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[XIIDoomsdayIIX]

#129 - Bioshock 2 Remastered.

 

 

[Splathew]

#86 Outriders

 

[Arzoden]

PLATINUM #87 - Mirrior's Edge Catalyst

 

 

[DrBloodmoney]

  524

 662

 

Telling Lies

 

NOTE:

Telling Lies is a game in which learning the story IS the game. Knowing what transpires is, quite literally, the ENTIRE premise of the game. 

As such this review will be entirely spoiler free, meaning I cannot, unfortunately, go into much detail about the overall plot, or the specific character portrayals by the actors. 
Such is life... sorry if this one feels awfully vague!

 

A free-form narrative detective game from Sam Barlow - writer of underrated Silent Hill entry Shattered Memories, and creator of the excellent (and very successful) iOS indie narrative detective game Her Story, Telling Lies continues the broad gameplay structure of Her Story, but expands it out beyond a simple single-character interview, to a full, long-form, multi-character narrative, told through recordings of conversations via phone, Skype, secret cameras and video reports. 

For those unfamiliar with Her Story - the premise was relatively simple, The player is tasked with watching clips of a series of police interviews with a single woman, and has a single defined objective: find out what happened to her husband, who went missing then later was found murdered. 
By searching specific terms, watching clips containing those terms, they would learn more and more about the woman and the case, discover new lines of enquiry, search those, and slowly build up a picture of what happened. Essentially, there were two mysteries in play - what happened to the husband, and who is the player playing as?

Telling Lies expands that concept, playing with a lot of the same gameplay elements, but this time, the story is much broader, and more complex. The game begins showing the player character - a mystery woman - arriving at an apartment (presumably hers) with a cache of secretly recorded conversations with multiple characters... but without any stated objective. Not only is the whole story told in the cache of files a mystery, but so is the identity of the woman, the reason for her analysing them in the first place, the initial objective, or even what the files are. 

That means, unlike Her Story, in Telling Lies, the player begins the game truly lost. They have no idea of even what the nature of the clips they have to watch are. The early portion of the game is, therefore, genuinely baffling. Searching terms in the database returns multiple different clips with seemingly no connective tissue, and multiple seemingly unrelated characters. All they can do is keep searching terms, keep delving deeper and deeper into the archive, and try to make sense of what they have in their hands.

That is - it should be said - damned risky. 
Unlike Her Story, where the player knows what they will be watching ahead of time, in Telling Lies, the player has nothing but the compelling nature of the footage to keep them interested in those early hours. The nature of the game shows a level of confidence the developer has in the performances of the actors cast - free of context or connection, the average player who does not immediately stumble onto one of the games many rich veins of narrative evidence will only have the draw of those dispirit scenes to hold their attention. 
Luckily, in Telling Lies, that trust is both earned, and pays off dividends.

Gameplay-wise, it also might feel like a game liable to "blow its wad" too early - it might seem like the player is just as liable to stumble to the most climactic moments of the narrative by accident on their first try than slowly unravel the mystery, however, the key to Telling Lies (and Her Story) is the way the database works. There is a maximum number of clips that can be viewed for each searched term - five - and these are always shown in chronological order. If the player searches, for example, the word "Love", the database might tell them there are 65 instances of that word in the archive... but will only allow them to view the earliest 5 clip in the timeline. As such, more and more specific terms are required to view clips towards the latter end of the chronological timeline, and interrogation of the clips, picking out key clues or terms, becomes necessary in order to view the more meaty, revealing clips from later on.

Clips can be rewound and fast-forwarded at the player's leisure, scrubbing back and forth through the footage in search of specific clues and information, or finding specific references, and this works really well and very intuitively. It really does feel like the player is doing detective work, and solving an actual mystery, with stakes, methods, procedures and their wits.

It's a really smart design - and one that I have to imagine requires an almost absurd attention to detail in script-writing. Ensuring terms are not "accidentally" inserted into clips too often, thus making it impossible to see later clips that feature those terms means every clip must be written and edited to within an inch of its life. 
This is something that one would imagine would be liable to cause the clips themselves to feel stilted or poorly acted, however, the result is anything but. I have a real soft spot for the FMV games of the mid 90's - I find tremendous fun in their ham-fisted acting and semi-broken gameplay - however, make no mistake - a game like Telling Lies would simply not work if that kind of ham-acting was on show. The game is too dependent on the quality and realism of the acting to allow for that. 

The acting is superb. "Good acting for a game" is something of a back-handed compliment - the fact is, genuinely good acting in games is rare, even now - and I wouldn't use that phrase here. This is simply "Good Acting". It wouldn't feel out of place on TV or on the big screen. I really believe that Telling Lies may well be the foremost example of genuinely good acting in what is ostensibly an FMV game - the whole cast knock it out of the park. 
I think the best compliment I can give the game, is that while playing it, MsBloodmoney walked in, sat down, and after a few minutes, picked up the TV remote, and hit the "info" button...
...expecting the Netflix or Amazon Prime info to tell her what I was watching. 
A game having good acting is one thing, but a game being indistinguishable from a TV show to a lay-person is something much rarer!

There is a large cast, though the majority of the clips tend towards the interweaving story of 4 principle characters: Undercover cop Logan Marshall-Green, his wife Kerry Bishé, troubled sex-worker Angela Sarafyan, and young, somewhat naive but charming activist Alexandra Shipp.

Each of these actors is likely recognisable to most players, each is a qualified and talented actor in their own right, and each turns in a performance that feels real, nuanced and layered. The stand out is probably Alexandra Shipp (of X Men and Straight Outta Compton fame) who's turn as Ava is one of the most dynamic and difficult performances in the game, and one she makes incredibly charming and real, however, Halt and Catch Fire's Kerry Bishé, Westworld's Angela Sarafyan, and Upgrade's Logan Marshall Greene all turn in equally compelling performances in their respective roles. It is  testament to the quality of the acting that the game feels so mysterious at first - unconnected clips of characters viewed out of order can swing wildly in terms of tone and mood, but I never found a single one in which the emotion felt forced or false.

The supporting cast keep up the high standards too - there are several character that only appear in one or two clips, but each of these feature performances that feel lived-in and real enough that the relationship those characters have to the principles can be intuited from their performances, and add a realism to the overall that is laudable. In fact, a particular accolade should go to Vivien Lyra Blair - the child actor who plays Kerry Bishé's daughter. Child acting is a tough thing - even full film productions can suffer for bad examples of it - but her performance feels absolutely natural, and very well done!

These performances are - without a doubt - the crux of the game. Technically, Telling Lies could (somewhat reductively) be described as 10 un-edited hours of a film - it's therefore critical that those 10 hours be compelling and watchable. Here, they absolutely are. 
The nature of the game - as recorded footage via electronic devices - means often clips might have long stretches where a character is simply reacting to unheard dialogue (if watching a clip of a Skype conversation, for example, only one side can be viewed at a time, with the player having to pick out key, unique terms in that conversation to later search for the alternate side of the same conversation,) but even in these sections, the actors give it their all. While it's not possible to do, I have seen enough of these to be confident that if the conversations were cut together, as a back and forth, they would match up correctly, and character reactions would make sense in context. 

