KYC 777

[dmland12]

Game #2: Trackmania Turbo

Trophies: 32/49 (55%)

Completion: 94.75% (-0.44%, -1.52% from start)

 

Trackmania Turbo was a PS+ game just a few months ago (April, I think).  It's a difficult racing game, and has basically boiled things down to the basics.  There's no upgrading your car or buying a better one and improving your performance that way.  Your car is what it is, so you'd better get good at it!  You're not even racing against other cars, you're just trying to set a good time on each track.  There's 200 tracks in total separated in four different categories (each has a different car you'll have to use for it) as well as by difficulty.

 

I've gotten through the first 100 tracks (though with only a handful of gold medals), and it's clear that this will be a tough one to platinum.  There's a lot that can go wrong on most of the tracks I've played, and I've basically only played what should be the easiest half.  There's the standard racing stuff that can go wrong: messing up your drifting, hitting the walls etc.  But, you can also fail to land a jump if you're not lined up correctly, or fail to jump far enough if you've not got enough speed...  There's also places where you'll need to race in loops and up walls etc.  It's pretty easy to fly off of many of the tracks in general if something goes wrong.  And then of course, you'll need to do better than just not crashing to get a good enough time for the gold medal.

 

Overall, the game plays well and if you like racing games and are up to the challenge it poses you'll probably like it.  The tracks look nice and there's a lot of variety in how they're set up and what you'll need to do.

 

Here's one of the last tracks I played (#93).  I messed up that run up the wall on a lot of previous runs.  This one was far from perfect, but it was good enough to get silver.

[ImBossy83]

#2 Game

 

Spec Ops: The Line

 

After starting with the game that has the highest Metacritic i wanted to check out the low end spectrum of things. Actually i was kind of surprised to find out that Spec Ops only has a 77, because i only ever hear good things about this game. 

 

Why haven't i played this game already?

 

I don't know it just went past me i guess. I knew that this game exists and that it's good but that's about it. I bought the game probably a year ago and i haven't played the game by now because i just can't believe of ever getting the Platinum.

 

Impression

 

You play as a squad leader of 3 US soldiers who are out on a mission to rescue an American war hero and his division out of Dubai, which has fallen into ruins after massive sand storms have made the previously rich country into dissary making it quasi uninhabitable. The only people Still living there are the ones that where too poor to escape and the military. Soon after you and your squad set foot in Dubai you get attacked. And from that point until the point i am right now it's a action packed trip into the ruins of Dubai.

I played for about 4 hours and i got 7 trophies.
My completion went to 54.90% (-0.49%).

 

The verdict

What a great game.My only grip so far is that aming is L1 and shooting R1 with no option to change it to L2, R2. But the story and gameplay... I'm don't know if i ever have the patience to go through fubar difficulty. But i want to at least play through the story once on normal when this event is finished. Up until now i would give it a score somewhere around and 8 or a 9

[xFalionx]

Game #1: Catherine (PS3)

Final Review

Total playtime: about 5 hours

Trophies: 8/50 for a C rank

Completion: 61.94% -> 61.27% | -0.67%

Story:  

The story is very unique and in my opinion the primary reason to play this game. 

Protagonist Vincent finds himself in a weird nightmare the night after his longtime girlfriend Katherine urges him to marry her. Soon, he wakes up to to discover a naked girl, conveniently named Catherine, laying next to him. He then proceeds to lose his shit while making the most magnificent face in the history of animation:

Spoiler

Like a normal person would, he then tells Katherine about his blunder, that he sincerely can't remember anything about what happened that night because he just got too drunk the evening before. What he actually does is keep it a secret, continuing to cheat on Katherine and drinking himself to sleep every night because he just doesn't know how to handle the situation.

Meanwhile, rumor has it that numerous people who cheat are having deadly nightmares that none of them remembers in detail, forcing them to repent for their sins. Then there's the steadily rising amount of people found dead in their beds with mortified faces and unknown causes of death.

 

As the story unravels Vincent gets himself in many bad situations trying to keep his lovers from finding out about each other, some of which really made me cringe. For example Catherine finds one of Katherine's (very long) hairs inside Vincent's bed and asks him who it's from. He then proceeds to explain that he grew a very long hair on his chest for good luck, which must have fallen out. Definitely not from another woman. As the nightmares go on, the nature behind them starts to unravel as well, slowly but surely solving the mystery the game revolves around.  

 

Gameplay: 

The gameplay of the story mode is separated into two main sections. You spend about half of your time in the nightmares where you have to complete stages which are separated into 2-3 levels by scaling up a huge wall of blocks which you have to push and pull in order to build steps you can climb. As the game progresses there are more and more special blocks added to the levels which range from blocks that are heavier/impossible to move, trap blocks that kill you if you can't get off of them quickly enough, blocks that break if you step on them too many times, ice blocks that you can slide on, as well as spring blocks that catapult you into the air. I'm sure there are more as I've only been to stage 5 out of 9 but these keep the gameplay from getting stale as you need to develop new techniques to face the challenges they present. To keep you moving, rows of blocks will slowly but steadily fall, representing a sort-of time limit. Every last level in a stage is a boss level, which has you climbing away from one of Vincent's nightmares. They all have special abilities, move faster than blocks usually fall and they can attack you if you get too close to them, killing you in the process. In between levels are landings, where you can talk to other people in your predicament which you perceive as sheep. You can buy items that help you in the following stages using the points you earned in previous stages and exchange climbing techniques with some of the sheep.

 

The other half of the time will be spent in Vincent's favorite bar, the Stray Sheep, where you can pass time getting drunk, answering texts from back of your lovers on your phone, talking to the people there which happen to be some of the sheep from your nightmares. The split feels similar to Persona 4, where you spent half of the time in dungeons and the other in the protagonists's normal daily life. This keeps the fairly simple but challenging puzzle style gameplay fun and the pacing steady.

 

Besides the story mode, there is also the tower of Babel, which consists of extremely hard and long, randomly generated levels for you to beat as well as the Rapunzel minigame which has the same gameplay of the original game but with the time limit changed for a turn restriction, preventing you from moving blocks as you please. They are both fun ways to change up the gameplay.

 

Visuals: 

While this game is no Assassins Creed, the anime style 3D models have stood the test of time and the drawn cutscenes look pretty. What makes this game stand out is its unique artstyle that reminds me a bit of what I've seen from Persona 5.

 

Audio: 

Very fitting music as well as sound design, nothing memorable though.

 

Difficulty: 

The story on normal difficulty is challenging but fun and it feels rewarding to beat a stage. It's usually a lot easier if you take your time and plan you way up wisely, as it's very easy to ruin a perfectly fine layout of blocks, then losing a lot of time and panicking even more as you see more and more rows of blocks fall beneath you. This is what makes the bosses really hard to beat. They move faster and have very annoying attacks causing you to make unwise decisions. I've easily spent 15-20 continues on some of the bosses because they are just that hard. There is also an easy and a hard difficulty to the game, though I haven't tried these.

 

The platinum on the other hand is extremely hard to get. Most trophies are easy and can just be gotten by following a guide but the deal breakers are the Babel stages. According to the guide, the last Babel stage is almost impossible in singleplayer in the EU/NA version and still very hard in multiplayer. Due to the random nature of the Babel stages, you can't follow a guide for these.

 

Grind: 

The only grind to the platinum trophy is seeing all endings. Getting every last ending requires replaying the last half of the game a multitude of times while taking different decisions throughout the course of the game. Besides that, every trophy is either simple or rare because of the actual difficulty of that requirement.

 

Value/€: 

The story of the game takes about 7-10 hours to complete, depending on how fast you can beat the stages. If you're going for the plat then there's an additional 50 hours on top of that. 

Since the game can often be found on sale for around 4€, that's a phenomenal value right there as long as you also play some of the additional game modes besides the story. It's not worth the regular 20€ in my opinion, though.

 

Overall: 

I really loved playing this game and I'm actually pretty sad that I didn't manage to find more time to play in these 6 days, as I'm really curious as to where the story will go. I especially loved the unique look of the game and was surprised by the gameplay which punishes rash decision and rewards taking your time while still being frantic. It's a fun take on the puzzle genre and I'm sure to come back to it to finish the story and get most of the trophies. I likely won't earn the platinum trophy, though, as the Babel stages will likely break me and I can't take the "easy" way out by using a second controller for the easier local coop variant.

 

 

 

My next game will be MotorStorm RC on PS3 as it won the poll by quite a large margin. I might not be able to play this on PS3 as it turns out that the version listed in my download list that is labeled as PS3/PSVita is actually only the Vita version, though there's an included PS3 demo version along with an item that supposedly unlocks the full version, so we'll see if I'll be able to play it on PS3 or if I'll have to grab my Vita. 

