KYC 777

[vin_rob]

12 hours ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

I put in a couple of hours so far into Yakuza 5 and must say that I really like what I'm seeing so far. I'll get a few more hours on it though this weekend and put in my full review then, but so far, I'm a fan. I've never played a Yakuza game, so this is a new experience for me. 

 

I did earn a trophy and effectively killed my completion!

I'll look forward thinking about getting that game myself.. 

[PerryToxteth]

KYC 777 Game No. 1

Battle of the Bulge

 

 

Playing Time: 4 hours

Trophies Earned: 16/32 (42%) A ranking

(So for this event, I will just have a final review. These games are too short to give a first impression.)

 

Final Thoughts: So I have pretty much been a gamer all my life. I was a childhood prodigy in Candyland and my parents were sure I was destined to make the professional circuit of Chutes 'N' Ladders until a tragic, career-ending injury. 

  All kidding aside, I didn't have a video game console until I was 13 so prior to then, gaming was all about board games. And the grandest one of them all, was Axis and Allies (for the uninitiated, it's Risk on steroids). Hours and hours were spent trying to conjole family and friends to play, only to find them sulk when I invaded Eastern USA with my German tanks and transports. Simply put, I loved this game (and still do!) The dice rolling, the Russian cannon fodder troops, being braggadocio and buying a carrier for China (1939 version) - it's a marvelous game.

  For some inexplicable reason, Hasbro (who owns the rights to the game from Avalon Hill), has not pursued a video game version of this for console or app purposes. Years ago they made a PC game that whetted the appetite, but the AI fought with as much gusto as the Maginot Line. So I have been searching for a surrogate game and a few PS generations ago, there was Allied General and Panzer General for PS1? PS2? That was a fun strategy, turned-based game but it seems the wartime strategic armchair general games have fallen to the wayside the past few years. 

Suddenly, I saw this title a few months back and my hopes were renewed! So I eagerly jumped into this one a few days ago and after playing a couple scenarios, here's my thoughts. This game is fun, not great, but entertaining in a Tiger tank sort of way. Gameplay is based on conquering territory with armored and infantry divisions ( strangely, no air. Though that could be for historical accuracy). Taking a piece of territory is essential to meet your endgame goals, but also to keep your supply lines connected. You can bunch up to three units to unite and invade a chunk of territory. Depending on the strength of your opponent, the battle might not be settled that turn and it could last a few turns. Depending on the scenario, turns are divvied up into hours and the scenario can last up to 12 days. Each days' turns basically lets you move each piece once, though you can also pass if there's no place to go. You can also choose who your commanding opponent is ( Montgomery, Bradly, Patton, Dietrich, Von Rundstadt,etc). That will determine how aggressive the AI will be (Monty plays passive ).

  So far, I have played Race to the Meuse as both the Axis and Allies ( and won both). Took me three tries as the Axis to win because I found out the importance of keeping your supple lines secured. If your supply line gets cut off, no petrol for the Panzers. 

  Frustration set in with the Battle of the Bulge scenario. At the beginning of the game, the aim for the Allies was to keep the Nazis from crossing the Meuse. So I adjusted my defenses and packed it in on the river's edge, which gives you defensive bonus points. But the parameters for winning somehow changed mid-game and even though the Wehrmacht never crossed, I suddenly get this notification that the Axis won. Huh??? It seems the Axis can earn points for taking strategic towns (like Bastogne) and can win that way. But that was never stated from the get-go. 

My other gripe is the game has an auto-save, which seems helpful, until I realized it saves over your manual save file. When I tried to resume my Allies campaign, I could only load the auto-save which meant certain defeat. So I guess you will need your PS+ to ensure specific saves, which means added hoop-jumping.

  That said, this game is pretty fun. It's not terribly complicated, maybe a couple grades above Risk, but certainly not Axis and Allies, or head-hurting thinking monstrosities like Advanced Third Reich. Scenarios don't last more than an hour so it's not a time-suck. And finally, the trophies look awesome! Check this out:

 

 

Final Verdict: Based on my Sweet, Sufficient, or Stupid rankings, this goes somewhere between Sweet and Sufficient.