Where the game does have some flaws is not really in any of these core areas - as is probably pretty obvious from this review so far, I think those are handled marvellously - but in the implementation of gameplay as an overlay on them - and particularly on console. 

The UI feels overly awkward at times. Some of the more advanced options available to the player feel anything but. There is a system for tagging clips, and allowing them to be grouped or labelled, but it's not particularly user friendly. Bookmarks can be dropped at any point during a clip on the fly, which is nice, but applying a tag requires navigating a separate menu of these bookmarks, and while it's a neat idea on paper, the reality is that it is too clunky to really serve as a useful tool. It tends to break up the flow of the players concentration more than help it. In the end, I reverted to using a pen and paper to take my own notes, and found that a much more fluid system for keeping track of my thoughts, and ensuring I kept sufficient track of strands of stray information to be followed up on.

The other issue with the UI is typing. Literally any word can be searched, and it's remarkable how well the system works, however, as most people will know by now, typing on a controller is a slow and somewhat laborious task... one exhascerbated by the PS5's tendency to try and revert to the touchpad controls. (Those touchpad controls for typing remain the bane of the PS5 in my opinion - the idea of using the touchpad as a "mouse" is good in theory, but controllers are hardy products, and take a beating in real life. A single speck of dust or the residue from an oily finger tends to get picked up as an input, rendering the pad unusable for the delicate, fine-control required for navigating a keyboard.)  

Manual controller typing is fine when all the player is being asked to do it fill in a character name one in a while, but when the primary interaction with a game is typing, it can become a hindrance. The game does alleviate this somewhat with its ability for the player to directly search any word from one clip - highlighting any subtitled words in the live dialogue of a scene allows searching that word (or phrase) in the whole database with a single click - and that is a very good method for playing early on, when the player is simply free-form exploring the vast vault of clips - however, later, once the player has built up a wealth of their own notes, has more idea of the broad narrative, and is searching for specific elements, it becomes less helpful.

My personal method for dealing with this issue was actually to play the game using remote-link. If playing the game through remote play to a PC (or in my case, a Mac,) the text input can be done using the computer keyboard, bypassing the controller input. I found that to be a much more user-friendly way to play, and if anything - actually benefitted the feeling of immersion, since my typing mirrored the typing the mystery woman I was playing as was doing - however, this is not a set up that is going to be available to everyone. I believe the PS4 and PS5 do allow for connection to a Bluetooth keyboard as well (I haven't personally tried this) and that would also work, but as is, out of the box, the typing interface is liable to be much more of a hindrance than it was, for example, in Her Story, which was played on a phone.

Aside from these input issues though (and the one other odd flaw the game has - it's cover art and game name, which seems to suggest a wildly different game than the one contained within (Looking at the cover, a consumer could be forgiven for mistaking Telling Lies for some kind of multi-player party game, more akin to Jack-box or Pictionarythan a detective mystery in the vein of Her Story!)  - Telling Lies remains a really great example of what narrative in videogames can be.

It is a game in which the gameplay elements are remarkably free-form - there is no real "good" or "bad" ending, but rather simply an ending, with it down to the player to decide if they saw enough of the game to make sense of it - but it holds up on the strength of what is there. 

A smart, well told story, complex and interesting characters genuinely well acted by good performers who never feel like they are phoning it in. A neat premise, a smart expansion of the core gameplay pioneered in Her Story, and shown here to work on a grander, broader, and more complex scale, and most of all - a smartly written script allowing the player to really feel lost in complexity at the outset, yet fully versed in the details by the end. 

 

(For original review and Scientific  Ranking see HERE)

[ZitMeatloaf]

With the next batch of 5 complete, it's time for another update.

 

 #106 - Ultimate Chicken Horse

"Super Ultimate Chicken Horse!"

Difficulty: 2.5/10

Enjoyment: 6.5/10

 

I'd never heard of this game until my son played it at a friend's house and asked if we could get it (he astutely pointed out the game was on sale at the time). It's a party game where you score points by trying to get to the goal of various stages through obstacles which are placed by the players. It's a fun game that I still play with my kids. If you want the platinum there's nothing really difficult, it's just a matter of grinding out certain conditions and completing 50 online games.

 

 #107 - The Artful Escape

"All Done"

Difficulty: 2/10

Enjoyment: 7.5/10

 

This was the first game from the revamped PS Plus offerings that I played. It's a story-driven music game light on gameplay, but heavy on the guitar riffs. Somehow they got Lena Headey (Cersei Lanninster from Game of Thrones) to voice a character in this indie game, which is kinda weird but neat.

 

 #108 - Rainbows, Toilets & Unicorns

"Platinum Rainbow"

Difficulty: 4/10

Enjoyment: 6/10

 

I bought this game based on nothing but the title. For two bucks and some change, I had to see what this game was. It's a vertically scrolling bullet hell shmup, very similar to the old 1942/1943/1944 Capcom games. You pilot a toilet steed named Sparklebarf throughout the game and spread unicorn shit throughout the universe. Feel free to take a break from reading my entry if you want to run and purchase the game straight away.

 

 #109 - Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

"Ultimate Fall Guy"

Difficulty: 7/10

Enjoyment: 9/10

 

I'm quite proud of this platinum, as I previously thought I'd never be able to get it. Under the old launcher I got everything except Squad Goals, Golden Guy, and Infallible; I didn't play with other people very often, I think I won maybe 10 or 11 shows total over 60 hours of gameplay, and Infallible just seemed impossible. But with the new limited time events (Ski Fall in particular), I was finally able to get Infallible and Golden Guy! Even with the special event, Infallible was no guarantee for me, but I practiced and was able to get it. Without the special event, this game definitely would have been a 10/10 difficulty for me.

 

That just left Squad Goals to obtain. My son likes to play, so counting myself I had two people whenever I wanted. I called up a lifelong buddy and asked if he'd be willing to log on for a Fall Guys boosting session while Ski Fall was still available. He laughed and said yes, I got the victory I needed and popped the platinum! This one felt pretty good.

 

 #110 - Odin Sphere Leifthrasir

"Odin Sphere"

Difficulty: 3/10

Enjoyment: 8/10

 

I knew of this game back in the PS2 days and it was one of those "I'd like to play that someday" games in my head. I saw this remake on sale in the store and decided to buy it on the advice of the same friend who helped me boost Fall Guys. It's a great game with an intricate story that weaves together through different playable characters. Plus it's got that gorgeous Atlus & Vanillaware look to it.

 

Onto the next five!

Edited July 15, 2022 by ZitMeatloaf

[DrBloodmoney]

  525

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Resident Evil VIII: Village

 

Four years after Resident Evil 7: Biohazard rejuvenated the ailing mainline Resident Evil franchise from the Bruckheimer-tinged depths of Resident Evil 6, (and after the fantastically remade Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 versions kept interest in the franchise at an all time high,)  Capcom continued the series in the new 1st person style pioneered in Resident Evil 7, with Resident Evil VIII: Village.

