Kill Your Completion ∞

[PerryToxteth]

KYC 8

Game No. 2

Detention 

 

 

Alright, we'll try this again after losing my review a few days ago...

 

Final Thoughts: Best way to describe this game's genre is horror/history/ David Lynch.

  The horror aspect isn't jump scares so dependent in campy movies like Friday the 13th, but more of an overall creepy feeling heavily pushed by the score of the game.    

  The History comes in that the game is set in a primary school during the White Terror period. Taiwan, like other countries during the Cold War period, had a Communist scare and incarcerated/tortured/executed thousands of its citizens.

  The David Lynch aspect occurs in the game in that like most of his movies, your mind is not going to be in a good place while watching/ playing. This isn't a complete mind-fucker like Lost Highway, but it's similar to Blue Velvet where feelings of uneasiness, perturbed, disturbed, disheartening is the overall vein and a sense of needing to take a shower usually hits you when finished.

   I put the above genre categories in order of prevelance in the game. Detention definitely plays as a horror game first, with history as a secondary theme. I find that to be a bit of a bummer in that this period of history isn't well known outside of Taiwan, and the developers really had an opportunity to make others aware of the state-sanctioned terror that citizens lived under for decades. Unbelievably, Taiwan was under martial law for almost four decades!

  Instead, the developers went for having the gamer feel a smidgen of what the White Terror vicitims must have felt with paranoia, helplessness, victimization. It is conveyed quite well with an eerie, industrial drone-like background audio, very reminiscent of the score in Lynch's Eraserhead.

  Besides book-burnings, terror and torture, the game also incorporates more personal cultural taboo subjects. Again, you aren't exactly happily tip-toeing-through-the-tulips in this one! 

Gameplay: A mostly 2D side-scrolling point-and-click game. The path is usually pretty obvious because you don't collect many items to use. There are collectibles but because there is such a minimal amount of stuff to interact with, they aren't that tough to find. That said, I always have trouble in minimal interaction games because I often overlook things and sure enough, in this game I get majorly stuck. Turns out, I didn't interact with a certain item but that was because it didn't highlight up like the other items you can interact with.  I only used a walkthrough in the last chapter because there is a certain number of things you need to do in order to unlock one specific ending that's tied to a gold trophy. Screw up in any fashion and you get the other ending. So I figured I'd give it a go and if I screwed up, I would get a second chance without having to do it a third time. And lucky enough, I got it first try. 

Conclusion: Every once in awhile, I enjoy dark, macabre, film noir type of adventures whether that is through cinema, literature or I guess, gaming now. Detention definitely takes you down the wormhole, but it does it well and in a strange sense, is able to respect and salute the history it is disseminating in its story. 

Another good Voodoo recommendation! 

 

Next Up: God of War (PS3)

[voodoo_eyes]

7 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

KYC 8

Game No. 2

Detention 

 

 

 

Conclusion: Every once in awhile, I enjoy dark, macabre, film noir type of adventures whether that is through cinema, literature or I guess, gaming now. Detention definitely takes you down the wormhole, but it does it well and in a strange sense, is able to respect and salute the history it is disseminating in its story. 

Another good Voodoo recommendation! 

 

Glad you liked the game for the most part. That said, it just so happens that I have another recommendation . It's another indie game I've recently finished and it's been on sale quite a few times recently (at least in the EU). It's Beholder Complete Edition, which is set in a totalitarian State setting. You play as a landlord that gets tasked by the government to spy and profile on your tenants. There is some micromanaging to be done in this game, as you'll have a time limit to complete most of those tasks. Same goes for mini tasks, that you can get when speaking to the tenants. There are different ways of tackling each situation and as a result there are several endings. It took me a while to get into it and used to the time constraints, but it won me over after playing through it a few times and I ended up enjoying it a lot.

[ImBossy83]

Bonus Game #1

 

 

I was a little bit disappointed when i saw that this game doesn't have a Platinum but when the first reviews came out and said that it was basically just more of the same i was sold. I know that it may not seem like the biggest compliment but Hitman Season 1 was my favorite Game of 2017.

 

I always had and affinity for the series since i played the original back in the days on PC. And that affinity held up even though a lot of the entries in the series weren't that great. But especially Hitman Blood Money is one of my favorite games of all times. 

 

With that all said I started the game and i love the fact that they included the season 1 as dlc if you already own it. Especially because it gives me a reason (Trophies) to revisit them. I played for about 5 hours and managed to complete a good part of the initial Level and the second level as well and i also replayed the prolog. The reviews where right it's basically more of the same and i love it. I'm going to continue playing this came so my finale review will be much later this month.

 

Playtime: 5 hours

Trophies: 16/118 Rank B

Completion: 53.83%(-0.93%)
Enjoyment: 10/10

[xFalionx]

Game #3: Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines (PSVita)

1st day

Total playtime: about 2 hours and 30 minutes

 

The story of Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines begins as one day in 1119 in Kyouto, former capital of Japan, the four instruments of the gods suddenly vanish. As a result disasters plague the capital and divine festivals can no longer be held without the instruments. To appease the gods, the emperor has the clan that was supposed to protect them sacrificed. That just happens to be your clan. After the sacrifice one of the god descends from heaven in order to give you the gift of life again because he didn‘t agree with the choice of the emperor, or maybe he was just bored, you know how gods are... anyways, turns out that you’ve not only been killed but also cursed so that everyone in your bloodline can only live for two years and the only way for you to procreate is with other cursed clan members or gods. Turns out that the latter is actually pretty easy because you can get devotion by killing demons and then there are some gods that are cheaper than others. 

