A very good remake of a game I adored back in the day. It keeps the essence of what made the original so special and throws in a few of its own ideas for good measure.
The core gameplay of never quite being able to carry around everything you want, so having to manage your inventory whilst choosing what enemies to pick off or avoid is alive and well. This is a far scarier game than RE4, and the lighting and sound effects make this a very tense and jumpy experience at times. I loved seeing the Police Station brought to life in 3D, even if some of the melodrama of those gorgeous static backgrounds is slightly lost. The quirky puzzle elements remain too, a trait of the series I adore, even if the designer of this towns buildings needs sectioning.
The way it changes certain things about the original and plays with your memory is one of this remakes strengths. Mr X is elevated to an ever present threat that is terrifying and very smartly implemented. The organic enemies are a great late game twist. Sherry’s section of game changes the pace of the game well, too.
It’s not all quite perfect.
Raccoon City feels a bit dead outside of the Police Station. The narrative tone of the Chief of Police and Gun shop keepers characters jar with the B movie nature of the rest of the game. The shooting feels a lot less satisfying than the newer RE4 remake. And the first half of the game, like a lot of Resident Evil games, is far more memorable.
Most disappointing of all, is probably that the B Claire campaign doesn’t add much or interweave with Leon’s story, bar a clever alternative task in and around the locked car park. In my memory, the original did this far better, but I might be misremembering it given it has been 25 years since I played it…
It doesn’t stop this being a great reimagining of a classic game however. