Kill Your Completion - CYOA

[Hemiak]

Game 4, day 2

1.75 hrs played, 4/12, 20%

 

The kids begged to play some more of this yesterday so we fired it up for about an hour. 

 

They started off by again finding and riding all the creatures around. Then they started exploring. Chapter 3 involved. Swimming around some underwater ruins and using some mechanisms to pull chains that opened doors. We spent a little time searching for side stuff, and a lot of time riding animals, and that's about it for this chapter. 

 

4 was a bit more interesting. We were introduced to these large pyramid shaped things in the water. When you get close they begin pulsing and emitting sound, while slowly drawing closer to you. Get too close and they open and hit you with some orange electricity which stuns you and knocks you back. We found a huge space ship (I think) and the creatures? were more common near it. Navigating down a hallway we came across the Great White shark that ate our little buddy in the 1st chapter. He was trapped under some wreckage. We were able to rescue him, and even gave him a pat as he swam away. 

 

During our time we swam with many different animals including blue whales, sperm whales, humpbacks, sharks, and even a giant squid. 

 

The kids are still enjoying just swimming around exploring the environment and finding animals. They were a bit irritated with the electric pyramid things but were able to get through without too much trouble. 

 

Hem game 3, day 2

6 hrs played, 10/14, 47%

 

So I fire this up last night and keep working towards the next boss. I find one of the side caves and work through it, hoping for one of the ore collectibles, but it's pretty much only money chests. I reach the next boss and cue thirty minutes of frustration and irritation. The boss is a long stone dragon with green crystals in his forehead and tail. Either can be hit to damage him, though it's hard to get more than one or two hits at a time usually. 

 

His main attack is to open his mouth and charge you, which is very hard to avoid as he can change directions just enough to usually get you. He also summons wind from random directions to inhibit your movement and actually move you if you aren't prepared. His last attack is to summon these pink or white whirlwind things that also jack with your movement, but only the pink ones will hurt if you touch them.

 

He also occasionally summons flying enemies, and does this wierd curling movement where he will pause for a second or two. This move is the primary place to get some hits in, and if you can actually get yourself wrapped up you can get more than your usual damage in, without being hurt yourself. This move can be somewhat baited, although it's random where he will actually line up and whether you'll be able to reach his weak points. 

 

My man issue with this fight is that it takes place on a floating island, with two small block islands near it. The bosses body doesn't damage you, but if he hits you on the way by or when curling or unfurling you often get thrown off the island and take half a bubble of damage. I can't count the number of times I would try to dodge his charge, get hit and take damage + knock back, then the wind or a Pinwheel would blow me off the edge before I couple recover. Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuu!!!! 

 

Anyway, when he died I got the blue gem and a little bird buddy (or maybe I got him sooner, don't remember). Bird friend flies around and auto targets enemies with a spit ball attack, though his damage is pitifully low. You can also soul link with him, where you take control and navigate paths to reach switches. How the hell would anyone without a bird friend ever activate these? I worked my way to the final area and entered a huge castle with gold walls, floors, and ceilings. This place was kind of annoying to navigate as it requires a lot of switch flipping and backtracking to go through doors. I found the last teleporter here, for another trophy. This dungeon was pretty rough, and I died several times before getting though. Luckily save points are found pretty regularly, and even if you die without reaching one, your progress on switches and doors is still saved. 

 

I reach the final boss his name is Evil Lord Moridor, which is good because I wasn't sure if he was a bad guy or not until I read that. He was a pretty standard fight for the most part. He leaps at you and swings, does an M. Bison spear charge across the whole screen, shoots a little purple ball that paralyzes you, and later summons spikes from the ground. The fight basically involves dodging and hitting him. After a bit of damage he'll go super saiyan and start burning with purple fire, though he remains immobile and heals himself during this. When this happens you need to move away a bit, then link with your bird. You fly your little buddy down under the arena floor and there are a series of switches down there. You hit whichever one is closest to him and it caused the spikes to shoot up and hit him in the ass, breaking his concentration or something. Rinse and repeat for the win, pretty easy stuff. 

 

You go up some stairs and that's where the true final fight is. I saved the video so I don't have to explain the fight. Not too bad except for the GD sideways fists, sometimes they seem almost impossible to dodge. 

 

 

Of course I finish the game and don't get the trophy for clearing it without upgrades, which is super awesome. Apparently these little lawn gnome bastards called Ramplekimpers screwed me. They offer to sell you something, which turns out to be a better wallet or quiver, which counts toward the trophy. So essentially I beat the game without any of the helpful upgrades, and now I'll have to do it again at some point. 

 

After the cutscene you're placed back at the last teleporter and can free roam the game looking for secrets. I did this for a bit and went to bed. 

 

All in all I think I'm done with this for now. I still need to find at least three more ore to upgrade my hp, though I've fully upgraded my swords and bow. The lack of a useful map means I need to scour each area looking for the small cave areas that contain secrets, and hope they actually have ore and not just money. 

 

Fun : 6/10

Difficulty : 3/10 for 95% of the game, 6/10 for the 4th boss. 

It did lower my completion, and for $3 I'd say it's worth picking up. 

 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #5 - Day #3

 

Hours played: 3h10m

Trophies earned: 3/30

 

 

I didn't play too much more of this as I got distracted by other games. Furthermore I had a boosting session for Ride scheduled for this evening, of course the person that signed up for it didn't show up. So I spent my evening playing through "The Sexy Brutale", about which I'll just say the following... it's great.