 

 

 

 

 

[eigen-space]

4 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

 

It seems to be a rather typical thing to dislike the main male character of a Final Fantasy, at least for me. From those I (partially) played (1, 2, 4 to 10, Type-0 HD) I only "enjoyed" Squall from 8 and even he was a whiner and I only liked him somehow because he was the lone wolf of the group.

 

You might like the boys of XV. Noct kind of grows on you, Gladio and Ignis are badass, and Prompto... eh... they can't all be great.

[Toogie53]

7 hours ago, Fidel said:

Anyways, I'll likely give it a full review (and Horizon a final one) in a couple of days. I should invite someone to my game, and see what the results are. Will they actually help, or stab me in the back?

I always got help in Bloodborne. However, in the DLC area, I always got nothing. 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Toogie53

[xFalionx]

7 hours ago, Lars said:

I hope i can still participate because i really enjoyed the last time i participated.

You're pretty late but @Hemiak seems to be pretty lenient at the moment and let me join technically late as well. I mean since you've only picked 5 games, you'd still have around 2 days before your first review would be due, so I think you've got an alright chance of being allowed to join, at least for being 5 days late, that is.

 

 

The voting for my racing game slot ends in less than 28 hours, by the way. Looks like I'll be playing MotorStorm, though it's still pretty close so the tables may still be turned.

 

 

[crimsonidol38]

2 hours ago, eigen-space said:

 

You might like the boys of XV. Noct kind of grows on you, Gladio and Ignis are badass, and Prompto... eh... they can't all be great.

 

I already thought about giving it a try. Thanks to Type-0 I could at least try the one demo which they released back in 2015. I know that they did some major changes in the mean time but I guess it's good enough to get a first impression, especially of the battle system. 

[eigen-space]

Just now, Crimson Idol said:

 

I already thought about giving it a try. Thanks to Type-0 I could at least try the one demo which they released back in 2015. I know that they did some major changes in the mean time but I guess it's good enough to get a first impression, especially of the battle system. 

 

Only suggestion I have is to wait 5 years... or until FFVII's remaster is released. I have a feeling that DLC for XV will finally stopped being released once they have VII to release DLC for  

[DamagingRob]

4 minutes ago, Toogie53 said:

I always got help in Bloodborne. However, in the DLC area, I always got nothing. 

I tried getting help with Blood-starved beast. But no one joined, so I ended up taking @Kent's advice, and threw a bunch of molotovs at it.

[crimsonidol38]

6 minutes ago, eigen-space said:

 

Only suggestion I have is to wait 5 years... or until FFVII's remaster is released. I have a feeling that DLC for XV will finally stopped being released once they have VII to release DLC for  

I have so many unfinished games that sit there around 1% to 20% that those whole DLCs of FF XV wouldn't change my completion rate too much. But waiting would still be a good idea so I will have enough time (and motivation) to finsih all those RPGs that are still on my Pile of Shame. 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Crimson Idol

[eigen-space]

Just now, Crimson Idol said:

I have so many unfinished games that sit there around 1% to 20% that those whole DLCs of FF XV wouldn't change my completion rate too much. But waiting would still be a good idea so I will have enough time (and motivation) to finsih all those RPGs that are still on my Pile of Shame. 

 

Even if completion isn't something you worry about, it's probably still best for your wallet. The Royal Edition that was released a couple months ago included everything from the base game, all season pass DLC, and a new pack of DLC. So instead of buying three separate items, you only had to buy one at a much lower price point.

[crimsonidol38]

6 minutes ago, eigen-space said:

 

Even if completion isn't something you worry about, it's probably still best for your wallet. The Royal Edition that was released a couple months ago included everything from the base game, all season pass DLC, and a new pack of DLC. So instead of buying three separate items, you only had to buy one at a much lower price point.

 

That's a good argument.

[dmland12]

2 hours ago, PerryToxteth said:

KYC 777 Game No. 1

Battle of the Bulge

 

 

Thanks for the review.  This looks like an interesting game that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.  Board games or video games that are heavily inspired from then do have a certain charm.  Although, they don't seem to do very well with most gamers.  I guess it's probably the randomness (dice).