 

Gameplay wise, it’s a standard turn based JRPG. The dungeons so far seem pretty similar to those of Persona 4. There’s many dungeons comprised of multiple floors with varying enemies. Enemies are shown walking around in the dungeon and you have to walk into them to engage them. If you walk into their back, you get to attack first, if they walk into your back they get to attack first. You fight with three of your clan members that can have many different classes that use different equipment and attack in a different way. There are classes that can hit every enemy in the front row, some that can hit an enemy and the one behind it, some that can only target a single enemy and some that can hit them all but don’t deal that much damage.  

 

Since your clan members only live for two years there are some heavy time based mechanics, time passes in dungeons and while in battle, as well as for certain actions in your town. There are different events based on time, including the only way to fight story bosses: a demon festival that spawns a portal in a dungeon which you have to find and enter within that month in order to fight the boss. So far I’ve fought the first boss and it turned out to be surprisingly easy, especially because a normal demon almost killed me in one hit before I got there.

 

Besides that there’s also some management aspects like upgrading weapon shops, holding the ceremony required to make some new clan members as well as travelling to the territory of other clans to buy equipment, adopt some of their member into your clan, or make love with their gods. Apparently you can also attack them and try to take over their clan but I didn’t try that yet. With all these activities getting between you and the dungeons, it’s good that you have a little weasel assistant called Kouchin (that turns into a little weasel girl when you’re in the town, for some reason) to plan these for you, should you choose to task her with that. She can also help out in battle from time to time by casting support spells.

 

So far I’m really liking the soundtrack as well as the art style which take some heavy influence of traditional Japanese music and artwork. Interestingly enough, the art style manages to combine the default 3D anime character models as you tend to see in most of these kinds of games with an Okami-like 3D brush drawn style for the dungeons as well as a cutout Japanese traditional artworks for the enemies in battles which are animated and remind me a bit of Paper Mario. Sounds like a weird combination but works really well together.

 

Another thing I really like about this game is that they don't just let you pick a difficulty, they let you pick the pace of the game entirely. For example there's an option that grants you a lot more rewards for battles but in return, months will also be much shorter, leading to less grinding. The game lets you change this at any time and even specifies an estimated completion time. I've never seen a game do this before but I really love the idea because it lets you tailor the game to the way you like to play it and, while other RPGs might tell you to go grind 10 hours, this game gives you the option to do less than that, if you don't feel like it. By shortening the months, it also provides an entirely different challenge than stronger enemies would pose, as your characters only have very limited time to live.

 

There's a whole lot more for me to talk about but I'm dragging this out too much again. Obviously, since I bought this game based on a KYC review, I knew what I was getting into but I'm enjoying this at least as much as I was thinking I'd be, if not more.

 

Also, since I've spent my entire train commute writing this out I'm wondering, do you guys prefer long and detailed reviews, or should I rather write ones that are short and on point? I totally went and spent more time than I was planning to on this review, so I'm just curious.

[PerryToxteth]

KYC 8 Game No. 3

God of War (PS3)

 

 

Playing Time: 5 hours

Trophies Earned: 14/36 ( 24% D ranking)

Final Thoughts: So God of War is a hack-and-slash action game where you are the character Kratos, a Spartan warrior and..wait? Why am I telling you this?!? Of course you already know this! This game is nearly 15 years old!! I can hear you right now yelling, "Perry, I was playing that game on PS2 when I was in diapers!"

  I digress. Yes, not only did I somehow missed the GofW trireme when it sailed on the PS2, but then I failed to play the re-release of it on PS3, until just last week. So no review is really needed, instead I will ask all of you a few questions:

- Are the sequels as fun as the original? (I hope so!)

- Are there any turds in the series I should skip?

- Will Challenge of the Gods really make me punch myself in the nuts?

 

  I'm really having fun with this game. It's a hark back to games of yesteryear because frankly, it IS a game from yesteryear. This title came out in 2005 and you can tell how old it is with the shoddy graphics in the cutscenes. Surprisingly, the gameplay graphics on the PS3 are quite good so they remastered it well. 

  It reminds me a lot of Prince of Persia games, right down to collecting red and blue orbs. Only PoP is heavy on platforming, light on action fighting: and GofW is the opposite with the majority of it combat, with some platforming sprinkled in here and there. I was pretty worried to start this game because I tend not to like combo-based fighting. I still have a hangover from one of the Batman Arkham games. But I like this in that it's a couple of button pushes, not 25 consecutive sequence ones. It is funny though, I have not had to button-mash for years until I was killing one of the minotaurs. Let's just say my button-mashing skills have waned in the last decade and thank God game developers have now steered away from that. 

  The other annoying old school gameplay concept is the save points. You really take for granted the auto save points in today's games and there were two sections in GofW that I lost progression in because I turned the game off w/o getting to a save point. 

Conclusion: A fun one, and most worthy is being in a Gaming Hall of Fame. 

 

Next Up: Pic-A-Pix Color

 

[DamagingRob]

Game #4

Blue Estate- Final Review

 

Chihuahuas humping your leg, forcing your aim to become erratic until you shook them off were introduced. Lol. Each level gives you 2 weapons. A pistol with unlimited ammo, and a more powerful weapon unique to each level. The catch for the latter is you run out of ammo, unless you grab the ammo pickups by swiping the touchscreen when they appear. Timing is pretty short, so I got into the habit of doing a circular motion on the touchpad whenever I wasn't shooting (this is also a great method for getting Speed Demon on quicktime actions most of the time, and knocking off the boss trophies). 

 

The final level was something else.. Even with double the lives I had in the previous six levels, I was getting Game Overs. :/ When you get a Game Over, you get a life added to your total, until you get to 10. Then it caps out, and you simply restart the level with 10. Gave up yesterday, went back to previous levels, found and shot all the collectibles, and got 4 stars on them. Then tried it again today and beat the game, nabbing the last 4 star rating in the process. But I still used up almost all my lives. :/ The difficulty spike is insane.. I shudder to think what it's like on the Crazytrain setting. 

 

I tried that difficulty and got a Game Over in the first level, so... might just leave that trophy for now. If I had someone to play with, it'd probably be easier. 

 

Other than the final level, I found nothing particularly difficult. Even the 4-star ratings were fairly easy, once I knew what to do. Doesn't matter how much you die, or what your score is. Just have to get 4 stars in 6 different categories. Collectibles, nutshots, accuracy, melee kills, and quick gestures all seemed pretty easy to get. Then I just needed enough warning shot or headshot kills for a sixth. 

 

So yeah, had a good time playing this and don't regret the $3 and change I spent on it. Will give it a rating. Second favorite game of the event, so far. 

 

Time played: 10-12 hours? 

Trophy progress: 12/13 for 71% and an A rank. 

Did it lower my completion? Maybe? I think it was 91.51% before this game, so that would be the smallest drop ever. But a drop. Lol.

Edited November 12, 2018 by DamagingRob

[dizzyshadow]

Moonlighter

 

 

 

This is a game I’ve had my eye on for some time but it’s just had a physical release, so I thought I would grab it.

 

You play as Will of Moonlighter, a merchant in town that was built to service the needs of heroes exploring the nearby dungeons, however the dungeons were deemed too dangerous and closed and so the town has fallen into ruin. But Will has heard that there is a secret to the dungeons and is determined to solve it, at the same time restore the fortunes of the town. While exploring you discover that there are 4 dungeons and each has a guardian, defeating the guardian gives a key, and earning all 4 keys will unlock the mythical 5^th dungeon. At the start only the first (Golem) dungeon is available.

 

Dungeons are procedurally generated and so change every time, the aim is to get to the end and defeat the guardian, but at first this is not achievable, you need to focus on gathering supplies and escaping using your pendant before you die. You then use these supplies to upgrade your gear or you sell them for money, this takes me to the 2^nd part of the game, you don’t just take items to a shop to sell them, you actually have to run the shop and sell them to other townsfolk, this seems to boil down to ag game of trial and error in setting the right price based on their facial expressions. However the tutorial is rather poor mostly done via the way of diagrams which aren’t very clear, so there is a lot left to guess work and I still don’t really feel like I’ve got a handle on everything so its possible there is much more to it.

 

after 4 nights of this its starting to get a bit repetitive but i do feel like i'm making progress so i'll have to go back to this to see what happens.

 

 

Playtime: 7 hours

Trophies : 8/57

Rating : 

Completion : 55.36% (-0.54%)

 

Next Up: Moss

[voodoo_eyes]

3 hours ago, xFalionx said:

Also, since I've spent my entire train commute writing this out I'm wondering, do you guys prefer long and detailed reviews, or should I rather write ones that are short and on point? I totally went and spent more time than I was planning to on this review, so I'm just curious.

 

Do them how you prefer to write them.

1 hour ago, PerryToxteth said:

KYC 8 Game No. 3

God of War (PS3)

 

 

  I digress. Yes, not only did I somehow missed the GofW trireme when it sailed on the PS2, but then I failed to play the re-release of it on PS3, until just last week. So no review is really needed, instead I will ask all of you a few questions:

- Are the sequels as fun as the original? (I hope so!)

- Are there any turds in the series I should skip?

- Will Challenge of the Gods really make me punch myself in the nuts?

 

 

The sequels are even better.

Not a single game is bad (haven't played the newest though).

There will be about 2 challenges in each of the games that are annoying to get through. Still it shouldn't take hours upon hours to beat them eventually.

[DamagingRob]

1 hour ago, PerryToxteth said:

- Are the sequels as fun as the original? (I hope so!)

- Are there any turds in the series I should skip?

- Will Challenge of the Gods really make me punch myself in the nuts?

Like Voodoo says, it only gets better after the first. Even the PSP games are great, with one of them having one of the best stories in the series (imo). If I had to pick a weak entry, though, it would definitely be Ascension. Just not as fun as the others. But still worth playing. 

 

Depends. Lol. A couple can be fairly annoying, but they're not too bad.