 

 

Now about Okage Shadow King. From what I've played so far it seems to be average maybe even good if it improves further down the line.

 

 

Visuals

 

It's not pretty, and it being a ps2 game I didn't expect it to be. The buildings don't look too bad and the character models are alright. I'm not a fan of the monster designs though The first boss was a giant rat that was so incredibly bloated it looked like it was about to pop.

 

Sound

 

Alright, so the music is actually quite good, although I think it's starting to loop every now and then. Furthermore there's an option to turn t off (something Dark Cloud didn't seem to have, which annoyed the hell out of me because I couldn't stand the music in that game). The general sound effects of walking fighting and doing other actions are alright.

 

Gameplay

 

This might actually be the section that's most flawed.The movement and camera control are fine, which is a good thing. The issues I have are among others too long load times when a battle is over.Yes it might be "only 20 seconds". Those are 20 seconds of looking at a screen I can't interact with though. The amount of battles you're thrown in to due to ghosts popping up out of nowhere, chasing you down like a dog that's in heat and wants to hump everyone's leg, is mental and gets annoying minutes in. I like to explore in RPGs, this system of random encounter generation, works against that.

 

Speaking of exploring... I genuinely dislike it when games waste my time for the sake of it. If there's nothing to explore or interact with in a room, building or whatnot, then don't let me enter it. Don#t make me bump into everything, hoping there would be something to pick up...

 

The battle system is turn-based, and so far fun enough. I'm hoping there'll be equipment drops at some point in this game, as there not being any, would not make me happy.

 

 

Anyway, I highly recomment The Sexy Brutale and if you're into the sort of murder mystery thriller genre with a twist, beautiful art style and fantastic music you should definitely pick that up (physical copy comes with soundtrack on a separate CD). Wait... that wasn't the game I was... ah whatever. Go get sexy!

[DamagingRob]

Today, once again, consisted of mostly boosting Star Wars Battlefront. I got to Rank 100, and then helped out a couple of people from the first boosting session since they were short a man. But I don't think there's going to be many new developments in Falling Skies. A new type of enemy, I think. But mostly, I covered everything in Day 1. Probably going with a bronze or silver rating, as it's the least enjoyable game for me so far. I mean, the fact that I would rather stand around holding the square button in Battlefront, instead of playing it says a lot. Lol. But I like boosting with people that have mics, 'cause they usually make me laugh and keep it from being boring. Don't think it hurt my completion, because of all the Battlefront progress. But it'd be even higher if I didn't have Falling Skies on the list, so... yeah.

 

Tomorrow morning, Dark Cloud 2. Didn't really like the first, but many have said this one is great. Figured I'd give it a shot, when it was on sale for <$5. Could be another FFXIII scenario, where I didn't like the first but loved the second. Here's hoping. 

Edited July 16, 2017 by DamagingRob

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #6 - Day #1

 

 

Another game I know basically nothing about. All I knew is that it's a stealth game involving hacking. Having played maybe 30 minutes, that's exactly what it is. The trophies indicate that it's also quite the collectathon, , which is something I'M not necessarily looking forward to.

 

I don't want to get too much into this game yet, but so far it seems like a MGS game without the action. Kind of looking forward to play this a bit more though, so that's a good thing at least.

[Metal Slime King]

Period 3 Wrap Up.

Starting Completion - 87.03%. Current Completion - 85.56%

Rogue Legacy vs. La-Mulana EX

My winner this period was Rogue Legacy.

 

Rogue Legace - 15% (10 of 30 trophies) - My personal rating:

This game would probably get a plat score from me if it wasn't for some of the handicapped traits the game chooses to throw at you. I had a lot of fun making progress and building up my characters for subsequent runs. At least I was able to beat the first boss before I hit level 50. This is a challenging game but the mechanics can be mastered and they'll need to be mastered to meet the trophy requirements. This is not a free plat for sure. The levels are randomly generated but you can gain familiarity with the level elements which allows each run to be fresh but manageable. Like I said before it's a 2D action game with rogue-like elements. Each of the castles 4 areas hides a boss door and after all 4 bosses have been defeated the door to the throne room at the very start of the castle opens up for the final confrontation. If you die after beating a boss that boss will remain defeated in subsequent runs so progress can be maintained and characters can be chosen to suit particular bosses. This will probably be one of the first games I go back to after the event (and may continue to sneak into during the event ).

 

La-Mulana EX - 4% (3 of 55 trophies) - My personal rating:

This game left me a little cold, maybe it was just a little too retro for me (control wise) or maybe it just wasn't my retro. It was cute how different elements of the game (such as receiving hints and viewing maps) manifest as apps that you install on your laptop which has limited RAM. I'd say the action takes a back seat to the exploration. I didn't really like how your character jumps or interacts with ladders. Thank goodness fall damage isn't an issue. Still, it's a decent game and I'm sure I'll get back into it eventually but it's certainly not at the top of my to-do list.

 

Up next for me are Trine 3 and Axion Verge. I enjoyed the first two Trine games on PS3, they were fun little physics platformers. If Trine 3 is more of the same then it might be a contender for the top spot but Axion Verge looked pretty interesting too, so I'm looking forward to this next period.