 

With Dulsey Louisiana behind them, Mia and Ethan Winters are living an idyllic life in Europe, (facilitated by Chris Redfield), in a nice house, with their infant daughter Rose. 
When, their picturesque life is shattered in bombastic fashion - as Mia is riddled with bullets from Chris and his team of Umbrella Soldiers, and both she and Ethan are dragged into a transport, the player has no idea what is going on. When that transport is subsequently attacked, and Ethan awakes in the remote Romanian hillside, without Rose, without Mia, without Chris, and without any clue as to what just happened... the player is right there with him. 
Stumbling through the snowy night in search of shelter or sense, Ethan quickly finds himself in a dilapidated village at the edge of a castle, and surrounded by werewolves.

Yes, that's right - werewolves. 
Not zombies, nor cannibals, nor any of the bio-weapon horrors that have graced the series before, and this is something that shows both the areas of adherence to, and deviation from, the ethos that I found so revelatory and exciting in Resident Evil 7.

As anyone who read my review of Resident Evil 7 knows, I loved that game. I loved it for many reasons, and a lot of those reasons remain staples of Resident Evil 8, but while I enjoyed aspects of Resident Evil 8, I dod not love it to anywhere near the same extent. The reason is, that while Resident Evil 8 does continue many of the factors that made Resident Evil 7 so revelatory, the actual lessons they take from that astounding refresh of the series are not necessarily the same ones I did. 

Resident Evil 7 refreshed the series by doing things differently - by taking an entirely new strain of horror influences, and amalgamating them into the Resident Evil franchise. This was a bold, and particularly beneficial move - by eschewing the Zombie / Biowarfare angle, and instead looking at slasher and found-footage horror media for inspiration, it felt completely different, and much more original than the franchise had in years. 
Resident Evil 8 continues this boldness, by this time looking even further afield in the Horror genre, and picking another new set of influences - this time concentrating on Fantasy Horror, Gothic Horror, Grimm Fairytale horror and Hammer Monster Horror as its narrative jumping off point. This is laudable, and gives another striking tonal difference for the series... but one that personally didn't connect as viscerally, as it is simply not as much in my personal wheelhouse than the slasher / found footage milieu.

It puts me in something of a quandary with the game, as while I applaud Capcom for continuing to pursue new avenues for narrative and tonal elements, I am not as enamoured with the particular ones they opted for this time. 
Fantasy Horror is a more difficult genre to stand out in - primarily because there is a far richer and more storied history with Fantasy Horror already alive within videogames. While slasher / found-footage style games certainly exist, it is a vein far less saturated, and there are fewer titanic games already within that field for Resident Evil 7 to be overshadowed by. 
In Fantasy/ Gothic Horror, however, there are. The Dark Souls franchise alone has dominated that genre in the past decade, with its titanic progeny Elden Ring, providing the magnum opus of that style this year. (I'm aware, of course, that Resident Evil 8 predates the release of Elden Ring, however, having played it after the fact, it is impossible for me to ignore!)

There is an element of "Big Fish in a small pond" effect that benefitted Resident Evil 7 from a narrative point of view - upon release, it was arguably the highest budget, most lavish game ever made in the Slasher / Found Footage Horror genre. Resident Evil 8 is entering a more crowded field, and while it retains its excellent gameplay and its unique mechanical signatures, it cannot avoid being inherently less interesting as a result. 

The story of Resident Evil 8 is - without going into spoiler territory - ludicrous. Unfortunately, the one truly smart decision Resident Evil 7 made that is not in any way passed on to Resident Evil 8, is the focus on more realistic scares. 
While the canonical place in which Resident Evil 7 sits in the overall franchise (and it's ending) do add some good old-fashioned RE nonsense into the mix, the fact is that for 90% of Resident Evil 7, the existing lore was largely immaterial. For the most part, the story played out as grounded, and rather realistic - at least by franchise standards. 
Resident Evil 8, however, has one of the most convoluted and absurd narratives the series has ever seen - both attempting to tie the entire deviation that started with RE7 back into the main franchise canon, and tell a wholly new narrative in itself, setting up future instalments. 
It simply doesn't work. Partly because the existing canon is so heavy and convoluted, but primarily because the game simply doesn't tell a coherent story in and of itself. The reasons for Rose's abduction, and the justification for the horrors of the village and the monstrous "Big-Bads" who make up the boss roster are not compelling, nor are a good portion of the characters. 

The game actually appears to fundamentally misunderstand what elements it has that work and which don't. The pacing feels off, simply because the bosses are fought in descending order of quality. 

There are five main villains to the game. 
The one truly interesting, well designed, scary and compelling one - Lady Dimitrescu - is, rather unfortunately, dispatched within the first few hours. Her castle area is excellent, and she is the one really stand-out performance in the game. She plays into one element of horror that RE games haven't really tapped before in any meaningful way - sexuality as an unnerving element. She is oddly and peculiarly attractive, and curiously sexual in her encounters with Ethan, and it works to a tee. It provides a really unnerving experience - but her time in the game is all too fleeting.

The second area - House Beneviento - is a very interesting area - probably the horror highlight of the game, as its section is genuinely disturbing. The game takes a break there from action, to do Capcom's version of a SOMA / Amnesia / Outlast style "weaponless horror"... and brings far more psychological horror elements into the fold. It is more akin to Silent Hill than traditional Resident Evil, (in fact, this section has a large debt to pay to the Silent Hill teaser for the game that never happened - P.T - including a lot of very disturbing, foetal imagery - and is DEEPLY unnerving. 

This is a genuine high point in the game - and during the initial playthrough, is very successful at disarming the player (literally, and figuratively,) however, it does have a down-side. Resident Evil is not a game like Amnesia or Outlast in its overall mechanical trappings, and this section, as good as it is, doesn't lend itself well to those elements that are fundamental RE staples. Resident Evil games are predicated on multiple playthroughs - they include speed runs, multiple difficulties etc... and having a section where the puzzles do not change, and there is no action element to vary the pace or challenge in the middle of the game means that section tends to become a mere distraction after the initial - very effective - time it occurs. 
House Beneviento was without a doubt my highlight of the game the first time through. By the time I reached my speed-run (my 4th full time through the game) the unchanging nature and the set pace were simply a somewhat tedious chore as compared to more action elements.
There is also the issue of the boss - the actual boss fought here is laughably silly, and almost absurdly under-developed narratively. 

Beyond that though, the game has serious problems with generating scares, or even holding up its end in terms of compelling narrative. The third area and boss feel more suited to Resident Evil 6 - a vomiting grotesquery of little narrative interest (and little performance stand-out)...
...and the fourth area - The Factory - while fun to play, feels like it belongs in a completely different game. It works on a mechanical level, but the enemies feel more suited to something like Bioshock Infinite that Resident Evil, and the boss of that area - Heisenberg - would be in serious contention for the worst character, and worst vocal performance, in a videogame in the modern age. 
His character is narratively bereft, his design a paleo imitation of other games, and his final boss fight is so outrageously silly that it gives the finale of Wild Wild West a run for its money.