[MarkusT1992]

Game #3: Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (Final Day)

 

 

Fatal Bullet is part of the Sword Art Online series and the only (as far as I know) game that's not a normal RPG.

Fatal Bullet is a third person shooter set in the VRMMO Gun Gale Online or GGO short.

Story time, so a spoiler.

In this game you start by creating your own character rather than playing as Kirito like in the other SAO games. After that is done the game starts with your first login to GGO. It seems your friend brought you to play this game. You start by going to a dungeon which seems to be part of an ingame event. This part also functions as the tutorial. So you learn how to move, shoot and some other stuff. Later you find the rare item you can get in this event.

Now it's time to creat another character, this time it's your ArFa-sys, a new AI implemented in the newest patch of GGO. It's one of the very rare types though. Right after that you are attacked by Kirito and Asuna. You soon become friends with them and the real game starts.

Your overall goal is to reach the SBC-Flügel, a new area that has something to do with the ArFa-sys. So you need one to reach the end of this quest.

First we need to get some new parts for our ArFa-sys to get some information about the SBC-Flügel.

 

Gameplay is like any other third person shooter mixed with some RPG elements similar to Borderlands. You can equipe two weapons of different types like pistols, MPs or sniper rifles. There's also a rarity system for the weapons. The rarer the weapons the better. It seems that the rarity only changes the abillities of a weapon though. Aiming is done through a circel. That means you just have to aim in the general direction of the enemy to hit. As soon as the circle turns green you are set to shot. You can also deactivate that if you prefere. To hit weak spots of enemies you have to use precision mode which basically is the normal aim in other shooters.

Beneath the main quest you have four different types of side quests. The normal side quests which are defeat enemy x y times, hunting quest which require you to hunt another player, unique enemy quests, which are for killing a unique, strong enemy and treasure quest which require you to find something in the dungeons.

 

So far I only played one other SAO game but I liked that one better than Fatal Bullet. It's probably the setting and that it is a shooter instead of a normal RPG. Nontheless is Fatal Bullet not a bad game. So far I ran from mission to mission without really knowing why. But the gameplay is the fun part of this game. The auto aiming helps a lot as fight can get a bit chaotic with all the things happeneing at once.

Still I'll probably enjoy the other SAO games more than this one.

 

Time played: About 5 hours

Trophies: 4/47

Rating:

 

 

[SolarCat02]

So... 

 

The Talos Principle

 

I highly recommend this game. If you like puzzle games anyway. If you don't, it's not for you at all. For a puzzle game it's really really good and even my husband has fun making the occasional suggestion. 

 

The storyline is thin but ties everything together well enough. You wake up and find yourself inspired to solve a few basic puzzles that teach you the basic mechanics of the game. From there you meet the narrator, introducing himself as your creator, and promising you eternal life if you collect all the sigils.

 

From there you are presented with a collection of puzzles that each award a sigil for completion, which is basically a tetris shape color coded for the puzzle difficulty (green, yellow, red). The green sigils are used to unlock each world (A, B, and C), the yellows are used to unlock new tools which are needed for later puzzles, and the red can be used in the tower. I believe there are other special colored sigils on the "secret islands" but I have not unlocked those yet. You can also collect stars, but the process of doing so after the very first one (which the game practically throws at you so you know it exists) really requires some out of the box thinking. 

 

Through exploration of the world you also learn other tidbits of background and history, including the thoughts of those before you in the form of graffiti. These are a nice touch, as some of them are of predecessors interacting with each other and a few even get into a bit of a flame war vibe. 

 

The game does a good job of adding in each new tool and letting you figure out how each one works. You can die in some puzzles, but this only resets your current puzzle back to the beginning. You can also choose to reset a puzzle yourself if you want to undo everything. The game's autosave is effective and unobtrusive and keeps a save for your last ten puzzles as backup as well as marking when you leave a puzzle or a world for closing the game purposes. The puzzles still incomplete are also well marked at each level of organization, with arrow signs and maps and each sigil crossed off as you obtain it, and markings showing which tools you need unlocked to solve them. The stars are divided by world sub room but you need to locate the exact puzzles yourself. 

 

Overall the game is well thought out, and beautiful. Programming wise it runs smoothly, and the loading screens are short enough that I wouldn't consider them loading screens so much as transition animation. The main puzzles are challenging but the mechanics are intuitive, so the puzzles are typically fun to solve and easily repeatable once you figure them out. While some puzzles do require timing for certain portions the majority can be done at your own pace. You can also run fairly quickly. Trial and error does not feel too punishing. 

 

Overall it's a very clean and addictive game, and I will definitely be finishing this one sometime after the event. Highly recommended. 

[Kevvik]

Game #4: Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs

 

Day 3 Impressions

Time played: 15 hrs

 

Ok, so still enjoying this. The story progresses and you recruit new members (maybe).  Never got around to the board game, having too much fun hunting ghosts and playing the daybreak missions. I'll try to do a supplemental on the board game later, especially if they actually explain it.