[Kevvik]

Game #5:  SwapQuest

 

Initial/Day 3 Impressions

 

Time played : ~1.5hrs  Too much RL going on right now, played next to nothing Day 1 or 2, except platting a lame excuse for a puzzle game in 45 minutes before going to sleep (see my Bonus Game review for Energy Cycle, bleh).  Got some play time in on Day 3. OK, on to impressions...

 

This is a puzzle/RPG of sorts.  You play the child (prince or princess) of a king who once stopped a great evil darkness with a magic sword.  Things have been peaceful for some time but the darkness has returned, starting with the castle.  You escape and are tasked by your father to try to find the magic jewels to stop the evil.  Story is not the big draw here.

 

Gameplay is a sort of escalator, side scroller.  If you stay to far back, you will be damaged by the advancing darkness.  You follow paths which can be manipulated by swapping pieces of ground to direct your path, moving forward, turning left and right or backtracking.  There are treasure chests along the path which contain gems, obstacles which need to be avoided and monsters which will need to be fought with your melee weapon.  You have a number of classes for your prince to choose from.  I chose the rogue who is weaker in melee but has a dog(!) to fetch gems and hearts from around the map for you.

 

The play itself is reasonably smooth and I found no issues creating my path.  Each level has some challenges for which you can get extra gems (kill x enemies, finish the level in less than x minutes, you get the idea).  In between levels you can visit a caravan where you can get new equipment, upgrade current equipment stat bones and store your gems (you can only carry so many and you lose them if you are defeated on a level).  The difficulty is based on the easy, normal, hard choice you made at the beginning.  I'm playing normal and didn't find it too bad.  Challenge missions can be tricky though.  You have different enemies and obstacles depending on where the level takes place (cave, forest, village, graveyard for me so far).  Failures on regular missions don't feel cheap though one of the challenge missions did.  Presentation looks good.

 

I'm not not enjoying this (if that makes sense) but I'm having difficulty getting into it.  This is probably just because I've been so busy this past week.  It's a serviceable puzzler and so far has some charm but I'm just not feeling it yet.  I've also only played a 1.5 hr block.  Will I come back to this?  Yes.  I think I just need to have time to appreciate it a bit more.  

 

Current impression: 5/10

Trophies: 5/31, 7% for E rank

Completion rate: 78.58% (-1.63%)

 

Next up:  Again, no clue.  July has always been real busy for me and this one is no exception.  Hopefully, I'll get into something for more than one day of the three.

[PerryToxteth]

Game No. 3

Day of the Tentacle (Remastered)

 

 

 

 I will preface this review by stating that I am doing five games in 25 days.  I am also going into all games blind (no walkthroughs, no trophy guides, no trophy list consulting). 

Overview: Well, forty five minutes of gameplay into this turd and I said, "Fuck that strategy!"  

  Okay, so it could be that I have tons on my plate. In a week, I'm off for a multi-week vacation abroad so I have been stressing with work, kid-care, packing, reservations, etc., etc. etc. Anyways, this game rubbed me the wrong way in all sorts of contemptible ways. Could be that my previous game (Submerged) was a stress reliever, DOTT was definitely a stress-inducer (w/o a walkthrough). Why? It makes absolutely no F'ing sense! I'm all for a point-and-click problem solver, but when one of the solutions is to fill a bucket with red paint, then paint a kumquat tree, then convince George Washington to chop down that tree, but first you need to replace his dentures by giving him an exploding cigar...you see the puzzling insanity. Essentially, items used for problem solving have no obvious connection to the task at hand. Need another example? Travel back in time to give Betsy Ross a Tentacle Exam Chart so she weaves a windsock you can use as a costume. To boil it down - THIS GAME MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

  But, with a walkthrough, it's a trophy grab. 58 trophies for this game?!? That's ridiculous. If you try platinuming this w/o a guide, GOOD F'ING LUCK! Most of the trophies are hidden and are inconsequential to the story. Example - one of the first trophies you can earn is ringing a service bell 100 times. There is no way in normal play you would ever button mash for a few minutes to get this, yet this fits the mold for most of the hidden trophies.

  I had an ominous sense to this game when I began play and the light bulb finally went on when there is a section where you play the original Manic Mansion game. Not sure I played the original game on my Apple IIE, but I played games like this and HATED them. They just weren't all that floppy disc fun. Why sit at home and play jejune computer games at home when I could ride my bike to the arcade and play Frogger and Spy Hunter?

  Knowing I would NEVER get back to this game, last night I loaded up a YouTube walkthrough and pushed through for the completion of this game in a couple hours. The story incorporates a farcical, cockamamy dry style of humor that isn't funny. In fact, I deleted the game immediately after completion and hope I can bury it deep down on my gaming log so I can forget about it.

Rating:  George Lucas delivers another turd to the masses.

 

KYC/CYOA

Games Completed/ Played - 75/53

Trophies Earned -2592

Unearned - 420

Completion % - 84.84%

Rarity - 43.85%

 

Next up - Flower

 

[crimsonidol38]

42 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

Rating:  George Lucas delivers another turd to the masses.

 

Wow, that's a quite harsh review overall. But I guess the main problem with PnCs that rely so much on humor is the fact that you either like them or hate them. I had a really good time with it, but on the other hand I didn't enjoy Grim Fandango or Full Throttle (and didn't even bother to finish Broken Age, which is a pile of turd for me). I still had some minor struggles with some puzzles but overall it was easy. But I'm glad that they only required you to play a bit of Maniac Mansion.