[Myu]

5 hours ago, eigen-space said:

 

You might like the boys of XV. Noct kind of grows on you, Gladio and Ignis are badass, and Prompto... eh... they can't all be great.

 

How dare you! Prompto is the best! He's the one that grew the most on me. I used to think he was pretty meh at the beginning of the story but now I think I like him even more than Ignis

 

@Crimson Idol Djidane from FFIX is one of my favourites. You should try that one

Edited July 5, 2018 by Myu

[Metal Slime King]

Badgers?! We don't need no stinking badgers!! My game #2 is Gravity Badgers for Vita. A lot like Angry Birds only in space and instead of destroying buildings and killing pigs your objective is flinging badgers into the wormhole to progress to the next level, ideally making a path that picks up the levels 3 shiny orbs. Humid, thunderstorm days are good days for the Vita. The small screen puts out less heat and I'm not concerned about power outages.

[Toogie53]

I revamped my review of The Surge on page 5. I did the first one while at a family BBQ killing time. When I read it today, I realized I wasn't very brief and gave no detail about it. So now there are three paragraphs. If you're interested you can go read it. If you're not, that's cool too. Going forward, I'll try to post better reviews the first time. I think I'm going to do The Sexy Brutale next. It's relatively quick so I might be able to complete the whole thing before I review it. 

[crimsonidol38]

7 hours ago, Myu said:

Djidane from FFIX is one of my favourites. You should try that one

 

I already played FF9 back in 2001, or 2002 and it's one of my favorite Final Fantasys. Don't like Zidane much, but Freya, Vivi and Amarant Coral are my favorite chars. Heck, I even like Quina Quen more than Zidane.  

[crimsonidol38]

Game 2, Review:
Lumines Remastered (PS4)

Previous posts:

Day 1

 

Well, is it Day 7 already? No, but I refuse to play this game for another day as it isn't fun for me and I have already seen every mode. So I rather spend the third day playing a different game (hello FF X  ) than playing this game.

 

I retried the "endless" mode and unlike the first time where I only reached level 20 or so I made it into to level 44 or so. AFAIK the mode goes up to level 105 so it would still be a long way to go (reaching level 44 took me about 25 minutes). I also tried the challenge mode and some of the puzzles but got bored rather fast. What I also noticed while doing this mode are the rather long loading times. Honestly I don't think that Lumines is a game where you should wait perceived 3 to 5 seconds to play a challenge that lasts for about 5 to 15 seconds.

I also replayed the vs CPU-mode once again and I reached the 9th CPU (after ~80 minutes of playtime and several restarts) and I still dislike the combination of sound effects (heck, you can't call that music!) and all those visual bling bling that can be seen on the screen. One can call me a scrub but that's no gameplay I enjoy.

I can't test the 2-player-mode as my gf refuses to play the game with me. Before seeing (and hearing it) she also had interest in it (she also enjoyed Electronic Symphony and already enjoyed the puzzle madness in Puyo Puyo Tetris) but she knows that the combination of visuals and sound effects would stress her out.

 

Stats:

Rating:

Total playing time: ~2.5 hours
Trophies earned: 8 / 30
Completion rate: 15%

Rank: C
Did the game lower my completion? Yes

 

My ratings:

 AWESOME!!!
 Fun to play, sure will continue playing these
 Good while it lasted, but let us just stay friends, kay?
 Be glad you weren't deleted already
  Wait, who are you? I don't know you...oh shit, you are in my trophy list

 

Next game? Don't know yet but I guess it will be something I will like for sure. I choose you Ys Origin!

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #2 - Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory - Final Impression

 

Time played: 4 and a half hours

Trophies Earned: 6/42

 

Since I've no intention of playing more of this today, I'm going to give my opinion on it now.

 

 

The presentation overall is alright, there are however a few things that annoyed me. As usual with these games there's way too much dialogue, to the point where basically a third of the game consists of it. Another issue that ties into this is that sometimes it's voiced, sometimes it isn't. Now that's something I dislike quite a bit. Either you voice it, or you don't, but don't just provide a half-arsed middle ground.