[crimsonidol38]

10 minutes ago, xFalionx said:

My next game will be MotorStorm RC on PS3 as it won the poll by quite a large margin. I might not be able to play this on PS3 as it turns out that the version listed in my download list that is labeled as PS3/PSVita is actually only the Vita version, though there's an included PS3 demo version along with an item that supposedly unlocks the full version, so we'll see if I'll be able to play it on PS3 or if I'll have to grab my Vita. 

 

As MotorStorm RC is a Cross-Buy title you should be able to play it on any of the two system. The Demo + Unlock Key is a rather typical thing for PS3-games.

Be warned though:

The saves are automatically uploaded to the servers for the Cross-Save-functionality but that might not work always. I mainly played the game on the Vita but for some stages I prefered the controller of the PS3 as the Vita's analog sticks are horrible and sometimes I had lost a bit of progress as it didn't sync the progress properly. And I don't know if you care that much about it but the PS3- and PS Vita-version have different trophy stacks, but trophies autopop once you start the other version and fulfilled the requirements. Have fun with the game. IMO one of the more enjoyable games with RC-cars.

[Myu]

Day 6 - Zero Time Dilemma

 

 

Zero Time Dilemma is an escape game following 9 characters divided into 3 teams and locked up in an underground facilty to play a « Decision Game ». The aim is to get access to the central elevator to reach the surface. To unlock the elevator's door, six passwords are needed, one password being awarded for each death. Everything is supervised by Zero who strives to give his guinea pigs plenty of occasions to murder each other.

 

Every 90 minutes, the watch on their wrists injects some kind of drug that puts them to sleep and erases their recent memories.

This game is by no way linear. There's a lot of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff going on and it's very confusing at the beginning but you get used to it eventually. Each team's story is represented by several fragments in no particular order and you can choose which one you want to start with.

 

After each espace room, you usually have to make a choice and this choice has repercussions on the past, the present and the future of every team.

 

ZTD 's story takes place between 999 and Virtue's Last Reward. I've only played VLR and I must say that this one is so much better than its predecessor ! The characters have very unique personalities and the chara-design looks great. It's not nearly as boring and repetitive as VLR. In fact, I haven't even started Trails of Cold Steel yet because I really want to see what's going to happen !

 

Current completion rate : 85.88 (-1.7% since the beginning of the event).

 

 

[DamagingRob]

Day 1- Fallout Shelter

 

...I'm already dying to go back to Bloodborne, and it's because this game is really dull. I probably shouldn't have expected a lot from a mobile game, I guess. This is the type of game you play during your lunch break at work or something. Just a silly time waster. 

 

You basically manage a vault, building things your vault needs, and trying to keep your people alive. There are many different kinds of rooms you can build. Most important are the water, food, and power ones. As time passes, these will be slowly consumed. And if you run out of any of them, it won't be good. You also need to send people to these rooms, for them to work and keep them from running out. 

 

Other rooms include the living quarters, clinics, science labs, storage rooms, and the overseer's office. The living quarters allow you to have more people in your vault. And if you leave a male and female together in one... you might have a little vault dweller running around. Clinics are for making stimpaks, which you use to heal a person's health. Science labs produce radaway, storage rooms let you hold more items, and the overseer's office gives you access to quests. There are many other rooms that I haven't built yet, as well. 

 

Everything takes real time. Producing stuff, traveling to and from quests, and sending people out to explore. And if it wasn't for the fact that you can speed this up by changing the PS4's clock, it would be a really annoying thing to deal with. You'd just have to sit and wait, buy microtransactions, or come back to it later. Of course, doing this can have negative effects, so use at your own discretion. 

 

Quests have you take a team of people in your vault, and just click to have them explore rooms. You'll fight enemies, but are mostly just an observer. Sometimes a prompt will show up, allowing you to try to press X with the right timing for a super attack. And you can heal your people. But that's pretty much the extent of your involvement.

 

While managing your vault, you'll have to deal with various things from time to time. Bugs might pop out of a hole in the floor, raiders may attack the vault, or a fire may break out. Again you don't have much involvement, but can move people around to better deal with the issue. A mysterious man in an overcoat may appear also. A sound effect will notify you of his presence, and clicking on him before he disappears will reward you with some bottle caps. 