 

45 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

Next up - Flower

 

I hope that will help you to calm down a bit.

[Hemiak]

1 hour ago, PerryToxteth said:

Game No. 3

Day of the Tentacle (Remastered)

 

 

So glad you didn't post this 24 hours ago. /s

 

With my kids happily playing through Abzu for(with) me, I figured it was time to start another game with Mim. She enjoyed the Monkey Island games and The Book oUT Somewhat so....  

 

Game 5

35 minutes played, 1 trophy earned. 

 

I did actually play the original Maniac Mansion back in the day. I heard somewhere that you could play MM within this one, but somehow didn't process that this was actually a sequel of sorts. Also, I don't really remember enjoying or hating MM, but I do know I never finished it. 

 

Anyway, there are two Tentacle creatures, one drinks some toxic sludge and becomes evil. You take control of three idiot friends, a nerdy guy with a lisp who is supposed to be the "smart one", a rock star burnout guy, and a girl with a vacant expression and flat affect. Apparently the nerd at least was the protagonist from MM. 

 

I didn't actually get to play that long before Mim went to sleep. So far. It's just been walk around, pick stuff up, and talk to people. Nerd boy is back in the Mansion with the crazy doctor that created the tentacles, burnout is in the past, and glassy eyes is off in the future. We need to figure out how to get everybody home, and still travel back in time one day to turn off the toxic sludge before purple Tentacle can drink it and become evil. 

 

Went back to Jotun and spent a few hours working on Valhalla mode. Finished the no damage on Jera, then did no god powers and no damage on Isa, then did the no damage run for Kaunan. I tried Fe the other day without God powers and Kaunan last night, both are going to take some more work. 

 

[Melanogaster1987]

I think I will just give a rating and a stats update after each game from now on - maybe I will do some more detailed reviews in a wrap-up at the end of the event, but I'm getting rather less free time than I anticipated when I signed up for this, and would rather spend the time I do have playing the games rather than spending hours writing long reviews, sorry about that... I have just 6 hours left with my third game (Epic Mickey 2), and I haven't even been able to start it yet...

 

Game #2 of 8: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
 
My rating: Gold
 
---
 
Trophies earned in this game: 8 (8) for 120 points
Total trophies earned in this event: 19 (19) for 285 points
 
Current completion rate: 61.51% [Down 1.32% since start of event; Down 0.70% as a result of this game]

[Myu]

Day 15 - Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth

 

Time played : 3 hours

Trophies obtained : 2/57

Completion % : 2%

Rank : E

 

I only played this game for three hours, not because it's a bad game, but because Oreshika is reaaaally addictive. 

However, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth looks very promising to me. I liked the prologue and the first chapters and I already know I'll go back to it pretty soon. 

I vaguely remember watching some episodes of Digimon when I was a child, but I also remember that Pokemon was so popular that Digimon didn't really get its chance to shine. And the fact that the Digimons could talk was...weird (especially when Pikachu was able to have full conversations with only 3 syllables  ).

In this game, you can choose to incarnate the red-haired boy or girl on the picture above. The story starts in a chatroom where people are happily gossiping about recent events that happened in Eden, the virtual world. Suddenly, a hacker invites itself and challenges them. The day after, only three people have answered his invitation : your character, a loud girl named Nokia and Arata, a guy that looks always pissed off. 

The hacker gets into your account so that you can become a hacker too (without your permission of course, where is the fun otherwise?) and you can now gather data and get your own Digimons 

 

Eden makes me think of the .hack games. I like the art style and the character design but the interactions with items and people are very slow and sometimes not very precise so it kinda tends to get on my nerves when I have to smash the X button several times to pick up an item. 

 

I don't understand everything yet. I even had to google how to add new digimons to my party because the game doesn't explain it but the game is fun so far  

 

Current completion rate : 84.57% (-3.09% since the beginning of the event)
 

Next stop : Persona 5!

[ItsMeMartyy]

Game #9 - Ratchet & Clank (PS4)

Day: 14, 15 / 31

Time Played: 12 hours 

 

Graphics:  This game has great graphics. If they were going for the feeling that you're inside a cartoon they nailed it. Everything is super colorful and vibrant, there are sometimes an insane amount of enemies on screen and the game handles it well. In PS4 pro boost mode this game only dropped frames a few times, mostly while using the Pixel gun on a lot of enemies at once. The environments are varied enough so you get to see something new every hour or two and that helps the game in my opinion. The animations are great and varied because there is a lot of different types of enemies, and when you use the disco ball weapon every enemy dances differently and its hilarious and shows the attention to detail they put into this game.  

 

Sound: The characters in this game are hilarious and I had to laugh a few times at the game which is rare for me so it shows that the voice acting is done well in my opinion. The gun sounds are the stand out here at least to me, you have a ton of different weapons and they all make unique and sometimes over the top sounds which suits the style of this game completely. The different areas do have some different sounds but the main takeaway here is that the most important sounds are good (guns and characters) everything else is fine but is just sort of filler as you'd expect. 

 

Gameplay: This was my first Ratchet & Clank game ever and I can say that I now understand why there was a lot of hype around these games in the past. Everything you do in this game is rewarding in some way, enemies are diverse and come in massive numbers and they explode with bolts when you kill them and you have an insane amount of diversity into what and how you will approach enemies and situations. Also, there are rpg elements in this game and most worlds are essentially open-world and have optional objectives to boot. There is so much to talk about with this game but overall it is just enjoyable to play and you don't need to be in any sort of 'mood' either to play this. It's just the sort of game you can just turn on and play no matter what. 

 

Fun Factor:  This game is very fun. I honestly didn't have high expectations but after a few hours I was pretty hooked. Super fun and enjoyable every step of the way. If I had one negative here it would be the Clank parts. They were a bit boring compared to the other super fast paced elements of the game. This massive contrast is a bit weird sometimes.

 

Closing Thoughts:  I picked up this game for 10$ on the PS store what a great deal. If you can get this game for a decent price its a must buy in my opinion but even at its full price now its worth it if you are a fan of the genre. 

 

Rating: 8.5/10

 

Game Competition: 72% ( 1   , 9   , 27  )

[DamagingRob]

3 hours ago, PerryToxteth said:

Rating:  George Lucas delivers another turd to the masses.

Man, if Billy were still here, he'd probably be driving over you with his racing kart.  

 

Day 1- Dark Cloud 2

 

So, this one starts off with you playing as the girl, Monica. You fight a few enemies, in a more action-oriented format than I was expecting. And then witness your father being murdered.  It then cuts to the boy, Max, who is planning to enjoy an evening at the circus. But as he goes to hand his ticket to the guy at the entrance, a street rat steals it! Off we go to chase him down, by questioning the townspeople to find out where he went.

 

When we find him, he gives us a sob story on how he just wanted to see the circus, and hands over the ticket. Cool. Let's go enjoy the sho- "Well, in that case, you can have it. I'll catch it next year." Whaaaaat!? Who is this guy!? Then it fades to black, and the kid says he passed the test. Then disappears.. Onto the circus! 

 

While watching the incredible show(involving a CGI elephant, no less), Max overhears people talking. Upon checking it out, he finds the Mayor and the owner of the circus. Discussion gets heated, and the circus owner appears to not be a very nice guy. He says he wants some stone, or he'll let everyone know what is happening in the "outside world." Eventually, Max is noticed, and wouldn't you know it? The stone is what he's wearing around his neck. Time to run! 

 

So now, we're trying to find a way out of town, with the help of our boss, Cedric, and a kid living in the sewer named Donny. But to reach the exit, we're going to have to fight that elephant from the circus aboard Cedric's robot, Steve. This is just a summary of the first couple of hours. Lol. 

 

The sewer is the first dungeon, and you have to go around a map killing enemies as you do. One of them will drop a key, that allows you to advance to the next floor. Battles are of the real-time affair, and you can attack enemies with your wrench or gun. And block attacks with . Pressing  locks onto an enemy. As you use a weapon, it will start to wear down and possibly break. Not sure what happens to it, at that point. Items you find in the dungeon or buy from a shop, can repair it. Using weapons levels them up. And you can strengthen them, by synthesizing certain items into them. 

 

With your camera, you can take pictures of things. Taking pictures of certain objects, will add them to your ideas. Combine the right 3 ideas together, and you get a new invention you can make. Once you have the right ingredients, that is. There's a ton you can miss, though. I have to follow a checklist guide, so I don't have to do a second playthrough.. And I have to restart the elephant fight, 'cause there's one you have to take right at the start of that fight when it raises up. The time window was small, and I didn't know how to get off of Steve to take the picture fast enough. After I got off of Steve, I died again trying to see if it would raise back up. So, that makes 2 so far. :/ 

 

I'm not sure how I feel about it, yet. The game is pretty unforgiving, so you need to save regularly. I died on the first floor of dungeon #1. :/ And I would have preferred just being able to buy the strongest weapon from the shop, instead of this weird "constantly trying to improve it" system. I'm sure I'm going to create a crappy weapon, die a ton, and end up having to grind to fix it.. But I'll try to at least beat it, for the sake of the story. That seems good. And Robin from Teen Titans voices Max.  

 

Time played: 2 hours.

Trophy progress: 3/31 for 4% and an E rank. Under 88% now. *sobs uncontrollably* Why'd I do this!? 

 

I'll probably go back to Battlefront, while I watch the Cubs. They actually made Remote Play work pretty well, by changing  and  to  and on the Vita. Would have been really hard to shoot, otherwise.. I'll still not be as good as I am with a controller, and I don't think I can sprint. But it's not like I was the MVP of my team, anyways. Sporting that 0.54 k/d ratio, y'all. :/ Teammates, carry me to victory, please. 

Edited July 16, 2017 by DamagingRob

[PerryToxteth]

2 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

 

Wow, that's a quite harsh review overall. But I guess the main problem with PnCs that rely so much on humor is the fact that you either like them or hate them. I had a really good time with it, but on the other hand I didn't enjoy Grim Fandango or Full Throttle (and didn't even bother to finish Broken Age, which is a pile of turd for me). I still had some minor struggles with some puzzles but overall it was easy. But I'm glad that they only required you to play a bit of Maniac Mansion.

 

If I went into this game with a walkthrough, I definitely wouldn't have been so frustrated. But a game shouldn't require a walkthrough for entertainment.  This game reminds me of Syberia, where none of the items necessary to problem solving are relevant to each other (automatons, wooly mammoths, etc.). And yes, 10 minutes of Manic Mansion was more than enough. Probably good for the younger generations to see though, so they can say to their parents "You played crap like this?!?"

1 hour ago, Hemiak said:

So glad you didn't post this 24 hours ago. /s

 

With my kids happily playing through Abzu for(with) me, I figured it was time to start another game with Mim. She enjoyed the Monkey Island games and The Book oUT Somewhat so....  

 

Game 5

35 minutes played, 1 trophy earned. 

 

I did actually play the original Maniac Mansion back in the day. I heard somewhere that you could play MM within this one, but somehow didn't process that this was actually a sequel of sorts. Also, I don't really remember enjoying or hating MM, but I do know I never finished it. 

 

Anyway, there are two Tentacle creatures, one drinks some toxic sludge and becomes evil. You take control of three idiot friends, a nerdy guy with a lisp who is supposed to be the "smart one", a rock star burnout guy, and a girl with a vacant expression and flat affect. Apparently the nerd at least was the protagonist from MM. 

 

I didn't actually get to play that long before Mim went to sleep. So far. It's just been walk around, pick stuff up, and talk to people. Nerd boy is back in the Mansion with the crazy doctor that created the tentacles, burnout is in the past, and glassy eyes is off in the future. We need to figure out how to get everybody home, and still travel back in time one day to turn off the toxic sludge before purple Tentacle can drink it and become evil. 

 

 

Good luck! I give you another hour of wandering before you start searching for a walkthrough. I can't imagine someone pushing through the whole story blind, mainly because there's no real path of progress. 

[PerryToxteth]

22 minutes ago, DamagingRob said:

Man, if Billy were still here, he'd probably be driving over you with his racing kart.  

 

True! But besides doing a cash-grab with Disney for an idea he had in the 1970s, what has George Lucas done lately? I'll put it to you this way - if I said that for the rest of the day you will have to watch the Prequels in succession, would you be thinking "Sweet!" or "Oh, shit."

[DamagingRob]

4 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

True! But besides doing a cash-grab with Disney for an idea he had in the 1970s, what has George Lucas done lately? I'll put it to you this way - if I said that for the rest of the day you will have to watch the Prequels in succession, would you be thinking "Sweet!" or "Oh, shit."

I wouldn't mind rewatching those. Not as good as the first trilogy, but I don't hate them.

[dizzyshadow]

So after a crazy few days in the real world, I've fallen behind with my reviews I'll try to catch up over the next few days.

 

Game 4 : Stardew Valley

 

 

 

@dmland12 has covered most of the basics already. So i'm going to keep this brief

 

Its a farming game with lots of similarities to harvest moon, it also reminded me of animal crossing to a lesser degree, this isn't really a beginner friendly game it leaves you to figure most things out yourself and while its not generally that difficult it does slow you down a lot at the start.

 

My other lasting impression of this game is how huge it appears as despite some decent playtime i really feel like i have barely scratched the surface of the game, and i get the impression the platinum would take like 200 hours, so the chances of me ever getting anywhere with the trophies are slim. 

 

Its also the first game of the event my wife has taken an interest in, even if it is only to complain that i'm not building my farm correctly (building crops outside the front door and not leaving space for paths, generally my farm wasn't as beautiful as it should have been.

 

But overall i did enjoy it, very relaxing and something that will be good to dip in and out of in short  bursts.

 

 

Playtime : approx 6 hours

Trophies: 1 of 41 (didn't even think i would get that one)

Rating: 

Completion: 48.9% 

next up: Rime

 

 

[Edward_FOX_86]

 

 

Game #3 Metal Gear Phantom Pain

 

 

 

I wasn't aware of the jump between ps3 to ps4 until I played this.

 

What amazing graphics and settings. The dialogues are realistic enough but the story of course is a bunch of fantasy mixed together with world war facts and espionage as you would predict from previous entries in the series.

 

I've played for 2 hours and I was hooked. I still need to play more to give you guys a more accurate review but I really recommend this one.

 

Its not another metal gear game its the metal gear game. Really amazing what they did and changed the mechanics to a open world game.

 

4%

3 trophies ^^

 

Also...

 

Bonus Game - Let it Die

 

 

Just wanna stand out that I wasn't supppose to like this game as much as I did. Its a really good game for a free ps store Game. Get it!

 

0% 

still no trophies 

about 3 hours played

 

Some gameplay :

 

 

 

 

Cheers

Edited July 17, 2017 by Edward_FOX_86

[dmland12]

Game #5: Transformers: Devastation

Game Progress: 11/31 Trophies (26%)

Completion: 90.43% (-0.89%, -4.43% from start)

 

I saw a couple people playing this game in the last KYC event and it looked like it could be fun and challenging, so I figured I'd look it up on the store to see what it cost and go from there.  I was surprised to see that I had already "purchased" it.  Apparently, this was free on PS+ some months back and I already had it in my backlog.

 

This is an action/fighting game and overall I did enjoy it.  The story's kind of bland, but the action's pretty good.  The game is rather short, but since you'll need something like 5-6 playthroughs to get the platinum, that's not a bad thing.  I didn't have as much time with this game as most of the previous ones, but I did play through the game twice.  For my first run, I used Optimus Prime on the middle difficulty (Warrior?), and it wasn't that bad except for a few fights which did give me some trouble.  I played the second one with Grimlock on the lowest difficulty, since he was one of my favorites when I used to watch the show as a child (he was also great on the old Transformers cartoon movie).