 

Meanwhile, the daybreak missions, which are new to this edition.  I've done three so far.  Whether they would be available to you would depend on whether you recruited the appropriate new members. They take place between chapters and add to the character background of your recruits.  The stories are actually fairly expansive. They are actually longer than the story chapters, each containing a bunch of VN and 2 battles each vice the usual one. The second and third actually give you no prep time for the mid-episode battles as you pretty much walk into the fights so there's nothing on the map you aren't carrying, no traps pre-laid. I really liked these and found them challenging.  I also really enjoyed the expanding of the characters, both their history and how they have developed thanks to their association with the Gate Keepers.

 

Another new thing I have noticed is that the battle length in the whole game has shortened with 8 minutes looking like the longest battle.  This makes going after the main ghost and not being distracted by others really important, especially as the game goes on and your foes become stronger.  It's also going to make one of the trophies a real pain but I'll know better once I hit chapter 9 which has the best opportunity for it.

 

Overall, I think I am enjoying this even more than before with the extra story and streamlining of the battles.  Looking forward to keeping on with this in the future.

 

Trophies earned: 18/53, 31% for A rank

Score so far: 9/10

 

Completion Rate: 81.49% (-0.40% for the event) 

 

Next up: Game #5: Obduction

 

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Kevvik

[dmland12]

Game #4: Pyre

Trophies: 51/51 (100%)

Completion: 92.95% (+0.07%, -1.81% from start)

 

Pyre is a hard to categorize game from Supergiant Games, the makers of Bastion and Transistor.  There's some RPG elements, but the main gameplay looks more like some odd sporting contest.  You have a team and you'll face off against another team.  Each team has a fire (pyre), that the other team is trying to put out by throwing or carrying a orb into it.  There's only one orb that starts in the middle and you'll need to keep it or steal it from the opposition etc.  So it's sort of like basketball, I guess.  There's some more to it than that, but that's the quick explanation of it.  So why are you playing these contests?  Well, you're exiled from civilization and that's the only way to get back.  How does that work?  It's some kind of magic, don't ask.  And between these contests there's lots and lots of dialogue.  And it mostly wasn't that great.

 

In general, the game was alright, but not as good as I had hoped.  I give the developers credit for trying some new things here, but I don't think the end result was as good as their previous games.  The trophy list was easy enough and the game short enough for me to get the platinum during this event, so there's that, I suppose.

 

I guess my main problem was that the game took a little while to get going, and it was difficult to care about a lot of the characters.  Also, the gameplay itself wasn't all that challenging.  Things picked up in the second half of the story, both narratively as well as with the gameplay.  But, the first half of the game seemed bland.

 

Compared to Bastion or especially Transistor, the game didn't measure up in my opinion.  There were some glimpses of what I liked about those games here, but just that.  I'd recommend trying either of those two games before this one, personally.

 

If you're interested, here's a gameplay video of one of the liberation rites.  They were generally better than the regular matches.  They saved the better music for them, and you had to make a choice as to who got to go back home if you won.

 

 

[Edunstar84]

Game #4 - First Impressions

Beyond: Two Souls

 

Playtime: 1 hour

Trophies: 7/46

 

Beyond: Two Souls is a surprisingly good game. I've played the first several chapters, and I like how the story's told. I went with the original storytelling (I guess you get a choice in the PS4 version). The character build-up is cool. I guess I'll be doing a "good" run, and so far I feel very sorry for Jodie. At first 

 

I thought her "friend", Aiden, was special and was there voluntarily, but there's one scene where she explains that Aiden was forced to be with her, like a caged lion. And there's nothing she or he can do about it. 

. It is an awesome experience. It took me a while to get used to the controls though; it just didn't feel intuitive, but I got used to it. Can't wait to play more.

 

Small update: I platted Cat Quest. 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Edunstar84

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

19 hours ago, dizzyshadow said:

Now i'd heard that some people experience motion sickness using the VR and at the end of day 1 i felt fine. On day 2 i discovered the option to enable left stick movement instead of the teleporting, this makes the game much easier (at least for me) as you can dodge enemy fire much easier but boy did it bring on the motion sickness for me, so much so halfway through the final level i just couldn't go on, so i quit and went to bed, i was still feeling the effects of it 24 hours later, so there was no way i was going back to play more

 

Yeah, walking in a VR game while you're sitting down yourself will do that to you

 

It's exactly why I've said a few times now in this thread that I'm not doing more VR games until my stomach stops  messing around, as I can play VR games just fine as long as I go into them while my body is at ease.

 

There are some great games in which you sit down in-game, by the way. Puzzle: Statik. Platformer: The Lost Bear.

[voodoo_eyes]

Game #4 - One Piece: Burning Blood - Preview

 

Once again a One Piece game from me during one of these events. That's the third one now, and also the third different genre for that matter. I'm still not a fan of the anime, but I do like fighting games and neither of the other entries of this franchise have been bad games. So I wanted to give this a shot.

 

I'm hoping that it plays like the Naruto games. As those games while relatively simple for fighting games, are quite a lot of fun. Either way it's going to be an interesting experience.

[Caju_94]

Hey there, I'm finally back from my holidays! Before I went out I ended up playing one the 5 games I proposed to for this event, I'm currently working on Lost DImension (which review will probably come out this week) and just started Mafia III as well.

 

Ratchet & Clank (PS4)

After about 4/5 hours of gameplay, I feel I have enough to review about this game. Having played the original Ratchet & Clank twice on PS2 and Vita and Ratchet: Gladiator for PS2 (never played any other Ratchet & Clank game), I must say that this remake/reboot (I personally consider it a reboot since the story adds new characters and even though the missions may be similar, they have another context story-wise) was really well made.

 

Storywise, it feels more complete. The original game was quite straightforward with the story and some missions ended up being a little out of context, still. I don't know if the game is based on the animation movie since I never saw the movie, but I guess it probably is, because whenever there is a movie cutscene, the PS4 does not allow you to record the cutscene. Cutscene and animation wise the game seems more kid-oriented than the previous games, and since my PS4's language is portuguese, so the portuguese dialogue and translation of R&C concepts is quite funny sometimes.

 

The graphics are really beautiful and the world's design is immersive. It feels pretty nostalgic going trough the same structures of the original game.

 

About gameplay and combat, even though I think the game is still action-packed, I feel it a little less than the original one, probably due to the weapons. The original blaster was a fast-rate weapon, while in this one, it is a little slower (or do I need to upgrade it to the max?). The difficulty setting is something new to me in this series, and the checkpoints are more friendly. In the original game, whenever you died, you had (almost) to redo most of the level. The upgrade system seems really interesting, and the leveling weapon system as well. I remember it from the Gladiator/Deadlocked game, I just don't know yet if it's something R&C 2 and 3 have as well. With the upgrade system, you end up having 2 "currencies". Bolts for buying weapons and ammos, and another one (which I don't remember the name) which purpose is to buy weapon upgrades. Finally, the board racing is way cooler and easier than in the original game (the original game controls were horrible)

 

Overall, it is a pretty nostalgic game for those who played the original game, and I feel this version is way more complete than the previous one in many levels. It probably has it cons, but I feel I have to complete the game in order to be certain of them. I'd say the game is really worth it.

Edited November 13, 2018 by Caju_94

[Arctic Cress]

Game #2 - SoulCalibur VI

Trophies - 14/49 (27% - C)

Playtime - 4-5 hours

 

I had planned to play a bit more of SoulCalibur VI last night but that apparently didn't happen because I both fell asleep and the Giants were playing so there wasn't any time to do so. I still had played up to 4 hours on the previous two days, though. I have not played any games in the SoulCalibur series since II back on the GameCube where I used Link a lot (and then again on the PS3 where I used Talim) so this was a new experience for me.

 

SoulCalibur VI has two story modes in it: Libra of Soul and Soul Chronicle. Libra of Soul follows a created character as they travel the world to repair astral fissures that have appeared within the events of the first SoulCalibur. Several of the other characters appear as well, some as allies and others as enemies. There's also sidequests, weapon forging, and EXP/levels so it plays out almost like a RPG with fighting game battles. It isn't a bad thing, though, I've only made it to chapter two so far but it's been fun. Soul Chronicle tells the story of the twenty characters included in the roster. The "main story" part of it is just a retelling of the events that happened in the first SoulCalibur game, so it's not very interesting. What does get interesting is that each of the twenty characters (and any DLC ones in the future) get their own storyline to follow and how it interacts with the others (especially those that weren't involved with the story at that point, like Raphael, Talim, and Zalasamel).

 

The fighting game itself is also very well polished. You get a good tutorial of all the game's mechanics in Libra of Soul, and especially a whole tutorial about the game's new mechanic - the Reversal Edge. I still don't quite understand it completely, but I've managed to use it effectively when I do get a chance. Many of the attacks I've seen are very close to the attacks I've seen from the characters dating all the way back to SoulCalibur II, which is a nice surprise, enough that I don't have to change my inputs from back then.

 

I only did one match online and looked at the character creator, but both seem well done. No problems with the netcode from my one fight (and I did get the win) and I've seen some pretty nice created characters, though I wish there was a better way to look at them (or I'm just not seeing the option, dunno which). It's definitely something I'll look into when I play it in the future.

 

Starting completion: 70.74%

Current completion: 70.07%

Difference: -0.67%

Dynasty Warriors 9: 11/44 (17% - D)

 

Only a drop of 0.02% this time around because I managed to push this and Taiko to a C rank and also got a number of trophies in Word Sudoku by POWGI. It was over the weekend so I had a lot of free time.

 

Next game will be Gal*Gun 2 as I return to this bizarre on-rails FPS series once more after not playing much of Double Peace besides a bit during last year on Christmas for some reason.

[vin_rob]

Valkyria Chronicles 4

 

This is not my first Valkyria game, I finished Valkyria Chronicles 1 on the ps3, and got the platinum for the remastered edition. Also played Valkyria Revolution. And to be really fair, I also got the demo (I could load the data from the demo in the main game).

 

So Valkyria Chronicles 4 went back to the same controls as Valkyria Chronicles 3. But they made some improvements. Like:

• You can use special command moves where you can team up with up to 2 extra units
• More different units will shoot when they are in range (like tanks with anti-tank units)
• You can make a character a leader (A leader character gives you an extra command point)
• You got a new unit type
• Paragon rank

 

Ok so for the rest the game is a combination of strategy, turn-based and I’m not sure if you are supposed to call it this way, but I would like to call it partly a third person shooter as well…

The entire game is being “read” to you from a book, also all the missions you do start from the book.

