing since Uchikoshi can be kinda pervy in his other games, but it wasn't something I particularly enjoyed.. To each their own. 

 

[MooseSketts]

While I continue the never ending farming in Metal Gear Survive I was able to complete a few more games off my backlog.

 

White:  Geometric Sniper

Yellow:  Kingdom: New Lands

Tan:  Rayflector

Orange:  Legions

Pink:  Run Sackboy! Run!

Blue:  Caves and Castles Underworld

Light Blue:  Kitten Squad

Green:  Jurassic Pinball

 

 

[Breakingthegreen]

Hello again friends, this is a game that's been long coming thanks you a certain accusation with a question mark from my PSNP interview from @zizimonster (Just kidding thanks for the recommendation.) It's Blue and it's Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. A game originally published by Xbox that I was aware of but didn't realise that it had come to PlayStation (apparently after the developers got shutdown and re-bought.) Maybe I should get round to getting the first Max game.    

 

 

This game has got a lot of buzz from platformer fans on this site, but the question is why. Well there is one thing that we always seem to underestimate when it comes to enjoyment, and that is the fundamental of game. How a game introduces mechanics and makes a player feel like a genius when working out puzzles. The game on a design level is top notch, but there are plenty of asterisks to add.

 

Max's Magic Marker is the selling point here, you can draw columns to stand on and vines to swing on, as well as a few more. These are all contextual which makes it much more of a puzzle game where nearly all levels consist of a bunch of rooms to solve the marker based puzzles to solve rather than a straight forward platformer; well except for those chase levels, (Which always have those 'no death' trophies which caused me no end of pain) the chase levels are not lenient at all but I don't mind at all because of a critique in the next paragraph.

There are frequent times that the rope physics made me rage, it frequently freaked out and caused me to find out the taste of lava (it tastes spicy).

 

The game is way too easy, there was one puzzle that I struggled with in the whole game, also the collectables are very easy to find with only a slight increase in element of difficulty in attaining them, I'd managed to get 89/93 collectables without looking at a guide first time around.

 

The game's story is not very strong. I have a brother, I love him, but Felix did not endear me enough to want to save him. It is your basic damsel in distress story which is a predictable and snore inducing. Felix in my mind is worse than Princess Peach because I'm pretty sure the only reason Max went to save him is because he was much more scared of getting in trouble than any kind of brotherly love.

 

In conclusion, yeah give it a play it is quite fun.

Edited January 18 by Breakingthegreen

[zizimonster]

5 minutes ago, Breakingthegreen said:

'no death' trophies caused me no end of pain

 

5 minutes ago, Breakingthegreen said:

the rope physics made me rage

 

5 minutes ago, Breakingthegreen said:

The game is way too easy

 

Hmm...

 

So, is it easy or not?

 

🤣

[Breakingthegreen]

1 minute ago, zizimonster said:

 

 

 

Hmm...

 

So, is it easy or not?

 

🤣

Puzzles in 14/17 regular levels vs no death chase challenges in 3/17 levels

[DizzyDavidson]

Back again with another game.

This time it's Evil West for Red! (Just like I said  )

 

 

The game was pretty cool, a brawler/shooter fighting vampires and such in the old west.

Couple of headaches tho...

The guide I found on PST gives this game a 2/10 difficulty... yeah right! Now this game has co-op and while I did play the whole thing solo, that difficulty rating feels off. Still, nothing I couldn't handle, just caught me off guard.

Also, chapter select/replay isn't implemented right. There are trophies for doing misc actions fighting the bosses who appear at the end of some chapters. Now when you go for these in chapter select the game doesn't save story progress at checkpoints so you cannot quit the game if you mess up to try again (instead when you reload it puts you back where you were originally in the story before replaying a chapter). Which means you have to keep replaying the entire chapter just to get those trophies each time you mess up (and the one for defeating the Bruch without it healing is VERY annoying). So it is best to do these trophies when you are actually at that part of the game naturally (make sure to back up your save at the Bruch!).

Oh and the dialogue is out of sync in one cutscene but it's no biggie.

Overall I enjoyed my time with the game.