 

One nice thing about this game, is that it does encourage you to replay it in order to get more powerful.  I won't go into the details, but you can level up your characters stats and weapons, as well as finding better weapons, so it does make sense to keep playing beyond just the trophies.

 

As far as trophies go...  You can pretty much just mash buttons and have a good time on Easy which makes a lot of these trophies easy enough to get, but the main trouble is probably going to be all of the trophies for taking no damage on higher difficulty.  I didn't get a chance to try for any of these, but I would like to come back to this game at some point and go for it.

 

Here's some sample combat from my first run.  I'm obviously not that good at the game at this point, but it should give you an idea what it's like if you're interested.

 

 

Closing thoughts:

Good and solid action game, though nothing that really grabbed me.  It's possible it could be suffering some Stardew Valley effect here though, as I pretty much just wanted to keep playing that game instead.

My Rating: B

[dmland12]

5 hours ago, dizzyshadow said:

My other lasting impression of this game is how huge it appears as despite some decent playtime i really feel like i have barely scratched the surface of the game, and i get the impression the platinum would take like 200 hours, so the chances of me ever getting anywhere with the trophies are slim. 

 

I agree, it looks like it's going to take a long time to platinum.  I'm really unsure of where to estimate it personally.

 

It does look like after you get a decent amount of money/resources you can just plant a ton of stuff and have it watered with sprinklers.  That will take most of the work out of it.  So, I'm thinking there's going to be a point where you basically have more money than you can spend pouring in almost every day with just a little maintenance (planting and harvesting).  It's mostly a matter of how long it takes to get to that point and how long it takes to get up to 10 million earned from there. There's also making sure you do basically everything else too (catch every type of fish, cook all of the recipes, craft every item etc).  And that mini-game looks like it could be tough too.

 

So, yeah, this game was certainly more of a time sink than I thought it would be when I started it.

[Mendant909]

Game #5

Days 9-10

 

Boy I just keep delaying these longer than usual. Asura's Wrath is a spectacle fighter in the same regards as a God of War, albeit with the speed of a Hideki Kamiya game. The main reason for the comparison to the God of War series is not only due to the game's emphasis on quick-time-events (which I'll get more into later), but also for the similarities Asura's story shares with Kratos's story from GoW 2/3. Asura gets betrayed by his fellow demigods, comes back from the dead, plans on getting revenge, dies/comes back a few more times, and meets a girl similar to his daughter.

 

The focus on the daughter-analogue is quite a contrast to GoW 3 as we could plainly see Asura's surrogate daughter is the spitting image of the original; GoW 3's Pandora is said to look like Kratos's daughter but I can't even remember what she looked like from her few seconds on-screen in GoW 1/Chains of Olympus, so anyone could be mistaken for Kratos's daughter for the little that was established for her. Asura's quest for revenge is fueled not only by the betrayal of his comrades, but also in an attempt to get his daughter back, so when he loses his surrogate daughter it makes sense why Asura gets his Dragon Ball Z moment. Kratos is intent on killing the gods, damning the grave consequences, and Pandora was just a parrot that wouldn't shut up about courage/hope or some pretentious bullcrap that didn't fit with the game.

 

The conflict with the demigods is a good introduction to how mad the story of Asura's Wrath is. The planet of Gaea is under attack by some demonic forces called Gohma (no, not the Zelda worm boss), thus Asura and his fellow demigods use their spaceships and powers to fight the monsters from space. Asura manages to stun the Gohma boss to remission, so the other demigods plan to get stronger before it returns. To do so Asura's daughter is kidnapped as a vessel to pray for their strength and her parents are killed. Asura comes back from the dead after 12,000 years, sees that Gaea has become a barren wasteland, and that the demigods are using human life to further increase their strength. The odd part is how humanity prays to be killed by the demigods that way their souls could ascend to heaven. Asura is seemingly the only sane person and sees how the demigods and humans have lost their respective way. I already covered the surrogate-daughter subplot so the second half of the game should be about Asura's eradication of the rest of the demigods, return humanity to thinking, and maybe get rid of the Gohma.

 

The breaking point for some people would be the gameplay. Some of it consists of using light attacks, heavy attacks that need cooldown between each use, and long distance shots to build up a special meter. When the special meter is full Asura can start a long cutscene that is composed of quick-time-events. These quick-time-events are the crux of the game as that's where most of the story is conveyed and they take up more than half of a chapter's length. I'll have to verify later to see if the quick-time-events are like Beyond: Two Souls where the scene plays itself regardless of success or failure. Another odd choice is the third type of gameplay, rail-shooter sections. Asura could lock-on to targets or just shoot them, simple as that.

 

One last thing i should bring up in regards to Asura's Wrath is its presentation. It's presented like an anime series with an intermission, just without the ads, and a preview at the end of each episode that kind of spoils what will happen next. It does a better job at presenting itself like a TV show than Resident Evil: Revelations did. It's sort of like Robert Rodriguez's Desperado where it does the minimum work to establish the action scene and then lets the spectacle occur. I'm curious to see how the second half of the game goes and whether I should be angry that they withheld the fourth part or that they even bothered charging money like Dante's Inferno did with DLC that was ten minutes long. For now I'll put Asura's Wrath at the top of the list as I'm curious how Asura's tale goes and the fights do go intense at times, even if a certain game with the Dragon of Dojima is going to take that place when I get to writing about it.