When you start a mission, you get some information on what to do in the mission. And then you see a map of war. Here you need to select the units you want to deploy. When you start the mission, you see the map of war again with the deployed units on it in blue, and the enemy units you can see (the units that you can see in perspective of 1 of your units) are shown in red.

When you use command points to move your units. The camera moves to a third person view on that unit where you can freely move around (till your activity points are gone) and of course, there is a way you can shoot the enemy units. But when you come in range of an enemy unit that is looking towards you. He can start shooting you. But when you do your shooting action, the enemy unit will get his turn to shoot as well. So these are all things you should think about before acting!

 

But without ruining too much of the story for everyone. I’ll just write something really high over. Just as in the first game, you are a tank commander and you are slowly getting one mission after the other. You have to do amazing things with your squad against all odds! But in the end, you want to finish the war versus the empire.

And like the previous game you are in a squadron with friends from the past.

 

When you progress the game, you slowly unlock more effects that can activate while walking/shooting etc. There are positive but also negative effects.

As I mentioned there was a new unit type, in the previous game you could use the unit types: Scout, Shock trooper, Engineer, Sniper and the Lancer. In the new game, there is also a grenadier type.

 

I’m going to continue this game later for sure!

I got 23 out of 36 trophies (45%)
The game lowered my completion.

 

[AJ_Radio]

Unfortunately as much as I enjoy reading each and every one of your posts, I'm going to have to drop from this event.

 

My pet dog that I've had for over 15 years has died and having to work my job and study for two tests has put a lot of pressure on me. I'm not exactly in the mood to play a bunch of games and then record my thoughts and observations on this thread.

 

I thought I was going to have the time to play my games but it turns out I don't. Plus the 2018 Elections in the States has me pretty pissed off but that's another discussion for another time.

 

Good luck to you all participating in this event, and happy trophy hunting.

[Kevvik]

Game #5: Obduction

 

Initial Impressions

Time played: 1hr 15min

 

So, I'm an adventure gamer from wayyyyyy back. So much so that we called them adventure games and not point-and-clicks or this generation's version, walking sims.  I cut my teeth on the text adventures of Infocom, discovered graphics with Sierra (Kings Quest, Police Quest) and LucasArts (Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and the criminally underappreciated Loom). Suddenly, what appeared was this new game that everyone was talking about (really talking about or, in the early web incarnation, posting to a BBS about) called Myst. This was a new adventure game put out by Broderbund but made by this new company called Cyan.  Nobody really wanted to give out spoilers but word in the adventure gaming community was spreading that you really didn't want to miss this.  So a buddy of mine bought it and we sat down. Opened the manual to essentially find....nothing. Like blank pages nothing.  Boot it up and what do you find? Yourself on a weird world and not knowing what the hell you were supposed to do. You basically wandered around until you found something to interact with, then wandered around some more. Eventually you had a goal, find pages, red or blue. Instructed to do this by ?trapped spirits, ?prisoners, you didn't know how to find the pages or whether to trust the task given you.  So started one of the best adventures ever.

 

Cyan faded a little over time, sending out 5 Myst games with only the second, Riven, really reaching the pinnacle set by the first. Still all beautiful games but some of the challenge faded in the later entries as the difficulty eased between trying to get a bigger audience and the spread of sites so dedicated to helping you out of jams that some would just follow the walkthrough from the beginning of the game (sort of like some trophy hunters).

 

Now, to the PS4 comes Obduction, Cyan's spiritual successor to Myst.  You start off in the woods with a narration vaguely describing something that occurred in the 30s (or 1870s to someone else). Follow the path past a picnic area and you'll come across a strange object which glows and overcomes you, bringing you about in a strange land very dissimilar to what you left.  What to do? Like Myst, wander until you find something to do. Stumbling onto a recording, this is Hunrath and humans have been brought here. Not sure why yet.

 

The area looks like an old mining company (shanty town, railway, what looks like a refinery. I wandered for about 15-20 minutes before finding what looked like a submarine door with a doorbell?  Ring it and get an FMV of a guy saying he needs the power turned on and something about some people hiding there from the Mofang (who/whatever it/they are). More wandering and basically trying to interact with anything I can, eventually finding what looks like a generator. Ten minutes later, I've figured out how to start it. I've been finding notebooks that tell me things about a war between alien races but nothing related to this so now that there is power, I go back and find out he is basically hiding in a safe room and others may be hiding but are probably dead and that the red beam is important. I've seen a red and a blue beam and, now that the power is running, I can get into what looks like a refinery/factory/workshop.

 

So that's where I am. An hour wandering around, you ask? This game is gorgeous! It's also VR compatible though I don't own that and can only imagine what it would look like in VR. Wow! Movement is smooth flowing and you can run to move more quickly but you don't seem to know where you are going so relax, walk and enjoy the view. Walking moves faster than the crawling pace of Everyone Goes to the Rapture so it's not a painful experience.  Maybe you are running if you are following a guide but that's not the way to enjoy this kind of game. So I haven't done much but this sucks me back to the days of Myst in just the right way. Do I know what to do beyond the most rudimentary guiding? Nope, but loving it all the same. 

 

I'll wander around more tonight and just enjoy the experience and delving into the notebooks to try to find out more about what is going on.