The final boss, and true villain of the game is somewhat more interesting, but has surprisingly little screen time, and shockingly little narrative justification. The battle with her ends up being rather anti-climactic in the overall experience as a result, and left me pining for the early portions of the game. 

Mechanically, Resident Evil 8 is also a huge step away from Resident Evil 7 - in the sense that the game goes from being one of the tightest experiences that the franchise had offered, to one of the loosest. Rather than following a minimalist, singular focussed story, through a set path, Resident Evil 8 adds a semi-open, almost Metroidvania "hub" area in the village, with each of its major "boss" areas spider-webbing out from there. There is a set path to the narrative of the game, gated by the collection of keys, and by accessibility, however, there is also a new element introduced to the series - optional areas, optional mini-bosses and side content - all tied to the newly added (or reintroduced,) upgrade mechanics. The effect is that Resident Evil 8 has the feeling of somewhat RPG - or at least, Action Metroidvania - elements seeping into it. While these are elements I often like in games, I do find them to be detrimental, rather than additive in the specific case of the RE franchise. 

Resident Evil is almost always at its best when it is a focussed, tight narrative experience, unfettered and unburdened by overtly "gamified" elements. While I certainly concede than none of the more fluid, gamified elements of Resident Evil 8 are fundamentally flawed - each is implemented well, and work in context - I do think the combination of them, on top of the less compelling and more absurd storyline, and the lack of genuinely frightening elements, makes the game feel markedly lesser than its predecessor. Often while playing (and broadly enjoying) Resident Evil 8, I found myself thinking "This feels like a sequel all right, but I'm not sure it feels like a sequel to Resident Evil." 
There are elements of Dark Souls, of Bloodborne, of Bioshock, of God of War 2018... even of Skyrim - but in a franchise as distinct as Resident Evil, each addition of one of these elements feels less like an additive thing, and more like a loss. For every outside gameplay influence added, a little of the core RE experience is reduced or marginalised.

To clarify, in many of the DLCs for Resident Evil 7 (Nightmare, for example, or Jack's Birthday) the addition of genuinely action-heavy FPS gameplay felt fresh and interesting, because it was in such contract to the main campaign. In Resident Evil 8, however, the sole extra mode currently available - Mercenaries - does not feel particularly interesting, simply because it is not markedly different in style than the campaign the player just finished. 
There is a section towards the end of the game - where the player controls a different character - that is clearly designed to be some kind of "Action Catharsis" - suddenly gifting the player copious amounts of ammunition, high-power weapons, and nothing but action fodder to shoot... 
...but really, the game doesn't have the self control to limit the rest of the game enough to make that section feel markedly different. At that point in the primary "Ethan story", the player has likely been blasting their way through the game with Call of Duty level abandon for hours already... and as I've said before: it is impossible to feel scared in a game where you have so much artillery, that simply carrying it all is the primary source of difficulty.

Now - a lot of this review so far has been negative - but It must be stated: none of this is to detract from one fundamental truth. Resident Evil 8 feels good to play. 
I have said before, and I'll reiterate: no matter how poor the narrative or structural elements have been in some of Resident Evil's darker days, the one consistent thing in the franchise (at least, in the mainline franchise) has always been its core gameplay. This is a streak not in any way disproven by Resident Evil 8. The game feels fantastic. Gunshots are crisp and impactful - helped enormously by the excellent implementation of haptic feedback in the PS5 controller. 
Ethan runs and shoots really well, has sleek, well defined movements, and the level layout is good. The game never encounters any kind of glitching, or issues with geometry - there is an attention to technical detail in Resident Evil as a franchise that is hard to beat. They feels great to play - and RE8 is no exception.

I'll also add that while I think the free-form nature of the hub area is not to the franchises benefit, some specific areas - namely Castle Dimitrescu, House Beneviento, and the Factory - are, as self-contained areas, very well implemented examples of Resident Evil areas. Each of these is functionally and artistically interesting and distinct, and each has its own set of metroidvania elements and criss-crossing paths to be navigated. The issue with the game is not that these areas don't work, or don't feel like "proper Resident Evil" - it is simply that the connective tissue between them - the village, the windmills etc - feels overly wishy-washy, bloated, and unfocussed. I like choice and agency in games, but in a franchise not suited to them, those things can feel like padding, even when they are technically not. 

Visually too - Resident Evil 8 is remarkable. The game looks STUNNINGLY good. The dilapidation of the village, the opulence of Castle Dimitrescu and House Beneviento, the grotesquery of the vomit-covered windmill area and the clunking, rusted factory all look magnificent. The visual attention to detail is remarkable - not only does it look better than the already absurdly well detailed RE7, but it does so on a much larger, much more varied scale. 

 

Audio is excellent in terms of foley - bushes rustle, winds howl, guns crack and pop with visceral impact - and the score, while not as effective as that used in some previous games, is still of superior quality.
There isn't a single musical signature in the same way Resident Evil 7 had with "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" - though the more free-form nature of the game would likely make any signature piece selected feel less impactful anyways, so I am in two minds about whether this is a negative or not. 
Voice work is a little uneven, but not across the board. There are some performances (Mia / Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters / the odd, ethereal shopkeeper simply known as The Duke) which are excellent, and others (the vomiting Moreau, Chris Redfield, Ethan himself,) that are rather lacklustre in writing, and the acting follows suit... and the less said about Heisenberg the better. His performance is utterly woeful - a depressingly flat rendition of the most basic "villain 101" voice I've heard in a good long time, and one destined to be mocked, (with good reason,) for decades to come.

Overall, Resident Evil 8 is something of an anomaly - a perfectly decent action game, but one that betrayed by both the past successes, and past failures of its franchise. 
It is, almost assuredly, the best "action" entry the series has had since RE4 - and given the setting, I think it is inarguable that with it, Capcom strived to combine the successes of RE4 with those of RE7...
...however, those are not really compatible ambitions. While roundly regarded as two of the franchises best entires, they are almost polar opposites in terms of design documents.

RE8's weaker narrative, combined with the late game sections, (where the game resembles less and less an RE game, and more and more a Call of Duty,) tend to make that harkening back to RE4 feel skin-deep - a purely aesthetic similarity. 
The entry the game most closely resembles in it's back half, in fact, is Resident Evil 6... and by doing so with the first-person veneer of Resident Evil 7, and with the same characters, it actively undercuts the good work put into RE7 to refocus the franchise as a whole.

 

In the end, Resident Evil 8 is a good action game, but a poor horror game. 
It's a fun time for the most part, but it disappoints even as it thrills, as it feels like the back-pedal no one wanted after the huge leap forward that its immediate predecessor was.

 

 

(For original review and Scientific  Ranking see HERE)

[Ryan Industries]

Never thought this day would come. I'm so proud of myself. After 7 weeks (170 hours of in-game time) of every emotion a person can feel, I finally got the platinum!