 

It's a fairly easy game, as long as you don't play on Survival. I think people stay dead in that mode. On the normal mode, you just spend some bottle caps and they come back to life. Not sure if there's a way to actually "lose" or not. 

 

So yeah, not really feeling this one. Lol. If it wasn't for the timeskip exploit, I don't know if I'd even bother trying to complete it. 

 

Time played: No idea. 4-5 hours maybe.

Trophy progress: 8/35 for 15% and a D rank.

[voodoo_eyes]

13 minutes ago, Fidel said:

Day 1- Fallout Shelter

 

So yeah, not really feeling this one. Lol. If it wasn't for the timeskip exploit, I don't know if I'd even bother trying to complete it. 

 

Time played: No idea. 4-5 hours maybe.

Trophy progress: 8/35 for 15% and a D rank.

 

Sounds like I should start this, before they fix the glitch   .

[DamagingRob]

6 minutes ago, voodoo_eyes said:

Sounds like I should start this, before they fix the glitch   .

Lol. Well, it's something they never fixed on other platforms, so I doubt they will here. But you never know. 

[voodoo_eyes]

6 hours ago, Fidel said:

Lol. Well, it's something they never fixed on other platforms, so I doubt they will here. But you never know. 

 

Well, it's a Fallout game so it would be a first for the franchise, if it ever got patched. Nonetheless, better safe than sorry. It'll also keep me busy until I start the 4th game, as I believe I'm almost finished with Fe (except for the collectible grind).

[Lars]

Today i will play my first game from the event: God of War.

My expectations are to be blown away by this game, however i haven't played any game from this serie so far

[Metal Slime King]

I've been enjoying Fallout Shelter without timeskipping or gaming crates or any other manipulations. I've just been popping into it, setting it back into a wait state then popping out to play something else.

[DamagingRob]

1 hour ago, Metal Slime King said:

I've been enjoying Fallout Shelter without timeskipping or gaming crates or any other manipulations. I've just been popping into it, setting it back into a wait state then popping out to play something else.

If you don't mind taking months to finish, that's probably the right way to go about it. It doesn't seem like the type of game you want to play for many hours in a row. I'm just not that patient.

[crimsonidol38]

Game 3, Day 1
Ys Origin (PS4)

 

Some may know the Action-JRPG-series Ys. In this series you take control of the red-haired swordsman and adventurer Adol Christin, who tends to get in trouble in every new country he arrives at (sinking boats and getting amnesia in the meantime), just to rescue the local citizens, seeing new landscapes and breaking the hearts of every (blue-haired) woman around him.

 

Ys Origin is a bit different though as Adol doesn't take the main role in here (he's just an unlockable bonus character). Instead you get to know the background story of what evolves into Ys 1 and 2 several hundred years later. The story of Ys Origin resolves around the twin goddesses Feena and Reah, who founded the land of Ys. Due to some circumstances the inhabitants had to flee from demons and they lifted a shrine into the sky, just to realize that the two goddesses fleed soon after. A rescue team returned to the demon-infested grounds and is now searching for the two goddesses, mainly searching one big tower of at least 40 floors (IIRC) which the demons build to reach the floating shrine.

This is the part where the player takes control as he can choose between two characters which travel through that demon tower. There's the battle-axe wielding Yunica Tovah on the one hand and Hugo Fact, a magician with assisting eye (?) projectiles on the other hand. Yunica is kind-hearted young knight apprentice and she's really good friends with the goddesses whereas Hugo Fact seems a bit more logical and cold-hearted, but both have in common that they have to suffer from their family's legacy. There's also a third character but that will only be unlocked once you finish the other two. I just want to say that I prefered that story and gameplay the most back then.

 

The gameplay of Ys Origin is quite basic. You slash your way through hordes of demons while climbing up the tower to find out the location of Lady Feena and Reah. While doing so you find several new items to equip, new abilities to learn and also some random friends and foes whom you can interact with. The gameplay is rather similar to Ys: Oath in Felghana or The Ark of Napishtim as you only play with one character the whole time (unlike Seven, Celceta or Lacrimosa of Dana where you fight with a team of up to three people). But at least Ys Origin doesn't you that infamous bumping system of Ys 1 and 2 where you have to run in the enemy to hit them. Here you just press the -button to do basic attacks,  to activate one of three special skills you can find (like a whirlwind) or  to activate some kind of hypermode with additional attack damage. When fighting enemies they might drop some small shards which you can collect. Those either give you a small XP-boost, or increase the attack- or defense-multiplier which wears off after some time. There are also some skill points you can gain and which you can use to increase your armor a little bit or to improve skills like a shorter cooldown phase, or better healing from herbs. Speaking about healing: There's only two (or three?) ways to replenisch your health. The first way is to find one of the statues where you can save the game. The other way is to collect the herbs which may drop when killing an enemy. (The third way which I'm not sure about: Leveling up). There's no possibility to keep healing items so when you fight bosses you have to constantly watch out for your health.

