Kill Your Completion - 6

[dizzyshadow]

Game 8 : Cars 3 Driven to WIN

 

So what can i say about this, its a kid friendly racing game based off the film with the same name. Its actually set directly after the events of the film but to be honest there not really any story so it doesn't really matter. In features all the characters & locations from the film. Its pretty much a sandbox game there is no real objective to the game. There are 21 tracks & 5 different events that you can do on each track. you can tackle this anyway you want, the game encourages you to try and complete the 136 skill points, these range from win a race, to destroy 3 cars using an exploding barrel, and doing this does unlock extra tracks and characters so you can't really ignore these, but that's about as much as there is, basically you can do whatever you want. 

there are 3 different difficulty levels, easy which is clearly aimed at kids (or trophy hunters) as you basically win every race, up to hard which offers a decent challenge so it can be tailored for pretty much everyone.

 

The different events are:. 

 

Race - plain vanilla first to the end wins.

Battle race - race but with weapons - think Mario Kart

Stunt Showdown - Earn the most point by doing tricks over jumps and collecting balloons

Takedown - Destroy lots of karts with weapons

Best Lap - essentially a time trial

 

There is also a playground area with additional challenges and where you can mess around and also collect 10 of Mack's hats (luckily the only collectables in this game)

I picked this up because i played and enjoyed the first 2 games on PS3 and this is essentially more of the same, its clearly targeted at kids, there is nothing special here, there is nothing wrong either and i'm sure kids who are fans of the series will have a great time, equally if you enjoy racing games you will probably like this. It should also be an easy plat (although not necessarily that quick).

 

I've found myself quite enjoying it, although it is a grind to complete all the events at all the tracks to get the plat.

 

Playtime: 7 hours

Trophies: 15/22

Rating:

Completion: 52.76%

 

Next Up : Walking Dead New Frontier

 

[dizzyshadow]

Two reviews in a row from me as i was late with the last one after a frantic weekend.

 

Game 9: Walking Dead the New Frontier

 

 

 

If you can’t tell from the list of games I’ve selected for this event, one of the main things I’m interested in when gaming is a good story, in fact my favourite games tend to be those which tread the line between game & movie.

 

The telltale games definitely fit that bill, I find they are great for a relaxing evening of gaming, there is no stress or frustration of trying to beat level or scores or meet certain goals, its just relax and see where the story takes you.

 

This game is Season 3 of The Walking Dead (Telltale series) although actually their 4^th game. It continues the story of Clementine, the young girl who you have followed since the beginning. As usual you carry over all your choices from the previous games so it really is the continuation of the story. They do approach this game slightly differently however as this story is told from the point of view of Javier is former baseball player and it cover how he has survived with his family. Clem is very much a supporting actor in this as we see her from Javier point of view but we get to see their friendship build. It’s set several years after season 2, so clem has grown up a bit but is still very much a child. The gaps are also filled in by flashback scenes which cover what happens to Clem since the end of Season 2.

 

Ther is also one feature that is new to me, which is crowd play this actually makes it very much like Hidden agenda, multiple players can play using phone/tablet and vote on what choices should be made. I haven’t actually tried this but its definitely something I could see myself using.

 

Overall this has been my favourite game of the event they still now how to deliver a really good story, the number of permutations that are available now as well mean that its really interesting to see how they knit it all together. I also thought that introducing Javier worked really well and freshened it up. Bring on the final season.

 

Playtime 6-7 Hours

Trophies:  31/31

Rating: 

Completion: 52.92% (-0.18%)

 

 

Next Up: Burnout Paradise Remastered

 

NB – we are away for the weekend, so I’ll actually only get 1 night to play this before the end of the month, hopefully that is enough to see how well the new version plays.

Edited March 27, 2018 by dizzyshadow

[Kevvik]

Game #9: A Rose in the Twilight

 

Day 3 Impressions

 

Time played: 2hrs and a bit

 

Ok, I've finished the second area (at least the second area trophy has popped). While RL has kept me really busy, I've had mostly good luck with the games I've chosen this month being pretty enjoyable (a couple of exceptions). This has continued to be really fun and the puzzles getting more complex. I just had to catapult a red slab, with Rose standing on it, up into the air, steal the blood when it flies by a ladder to freeze the slab in mid-air so that I can climb up the ladder. Took a little figuring out for that. Can't believe I haven't hit the 30 death mark yet while figuring some of these out (must be in the high 20s) but really enjoying this. No new skills to speak of but finding new ways to exploit what I have is really satisfying.

 

Along with Amnesia, this will be one of the first titles I return to after the event.

 

Trophies earned: 5/29, 7% for E rank

Score so far: 8/10

Completion rate: 78.17% (-2.33% for the event)

 

Next up: Game #10: I Am Setsuna

 

Wow, almost through March, time sure has flown...

[CJ_Mystery]

Final Game, Day 3:

 

Trophy Completion: 14%

 

Boy howdy did I waste my entire afternoon! I just couldn't stop playing! I got through the rest of Chapter 1, ALL of Chapter 2 and am starting Chapter 3 soon, I am at Balance Valley station. So....

 

 

I did earn a few trophies. (I had earned Fighting For Fun while trying to get the "Kill Enemies with Items" medal in the Underground Channel and resetting constantly because the bats evaded my bombs, so I gave up and plan to do all of the Kill Enemies with Items medals on my Moonflower Palace clean-up before fighting the story final boss. )

 

Forgot how fun this game was to play through. I might swap it in my Spring Fling list since it has time travel as a major theme.

[Hemiak]

Game 4

3 hours played, 0 trophies. 

 

Well things have been pretty busy for me lately, weekends are always packed. I got the minimum time with this but no more, and I feel like that was barely enough time to scratch the surface. 

 

For those who don't know, TW3 is an Action RPG following the adventures of a man named Geralt. He is a Witcher, which is basically a Monster Hunter who trains and undergoes some ritual that gives them special abilities that allow them to fight magical creatures more effectively. He basically travels around accepting quests and slaying evil. At the start of this game he has received a letter from an old friend he is now trying to track down. Long the way random villagers and soldiers have tasks for you to perform. I'm currently on the trail of a griffin that has been causing problems and attacking people in the area. 