[Biscoito18]

1st Card🌈

 

Updating my card with "Metal: Hellsinger" for Maroon and "Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space" for Brown. The former is a pretty cool and fast shooter that doesn't take too much time to complete and the latter is a cheap first-person indie game that pays homage to 60s horror/sci fi films. Unfortunately, any interaction requires handling a horrible counterintuitive menu which ends up ruining the whole thing.

 

 

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Marsupilami: Hoobadventure

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inFamous: First Light

Metal: Hellsinger

Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala

The Hidden World (Marsupilami: Hoobadventure DLC)

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Donut County

Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space

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Edited January 19 by Biscoito18

[Sylvanticore]

On 1/15/2024 at 8:32 PM, ProfSeajay7 said:

 

You sure like horrific abominations!

 

I mean... you're not wrong considering I'm saving the Red slot for Five Nights at Freddy's Security Breach xP

 

I've redone my list and also completed the platinum on Alienation and the other day I got 100% on Powerwash Simulator thanks to the Back to the Future DLC so now my list looks like this!

 

 

For future plans I am going to use Orange or Tan for Gas Station Simulator which I should have this weekend or next

 

And for Red I plan on doing Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach

[cstanci]

UPDATE #2!

 

1. I moved Omno to BLUE instead of LIGHT BLUE and that's because...

2. I finished Dodgeball Academia for LIGHT BLUE. It was....fine. The gimmick was fun at first but it got old quick. I liked the story and I thought the dialogue was well done but the combat got stale pretty quick. By the time I was in the last chapter...I was ready for this game to be over. 

3. Knocked out Halloween Puzzle for PURPLE. Free game that was just sitting there staring at me. I was tired of looking at it so it was time to go. Nothing to say about it except that it's done. 

 

[plimaz-]

One more color!

Playing this and Sea of Stars definitely made me a Sabotage Studio fan! Very fun platformer with funny jokes and lots of references!
An easy platinum too, so for sure a recommend to everyone

Deep Purple: The Messenger

 

 

Spoiler

White - 
Yellow - 
Tan - 
Orange - 
Red - 
Pink - 
Maroon - 
Purple - 
Deep Purple - The Messenger
Blue - 
Light Blue - Sea of Stars
Green - 
Light Green - 
Brown - Crash Bandicoot
Grey - 
Black - 

[Beyondthegrave07]

10 minutes ago, plimaz- said:

One more color!

Playing this and Sea of Stars definitely made me a Sabotage Studio fan! Very fun platformer with funny jokes and lots of references!
An easy platinum too, so for sure a recommend to everyone

Deep Purple: The Messenger

 

I recently watched a video of the developers watching speed runs The Messenger,  and it was really cool hearing about ideas they had but never put in, music they changed, who designed bosses, their favorite music pieces, favorite level designs, etc. It was also really funny because you could tell how nervous they were watching someone expose the AI or use unintentional glitches.

 

Would definitely recommend it. It's on IGN's YT channel.

 

The Messenger though was actually just one of the coolest concepts I've ever seen in a game (and the developers talk about it as well in the video I mentioned). From what can be inferred, the past is supposed to represent the NES and the future is supposed to represent the SNES. They phrased it as jumping from one console to another. And honestly, it goes a lot deeper than just that and the more I think about it the deeper it goes.

[DrBloodmoney]

One More Entry Down!

 

 

 

 

 

Box: Brown

Game: "Blacktail"

 

What The Outer Worlds did to Fallout is basically what Blacktail does to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - takes the basic gameplay style of it, and makes a much smaller, more contained, but far less broken or janky version, with a lot less filler, and a lot more specificity of personality and a more targeted, tighter narrative and thematic slant.

 

Blacktail is essentially a Bethesda/Obsidian style game, but set in a world of Slavic Folklore, with the player taking the role of the young outcast Yaga - banished from the human village for witchcraft, as she discovers the mysterious forrest form her adopted new home - the Baba Yaga hut - and searches for her lost sister...

...while discovering her past, taking part in a war between mushrooms, kissing magical frogs, killing Gnomes and creatures,casting spells, brewing potions etc.

 

The story is good, and the voice acting and music pretty good too and the design is somewhere between Oblivion, Alice: the Madness Returns, and some of the more fairytale-themed Atrifex Mundi games...

...plus there's actually a pretty real sense of mystery and explorational wonder, as the game, while a little rough around the edges, is brimming with ideas and odd mechanics, and never seems to do things the "normal" way!

 

A pretty good brown one, and fits well against my Tan with Tintin, so going with that!

[ProfSeajay7]

On 1/19/2024 at 7:04 PM, plimaz- said:

One more color!

Playing this and Sea of Stars definitely made me a Sabotage Studio fan! Very fun platformer with funny jokes and lots of references!
An easy platinum too, so for sure a recommend to everyone

Deep Purple: The Messenger

I hope I don't spoil this but..

 

Spoiler

Sea of Stars is actually the prequel to the Messenger. I learned about this when they did a speedrun of Sea of Stars on the Games Done Quick channel.

 

[Copanele]

Getting an obvious(not easy😂) red with Lies of P

 

Edited January 21 by Copanele

[Beyondthegrave07]

I now have 2 games of my Kaleidescope done! Second game down with Sea of Stars.

 

 

This would have probably taken me a tad bit longer to do, but I've been pretty sick the last few days and pretty much just been huddled up in my cozy blanket playing RPGs in my room coughing up a storm (my neighbors must hate me).

 

Overall, I enjoyed the game. It definitely felt like an old school RPG and the story definitely grasped me the whole time. I still think The Messenger is the better game from Sabotage Studio, but this was a good love letter to those who like Chrono Trigger and grew up with pixels for RPGs.

 

My only real complaint was the lack of customization and abilities with your characters. It was always "Buy best equipment, build up combo, break locks on the opponent, and wreck shop." It's a good combat system, but it really needed some more variety spiced in other than boosts and combos. It was missing just a little more depth that could've really made it shine.

 

Welp, next up is I am Setsuna. Hoping to finish it off before it leaves Extra next month. 

[Limitedsphere]

Two more down!

 

Thomas was Alone for white. A simple and enjoyable puzzler-platformer I played on pc ages ago, but wanted to clean up on playstation too. 

Strangers of Paradise for Maroon. A quite interesting Souls-like spin on Final Fantasy, it is enjoyable but the dlc is boring and bothersome. The grind factor is huge and there are lots of silly overlapping game systems which drowns the experience in customization and min-maxing gear. 

[lady-reze]

For light blue, I played Endling: Extinction is Forever. 

 

This was such a sweet game and I enjoyed it a lot. You take on the role of a mother fox who is searching for one of her kidnapped cubs while also having to care for her remaining cubs. Throughout the game you have to find food, escape hunters, and search for your lost cub. I have a soft spot for animals, so I found the game adorable, but it is a bit of a tear-jerker. I did two playthroughs: one blind playthrough, and an additional playthrough cleaning up the trophies I had missed. Overall, great experience. 

 

[Treilio]

 

I Changed Heavy Weapon to Stacking. Stacking is a puzzle adventure game where you play as a Russian stacking doll. You solve puzzles by stacking to dolls that have different abilities, and all puzzles have multiple solutions to them. If you ever get stuck on a puzzle, you can then use the game's hint system with no penalty, other than having to wait a couple of seconds to get a new hint. The game's cutscenes are presented with a silent movie syle. If you want to buy the game, you have to first download the demo from PlayStation Store and then you can buy it from there. It costs 14,95€ for the game and 4,95€ for the DLC. It's a nice little game 👍

 

For white I got Blast Factor. It's a twin stick shooter made by Bluepoint Games. The game did not leave a very good first impression for me. When I first launched the game I tried going to the instructions in the game, but when I pressed it, the game tried to load a web page that gave me an error. After that I started a new game and got confused because I couldn't move or do anything. The problem was that my controller was on port 2 instead of 1, pretty confusing when I was able to navigate the main menu with the same controller earlier. Pretty soon I faced an enemy that I had no idea how to kill and stopped for the day. So yeah, I had to google how to play the game. Other than shooting, you can press L2 or R2 to do a repulse that slows time and pushes enemies back, or a wave by tilting your controller to left or right, that pushes enemies to that direction. Both abilities can be used infinitely, they just have a short time cooldown. Some enemies can only be killed after using these abilities, but some on the other hand can become more agressive if you use the wrong ability against them. The wave's tilting controls are not very reliable, sometimes the wave can go to the opposite direction you were tilting, or the game does not even register your tilt and you get nothing at all. If you could do the wave from L1 and R2, the game would be improved greatly. Now it's a game that I cannot really recommend.