 

The gameplay is pretty standard for these games and doesn't offer anything groundbreaking. You play with a party of 2-(4?) members. The combat is turn-based, and allows you to attack in a specific radius, so you can try and position yourself in a way where you can hit 2 or more enemies at the same time. Then there's HDD mode, which lets you change form and deal more damage. The enemies usually drop healing or crafting items, which you can also find scattered throughout the areas in free roam. Some items are hidden and you'll have to perform a search for them.

 

You can also craft or buy weapons and equipment in general at the hub areas. That's also where you can pick up quests that tend to be the standard variety. Either kill X number of enemies or acquire X number of items. You can also create your own combos, but that's limited by available action points.

 

 

Progress-wise I've gotten as far as Chapter 2, before I started getting Rebirth 1 flashbacks. Suddenly I realised why I stopped where I did in the first game. Essentially the game really wants you to start farming levels early, which is something I'm not a fan of. Actually, I fucking loathe that sort of unnatural progression system. I played normally through the game up to that point, picked up all quests available, went to the specific areas, and killed all the enemies that existed on the map (skipped the respawns), handed in the quests and moved on to the next area and resumed my usual rotation. I got to level 7 and early on in Chapter 2 the game tells you that some enemies are tougher than others and that they differentiate in colour on the minimap. Started to begin battles, picking up items, and got about halfway through the first area. Initiated another battle (with a regular mob), which one-shot me... somehow the mob managed to deal 1.7k damage in one hit. As you can only save at specific spots while in free roam, progress since the last save was lost. I tried again later on, got a bit further, moving up to the second area. Same enemy again, which up to that point never did more than 200 damage, decided to pull another 1-hit kill and that's where I thought fuck this.

 

 

Long story short, I'll be playing something else for the remainder of the day.

[eigen-space]

Final Thoughts

 

Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator
Completion - 67% - A Rank

Playtime - ~10 Hours

 

As mentioned in my prior post, this is a game that I perceived as a pretty hefty grind for what seemed to be a very RNG-dependent trophy list. And this is absolutely true.

 

Most of the trophies I have are pretty easy ones. One is obtained by playing through a tournament, which is 5 duels long. Another is for unlocking 2 characters, which can be done by (1) completing a tournament, (2) completing a tournament without having to retry any duels, (3) winning 3 multiplayer rounds, (4) winning the tournament with 5 different characters (which unlocks a top-secret character needed for a different trophy)... among other unlocks that I haven't necessarily done yet.

My favorite character is Lo Wang, whom you unlock by (2). He has the foulest mouth of them all, often propositioning people with his unique insults... he kind of reminds me of every Samuel L. Jackson character, if every Samual L. Jackson character were super into Asian culture:

Spoiler

 

The phrase here is cutoff, but I'm pretty sure it was meant to say " [...] smells of a demon's asshole and a dead parrot [...]".

 

 

I also have a couple trophies for using very particular phrases, which is where I spent the bulk of my time with this game. Let me tell you... do not play this game while you are tired, otherwise you'll probably end up breaking your controller or tv or... something else. It is VERY easy to get tunnel vision and completely miss building phrases that you're not working on. I personally missed "You are silly, and everyone knows it!" and "A duck hunter probably murdered this poor man!" because I was too focused on trying to build a different phrase at the time (fortunately I didn't screw up and miss out on the hardest phrase to come by, nudge nudge).

 

Still have quite a bit of grinding to do to reach 100 duels and 66 mentions of Satan, though I think I"m about 1/3 of the way through the Satan grind. I'm not keeping track, though.
This will be something I'll come back to when I'm bored. It's not a difficult game by any means, it just gets repetitive and, for people with less patience, probably a bit trying.

 

Overall Difficulty - 1.5/10

Enjoyment - 6.5/10

 

Completion at start of the event: 92.16%

Current completion: 92.69% (+0.53%)

(Worked on completing Atelier Lydie and Suelle between trading insults)

Edited July 6, 2018 by eigen-space

[Beyondthegrave07]

@eigen-space, I played that game on my cousin's Xbox and it's definitely fun to play with friends. I thought the trophies would be easy, but the RNG gods have to be on your side for this plat!