 

The game looks fantastic, I usually don't care much about graphics but this game truly does look amazing. Along with that, the voice acting and facial animations are spot on. I haven't noticed much about music but the ambient sounds work well also. 

 

So far I'm not blown away by the gameplay. I don't know what exactly it is but everything just feels stiff if that makes sense. Every enemy seems to jump attack, which means they can usually hit you before you are ready, which means you have to block or dodge. Problem is your block isn't super effective, it knocks you backwards and you take some damage anyway. The roll always seems to go farther than necessary and then you are out of position to follow up with an attack. I wouldn't mind as much if I had some time to actually play around and learn the controls better, but every fight seems to be with 3-6 enemies, and hits from low level enemies still do 30% of your hp. To be fair in playing on the hardest difficulty, so I'm basically asking to get rekt.

 

My next complaint is my dumb ass horse. It works pretty good when out in the open, but when you get near obstacles he becomes unreliable. Also, what kind of a horse can't step over a 6 inch stone wall?

 

As I said I haven't spent nearly enough time with the game as of yet. The game seems like it will be great once I actually get into it, but it will probably be a while before I return. 

 

Also haven't had a chance to start my final game yet, and I'm not even sure what it will be. Some friends want to start Magicka 2, but we haven't settled on a time yet so that might not work for this. 

[CJ_Mystery]

13 minutes ago, Hemiak said:

Game 4

3 hours played, 0 trophies.

 

As I said I haven't spent nearly enough time with the game as of yet. The game seems like it will be great once I actually get into it, but it will probably be a while before I return. 

 

Also haven't had a chance to start my final game yet, and I'm not even sure what it will be. Some friends want to start Magicka 2, but we haven't settled on a time yet so that might not work for this. 

 

Just wait until you meet the girls Geralt spends time with it. If you're a red-blooded guy who has a yen for a little erotica, you'll enjoy the flings he has with... uhm... I know there were two ladies who like him but I forgot their names. I only remember it because the trailers back in the day would not shut up about the ladies. Obviously people focus so much on the (censored) that they forgot how tough the actual witching really is. Unfortunately, I am a very picky gamer so that sort of thing isn't for me, or I would have jumped on it.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #5 - Day #4 - Progress

Gravity Rush 2

 

Time played: somewhere between 2 and 3 hours

Trophies earned: 3/48

 

 

Not much to tell really. Completed a few main missions and a couple of side missions, out of which one was a semi-escort quest and the other one was catching ducks. Not sure why escort quests are still a thing these days... Anyway, I got to the point where a random event popped up that includes some kind of boss battle. Tried a few times and noticed that the hit detection is a fucking catastrophe. Projectiles that clearly missed me ended up still doing damage to me and I was almost never able to hit the enemy where I wanted to hit it. This was actually something I had already noticed before, when I was trying to "break" the ore deposits (they give you upgrade materials, which only actually count when the game wants it to). 3 out of 4 hits would always miss the deposit.

 

Honestly, not sure if I pick this up again before the final day, as my disinterest for this game is growing the more I play it.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by voodoo_eyes

[ladynadiad]

Progress: Chapter 2 part 1

Trophies earned: 2 out of 52 (E rank)

 

So pretty much The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 is not a direct sequel, but more a game in a world like the one in the first game where you control the Hundred Knight and the playstyle is similar.  In this game instead of the Hundred Knight being summoned by a witch, he's a doll brought to life when a witch named Chelka awakens.  So in good news, there is no need to finish the first game to get what is going on in this one.  As of now the only character from the first game is the Hundred Knight.

 

Your goals are overall similar though.  Fight monsters and release pillars.  Except in this game the pillars release mana rather than swamp.  Also the witches are instead people who have contracted something called the "witch disease" and gained a third eye and magical powers rather than like the witches in the first game who were not necessarily scorned and hunted down.  Of course the witches in this game all seem to be inherently cruel so far unlike the ones in the first game who weren't all horrible people.

 

There are also some new gameplay elements in this game.  You now can learn skills and assign them to buttons and level them up with skill points you get with each level.  You still have the facets and tochka, but I've only unlocked the Power Fortress facet so far.  There's also another new element called Depletura.  After using five attacks in a row (which don't have to all hit enemies) you get a prompt to press L1.  When you do, if you kill the enemy you get a bunch of AP and GigaCals.  Like in the last game GigaCals recover HP and deplete as you explore, but you don't have to uncover as much of the map like before.  However in this game there is usually some creature you can kill to refill your GigaCals near each pillar, so you don't have to keep warping back home while exploring.  Enemies also drop a lot more, a notorious enemy can drop three items when killed.  So unlike in the first game, the limited stomach stock can be a potential issue since you get so much dropped.

 

If anything, it seems like the game is a bit easier this time around, but at the same time it seems casual mode doesn't exist if you want the game to be easier (or I haven't found it).  The bosses have been pretty tough so far, but the regular enemies are easy except if you run into multiple notorious enemies at once.  Like in the first game, if you run out of HP it's not an immediate game over as long as you have GigaCals left, you revive and use up a bunch to recover HP and are sent back to either the entrance of the area or the last pillar and lose a bit of stomach stock.

 

Overall, it seems to promise a similar experience as the first one, but with a new story, characters and world and some changed gameplay elements.  I'm enjoying it so far and the trophy set seems to be a good solid mix of story related and battle related.  Looks like it takes some of the best elements of both the PS3 and PS4 versions of the first game on the trophy list.

 

Games played: 94

Games completed: 78

Completion: 85.95% (-2.92%)

Unearned Trophies: 399

 

Trophies for this event:  134/270

[CJ_Mystery]

Final Game, Day 4: Still playing Dark Cloud 2 as I post this. Just unlocked Spheda and grinding for the Spheda medals while leveling some wrenches to fuse into Monica's bracelet because we're about to get a character who boosts bracelet training but she leaves after you fight the boss. Got the trophy for my first Spheda success but that's about it. Will probably play this game until I need to go to bed because I have to go to the gym tomorrow as part of a program to get more exercise.