 

Trophies earned: 2/15, 3% for E rank

Score so far: 9/10

[SolarCat02]

2 hours ago, Kevvik said:

Game #5: Obduction

 

Initial Impressions

Time played: 1hr 15min

 

So excited to see you playing this and enjoying it. I backed the Kickstarter but they worked on it so long the gaming laptop we bought halfway through wasn't powerful enough to play it. Was so excited to see it come to Playstation. Looking forward to your final thoughts. 

 

 

On my end, decided to mix it up a bit, going for Mages of Mystralia now and then Soul Suspect next, rather than the other way around. Realized I had two RPGs back to back, with one over Thanksgiving, and that wasn't going to fly. Only have ~20 minutes playing tonight so will give first impressions later. The intro movie was intriguing though. 

[Upendo_Vitani]

7 hours ago, Spaz said:

Unfortunately as much as I enjoy reading each and every one of your posts, I'm going to have to drop from this event.

 

My pet dog that I've had for over 15 years has died and having to work my job and study for two tests has put a lot of pressure on me. I'm not exactly in the mood to play a bunch of games and then record my thoughts and observations on this thread.

 

I thought I was going to have the time to play my games but it turns out I don't. Plus the 2018 Elections in the States has me pretty pissed off but that's another discussion for another time.

 

Good luck to you all participating in this event, and happy trophy hunting.

I'm sorry about your dog. I lost my cat a couple months ago. Nothing can replace them, and it feels like a huge hole just ripped open in your heart. But as long as they were loved and we know we did all we could, maybe one day it won't be so hard.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

@vin_rob good to know you enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles 4. I still have it lying around.

[Caju_94]

Lost Dimension (Vita) Note: Also available for PS3

 

This game looks like a fusion of two franchises: Valkyria Chronicles and Danganronpa.

 

This game consists of 5 chapters, and I just managed to reach the 4th one (I probably spent 5/6 hours of gameplay on this one). It is a tactics RPG which is quite short but has a NG+, in which you should do in order to get different results from your first playthrough (I will explain as you read this review).

 

Basically, you control a team of characters, with the main protagonist, Sho, that are called the "Gifted", people with different powers such as elemental magic, telekenesis, super-strength and so on... Their objective is to reach the top a tower with 5 stratums (each stratum being a chapter per say) and defeat "The End" who is basically a bad guy who for some reason wants to end with humanity but challenges the gifted to reach the top of the tower. So far, so good, you have a nice bunch of characters with different abilities and personalities and everything seems looking good. However, some of them are traitors and are allied to the "The End". Plus, everytime you complete the main missions of a stratum you have to go through a Judgement where one of your team members must be eliminated for good in order to progress.

 

That said, you need to identify the traitors, and eliminate them in judgement by voting and influencing others that you know who is a traitor. So basically, there is traitor on each stratum (except the 4th, where there are 2), and you have this interesting system, where after each mission your main character, Sho, can "hear" other's voices and identify if they are a suspect or not. After identifying the 3 suspects (there are always 3 suspects), you have a mini game where you spend limited Vision points to check if they are traitors or not. These traitors are RNG based (it can even be your fav character or the one you use the most), and are different every playthorugh (except for the first in the first playthrough which in unevitable in order for you to understand the game). Meaning you need more than one playthrough in order to bond with other characters if the RNG lets you. (You need to bond with other characters to unlock their missions and get the respective trophies)

 

The combat in this game is quite simple. It is a turn based tactics RPG like Valkyria Chronicles for example, and you can control each of your character once. You can move, attack (and get assists attacks from nearby allies), use your Gifts (special abilities), pass your character turn to a character whose turn as already been used, use an item or simply wait and restore some sanity. Besides the traditional HP and MP (in this game it is GP, which stands for Gift Points) you have a third meter which is Sanity which starts at 100% and can deplete during the battle. You can lose Sanity by using gifts and getting attacked. If a character reaches 0% sanity, it goes berserk, acts on his own and start attacking enemies and allies alike, leaving your other team members with fear. However, depending on your strategy, going berserk may not be a bad thing. I was once facing two bosses and was having some trouble finishing with them. I went berserk with Akatsuki (a fire mage of some sorts) and used a gift which killed one of her allies but also both bosses, because during Sanity, despite other members fearing the situation (decreasing their accurracy), the character in question has its defense decreased but his attack brutally increased. You can heal that berserk mode with gifts and items anyway. 

 

The character progression is also simple. The members that are not battling also receive EXP. Every level up a character has gives them a gift points which you can use in order to upgrade/unlock new abilities. You can also get these in missions. The weapons and items can be bought and sold at the Lobby through Energy points. And after a Judgement, when one of your characters dies for the rest of your playthrough, you can pass their gifts to another character through a leftover item they leave behind when they die, which are called Materia, so don't worry if your healer is a traitor, for example.

 

The soundtrack outisde of battle is pretty tense and really gives you the environment that things are not good at all in Lost DImension's worlds, mainly when there are traitors everywhere and characters are constantly doubting and accusing others of being traitors.

 

It seems this game might be a little underrated. Overall, I really liked the experience. I guess the traitor/judgement and the sanity system are what makes this game different than others. You should try it. You should. Careful, because your favourite characters may turn down on you.