 

Yesterday I played for about two hours and like I did on PC back in 2014 I decided to start with Yunica first, as I prefer to beat up my enemies right from the front, even though it's the far more riskier way while going for the bosses. I traversed through the first section of the tower which was rather basic and also finished the first larger boss. I died the first time I attempted him as I was overwhelmed by one of his fire attacks but afterwards I decided to leveled up once and he was easy afterwards. Afterwards I was able to enter the second part of the tower which mostly consists of llooded sections.

 

So far I'm enjoying the game but I really hate the UI of the PS4-version as the text in the menues seems rather blurry and I have to admit that I dislike the arrangement of the UI as compared to the Steam-version.

Steam:

Spoiler

 

PS4:

Spoiler

 

Seeing the HP-amount in the bar is a bit distracting. I personally prefer to see it right beside the bars. It's no big deal but it still annoys me a bit. Although I have to say that seeing that screenshot from Steam I have to say that the color scheme there was somehow crap, too.

 

What I really like so far is the music Combined with the action-packed gameplay this really makes me get hyped all the time. Songs like the game's main theme (Genesis Beyond the Beginning) or the boss theme (Scars of the Divine Wing) really know how to intensify the atmosphere:

Spoiler

 

 

I guess if it wouldn't be for the fact that I really enjoy the series' gameplay I would solely play it for Falcom's awesome soundtrack. 

Edited July 8, 2018 by Crimson Idol

[xFalionx]

21 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

As MotorStorm RC is a Cross-Buy title you should be able to play it on any of the two system. The Demo + Unlock Key is a rather typical thing for PS3-games.

Be warned though:

The saves are automatically uploaded to the servers for the Cross-Save-functionality but that might not work always. I mainly played the game on the Vita but for some stages I prefered the controller of the PS3 as the Vita's analog sticks are horrible and sometimes I had lost a bit of progress as it didn't sync the progress properly. And I don't know if you care that much about it but the PS3- and PS Vita-version have different trophy stacks, but trophies autopop once you start the other version and fulfilled the requirements. Have fun with the game. IMO one of the more enjoyable games with RC-cars.

Thanks for telling me. I was mostly concerned because I got the came as part of a small bundle of trashy games that came with my incredibly huge 8GB Vita memory card (which was surprisingly a little cheaper than the usual 8GB prices...) and I thought that maybe they were cheap enough to only unlock a non-crossbuy Vita version or something. Another concern would probably be that the PS3 demo was smaller than the actual Vita version but it seems like it's just a small game as it's working fine on PS3 now. 

 

I'll keep it short, since I'm more than half done with the plat already but here follow my first thoughts:

 

Game #2: MotorStorm RC (PS3)

1st day

Total playtime: about 6 hours and 30 minutes

So here's a game that I've had no high expectations for whatsoever. It was actually one of the very first modern Sony games I've owned since I got it along with my Vita (see above) which kickstarted my renewed love for Sony's consoles that I had long since forgotten after the PS2 became irrelevant. I did have a PSP but that got seriously underused as it never compared to the entertainment I could get on my PC, while a PS3 was always way too expensive for me. 

 

Of course this was just one of those trashy games I never even took the effort to try, especially because of the fact that it has RC cars. But in the end, my extremely low expectations were shattered with a fairly fun and simple racing game that resembles arcade racers more than it does the modern realistic racing games of the time. That's even more to my liking, as I prefer simple driving mechanics over complex simulation.

 

There's four different locations with very different feels as well as four different types of race: there's your standard race where you have to take the first place in order to win, pursuit, where you have to overtake a set number of cars in a certain time, hot laps, where you're trying to get a certain single-lap time as well as drift, which is by far the most unique of the gamemodes. This one requires you to gain points by performing enough long, fast drifts in a certain amount of time. All in all, these change things up enough to keep the game fun over long playsessions.

 

The only gripes I have with the game is that all of the available camera modes feel weird to play in. It's bearable but it certainly takes away from the fun for me. The other point is that the controls are actually too simple. You use  to brake,  to drive and the left analog stick to steer, that's all you need. Personally I'd love to have seen some sort of handbrake on  because drifting in this game is pretty annoying without it. I guess this might be some RC thing though. After all RC cars don't usually have handbrakes but it's still annoying.

 

In the end, the game turned out to be a nice surprise, although I'd have preferred to stay with Catherine a little longer. Anyways, my full review will probably follow fairly soon as I've earned most of the medals already and only really need to bring down my overall times for the platinum after that.

Edited July 8, 2018 by xFalionx
Spelling...

[crimsonidol38]

2 hours ago, xFalionx said:

In the end, the game turned out to be a nice surprise, although I'd have preferred to stay with Catherine a little longer.

 

This sounds more funny to me than it should be.  Just had to do this:

Spoiler

 

I would say: Go for it.

[DamagingRob]

1 hour ago, Crimson Idol said:

This sounds more funny to me than it should be.  Just had to do this:

  Hide contents

 

I would say: Go for it.

Replace Catherine with some creepy thing from Bloodborne and Motorstorm RC with the Fallout guy, and you have me.  And I don't know if I needed convincing, but Ys Origin will be bought from this huge sale we have going on. 

[xFalionx]

3 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

 

This sounds more funny to me than it should be.  Just had to do this:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I would say: Go for it.

I had a good laugh thanks to that, I guess my careful choice of words did not go to waste on you.  

 

I might actually switch back to Catherine at some point... I'm almost done collecting medals but the last few challenges are way harder than my lousy racing skills can manage. I've come to a point where I'm spending 20-30 minutes replaying a 11 second lap in order to knock .032 seconds off my time, while either waiting 10 seconds for a retry or just driving through the whole map again despite knowing that I have no chance of making up that time again after I mess up at the start of the course. It's starting to get very frustrating, but I'm at least gonna finish all of the challenges. I don't know how much time I'll end up having to shave off all courses for the final set of trophies but I'll have to wait and see once I've got my medals.

 

[Kevvik]

A bit slow in posting my reviews but here goes...

 

Game #2: The Sexy Brutale

 

Final Impressions

 

Time played: 8.5 hrs

 

So, I completed this hidden little gem. I really appreciate the work that was put into this even if the cards felt a little grindy in tracking down for the plat.  While I sort of suspected where things were going, how they got there was pretty cool.  The game was just the right length for the main story and the time restart mechanic made exploring enjoyable, rather than a chore. Looking around for all the little conversations going on simultaneously was kinda neat.

 

Ultimately, it was a fun go even if my completion rate didn't drop.

 

Trophies earned: 19/19, 100% for S rank 

Final score: 7.5/10

Completion Rate: 80.70% (-0.09% for the event)

 

Next up: Game #3: Until Dawn

 

I'll get the initial review up later. Gotta run.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Kevvik

[crimsonidol38]

12 hours ago, Fidel said:

Replace Catherine with some creepy thing from Bloodborne and Motorstorm RC with the Fallout guy, and you have me.  And I don't know if I needed convincing, but Ys Origin will be bought from this huge sale we have going on. 

Just be warned though. Ys Origin can be very repetitive. If someone aims for the plat, they have to do at least 6 playthroughs, with three of them being on the highest difficulty and unlike Celceta or Lacrimosa of Dana your stats don't carry over to a new run so you have to play that difficulty from level 1 onwards, which can be quite annoying. One playthrough isn't really long though. I read that people may only need 6 hours if they are familiar with the game and up to 10-15 hours if they have to level up and struggle a lot.

 

10 hours ago, xFalionx said:

I might actually switch back to Catherine at some point... I'm almost done collecting medals but the last few challenges are way harder than my lousy racing skills can manage. I've come to a point where I'm spending 20-30 minutes replaying a 11 second lap in order to knock .032 seconds off my time, while either waiting 10 seconds for a retry or just driving through the whole map again despite knowing that I have no chance of making up that time again after I mess up at the start of the course. It's starting to get very frustrating, but I'm at least gonna finish all of the challenges. I don't know how much time I'll end up having to shave off all courses for the final set of trophies but I'll have to wait and see once I've got my medals.

 

IIRC some of the challenges can be a PITA because you have to drive with some of the faster cars and it just felt like you were sliding/bouncing from one corner to another but I'm sure you will get used to it. But be glad that those laps and races are rather short. Now imagine you would play a "real" racing game and had to do a good time on a longer track which takes about 2 to 3 minutes (or the Nordschleife, which can take from 6 to 8 minutes depending on the vehicle). ^^

 

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #3 - Fe - Revuew

 

 

Since I got the plat, I might just as well give the review on this one already.

 

Fe is best described as an exploratory platforming adventure. The world consists of a handful of areas with snowy mountains, swamps, and forests. You play as a little furry thing that kind of looks like a mix of a fox and a squirrel.

 

The main path is fairly linear and navigates you throw the various areas, by having points of interest highlighted on your map. You can drift of the beaten path to explore and find collectibles, but a lot of them won't be reachable until you get upgrades. Those collectibles are crystals, that are used to buy those upgrades actually, and it only works because you really only need the first two to get most of them.

Speaking of upgrades, there are about 6 of them. The first ones you'll get are climbing trees and gliding which are essential to move around in the world and get to new areas. The remaining upgrades aren't really interesting nor useful for the most part.

 

The gimmick of this game is that you can "speak" with other animals/plants. in order to progress through the game. You'll have to sync up the "voice" in order to persuade animals to help and flowers to show their usefulness. This is also something that is partially incorporated into the platforming. There are also a few stealth sections, which could just as well not have been included and it wouldn't have made a difference.

 

Presentation-wise it's a bit of a mixed bag. The world looks nice, but it's often set in just two or three colour palettes. which varies from area to area. After a while it becomes unpleasant to look at. The music seemed to come and go, which was a bit odd. About halfway through the game it started to show some minor performance issues, with random lag spikes popping up here and there. Not much of an issue, unless you're gliding at that specific moment and it suddenly throws you of course. Another thing that interfered with the movement was the camera at specific occasions. The camera likes to focus on a point of interest at times, it doesn't stop you from moving while doing so though. So it can happen that you're preparing for a jump, and the camera decides to jerk around to a different directions to focus on a bird or something, resulting you to faceplant the ground.

 

In the end it was another artsy title that was alright, but nothing special. It's one of those games that doesn't give you and actual ending/meaning to what's going on, but leaves you making assumptions. Takes roughly 6 hours to finish and another 4 hours or so, to get all the collectible nonsense out of the way. Word of advice, under no circumstances use the collectibles guide from the trophy guide on this site, it's awful. Instead check Youtube for one that has an individual guide for each area and save yourself a lot of grief.

 

 

I might swap the game order around a bit, as I don't think I'm up for another exploration game this soon. So it's likely that I'll be playing Utawarerumono instead of Solus Project as the 4th game.

[xFalionx]

9 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

IIRC some of the challenges can be a PITA because you have to drive with some of the faster cars and it just felt like you were sliding/bouncing from one corner to another but I'm sure you will get used to it. But be glad that those laps and races are rather short. Now imagine you would play a "real" racing game and had to do a good time on a longer track which takes about 2 to 3 minutes (or the Nordschleife, which can take from 6 to 8 minutes depending on the vehicle). ^^

 

Yeah, that's exactly where I'm struggling right now. The last 16 challenges require you to do hot laps with the supercar which is extremely fast and slows down to a crawl whenever you touch a wall. Now with the rather extreme nature of the courses and the shitty camera angles it's next to impossible not to hit any of the barriers in your turns, which would be fine if the ghost times weren't that precise. If you mess up a single turn it's basically over for any of the short courses, even if you only touch a barrier slightly it's almost impossible to make up the difference afterwards. If this happens at the start of the race you're faced with the decision of restarting or just keeping going as both take a similar amount of time. The annoying thing about restarting is that you're just sitting there waiting for that damn traffic light to count down. Keeping going is equally annoying as I tend to ace the rest of the race, nearly catching up to the damn gold time, cursing at myself for messing up the beginning. On the longer courses a single mistake doesn't make that much of a difference and it's often possible to win even after making a minor mistake.

 

I guess the most annoying part is that I spend as much time, if not more, waiting and/or doing useless things as I do for meaningful attempts to win. This leads to a bunch of frustration and my usual comparison to Super Meat Boy, the only game I know of where you can die countless times and still have a fun experience because each death loses you seconds and you can instantly start over. No need to wait for an arbitrary countdown or to finish a lost race. Of the 40 minutes I spend on a single challenge, I spend around 20 waiting and that's just not fun, especially if you've been repeating the same 11 seconds over and over again during those 40 minutes. 

 

Anyways, I hope you're having fun with Ys, I've been considering some of the earlier games of the franchise for a while.

Edited July 9, 2018 by xFalionx

[Toogie53]

Trophies: 19 of 19 (10%)

Time: 6-8 hours

Rating: 7/10

 

Time for my third game, The Sexy Brutale! While the name is quite weird, it suits the game; which is actually very quirky and quite fun. You're dropped into a big mansion/casino. All you really have to go on is that the staff of the mansion are plotting the deaths of the guests.You're supposed to save them. In your favor, you have the ability to rewind time and start the day over at any point. So you start off following people around and peeping through keyholes. For my first couple, I just followed people until they died. Then rewound time and tried to figure out how I can foil that death. This isn't in the game, but an example would be, if you saw someone slip on a banana peel and fall down the stairs to their death; you could rewind time and pick up the banana peel, or perhaps go to the kitchen and hide the bananas so the person couldn't ever eat one in the first place. Things like that. When you save someone, you inherit a power from them. You can inherit the ability to pick locks, for example. After that, when you reset the day, you keep the power and you can now go through doors you couldn't before.

 

Art-wise, the game is pretty to look at it. It's highly stylized and will hold up well for years to come. I really thought music fit the game quite well. The music is kind of awesome. The physical edition came with a copy of the soundtrack. However, depsite it being good, I just don't see myself ever putting it on and listening to it on its own. The most memorable is the track that plays in the casino area and the menus, which is kind of a jazz piece with some techno bass in it (video below). Gameplay-wise, it's actually kind of boring. If you're not sucked in by the mystery, this will be a slog. You are pretty much just going from room to room and back again trying to solve puzzles and uncover the cause of events. There is not much action beyond opening doors and picking up items. I had a lot of fun piecing things together. I didn't think the pay off was always worth the effort though. Also, even if you're drawn in, towards the end, some stuff was quite linear. It seems like each room is only important once in the narrative, so you could just rush through room where you figured out whats special with it. If you're fast, smart, and/or lucky you can complete the story without a guide in a few hours. I played across multiple days. I think it took me about 6 or 7 and then a bit of clean-up on collectibles after that. I used a trophy guide to make collectible hunting easier. I had gotten 75% during the story portion. I think the rest would be doable without a guide, if you took enough time. The people in the game seem to drop hints about where they are, if you are in the right place at the right time. I think you'd find them all if you systematically followed each person through the mansion for the whole day. Maybe if you systematically went through each room thoroughly you'd get it too. The only tricky part is a few rely on you being in a room before or after an event has occurred. But its definitely a decent game. I'd recommend it, unless you're not a fan of mysteries. 

 

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by Toogie53

[DamagingRob]

11 hours ago, Crimson Idol said:

Just be warned though. Ys Origin can be very repetitive. If someone aims for the plat, they have to do at least 6 playthroughs, with three of them being on the highest difficulty and unlike Celceta or Lacrimosa of Dana your stats don't carry over to a new run so you have to play that difficulty from level 1 onwards, which can be quite annoying. One playthrough isn't really long though. I read that people may only need 6 hours if they are familiar with the game and up to 10-15 hours if they have to level up and struggle a lot.

Well, I'm not super obsessed with Platinuming every game I play, though I do often try. Lol. If I don't feel like playing it 6 times, it'll just meet the same fate as Chain of Memories.  But I haven't been one to shy away from a challenge as of late. 

 

I gotta say, if Bloodborne gets a sequel, I might actually buy it. And I'll probably grab the DLC if it goes on sale again. Liked it way more than I thought I would, and am currently one trophy away from the Plat. Although, that trophy is probably the hardest one in the game..

[voodoo_eyes]

16 minutes ago, Fidel said:

I gotta say, if Bloodborne gets a sequel, I might actually buy it. And I'll probably grab the DLC if it goes on sale again. Liked it way more than I thought I would, and am currently one trophy away from the Plat. Although, that trophy is probably the hardest one in the game..

 

Sounds like you'll have some catching up to do and blast through the other Souls games .

[DamagingRob]

11 minutes ago, voodoo_eyes said:

Sounds like you'll have some catching up to do and blast through the other Souls games .

I think I'm okay with just playing Bloodborne and its possible sequel(s).