 

For the rest of the month I'm going to just focus on this game and see how far I get. I think I'll stop playing this game on the 30th and give my final conclusions on the 31st as I plan on getting into my favorite MMO again for April so I can get further in it and prep for the big goals for next month.

3 minutes ago, ladynadiad said:

After reading your review, I might look into this. The first game seemed a little tough.

[ladynadiad]

9 minutes ago, CJ_Mystery said:

After reading your review, I might look into this. The first game seemed a little tough.

 

The first game isn't that bad if you change it to casual mode if normal is giving you trouble (I sure did that), though the final boss for the bad ending was a bit cheap even on casual.  There's someone you can talk to at the swamp near the shop that will let you swap.  However, the PS4 version of the first game does have a harder trophy list than the PS3 version and I have only played the PS3 version of the first game.  This game does seem to not have that so it's a bit harder in some ways, but at the same time you seem to have a lot more ease at recovering GigaCals here and patience does wonders.  Being able to easily recover GigaCals really does a lot to make it easier since you can press L3 to recover HP fast by using GigaCals if you're in a bind.

 

Oh, forgot to mention another new gameplay element actually.  There's a magic meter and once it fills you can press to unleash a powerful magical attack and for a time your regular attacks are faster and more powerful and also are always effective even if you use something the enemy is strong against.  So overall this game gives a lot more tools to win, you just have to be patient and make good use of them.  It may get tougher as I get further in, but at the same time there is already a player with the plat, which implies the trophy set isn't too hard (though I checked and they must have gotten the game early, they got the plat in about 5 days).

 

[dizzyshadow]

I'm about to head away for the weekend, so my gaming time is done for the month. So i'll post my final review now. 

 

Game 10 : Burnout Paradise - Remastered

I think most people will be aware of this game, so if you just looking for a view on whether its worth playing here goes. Its almost exactly the same game i think the only updates they have made are graphically and i'm not really one who pays much attention to graphics, it doesn't feel much different to me, i'm sure if i went back and compared to the original there would be but when playing it it just feels the same as the original. The game itself still feels fun, the original is till my favourite racing game ever, and this feels like it captures that spirit. So if you like the original and feel like playing again then definitely pick this up.

 

If you aren't aware of the game, its an open world racing game originally released many years ago on the PS3, it takes place in the fictional paradise city, i always thought of it as based on San Francisco, but in reality it probably borrows chunks from lots of US cities. You are given free access to the city you can go anywhere and do anything. Every intersection has an event that you can join (i think there are around 120 in total) which fall into various categories. However none have marked tracks they just have a set endpoint (one of the 8 landmarks at the "compass points" of the city) and you are free to take whatever route you choose. and because if this there are lots of shortcuts you can take once you know your way around. There's no story to follow the game simply encourages you to improve you license which you do by winning events. However tits very open world so there are lots of other things to do.

 

There is also collectables in the form of gates & billboards you have to smash and super jumps you need to take (around 500 of these in total) luckily you only need to find half for the trophies. There is also a great online mode (although i haven't tried this yet on new version), but this is one of the few games i have spent significant time online with. and every road has high scores for a time trial and biggest crash.

 

If you haven't played the original then i definitely recommend giving this a go. 

 

 

Playtime: approx 3 hours

Trophies: 27/95  (yes 95, not a typo)

Rating: 

Completion: 52.78% (-0.32%)

 

i'll do a summing up post of all games when i'm back next week.

[PerryToxteth]

Game No. 4

Virginia

 

 

Trophies Earned: 7/18 (17%) E ranking

Playing Time: 2 hours

 

Final Thoughts: Well, a business/ family trip has kept me occupied for the last week and haven't been around very much. My poor PS4 hasn't been touched for a week and a half. Before I left for Arizona though, I was able to get through the 'story' of Virginia for review purposes.

  For me, it was a tough transition going from a game heavily-reliant on dialogue (Telltales' Game of Thrones) to a game with zero dialogue. Yep, that's right: a story-driven game with zero dialogue. Alright, I can handle that, I thought, I just played Rime and really enjoyed that story with its use of images for an interpretive tale. Well, after blitzing through Virginia the game left me with mixed feelings. It was as if the developers put just enough effort in to finish the project, without really trying to make their best effort on the task.

  First off, a very generalized version of the story is you are a female FBI agent. In Virginia. How do I know I was a female in the first-person exploration game? Well, because one of my actions in this game was to put lipstick on. A couple times. My only other action in this game? Drink a cup of coffee. In fact, drink a LOT of coffee. And that is it for actions in the entire game. Yep, dead serious. Lipstick and coffee is as action-packed as this game gets.

  Again, I don't need Call of Duty-style, Adderall-induced levels of action and violence in games to have a good time. But there's really no point in exploring the environment if there's nothing to interact with. And yes, let's get to the environment. Without decent graphics, the environment really suffers. In fact, suffers to the point where I felt nauseated from moving the camera and looking/moving around. I've never had a problem before with a first-person camera - I highly enjoyed the Far Cry games and Battlefield 1. Even with an exploratory game like Going to the Rapture gave me no qualms. But this game's camera gave me a huge headache. Most likely because the graphics are frankly, half-ass. I get trying to go for the artsy-fartsy look, but then there's just plain laziness. This game falls into the latter. After a half hour of playing and a feeling of queasiness starting to percolate, I kept thinking 'Where have I seen the graphics before?'

Oh yeah, from 1985!

 

 

 

Yep, graphics from Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" video is essentially what the game developers copied/ replicated. Very innovative 30+ years ago but aggravating for a game made just last year.

 And I don't want to get too much into the story for spoiler purposes, but I hope David Lynch gets royalty fees for every copy of this game sold. Same for Angelo Badalamenti, the Twin Peaks composer. There's a difference between paying homage to a beloved thing, and blatantly ripping it off. One particular chapter will put you right back into One-Eyed Jacks. Nostalgic? Yes. Plagiaristic? Guilty.

  Even with all that, the game isn't a complete turd. I liked how the game transitioned between scenes. You'd be walking down a basement corridor and suddenly you'd jump to a scene with you sitting in the front seat of a car. The minimalist approach with sets and scenes kept the pace of the story at a good speed.  And the story does get involved more than I anticipated, especially in the last fourth of the game. But a little more production and a bit bigger budget would've helped this game reach the noir style it envisioned. .

 

KYC6 Statistics 

Pre-KYC numbers are in ().

Games Completed - Played 96/68.  ( 92/68)

Trophies Earned - 3262                      (3207)

Unearned - 559                                  (459)

Completion % - 83.81.                     (86.04)

Down - 2.23%

 

Next Up: Assassins' Creed Syndicate

- I will have a brief window to play this game tonight and tomorrow so hoping to get at least three hours in. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hemiak]

Game 5 - ME: Catalyst

3 hrs played, 7/50 trophies

 

Well, here it is, my final game. I went back and forth between a few before deciding on this one. I played the first one and loved everything about it. The story was basic, but it was serviceable and that isn't what it's about anyway. People complain about the controls, but what I found is that they were super strict. You mess up even a little on angle or where you jumped and wouldn't get where you needed to link a move. That isn't the games fault, it's yours. 

 

Anyway, Catalyst is the sequel to the cult classic Mirrors Edge from last generation. It was a linear first person traversal game, using various techniques to get from point A to point B while avoiding sporadic enemies. Catalyst changes that formula. It's still about moving around climbing and jumping things, but now it's an open world with a lot of side stuff to do and a lot more enemies to avoid. 

 

The game follows Faith. A runner for hire that just got out of Juvie, even though she looks to be in her mid 20s. O.o  You start out during her release. You are given a monitor bracelet and told to be a good girl, then walked out of the building. If you run they yell at you, or jump, or slide. If you walk too close to a guard he hits you in the face with a gun.... Seriously who does that to a minor, unless she's being released because she just turned and 18, then

.... No wait, who does that to anyone?  You aren't even out of the building when a side door opens and a guy tells you to follow him. The door leads to a street outside the facility. What kind of prison / detention facility has a random unguarded door directly outside? I mean, we're already kind of in an outside courtyard but still. Anyway, dude makes some snark remarks, gives you a computer contact lenses, then cuts off you bracelet, 50 feet from the jail. "Bro seriously? You didn't want to at least turn the corner first?" Anyway you're forced to run and learn the basic movea for traversal and fighting, and then sent out on your first missions. 

 

Being open world, each mission you complete unlocks a few more side objectives to check out and explore. These come in several forms but always involve getting to a certain point, usually with a time limit. Every mission, objective, or collectible rewards you with xp. Getting enough earns you a skill point you can use to unlock an ability. There are three trees, traversal, combat, and equipment. After your first mandatory upgrade you can choose whatever you want From a list of about 7 unlocked skills I bought both the traversal skills, the one piece of equipment, and one extra hp from the combat tree. I'm now sitting on three skill points waiting for more stuff to become available because I don't want to waste them on combat skills. :/

 

From the start you can run, jump, springboard off an object, wall run, wall climb, dash up to speed quickly, swing on a bar, and soften your landing. I already bought the quick turn and ability to roll out of a fall or slide. It plays like the first game, but feels like Faith isn't quite as fast as she was. A new addition is a focus bar. As you run at full speed for a while you have a bar that fills up. When the focus bar is filled it acts like a shield, protecting you from enemy attacks and shots. This is pretty handy if you just want to run past enemies, which I do. 

 

All in all I'm enjoying it so far. The story again isn't really anything super special, but it gets the job done. It's fun to run around and explore the city with a little more freedom this time, even if most of the side stuff is either finding collectibles or running short timed missions. Definitely be playing more in the next two days. 

 

 

[Metal Slime King]

Slain: Back from Hell (Rating: )

Slain is a 2D side scrolling action game. Retro-ish graphics, I'd say it looks most like a 16-bit era game. You play as the reanimated corpse of a viking warrior fighting against some demon lord who is corrupting the land with his minions. It's got a strong metal theme going on, like someone stuck an album cover for an 80's Death Metal band in a blender with one of the original Castlevania games and this is what poured out. The game is pretty hard, you can't take a lot of hits and there are a lot of instant deaths to be had. There is no limited life mechanic and there are no shortage of respawn points in a level so the game itself is quite doable but most of the trophies involve perfect runs on the bosses and not dying so it's a challenging plat for sure. The combat mechanics are pretty straight forward hack and slash, there is a block / parry mechanic that lets you do a critical attack for extra damage that is satisfying against large enemies. Some enemies shoot projectiles that can be reflected back at them with a well timed sword attack. You eventually unlock other weapons but the gameplay differences seem minimal, it just seems to affect your damage against certain enemy types. I thought I was going to have to ding the game for being a 2D side-scroller that forces you to move around with the analog stick but you can configure it to use the digital pad which is my preference as I find it to be more precise in 2D games. The music is decent but given the metal theme of the game I was expecting it to be harder, faster and really rocking out. Still, I'd say it's a great game and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a retro challenge.

 

Completion: (3 out of 31 trophies) 5%

[Kevvik]

...and the journey approaches its close...

 

Game #10: I Am Setsuna

 

Initial Impressions

 

Time played: ~4 hrs

 

I Am Setsuna is a fairly old school RPG. It starts with an introduction to the main character, Endir (or whatever you change the name to) who comes from a village of mercenaries, all really tough apparently, on a mission with an elder who is going on his last mission. This serves as a short combat tutorial or sorts. Upon completing the mission, you are approached by a stranger who gives you another mission, killing a young girl who is designated to be a sacrifice, giving the world reprieve from monster attacks.

 

You find the girl, get captured by villagers protecting her and then the girl sets you free. The village is attacked by monsters, you kill them and then join the guard assigned to protect the sacrifice as she journeys to the Last Lands to fulfill her destiny.  Fairly familiar RPG fare.  This is pretty standard for this game.

 

Combat is either melee or tech (read magic/special/etc). Attacking is based or a filling meter. Once it is full, you can do an action, attack, tech or use an item. If you let the meter stay full, you build momentum (up to 3 points). This can be used to boost your actions with extra effects like bonus damage, extra effects and the like. Tech uses a limited supply of MP to cast spells, do bigger attacks, etc or do combos with other members of your party, up to 3 actively, which are dependent on who you have with you and what tech they have active, supplied by certain items called spritnites. You can hold 1 command and 1 support spritnite at any time (at least so far). Ultimately this also feels familiar.

 

This familiarity is both a strength and a weakness of the game. The characters are pretty bland and this really doesn't feel like it breaks any real ground.  That said, it does what it's doing fairly well, fulfilling that old school feel which was really the point of this game, TokyoRPG aiming to recreate the feel of the classic RPGs which built the genre. In that it succeeds but sometimes feels more clone than homage.

 

So far, it's okay but nothing special. We'll see how it plays out.

 

Trophies earned: 7/50, 10% for E rank

Score so far: 6/10

 

I'll try to get a bit more playing time today/tomorrow and give a closing report before setting up end event stats.

[CJ_Mystery]

21 hours ago, PerryToxteth said:

Yep, graphics from Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" video is essentially what the game developers copied/ replicated.

Nah, the faces look a little more refined than that, but I'm surprised that this video popped up. I recalled watching that music video on MTV a ton before video games were a thing, when I was in middle school. Yep, I'm old as sh**.

 

That game was pretty interesting, though. It told a story without words, which is really hard to do. Having to go through it twice for a trophy was BS, but other than that, the game was nice.

 

Okay, better get to the gist of it...

 

Final Game, Final Days

 

Final Trophy Completion: 35% (16/31 trophies)

Profile Completion: 86.67% (down about 2%)

 

I decided to just put the last two days and then go back onto the game for a while doing medal grinding and getting Monica's final armlet and try to grind Max up a decent weapon - he hasn't upgraded his weapons at all since Chapter 2 since he's been carrying a Spheda club in his hand to do Spheda.

 

I got all the way to Chapter 7, this game is super-addicting. I think the opening theme is really hitting it with one line: "Only the strong ones can stand the test of time." This game is indeed a "strong one." Its tale will be replayed again and again through the generations until video games become obsolete and then people will write books about Monica and Max's adventures. I may be a little over-stating it, but this game survived the death of the PS2 and was one of the first to get emulated onto the PS4 via digital download, which shows how much the Playstation wants to keep this story alive, and the gameplay is easy to get into and, once you get Steve the Ridepod enough shield kits, easy to win. I've been using the Ridepod to clear levels super-fast and now very little can kill that giant riding robot.

 

As for my completion... if it's down, it's not this game's fault. It's because I earned my first trophy in two Vita games(Gal Gun Double Peace & Criminal Girls Invite Only) and a 100% game for Vita(One Eye Kutkh, which I bought to play while working out because I didn't want to go play the other games as they... well, it's NSFW shoujo stuff; I'm surprised that I don't hate the fact these games are not in English as the English subtitles are decent).

 

Probably be spending the rest of the month grinding up medals in Dark Cloud 2, I don't think I'll endanger the list because most of the remaining trophies. I will probably earn another trophy as I finally got my third Diamond and all three are now safe in the Gift Capsule so I will get the last monster badge for the trophy, unlike last time when I stupidly spectrumizes my first diamond.

 

Will I Enjoy the Platinum Quest? Forgot to add this at the end. Yes, I will probably enjoy getting the rest of the trophies despite them trying their darnedest to troll me. Medal Head is probably the meanest bully of the bunch as f'k Rainbow Butterfly Woods Spheda and Finny Frenzy can go burn in a wildfire as I don't like having to raise fish. ?? (cat food)

 

But all I need to do to get to Chapter 8 is to struggle through and earn all of the Moonflower Palace medals and then I can say good-bye to it and grind in the Zelmite Mines and get everything up to snuff for everything else and it'll be fun. This game is very beautiful and when Level-5 announced they'll be porting stuff over to the Switch, I had hopes this game would be on the Switch as Dark Chronicle HD on the Switch. (Then they said it'll only be their 3DS titles so only the Layton series. I have enjoyed the first three Layton games but only by emulating them and using save states and a cheat guide for the puzzles. So rip Dark Cloud HD. )

Edited March 31, 2018 by CJ_Mystery

[Edward_FOX_86]

Hey everyone!

 

It has been a long time since I wrote and that's due to work, family and lots of random events that have been happening.

 

I was very stressed the past couple of weeks and had some unfortunate "stuff" happening. I can't go into too much detail but I had to quit midway the event. 

 

So I think out of 5 games I played 3 the last one was Dragon age Origins which I intend to go back to.

 

I have to say a big thank you for organizing this event to @Hemiak and also @voodoo_eyes for letting me know about this. 

 

Having said that gaming is a big part of my life and a passion but I feel I couldn't really give enough attention to this event and the reviews and playtime and so on.

 

I have a Youtube channel and even that is kind of stand by point by now. I just made a couple of videos due to a fan always insisting and kind of cheering me on with comments.

 

Anyway I couldn't read all the posts but some games caught my eye. 

 

I can rate the 3 games I Played and I liked all of them but the one I preferred was Tomb raider followed by Street Fighter vs Tekken and then Dragon Age and I would rate them all above 80% so 8/10 as for Tomb raider maybe 8.5/10.

 

I also bought The Last o Us remastered at an unbelieble price of 16,99€ new on FNAC here in Portugal. I bought another for the same price (Resident Evil Revelations 2) not the same level of bargain I suppose .

 

Besides that I did the plat trophy for Dig Dug and played some Virtua Tennis 4 on the Ps3.

 

Again I apreciated the event and apologize for not completing the event (the irony ^^) KYC.

 

I have to make time to maybe arrange at least a beer or coffe meeting with my friend Voodoo  .

 

 

Ok that's all

 

Cheers everyone

 

And good luck on completing your games ^^ 

 

 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #5 - Day #6 - Final Impression

Gravity Rush 2

 

Time played: somewhere between 2 and 3 hours

Trophies earned: 3/48

 

So yeah, didn't pick this one up again since the last time I wrote about it. This one was somewhat of a letdown. The art style is nice, and the music and sound are good as well. The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. One one hand the comic book presentation is alright, but then a 3rd of it is voice acted while the rest isn't. Furthermore it sounds and probably is just gibberish (I don't speak Japanese, but I'm pretty sure that whatever was said weren't sentences).

 

The gameplay is where it crashes and burns for me. As mentioned before, the controls are imprecise and the hit detection is atrocious. Both of these things are essential for this type of game, There also doesn't seem to be much variety to the gameplay itself. It's either mining, doing some random meaningless fetch quests and fighting black gooey blobs that can only be hit on the weakpoints. Maybe further into the game it offers more, but for now I'm not interested in getting back to it.

 

Final score at this point is a

 

 

Best to worst this time round were:

 

1. Agents of Mayhem - Despite the glitched trophy, some lack of optimization and the seemingly repetitive gameplay, it turned out not to be boring. Oh and I also got the plat in the meantime.
2. Exist Archive - Has potential to be good, but only time will tell if it keeps being interesting or ends up becoming boring.
3. Ghost Recon Wildlands - Fun in small doses and that might be the big problem as the game has a lot of content, but it's mostly generic in every way.
4. Gravity Rush 2 - This one really needs to step up the game to sway my opinion, but hey at least the DLC was free.
5. Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier - It's a wannabe Telltale game, that turned out half-arsed

 

 

I've also been playing through some other games during this event.

• Final Fantasy XV - Got the plat and had a lot of fun with it. It's not perfect, but out of the FF games I played it's by far the best.
• Akiba's Beat - I got about a third through the game. The story is somewhat interesting, but the characters are starting to get on my nerves, especially the ones that inform you every time you walk past any form of store/save point. The combat is very mediocre, which is not the best thing for an Action-RPG.
• Contrast - Finished it and quite enjoyed it. Cool aesthetic, concept, music and story with some minor issues in the mechanics department.
• Under Defeat HD: Deluxe Edition -Got the plat in this average schmup that lacked variety.
• Sound Shapes - Triple plat for this one. Was alright overall, but Death Mode felt unfair at times due to the complete randomness.
• Telsagrad - Another plat in this poor excuse of a metroidvania platformer. While the concept was original it was poorly optimized and the story sucked.
• HiQAce - Finished this Jigsaw Puzzle, that didn't have much to offer. It was free though, so there's that.
• Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey - The title is about as long as it feels going for all the endings. Still a good game with a few flaws that I'll be trying to finish up for the plat race I'm in
• Ride 2 - I played the first one in a previous KYC event, and enjoyed that one a lot. This one is not as good, but still fun for the most part. Need one more trophy for the plat, which is a long ass grind.
• Killing Floor 2 - Went back to this for the new DLC trophies that came out.
• Ginger: Beyond The Crystal - Garbage 3D-platformer that looks like a PS2 game. The only thing interesting were the levels, but the awful platforming and camera controls made this an unenjoyable experience. Word of advice, stay clear of this mess.

[ladynadiad]

Progress: Chapter 3 part 1

Trophies earned: 6 out of 52 (C rank)

 

Well, chapter 2 did step up the difficulty a bit, but it really ended up boiling down to being patient and also making sure to upgrade my equipment.  The first boss of chapter 2 is really brutal if you don't watch its patterns and actually make an effort to dodge the more annoying attacks.  One thing is for sure, the bosses have way more HP than they tended to in the first game.  The second boss in chapter 2 wasn't a problem though so it really was just that one boss that souped things up a bit.  Still not a difficult game yet to me because the game is very generous with access to save points, healing item drops, and equipment drops.  Like in the first game the equipment has a ranking and is common, rare, epic or legendary.  I've already gotten legendary drops.

 

In fact, there seems to be a good reason why its so generous with drops.  Upgrading equipment in this game is very different than in the first one.  In the first one you just needed mana, which was easily obtained by killing monsters.  This is still the case here, but you also have to sacrifice items, so even losing a nameless bone or pumpkin if you die kinda sucks because that stuff is useful for equipment upgrading.  However, this is obviously why the game is very generous with drops because you're going to need to sacrifice everything you don't have equipped to upgrade your gear.  But this also can quickly make you very overpowered.  I actually was one shotting a bunch of enemies because my gear is so overpowered.

 

Games played: 94 (+7)

Games completed: 78 (+5)

Completion: 86.14% (-2.73%)

Unearned Trophies: 392 (+126)

 

Trophies for this event:  141/270

 

And since others are doing it and this likely will be my last post reviewing a game, here's my ranking of the games I played:

 

1. Tokyo Xanadu

2. The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2

3. Blue Reflection

4. Exist Archive

5. Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds

6. Secret of Mana

 

Honestly, all in all I didn't have any major letdowns other than Secret of Mana being a hideous mess of bugs and issues.  It was actually hard to decide between Blue Reflection and Exist Archive too, but Exist Archive is a bit overly repetitive so it ranked just a tiny bit lower than Blue Reflection.  I'd definitely recommend any of my games, but would advise to wait a bit on Secret of Mana and let them fix the bugs and freezing issues first and for the price to come down a bit.

Edited March 31, 2018 by ladynadiad

[MidnightDragon]

To my great shame, I haven't started my last game and I'm not going to have time to do so. However, it's not all bad news. My completion has fallen from 84.83% to 81.03%, If there's another one of these and I join, hopefully real life won't intrude this time. However, for what it's worth, I did have a lot of fun.  

[DamagingRob]

Final Review: Dreamfall Chapters

 

So, I just managed to get through the game in time. Lol. This game is much longer than I expected. I'm not sure exactly how long I played, but it's like 3 or 4 Telltale games combined. Unless you mash circle to speed through the dialogue. 

 

I talked about Zoe's world in the first review, but hadn't played much as Kian then. While hers is more advanced and science has progressed further than our own, Kian's is more... old-timey? Yeah, old-timey. It's kind of like something you'd see in a western RPG. Magic, strange-looking races (like mole people), talking birds, etc. 