#665 - Slay The Spire (PS4)

3.84% Very Rare

[DrBloodmoney]

  526

 664

 

 

Chicory

 

An Indie Adventure RPG / Metroidvania from developer Greg Lobanov (of Wandersong heritage) Chicory: A Colourful Tale was a Kickstarted labour of love, (and one that reached its Kickstarter target in less than 24 hours) developed over 3 years to release on all platforms in 2021.

The player takes the role of a sweet, somewhat naive anthropomorphic dog (who's name is determined by the player in answer to the question "What is your favourite food?" - and will therefore be referred to in this review by my chose name - Burrito!) Burrito works as a Janitor in the "Wielder's Tower" - home of the latest in a long line of "Wielders of the Brush" - Chicory the rabbit.

In the land of Picnic, (wherein all locations and people are known by food-related monikers,) all colour is provided via the magic Brush - passed from Wielder to Wielder throughout the ages, via an arcane ritual, and a series of testing trials. 

 

When, at the outset of the game, some calamity happens, draining all colour from the world, and Burrito finds the Brush, but cannot find Chicory, he takes it and goes looking for her. Upon finding her, the game gives its first hints that the narrative is not one as childish as it might seem on the surface. Chicory - his hero - is not herself. In fact, she seems utterly broken, and lashing out. It is relatively clear to any adult player that she is in the throws of a full depressive episode... and the fractious conversation becomes quickly combative - culminating in her abandoning her duty, and passing the Brush to Burrito.

Burrito then embarks on a light adventure across the land of Picnic, talking to its denizens, solving their problems, clearing the black, colourless rot that has infected the land... and painting the world as he/she sees fit!

Narratively, Chicory has all the hallmarks of more simple SNES RPGs (think The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or Earthbound,) - with the exception of non-boss enemies - however, what sets Chicory apart from most games taking cues from that era is how tied into adult issues of mental health the mechanically simple narrative is. Chicory herself is, very clearly, obsessive compulsive, suffers from acute anxiety, and the pressure she felt as the Wielder only exhascerbated those feelings. With no one around her for comfort, and huge responsibility on her shoulders, her mental health has suffered immensely. 
Burrito suffers from low self-esteem and mild anxiety too - however, he has the embrace of supportive and loving parents, and the difference between those two situations is made very clear in terms of coping mechanisms. 

More than simply those main characters though, what's remarkable about Chicory is how virtually every character in the game seems to have some sort of rich internal emotional life, their own strengths and weaknesses, and thier own fears and anxieties. Even characters who are only given a few lines, are coloured in shades of grey... ironic, considering the world, prior to the input of Burrito of course, is black and white!

There are far too many strands of these issues to mention, but what I'll simply say is that not once during the 20-odd hours I spent with the game, talking to what must be around 50 unique characters, did I ever feel like any were simply one-dimensional - and I never once bumped against any real mishandling or misappropriation of the emotional issues the game approaches.
There are so many different strands of life lessons - about imposter syndrome, depression, anxiety, fear of failure, fear of success, and simply the affirmation of putting ones artistic or creative endeavours out there for the world to see and judge, that the overall message should, by rights, collapse under the wight of it all. 
One would think that they should begin to cancel each other out - but they don't. Because the actual language use to discuss these complex emotional issues is simple enough, and child-friendly enough, that surprising nuance can be conveyed in relatively short exchanges, it makes the game able to contain a lot more emotional content than it might be expected to.

That idea of child-friendliness, in fact, is something that needs to be applauded. Make no mistake - the emotional content of Chicory, and the issues it deals with are grown-up, complex and universal - and in some ways, not issues likely to be fully grasped by the younger players in any full, mature sense - however, children are remarkably adept at picking up emotion without the contextual baggage. 
Chicory understands this, and deals in that arena. It doesn't address the complexity of the emotions directly - it acknowledges that they exist, but moves past them - to address the most fundamental emotional core of them, without ladening its messages with undue complication. 

It is not a game directed at children necesarily however - or at least, not solely. While it might be compared to  the very best of children's fare (Sesame Street, Mr.Rogers etc,) and that feels broadly correct in some sense, it is actually closer in tone to the best of family fare (Pixar / Aardman etc.) Chicory is able to approach genuine adult issues with the soft, careful and disarming touch appropriate for a child, but without pandering to them, and without losing its adult audience along the way. It conveys complex issues with simple, uncluttered dialogue, and therefore makes it perfectly acceptable and approachable for a child, but it loses none of its impact when addressing the adults in the room.
In fact, that softness probably adds to that impact - in much the same way that a child might frame a solution to a complex emotional problem as a simple, unfettered statement, cutting right through the nuance, and get to the core of the issue with simple non-judgement, Chicory eschews flowery language, without losing raw intent - or astute insight. 

Mechanically, the game operates as a Metroidvania - and a very clever one. While there is nothing really original about any of the traversal mechanics or abilities that gate exploration in the game on their face, the fact that they are all tied in to the one really original concept - the painting of the black and white "canvas" world, makes them feel much fresher than they technically are. 
As in most Metroidvanias, some areas are obviously inaccessible and gated by ability (for example, it is clear that a "jump" will be gained at some point, due to level layout,) however, Chicory manages to hide abilities in plain sight too. I has walked past hundreds of areas with a specific texture painted on them, and though it was nothing more than decoration... before finally receiving the ability to traverse them - opening up a wealth of new exploration, in places I hadn't even considered as potentially accessible before. 

That painting mechanic is both fun and engaging, and serves as a marker of progress (by colouring in areas you have visited), an aid to collecting ("fill-colouring an area the first time colours items, then fill colouring in another colour only does the floor, making items of interest stand out,) and a traversal mechanic. For example, later in the game, once the ability  to "Swim" in paint means colouring areas is a means to traversing specific pathways.

The painting is used in a variety of ways elsewhere too - boss fights, against the darkness that has crept into the world (and which manifest in these instances as the darkest, most self-loathing or hateful thoughts of both Chicory and Burrito) are done using the painting mechanic - each one becomes a sort of unusual mash-up of bullet-hell and Mario Paint!

 

I'll mention trophies for a brief moment (sorry)... but not for the usual reason! 
Generally I only mention trophies when they are a particular detriment, but actually, I feel like in Chicory's case, they are a particular benefit. There are a lot of collectibles in Chicory, and collecting them actually forms a good 50-60% of the time spend in the game. Indeed, of the 100-odd single "screen" areas in the game, virtually all have some sort of collectible in some hard-to-reach spot that the player must puzzle through, or use one of their acquired abilities to collect, and these are a source of much fun in the game.

The fact is, the actual play-time for the game, if the player is not looking to collect these items, is most likely in the 4-5 hour range. However, the playtime for a full platinum is probably closer to 20-odd, and that is not (as it feels in some games,) padding. The collectible hunt is a major part of the game, and doing so is where the care and attention that has been paid to crafting the world really shines. It's remarkable how many little nooks and crannies have been made that hide secret shortcuts back to out-of-reach spots in previous screens, for example - and because of this attention to detail, each and every new ability that is gained (by "strengthening Burrito's bond with the Brush" after each boss fight), opens up a wealth of new shortcuts and accessible areas.