[PerryToxteth]

22 hours ago, dmland12 said:

 

Thanks for the review.  This looks like an interesting game that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.  Board games or video games that are heavily inspired from then do have a certain charm.  Although, they don't seem to do very well with most gamers.  I guess it's probably the randomness (dice).

 

Thanks! For $10, I think it's worth playing. I looked into the developer, Slitherine, and it looks like they have a dozen or so titles on Steam. All of them have the same military board game premise, and some look better than others. 

  Also, they have also released another game on PS4 called Drive to Moscow. Looks like the same thing, except you're trading Shermans for T-34s. Nobody has platted it on PSNProfiles so if you're looking for a milestone, go for it! I hope they continue to port games over, ala Artifex Mundi. 

[Metal Slime King]

Into the 3rd level of Gravity Badgers. It's the perfect game to play while simultaneously tending to my Fallout Shelter, waiting for those 50 raider attacks before I grow my population any further. I've already had 2 different friends on psn message me like "Lol, Gravity Badgers wtf?"

 

3 hours ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

@eigen-space, I played that game on my cousin's Xbox and it's definitely fun to play with friends. I thought the trophies would be easy, but the RNG gods have to be on your side for this plat!

 

Did you know RNGesus was an actual guy that you could pray to? Maybe he can perform miracles but I'm certainly not donating to his "church" of mass Metal Slime slaughter.

 

[DamagingRob]

Final Review- Horizon Zero Dawn

 

So yeah, I haven't played this much since Day 1. Lol. But I did put in a few more hours, and encountered some new game mechanics. If you get close to machine enemies, you can hack them. Then you can hide in the tall grass, while the enemies fight each other. Certain machines can also be hacked, and used as a faster mode of transportation. Along with massive machines you can climb on top of. 

 

Anyways, I think it will be a good game in the end. Great graphics, solid voice acting, and it's fun to play. Just wasn't really in the mood to play it after Steins;Gate. And it may not be as amazing as I thought it would be.. I'll give it a solid for now. 

 

Time played: ~9 hours.

Trophy progress: 16/79 for 16% and an E rank. 

 

 

Bonus game (because @Hemiak can't control me!  ...I'm sorry, please don't ban me. ;w;)- Bloodborne

 

Since I didn't feel like playing Horizon, I figured it was the perfect time to try this. And it did not start out well. ^^; You can find my last status update, and see what I mean by that. I was just getting annoyed after losing all my Blood Echoes (40k+), and feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere.. BUT, eventually, I made it further, picked up some better armor, and leveled up some. And now I've kind of gotten the hang of things, and actually am enjoying it. With all the hard games I've been completing lately, I'm starting to think I may be a bit of a masochist.  But this is certainly a good game.

 

When you start, you'll get to create your character. Something I spent way too much time on, just to find out your character's head is mostly covered, and it didn't really matter what I looked like.  But you'll likely want to at least choose what origin your guy/girl has, as it will affect your stats. 

 

The story is pretty barebones, but you can talk to some NPCs for some voiced dialogue. And may see a cutscene every once in awhile. NPCs will often give you sidequests that you can try to complete. But the main draw is most likely the challenging gameplay.

 

You can probably expect to die a lot in this game. Things can turn bad in a hurry, with enemies taking off huge chunks of your health in a flash. I wish there was a death stat, because I am curious how many times I've died.  And it's not even really the epic boss fights I've had problems with, outside of one. I tried calling for help with that one, but no one seemed to be joining, so I sucked it up and beat it myself. 

 

When you die, you lose all your Blood Echoes, which are points you get for killing enemies. You do have a chance to get them back, though. But it requires getting all the way back to where you died, and picking them up off the ground/killing the enemy that killed you. Dying respawns all the enemies in the area, so it's not always an easy feat. And dying again means they are gone for good. But you do get to keep any items you picked up, and shortcuts you've unlocked. So it never feels unfair.