 

At first, I found his side of the game incredibly boring, and couldn't wait to get back to Zoe. But a lot of the characters there eventually grew on me, and I became more invested in the entirety of the story. Enu at least kept me from falling asleep early on. She's so damn funny.

 

Graphics are better than most adventure games, but not going to blow you away. And the voice acting is really good. I'm not entirely sure if it's him, but I swear that Likho sounds just like Lee from Telltale's The Walking Dead.  

 

But I really enjoyed this, and would probably put it on par with Star Ocean 5 in terms of overall enjoyment. But it's not perfect, as long load times and slow parts of the story bring it down. And if you haven't played the first two games, you'll likely feel lost. Hell, I wish I had played them more recently, as there are a lot of references to them. 

 

There are also no manual saves. The game autosaves at various places, which may lead to replaying a bit if you don't stop at one. And this makes 2 playthroughs necessary for some trophies tied to choosing one thing or another. So I have that to look forward to.. It keeps a fairly large number of autosaves, so I wonder if it would have been more efficient to choose an option, play through till the trophy pops, and then reload a save before the choice. Too late now, of course. 

 

But it was a very nice conclusion to the Dreamfall saga, with a surprising twist at the end. I give it a  rating.

 

Trophy progress: 40/46 for 92% and an A rank.  

Time played: ??? 20-30 hours?

Did it lower my completion? Between this and some NBA Live 18 progress, no. 

 

 

And so here we are at the end of another round. My final stats: 

 

Games Played: 486 (+6)

Games Completed: 389 (+0)

Completion Percentage: 90.12% (-0.43 such a huge drop ;P) 

Unearned Trophies: 1,534 (+95)

 

Game rankings:

 

1. Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness- What seems to be an excellent entry in a series I know and love, despite poor reviews from most professional reviewers.

2. Dreamfall Chapters- Excellent conclusion to a phenomenal seres of adventure games. 

3. Mass Effect: Andromeda- A great SciFi shooter RPG from what I played. Also seemed to get unfairly bashed by reviews. Or fixed most of the problems with a patch.. 

4. World of Final Fantasy- This and Mass Effect could maybe switch spots, I don't know.. Feel like I'll get tired of this one sooner, though. Fun turn-based Final Fantasy, which I wish the numbered series hadn't gone away from. But I also love Kingdom Hearts, so I may find XV enjoyable.

5. Titan Souls- Challenging game that lives up to having "Souls" in its name. Lol.  

 

All in all, I'd say I picked a pretty good batch of games this time. Enjoyed them all. Thanks to everyone that participated, and of course, @Hemiak, for continuing to do these.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

Just wanted to pop in to say I've played another game for the event (Claire Extended - didn't like it), but I've been too busy to sit down and write something about it, sorry.

 

Will try to make a bigger post tomorrow.

[CJ_Mystery]

So, last day of the event and time to break it down for the readers. Here we go! (My apologies if I end up writing an essay, I find it hard to reduce my thoughts into a small paragraph.)

 

Final Completion: 86.87% (down about 3.04%)

The Games: (Brat)wurst to Best (Friends Forever)

39%

All of the games on this list are ones I like, I made sure of that, but if I had to hang a scapegoat as the one I am most likely not eager to go back to and 100% it, it's Sly 3. And it's only because of the Master Thief Challenges. Two of the battle challenges were so annoying because when you die, the enemy has a voice-acted scene where they laugh at you, and having to watch it over and over is as rage-inducing as having to listen to a clowder of alley cats howl at your window at midnight! ?

 

Needless to say, I get very frustrated easily when I fail multiple times. I cuss heavily and I'm sure to go to Hell when I die for having a long backlog of vomiting profanity but my gosh these challenges are not for the faint of heart. Still, I have 100% this game in an older account so it's doable, it'll just take forever. Also, the RC challenges are tough(although the RC is smoother on the Vita, I rage-quit hard and have boycotted the PS3 Sly Collection because the RC in Sly 3 for PS3 is so tanky I quit the game forever) but I do love the story and characters very much.

 

Current Place in Time: Just cleared the first mission in Episode 3, Flight of Fancy.

 

15%

This gets a little higher on the list as Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite RPG franchises. However, there are a lot of trolly trophies that are going to tick me off, especially the mini-game record ones when I unlock 100-Acre Wood. Having failed at the trophies in my last few runs with Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, you can see where this is going. However the battle trophies are not going to be too hard. I did have to watch through the entirety of 358/2 Days to unlock the rest of the cards for Organization XIII but nothing too difficult to go through here.

 

Current Place in Time: At Floor 4 in Sora's Story, farming Moogle Points for the Moogle trophies.

 

40%

So I finally got into Nep-Nep syndrome with my first Neptunia game, Cyberdimenion Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online, and I love it. It's not too difficult and the cutscenes you can access are really cute. People can call you a perv for playing an anime-style game with mostly female characters, but Compile Heart is known for quirky femme characters and I don't judge them for that. Neptunia is their Kingdom Hearts franchise and has a huge fanbase so I wanted to get in on that. The problem is that the games I played to start out were horrible for me to get into especially the original Neptunia, which had a horrible healing system that nobody is going to touch ever again. (I mean, a 50% chance to heal when you are in critical mode and the characters are uncontrollable? WTF?!?)

 

I love the fact that this game is a love letter to MMOs, being an MMO junkie myself. (But nothing that isn't free to play, mind you.) And I plan to get back into this game eventually. The only bad thing is the fact that every time I log into the game it takes 5 minutes to skip to the title screen because of the loading screen!

 

21%

I really enjoy the Secret of Mana remake even though everyone else hates it. I admit it isn't a masterpiece like it was hyped up to be, but it does stay faithful to the original property. I also dropped voices to 0% volume so it felt like I was playing a fan-remake of the original game with all the cutscenes. Other than the random 3D cutscenes, the talk between characters when your rest at an inn, and Adventures of Mana dialogue at times, the game is mostly the same as the original so I intend to spend the next couple of months getting to the platinum and enjoying the grind.