Visually Chicory is, of course, somewhat dependent on the player themselves (I found it rather charming, that in the end credits, the "Lead Artist" credited is "You!") but of course, creating a world that works as both a canvas for creativity, and a legitimately fun explorational Metroidvania is no mean feat. It is done here with aplomb - the simple visual design of the world and characters allows for the player to feel agency in the colouring, but still looks great in black and white, and the dark, think outlines do nothing to dampen the artists ability to create stylish and distinct characters, with a range of emotive expressions. 

 

Audio is good - I don't think it is spectacular, in the sense that I never found myself humming tunes from the game when way from it, and wouldn't necessarily add the album to my Spotify rotation, but in game, I never found any of it grating, and enjoyed quite a lot of it. In fact, the boss fight music is particularly rousing and fun.

Overall, Chicory is a game that delivers on all fronts - it is a solid, well crafted Metroidvania, and a fun, engaging RPG. It is a game about creativity, and it absolutely nails that aspect - both in terms of allowing the player sufficient latitude to be creative themselves, and in discussing the many good and bad aspects of being creative - and of putting ones own creative output into the world. 

More than that though, Chicory is a game that looks at many different aspects of mental health, treats them all with respect, understanding and nuance and insight... and does it in a way that is accessible to everyone and judgemental towards no one. 
It teaches fundamental and good lessons in understanding, without feeling like a lesson at all.

 

 

(For original review and Scientific  Ranking see HERE)

[percy547389126yv]

#1,333 PS4 version of Canada Break Head to Head

[Brainswashed]

Ghost of Tsushima 

Difficult : 3/10

Fun : 10/10 Masterpiece 

Time: 40+ up

 

amazing thing in this game there is no loading screen just 1 or 2 second then game will showing with all fast travel any location it’s just amazing on ps5

[da-Noob123]

On 7/14/2022 at 7:48 AM, da-Noob123 said:

OH MY GOD!!!!!! I finally finished Crash Bandicoot! 

 

This game has been so freaking infuriating I almost want to cry that I never have to come back to it. High Road gets a  bad rap and yes, it was definitely a tough level but, Stormy Ascent... I just beat it about 10 minutes ago and it was pure agony. High Road took me like 5 or 6 hours, this took me probably close to 15 hours. I just wanted to snap my controller at times but after 5 days in hell I made my escape and grabbed my platinum and 100% on the way out.

 

I will NOT be playing the sequels. 

Been a while since I platinumed games in back to back days but I did so today. 

 

A little over 12 years ago, I borrowed Darksiders from a friend for one week. I only had time for 1 playthrough and had largely written it off as incomplete, especially since for the past year my PS3 has not been reading Blu-ray discs. On a whim though I saw this game at my library and decided: "What the hell." I rented it and popped it into my PS3. My jaw dropped when it worked and I proceeded to praise my baby on what a good little PS3 it was for reading discs again. ? I then determined to beat Darksiders as fast as I could in case the disc reader stops working again. 

 

As for the game itself, it is a mixture of Zelda and God of War and it had a pretty good story all things considered. I'm not big on the big burly men look like in Gears of War but the aesthetic worked in this universe. You play as War, one of the four Horseman of the Apocalypse as he tries to unravel what in the Hell (pun intended) caused the Apocalypse to begin prematurely and why his 3 comrades are not with him. A journey of revenge and button mashing ensues and it was a fairly enjoyable ride, except for having to ride Ruin (your horse) for 100 miles.

 

In the decade plus since this game was released, it has had 3 sequels released. None of them play the same to my understanding and I don't think I will be playing them, in my head cannon, the 4 Horseman finally reunite after the first game's ending and kickass together and after a few millienia Uriel and War admit their feelings for one another and live happily ever after.

[Kishnabe]

 Platinum #566: Matchpoint Tennis Championships (PS4)

 

 

14th Tennis game Completed.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Difficulty: 1/10 

Enjoyment: 7/10

Time: 15 hours

[percy547389126yv]

#1,334 PS5 version of The Jumping Burrito

[geunc]

  #138: Last Stop (PS5)

 

 

Difficulty: Very easy

Enjoyment: 6.6

Platinum Time: 6-8 hours

 

+ Good story, good music and sound effects

- Choices have no impact on the story or gameplay until the end

 

 

[Kefka1986]

 #131 - THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: MAN OF MEDAN (PS4)

 

 

Difficulty:  1/10

Enjoyment: 3/10

 

I had fun playing it once, I had fun playing it twice, I definitely didn't have fun playing it all the times needed for the platinum. Select every "follow your heart" option, then select every "follow your brain" option, then save everyone, then save noone, then save only the girls, then save only the boys. Some of these trophies can be earned together or replaying only a few chapters, but the game gets boring very fast and forces you to play almost the entire game several times for minor choices which voids some trophies. 

 

ALSO, honorable mention to the spanish voice cast, who made the experience a lot harder to bear as their voices don't match at all the situations of the game (i.e. they are casually talking but someone speaks like if they are angry, shouting, or a sarcastic answer that is read with a flirty voice, or lines read while crying when nothing happened yet and the character is calm and quiet...). Not their fault, but it's clear to me that they recorded the voices without knowing the scenes and the result is a total mess for almost the entire game.

 

THE WORST THING: The spanish dub, some key decisions have to be selected in the early chapters, so you need to replay almost the entire game for all the trophies.

THE BEST THINGS: Playing coop with a fellow trophy hunter for the coop trophy was fun, commenting on the ps app the plot holes and making fun of the characters. Also, now that I'm done with this, I can go back to play Hades! ?

Edited July 16, 2022 by Kefka1986

[KindaSabbath]

Platinum Trophy #14 

 

 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Oh boy did I enjoy my time with this game! My first FROMSOFTWARE experience and sure will not be my last! Absolutely gorgeous visualls, superb sound design and voice acting (I played it in Japanese with subtitles) and last but certainly not least - incredibly well designed combat that is begging to be mastered. The level of depth to the bosses it’s borderline outrageous and to be honest, I now understand exactly why FROM set the standard and practically spawned an entire genre based off of their addicting gameplay loop / game design. Of course, this is not a souls game but based on the bosses alone and speaking with friends - I totally get it. Count me a fan! Looking forward to more games from this genre and especially this talented dev team! 

 

[Kale]

 477 :  F1 2018

 

Trophy Collector
Acquire every trophy in F1® 2018

[BlitzkriegHottie]

What a perfect time to play Metro Exodus, a game that is about the post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland caused by Russia starting WW3! Oh nooooooooo! 