 

And for light blue Omno. Omno is a puzzle 3d platformer with some influence from Journey. It has a nice artstyle and the game has no enemies, it's a very chill game. One thing that I would probably change is making the jump a little higher, now it feels a little too short to my liking. Still a pretty good game though.

 

Spoiler

Blast Factor

Stacking

Peggle

Omno

 

[Kirenoxs]

Hi everyone

 

I moved Ms. Pac Man to Maroon-ish I think it fits better, if not please lmk and I will find another game to cover those both spots

 

Finished black square: Castlevania Advance Collection

 

[DrBloodmoney]

54 minutes ago, Kirenoxs said:

I moved Ms. Pac Man to Maroon-ish I think it fits better, if not please lmk and I will find another game to cover those both spots

I think MsPacman actually works pretty well for Maroon - it’s not predominantly that colour, but the overall effect is “Maroon-y”!

[Doodlebawp]

My first update of 2024! The best part about this challenge is playing games you would have never touched otherwise. I've been fortunate enough to start games for this challenge that have been absolutely amazing.

 

Tan: 

But enough of that positivity. Aerial Knights Never Yield is a game I discovered when trying to knock out a rhythm for the genre challenge on this site.  It sure was... interesting. I had to pause my game around level 4 to make sure I hadn't accidentally replayed an earlier level. I hadn't, it's just that the developer copy and pasted the first half of an earlier level into the one I was playing.  Examples like that are far too common. If I'd describe this game in one word it'd be "repetitive", but for $2.99 I can't complain too much.

 

Orange:

Pumpkin Jack. This felt like one of the old Medieval games in a good way. A decent platforming game with some slightly challenging boss fights.

 

Purple:

I. LOVE. TINYKIN. 10/10 game that doesn't overstay it's welcome. It felt like I was playing Pikmin inside of one of those old "I Spy" books. An absolute gem.

 

Blue:

Assassin's Creed Mirage. I've had a strong love/hate relationship with this series since the original game came out. I did, however, really enjoy this one. Ubisoft did a great job cutting the fat of older titles and highlighting the fun parts.  It sounds like they just did the same with the new Prince of Persia too. Dare I say that Ubisoft is maybe making a comeback? 

 

Light Blue:

Honkai Star Rail.  Goofy writing, decent story, filthy pay to win gacha mechanics. Everything you love in a miHoYo game. You'll feel right at home if you've played Genshin Impact before. The difference being that this game respects your time so much more than Genshin does. Free to play and worth trying.

 

Grey:

Another gem. Chorus makes flying in space fun as hell which isn't easy.  The story was great, and if I could understand more than 10% of whatever the hell was happening I'd rank it even higher 😅. 

 

That's it for my completed games ☺️.  More to come soon.

 

[Dezorak]

wasn't thinking i would start with my shameful rainbow but palworld, ark, pokemon and personal stuff means this is what it is

 

lizard lady vs the cats...... buggy ugly and god awful HOWEVER perfect for my new streaming night called shite shovelware :D... just hope its as popular as my Friday night of fright 😕 

 

 

either way next one will be my name is mayo 2 as i think it be funny to be my 25th plat  then i can focus on proper games still as i am slowly working towards monster hunter, ark, and just got a few others i plan on completing for the event eventually :D.

 

(shovelware games you think would be fun to stream ideas welcome as it was fun to badly play a game that looked like ReBoot while people were horrified at how bad it was )

[Redblaziken8]

 

Finally decided to make my first update with some really good games and DLC!