 

Did have a couple of Vita freezes and a crash but luckily the game auto-saves every screen shift so you don't lose more than a few minutes of progress. Still, wished they would have delayed the game a month to shuffle this through beta-testing a few more times instead of copping out with a quick fix.

 

Current Place in Time: At Northtown, ready to storm the dark temple there

 

50%

You may notice an inconsistency. Well, it's my fault. I couldn't stay away from Dark Cloud 2 and just played and earned a few more trophies last night. ?

 

This is a wonderful game and while having to delay my advancing to the final chapter has to wait until I get all of the Moonflower Palace medals, this game is a fun thing to grind in. Yes, the medal challenges are bull crap, especially Spheda(fu-- Rainbow Butterfly Woods and its random-ass Spheda placements) and I will hate having to raise a fish to 100 in four stats to beat Finny Frenzy Master Class, the aesthetics and music are more than enough to make up for it all. Even if you don't go for the plat, I highly recommend to everyone who plays RPGs for fun to download this game(which is really cheap, only $15 on PSN) and play through the story, and it will be a shame when I finally get the platinum and delete this game. But hey, there is Rogue Galaxy!

 

Current Place in Time: At the very end of Chapter 7, just before the boss

 

I enjoyed the event and would do it again. For the record, during this event, I also gained a few platinum trophies:

 

• Little Adventures on the Prairie (PS Vita) (March 2) - a very bare-bones platformer that was cobbled together by a greedy guy who wanted to cash in on the indie scene. But it's so damn easy to get the platinum that it has beaten My Name Is Mayo as fastest Platinum ever.
• Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (March 6) - a very slow walking simulator with a story about a ghost town in the British Isles. The music and graphics are pretty good. Put this down for my pick for March's Monthly Madness.
• LEGO Marvel's Avengers (PS4) (March 10) - Okay for a LEGO game but some of the collectibles are very tricky to get if you goof around.
• Seasons After Fall (March 10) - A very relaxing platforming experience.
• Aer: Memories of Old (March 12) - A 3D platforming adventure with a huge open world, but most of it is bottomless sky so you'll be flying around a lot
• Dark Cloud (March 14) - Dark Cloud's predecessor, cheesed uber weapons to breeze through the dungeons but a very decent game. Dark Cloud 2's final boss(in the last chapter) is a nod to this game a major spoiler reference.
• Jak II (March 17)
• Jak 3 (March 18) - I think everyone and their mother has heard of the debug mode codes and how to use the debug mode to earn all of the trophies, so I won't touch on these. Yep, I used the exploits just to give the Jak & Daxter platinum some friends.
• Dragon Quest Builders (Vita) (March 20) - My 50th platinum, and a fun Terraria-style game.
• The Little Acre (March 20) - A short point-and-click adventure with a couple of time-based trophies but it was okay.
• Virginia (March 20) - A very creepy game which might be influenced by Heavy Rain. Having to go through the story twice was stupid but it was an okay experience.
• Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas (PS4) (March 21) - Finally got this one. Probably won't get the Vita version stack unless I have nothing better to do since trying to catch the Ghost Fish was a pain and a half.
• forma.8 (March 24) - A decent Metroidvania game with full 2D movement. Died quite a few times on this, but it was worth it in the end.
• Zeus Quest Remastered (March 25) - A garbage point-and-click adventure game. Don't play this unless you love cheesy parodies of Greek mythology.
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (March 28) - My magmum opus. I really think I will enjoy the sequel once I get it. I might put playing it until I get the Dark Cloud 2 plat, so I don't end up getting sucked up by Evan Pettywhisker's life and forgot about Monica Raybrandt.

 

16 hours ago, voodoo_eyes said:

Ginger: Beyond The Crystal - Garbage 3D-platformer that looks like a PS2 game. The only thing interesting were the levels, but the awful platforming and camera controls made this an unenjoyable experience. Word of advice, stay clear of this mess.

 

Oh yeah, I have played this myself and the speed-run trophy is BS. It's almost impossible to clear the required level in under 60 seconds with all the shit going on. (Pardon my language.)

Edited March 31, 2018 by CJ_Mystery

[CJ_Mystery]

Since I failed to kill my completion(the drop in completion are from other games that I got 1% in), calling my plan to plat all the games on my list Reviving my Completion is sort of a misnomer. However, I do want to let everyone who cares know my plan to get 100% in the games that I played on this list.

 

First Priorities: Dark Cloud 2(PS4) and Secret of Mana(Vita), starting tomorrow I will focus on these two games (after I play LEGO games in the morning for the Spring Fling(since it's important I get those games done)) and try to get the platinum on them. I probably won't get plat on Dark Cloud 2 until the summer because the Medal Head and Finny Frenzy First trophies will take a lot of time, but I am confident. Secret of Mana will not deter me with its Vita-lock crashes, I will get 100% in it, expect it to be platted in May.

 

Second Priorities: June will be the beginning of a Sly Summer(see what I did there? ) as I chip away at Sly 2 first and Sly 3 next. Heck, may as well torture my life and do Thieves in Time on the Vita in August!

 

Final Priorities: If I have time and inclination, I'll try to work on the remaining two games through the year. Will definitely take days out of the weekend to get some work on Kingdom Hearts re:Chain of Memories so I can have a Kingdom Hearts platinum before KH3 comes out later this year, and Cyberdimension Neptunia will eventually get its day in the sun over the summer as I want to see who the mysterious guy who sold that weird device to Kiria and Black Cat Princess is. Not Arfoire, that's for sure, she's into eggplants.

[Hemiak]

Well, it's that time again people. The event has officially reached its conclusion, but we have a bonus day in March if you need if. Feel free to sneak in some extra gaming time and write up any last minute reviews. 

 

Ad always the thread will stay open, so feel free to continue to post progress or thoughts on any of your games you return to. 

 

Thank you to everyone who participated, and those that follow along. I know I've been a bit of a slacker lately and you all keep things moving along nicely. So again, thanks to everyone who has helped make these events successful. 

 

Hem