Pretend you can see a trophy icon there, I messed up my screenshot and got a glitched trophy without a screenshot instead TT_TT

Platinum Trophy
Rarity: 9.97%

100% Rarity: 2.22%

Ah the Metro series... the charm exuding from their "indie-ness" and the excellent post-apoc world building (to which I might be biased for, guilty as charged) has oft been enough for me to ignore some of its issues so it is with sadness that I must say that's the case no more: the gameplay is annoying and very sluggish, controlling Artyom (MC) sometimes feels like controlling a mecha instead of a human, and he will even drift sometimes (very noticeable when making sharp turns), the shooting is unresponsive and disappointing to the point you'll be missing your targets at point blank and the exposition is given to the player via neverending unskippable quasi-cutscenes (those that will let you move your character around). Oh and for some reason we're still getting silent protagonists... why?!... this only makes things extremely awkward when an interaction between our MC and NPCs takes place. The worst thing? He actually has a voice actor but Artyom will only speak when reading his diary in between loading screens... fucking why?!

 

The art design is as impeccable as ever, the settings, the atmosphere, the mood and the acting are all very good as well, its a shame that it turned out to be a mixed bag.

 

Gnarly

 

Platinum wise this is an easy one. There's even a glitch that will let you skip the hardmode playthrough, just use a collectibles guide you don't want to go through the unskippable cutscenes again just to get a couple diaries.

100% wise is when things get a bit trickier, The Two Colonels and Sam's Story (this gets a voiced protagonist, btw!) are proper DLC packs with a single very annoying but very doable trophy in each but the NG+ DLC will have you replaying the whole game in a mode that only saves after completing every chapter. Granted you can select easy difficulty for this but certain areas are still going to be troublesome considering gravity is still a one hit kill, this paired with Artyom's mecha-like flow will only make you hate those unskippable cutscenes even more.

 

Game Rating: 5/10

Platinum Difficulty: 2/10 (Ranger Hardcore Glitch)

Time to platinum: 20h (Ranger Hardcore Glitch)

 

The Two Colonels Rating: 6/10

100% Difficulty: 4/10

Time to 100%: 2-3h

 

Sam's Story Rating: 7/10

100% Difficulty: 4/10

Time to 100%: 4-5h

 

Ng+ Pack Rating: 2/10 (why is this even a thing)

100% Difficulty: 3/10

Time to 100%: 5-6h

Another franchise finished. That ultra rare ps3 Last Light stack is looking good, tho, might go for it later on.

 

 

Yeah yeah, post-apoc strippers flashing their nipples is ok and all, but you know what could have instantly turned this into a 10/10? Post-apocaliyptic armored Adidas tracksuits. Kurwa! 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by BlitzkriegHottie

[Slava]

#18 - OKAMI (PS3)

 

Top Dog 

 

Okami is an interesting and unique game. On one hand, it’s a wonderful mix of 3D Zelda and Devil May Cry. On the other – its strongest part is the new mechanics. This gameplay formula along with a strong art style, beautiful music, tons of Japanese folklore and humour create an awesome (and a pretty long) adventure.

 

You play as the wolf goddess Amaterasu AKA Shiranui AKA Snowy, Furball, and many other names. Evil powers are taking over the lands of Nippon, so you embark on a quest to get 13 celestial brush powers and use them to beat the nasty demons and bring life back to each place. The Zelda aspect comes in the way of the structure of the game world. You explore the new areas, talk to whimsical NPC’s, do some missions, fight monsters, collect treasures, then enter a dungeon where you solve puzzles, fight more enemies, get a new power, and fight a boss at the end.

 

The battle system will probably remind you of DMC. When you encounter enemies, you fight them in small closed arenas. When a fight ends, you receive a rating. While the attacks themselves seem simple, especially at first, the game has plenty of depth. You unlock new weapons with different abilities. One looks like a disk, one acts like a whip, and third one is a sword. Place them in two slots (the main and the sub) in different combinations and you get different play styles. The square button is always the main weapon attack button, but the triangle button gives you options. The disk in the sub slot acts as a shield, the whip acts as a range weapon, the sword gives you an ability to launch or stagger enemies.

 

But the main feature of the battle system and the whole game is the Celestial Brush. Pressing R1 stops time and gives you an ability to draw on reality itself as if it’s a piece of paper. For example you can draw a line to cut things in half. You can draw a circle + one line to create and set off a bomb. These abilities really add a lot to the battles. Every enemy is unique, so you need to learn to counter their attacks and take advantage of their weaknesses. On top of that, there is a finisher for each type of enemy that will give you a reward when you execute it. You also use brush powers during puzzles and while exploring the world. Blow up a wall to find a secret treasure, or even manipulate the day and night cycle by drawing the sun in the sky. There are not many ways to combine them though. The one I liked was making a lily pad, and moving it like a boat with the wind.

 

The game also stands out visually. The art style, like many other things in Okami, is inspired by Japanese art. Everything has a thick black ink outline, the backgrounds look like they are straight from some old scrolls, sometimes only consisting of an outline. Not to mention the names of locations just floating in the sky. The characters are cartoony and colourful, they are not very detailed, or have realistic proportions, but they all have amazing designs, memorable and recognizable. Thanks to the strong art design, this PS2 game's visuals aged well. The cherry blossom trees, the crazy looking outfits, even the enemies are nice and interesting to look at.

 

In terms of music, Okami is pretty strong as well. Each area has an amazing music theme, a lot of characters have theme of their own. The music in Sei-An City and Waka's theme stood out to me the most. Great use of flutes and other instruments in each one. Some tunes are more inspired by traditional Japanese music than others (at least as far as I can tell), but they are all very memorable. The merchant music will play in my head until I die.

 

One thing I need to mention here is that this game was surprisingly horny. The butt window in one of the female characters’ outfits was one of several things I didn’t expect to see in Okami. Or hear. Because not only you’re graced with boob animation and dirty remarks from your companion Issun, some erotic tones make it in the music as well. I can’t remember the last time I heard moans like these ?.

 

Speaking of Issun. Your small companion who explains things to Amaterasu (and you, the player) is very talkative. There’s a lot of dialogue in general. I’m used to a lot of dialogue after playing MGS games, but you may not be prepared to the amount of writing this game boasts. Hideki Kamiya definitely has graphomania just like Kojima. Some things are over-explained. That’s where one of the few of my gripes with this game comes in. Sometimes the slowly appearing lines of dialogue are un-skippable. I was reading them faster than they came up on the screen, so I’d rather prefer either the whole sentence to appear at once, or the ability to speed it up. Thankfully, most of the game’s dialogue reacts to the speed-up/skip button.

 

The other negative has to do with the main villain. There are a lot of characters in the game, and there’s something interesting about each one, including secondary characters and some bosses. I waited to meet the final boss and hear some story about them and discover their motivation. Won’t spoil anything, but I was disappointed with what I got. Nevertheless, it doesn't ruin the story. I just wish there was more to the villain side.

 

One last thing to mention is the mini-games. Okami has a few. The running mini-games were probably my least favourite. The only challenging part – the obstacles thrown by the guys – is nothing but annoying. The digging mini-games are pretty cool. You guide a person through a 2D level while destroying blocks and giving them directions on the way down in time. Of course, there is a fishing mini-game, too. I thought it was pretty well-made, albeit not the most fun thing ever. Catching every type of fish will take some time because of the RNG, but at least the mechanic itself is not annoying.