 

Game #6

Days 11-12

 

Boy is this the third boring game I've played this month. I kind of miss playing trainwrecks like Battle Princess and Shinovi Versus as at least I could make fun of their stories or some other inept design. Child of Light is an RPG about a princess named Aurora that's dead. She turns up in some new realm and is told she could be revived if she brings back the sun, moon, and I forgot what the third thing was, from the Dark Queen. Aurora is accompanied by a firefly and meets up new meatshields along the way. Three chapters in and none of the party members have caught my interest. Aurora sometimes speaks in rhyme and is worried about her dad, the jester uses the wrong word at times and is worried about her brother, and the dwarf is timid and got kicked out by his elder. Why should I care about these characters if they've shown nothing truly heroic or camaraderie between themselves to make me care about the team. I have a pretty good guess who the Dark Queen and Light Queen are, so I'm hoping the game's story isn't simply using cliches like Accel World and passing them as shocking revelations.

 

The battle system is pretty decent, I just wish it was used for a better story. Your party consists of two characters and you need to time your actions correctly. Some actions will be quick while others need prep. If you get attacked during that time you'll lose that action and will need to wait a bit for another chance. This applies as well to enemies so it's pretty engaging to screw enemies in acting while making sure you don't get flinched to death. Aurora quickly gains the ability to fly but there isn't much to do in that regard. The visuals themselves are kind ouf washed-out  blues with a few browns and greens, nothing too impressive. So far I'm not a fan of the game and I don't see a return for quite a while. Child of Light is going in my bottom seven and I'd recommend people to play Ni no Kuni instead if you want a more vibrant RPG with a battle system that also needs real-time action.

[Lars]

Game 5: Homefront: The Revolution

To me everything i played in this game felt very mediocre.

The world was a bit boring, there weren't many unique points so far in the world and it feels all very generic, same goes for the enemies.

So far i didn't encounter any glitches which was something this game was known for when it released. Story isn't that interesting so far either.

There is a lot of content in the world. Although that content isn't that unique for me that is positive because i like it when there is lots of stuff to do.

 

This could have something to do with my skill but i found the game rather difficult in the beginning. My weapons were very weak but my enemies weapons were rather powerful and the enemies could turn up in great quantities which made me die a lot. And with minimal safe houses in the beginning that is frustrating. Because you have to walk often to not get discovered. But getting to the start of a mission was for me at least more difficult than the mission itself.

 

What i do really dislike is the trophy list though. It makes you do things that have to be grinded out with doing an action once, die and repeat. I really dislike that because it discourages the way the game should be played. You have to do this because there are trophies which otherwise are close to impossible. I've tried a trophy yesterday where i had to distract guards at a guardpost. It would be a good trophy if you had to do it 5 times, or maybe 10. But you have to do it 30 times and it only counts in a number of spots. Which makes the trophy very frustrating to get. And i looked through the list and guide and there are more trophies like this one.

 

Next game for me is Assassin's Creed: Unity

Edited July 17, 2017 by Lars

[Metal Slime King]

Initial Impressions

Axiom Verge

Now this is my kind of retro! It's like someone ripped an awesome, unreleased NES game from a wormhole and amped it up to 13! Of course the graphics are simplistic but they absolutely nail the effect they were going for. The music is fitting and atmospheric, very well done. I almost got the feeling that if 200+ Mb carts existed back in the day then this could've actually been on a NES even though it uses all of the PS4's buttons but after the game pulls a few tricks it becomes apparent that a NES would explode just thinking about running it. So far the controls have been perfect and I don't throw that out lightly. This game manages to evoke Metroid without being derivative or blatantly ripping it off. Well..

Spoiler

Is that Mega-Kraid from Super Metroid? No? Sorry, I must've mistook you for someone else. ?

 

Trine 3

I was expecting more of the same from a series of games that I already liked but I was pleasantly surprised to find a new dimension of gameplay. Namely what was a 2D physics platformer is now a 3D physics platformer. I liked the first two games, they were alright, they were on sale but I wasn't a die-hard fan or anything, so I never looked into the third game. I just picked it up when it also went on sale. The first thing that I actually noticed was that the controls were different then I noticed you could move freely in 3d so obviously the controls needed to be adjusted and they seem to work well. I went through the first 3 short intro levels and the first real level and I'm looking forward to putting more time into it.

 

So far in this event one game quickly became the one that I was more interested in playing but this round is a close tie in a good way. ?

[DamagingRob]

7 hours ago, dmland12 said:

As far as trophies go...  You can pretty much just mash buttons and have a good time on Easy which makes a lot of these trophies easy enough to get, but the main trouble is probably going to be all of the trophies for taking no damage on higher difficulty.  I didn't get a chance to try for any of these, but I would like to come back to this game at some point and go for it.

With the stuff already under your belt, I'm sure you'll have no trouble with those. Only Megatron and I think Menasor gave me any real issue. And I'm a scrub.  That fight where you need to protect the autobot hacking was kind of annoying, too.. But other than that, it's fairly simple, when spamming headshots/rush attacks and backing up your save before each mission. 

 

3 hours ago, Mendant909 said:

Boy is this the third boring game I've played this month.

B-b-but the music! I was humming that shit for months after playing it. :/ 

[crimsonidol38]

1 hour ago, mking_63 said:

Axiom Verge

 

Come on Badland Games, give us finally a release date for the physical release of Axiom Verge. I want to play this NOW.