 

Orange: Shadow of the Tomb Raider 

 

Had a lot of fun with this one and I now have the 100% for each of the PS4 reboot Tomb Raider games. Seeing Lara go from a shy, unsure adventurer in the first game to an absolute badass in this one and her journey through being an asshole for a bit, becoming self aware about it then fixing that was a bold move by the developers. Think a lot of people complain about Lara not being likeable but that's kinda the point in the latter games. Her relationship with her parents is well explored in this one, the DLC is fantastic, and I had a great time replaying this one. Would recommend it to anyone and I definitely want to play the PS3 trilogy and the soon to be released PS1 trilogy remasters.

 

Black: Borderlands 3: Pyscho Krieg and the Fantastic FusterCluck

 

Great DLC that shows that Krieg is a character with more than one side to him, shows how he became the batshit character that he is, and surprisingly there's a lot of depth to Krieg that you'd have no idea about if you didn't play this DLC. It's really well made and tackles some difficult topics. Thoroughly recommend and my favourite of the BL3 DLCs.

 

Pink: Borderlands 3: Guns, Love and Tentacles

 

My second favourite DLC of the lot. Great DLC with a cool Lovecraftian setting that's used really well with the area designs, enemy designs and quests featured in the game. Hammerlock's hubby is also a new character introduced and he's a likeable character, and the story between the two of them goes through their wedding at the most bizzare place which fits the two of them quite well. 

 

Tan: It Takes Two

 

Played this one with my awesome SO @rjkclarke, had a great time with it and the co-op gameplay is fantastic. It was a perfect short game for us both to play and this game looks absolutely stunning on PS5, and the area design is super well done in this game. Much better than A Way Out but the story is weird, since the couple in the game have a toxic AF relationship and should defo get divorced, and some of the stuff they do to their kid in the game is so insensitive it's unreal, some really bad parenting in this one.

 

Blue: Sly Cooper and The Thievius Raccoonus 

 

One of those games I've been saying for years that I really need to try and it didn't disappoint! It's got so much charm, it's really quirky and the humour is good too. Game kinda reminds me of a mixture of MGS, mixed with some Spyro for good measure. The platinum was super fun, since I just needed to play through the game and get all the bottles in each area, which are mostly in really obvious places. It was a really nice break inbetween playing the 511 VR missions in Metal Gear Solid 2. Speaking of that game, I'm hoping to add it for my white entry in this card. Game is just hard as hell, but I love it. So it'll come eventually. 

 

 

Edited January 26 by Redblaziken8

[Copanele]

Got 2 entries done!

Tan - Uncharted Lost Legacy 

Grey - Cult of the Lamb : Sins of the Flesh DLC

 

[Biscoito18]

1st Card 🌈

 

Updating my card with:

 

- Interaction Isn't Explicit for white. A free game or "study" as it calls itself that analyzes mechanics used by developers when creating games and that uses several famous titles as examples. Nothing too deep. Its art and music are interesting but the gameplay is frustrating at some points. I really don't understand why anyone would bother creating something like this but I appreciate the free gold trophies;

 

- Noir Chronicles: City of Crimes for grey. A typical exploration/puzzle game from Artifex Mundi but with a noir atmosphere. I loved the minigames and how the game doesn't waste too much time in one place. I also liked having only one collectible per scene. The plot is simple but I found it funny that the femme fatale here is a middle-aged cat lady who the game tries to sell as a big heartbreaker desired by all the men in the city;

 

- Evil West for red. I loved the steampunk atmosphere mixed with classic Wild West settings and super gory horror. The weapons are spectacular both visually and in gameplay. It's so good to shoot and punch in this game! I thought the Evil difficulty would be something beyond my capabilities but after finishing the game twice, getting all the collectibles and doing all the upgrades I was hooked on the gameplay and hungry for more challenges so the Evil difficulty ended up being quite fun for the most part. This is my favorite platinum of the year so far;

 

 

 

Interaction Isn't Explicit

Marsupilami: Hoobadventure

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Evil West

inFamous: First Light

Metal: Hellsinger

Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala

The Hidden World (Marsupilami: Hoobadventure DLC)

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Donut County

Albedo: Eyes From Outer Space

Noir Chronicles: City of Crimes

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