 

Okami’s platinum is one of those that asks you to do almost everything. Upgrade everything, fight every enemy, learn every move, find every collectible, beat all mini-games, and so on. It’s great. There’s a lot of stuff to do and see in the game, and trophies reflect that really well. I spent 65 hours on the platinum +5 more because I missed one of the two missable enemies. Keep them in mind while going for the plat, and you’ll be fine. The requirement for the number of deaths at the end was not a trouble at all. I haven’t died once.

 

I honestly recommend Okami to everyone. Especially if you want something Zelda-like on PlayStation. It has solid gameplay with unique mechanics, memorable set pieces, tons of stuff to do, some touching moments, some funny moments, and a lot of cute animals everywhere.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Slava

[Valzentia]

 #66 - 7'scarlet (NA/EU)

Difficulty: 1/10

Fun: 7/10

 

Another Otomote visual novel in the vein of the Hakuoki series, only this one is more mystery-focused, apparently (I didn't focus much on dialogue, these visual novels are really just trophy dispensers to me.)

[slender_adrian]

 

 

 #99

Difficulty: 4/10

Enjoyment: 10/10

Grind: 4/10

Time: 78 Hours

Rarity: [Very Rare 5.9% / Rare 18.02%]

 

"Maybe we're all cursed… from the moment we're born."

 

Were to start with this game, Dark Souls 2 & SotFS may not be the best soul but is one amazing game for sure. The things I dislike from the original DS2 still here, I hate that enemies attack in groups, and by playing both versions I can say that SotFS is the worst of both in this manner, you literally can't walk in Iron Keep without getting greeted by 10 Alonne Knights, making the game pretty much unfair, there are no borders in this game like in other souls games, if you cross any line you can expect at least 10 dudes surrounding you and for me that's the most annoying thing, despite a lot of this things I hate there are a lot I really like, for example the enemies are way better placed than vanilla, and they feel that they belong where they are placed, sounds odd but it feels alive in some way. SotFS is a good remake and it may have its issues compared to other souls games like the difficulty been artificial or having a incredible bad level design but that doesn't make this game bad, in fact for every thing it did bad there are 10 others that are good, my favorite examples are Majula, the multiplayer and the combat, making it an awesome journey.

Every time I play Dark Souls 2 & SotFS I have tons of fun, it wasn't as magical as the first one and I still believe this game is the only unfair one in the series but Dark Souls 2 is still an incredible good game no doubt about it (it also has the best dlcs in the series). Talking of the dlcs, they are amazing and extremely challenging and unforgiving (and unfair, looking at you Crown of the Ivory King), by far my favorite is the Crown of the Old Iron King, Fume Knight make Artorias look like an amateur and my least favorite is the Crown of the Ivory King, that was a pain to do but totally worth it. Dark Souls 2 & SotFS are incredible games, and I love playing them totally recommend them!

 

And the platinum trophy for this game, well believe it or not I think this is the best trophy list in all the trilogy, its simple and not as cheesy as the first dark souls haha. I'm not as familiar with this plat as I am with the original dark souls but my advice for anyone that's going for this plat or vanilla is that take the most advantage of your first playthrough, do everything you can and especially go for the characters side quests (Lucatiel & Benhart) since they are the most easiest thing to screw up, these quest aren't impossible on ng+ I did both of them in ng and ng+ but the thing is defeating the bosses is ng+ with them isn't hard, keeping the npcs alive is the hard part, so you will want something or someway to deal huge damage in ng+, you can miss or screw up one battle though. And the grindy part was getting 30 sunlight medals, took me about 3 hours maybe, but it wasn't as hard as in vanilla. I recommend doing the dlcs all the way to the end, that way you can get some op objects to make subsequent playthroughs easier and faster. I did everything solo, and I didn't have any trouble with any trophy, once you are done with the previously mentioned side quest this plat is a breeze.

 

First post I made for DS2 plat, stats: 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by slender_adrian

[percy547389126yv]

#1,335 PS4 version of The Silver Age

[DrunkenEngineer]

Platinum #34 - Dex (July 1, 2022)

 

 

Trophy Statistics

 

The Good

• Music is appropriately 16-bit and synthy
• A well-established sense of place in Harbor Prime

The Bad

• Combat is a drag and can be trivialized with a stun-stealth combo
• Weird shadow glitches

Full disclosure: my experience with Dex was definitely colored by my desire to be efficient with the playthrough.  The game is absolutely riddled with missable trophies, and it’s likely the developer’s intention was to provide motivation for multiple playthroughs.  Staring at a trophy guide can be really distracting in this kind of story driven, branching path, action role playing game.  That last statement is a little generous towards Dex, however, as there are really only 2 endings that amount to “which button did you push?”

 

It’s a stylish 2-D sidescrolling indie immersive sim mashup, with very cool music, appropriate pixel art (with some bizarre technical issues with the lighting), but it does have a bothersome hacking minigame and some truly bland combat.  Play it on “casual” and invest in skills that let you stun bad guys and then you can exploit the one-hit-kill sneak attack mechanics.  The main story itself is truly predictable, it’s the side quests where the world building really shines.  Oddly enough the platinum will pop before the credits roll.

 

Imagine if Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, and Hackers walked into a bar and hooked up with Deus Ex, the resulting baby of uncertain parentage would be Dex.  This is Dex’s strength; it’s unashamed of it’s blatant influences and and expects the player to appreciate that.  And if that fails to connect with the player, you’ll come out of the experience a little cold.  I know I did.

[Sunny]

#Platinum 221

 

-Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales.

 

.It's a really good game, with a great story that kept me interested until the end, I always loved Gwent in the Witcher 3 so the battles didn't feel foreing to me at all, I also really loved how the game is portrayed using a narrator and the choices and consequences aspect, together with the high fantasy scenario it brought me back to my D&D days, the platinum journey was rather easy simply because of the use of a guide, otherwise all the missables would have been a nightmare, the only aspect of the game I didn't enjoy was the puzzles, they start nice but halfway through the game they become so obnoxious, also the game is very prone to crashing and it happens when the game is loading between battles, that was annoying but not to the point it was unplayable, all in all a nice platinum and (mostly) stress free.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Sunnyburrito

[Luckman]

#591 - Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD

 

Difficulty: 7/10

Enjoyment: 7/10

 

I played this game when it was released back on the Wii. The Main Game is always great just as I remember, when it comes to Party Games I was disappointed because the original had 50 minigames and in the HD remake it had 10 Minigames. Therefore, the game has been cut out 40 minigames which is insane. The camera controls were awful, and the visuals in this game were amazing. Putting Sonic as a playable character was pretty cool the bad news is sonic is only available on Main Game, not the Party Games. As for the platinum in this game, I started with the Expert Time Attack which took me two tries because of one stage which happen halfway through world 10. Completing the decathlon and time attack 36 times was the only grinding part. Overall, This game is a decent remake but it doesn't feel the same as the original.