 

The game has a co-op function, where you can summon other players to help you out. It also opens the door for invaders, though. These are real life players that may try to kill you. Many boss fights also have AI partners you can summon. I've made use of that a few times, to help draw enemy fire off me.

 

There's a hub world, where you can buy and sell items, level up, and upgrade your weapons. Most things cost Blood Echoes, but upgrades require having a certain number of a specific item. And then there's Insight, which can be used to buy things from another shop, or used to call for online help. Having too much of it can also make the game harder? 

 

Fighting for me mostly involves dodge rolling and slicing enemies with my axe. Which can be extended, giving me more range. But takes away the ability to use my secondary weapon. Secondary weapons such as guns can be used to stun enemies, and then you can perform a powerful visceral attack. I'm not very good at pulling these off. :/ Various projectiles in your inventory can also be thrown at enemies. 

 

So yeah, I am liking this game quite a bit. But with the barebones story not giving me a real good reason to care about what I'm doing, I'm not sure if I'll be running out to buy more of these. But I do want to finish this one, and it will probably be my go-to game if I end up not liking any of my other KYC games. I do want to squeeze in GTA V somewhere as well, though. Rating is somewhere between a and a . 

 

Time played:  Too many hours. Lol. No idea since there's no playtime stat, but it's been fairly addictive. 

Trophy progress: 17/40 for 25% and a D rank. 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #3 - Fe - Preview

 

Since I'll be starting this shortly, I'll get my preview out of the way.

 

Well, I don't know much about this game. Saw it at an E3 event and about 5 minutes of gameplay on Youtube and thought it looked great and could be fun to play. I have no idea, if there's combat in this game. What I recall seeing, was some sort of flying or gliding and that's pretty much it.

 

Expectation:

To be honest it's more of a hope than an expectation, as I really wouldn't want this to be just another artsy game like Rime or Aer. I'd like more interaction with the game world and a bit more out of the gameplay mechanics than the aforementioned titles had to offer. Other than that I expect this to be a fairly chill experience.

[MarkusT1992]

Game #2: Super Motherload

 

 

First let me say that I ecpected something very different from this game. I never heared of this game and would never have played it if it wasn't part of PS+. Although it was a PS3 game it has cross buy so I got it on PS4 as well.

I thought it was some kind of 2D side scroller shoot em up but in fact it is a digging game.

 

The gameplay is simple. You control a square robot drill thing and need to dig into the Mars. Hidden in the ground are minerals you need to collect, bring them back up and melt them to earn money to buy upgrades for your various parts. At first you can carry very little and need to go back up often to make room for more. You also have limited fuel. When you run out of it you can't drill anymore but you still can fly up to refill on the surface, although with limited speed. Flying up with fuel is much faster.

Your drill only works left/right and down. That means you have to go the same way up you came down.

Hitting the ground or walls to hard damages your robot's hull but I don't know what happens if it breaks. Maybe it's game over, maybe you just respawn. Never happened to me.

 

You can upgrade all kind of things like your tank, your furnace (which unlocks more ore combinations) or the hull and some more. You also can buy bombs, which you also can find underground. There are differnet kind of bombs like small ones, big ones or T bombs, destroying an T area.

Ore combinations means collecting the right kind of ore in the right order makes a new ore out of it which is worth more than the ingredients. Collecting the same ore in a row without unloading increases your combo which seems to give extra money.

 

I don't know if this game has a real story. There are some radio tansmissions on your way down that suggest that something happened to an eralier crew digging there.

As you get deeper you reach bases of said crew which act as a checkpoint. That means you have everything there you have on the surface so you needn't go all the way up anymore.

After the first base the terrain gets more dangerous. For example there a lava blocks which damage you when you mine them.

 

So far I reached the first base and explored a bit under there. Then my game crashed. I haven't played anymore after the crash so I don't know how much progress was lost. I guess the game saves everytime you unload yor robot.

I had some fun with the game but it is nothing special. It probably is best played in small portions. It's good enought for when you have only little time.

 

There seem to be different characters but again no clue whether they play the same or not. You also can play with up to for players. No info on that as well though.

 

Time played: About 2-3 hours

Trophies: 1/9

Rating: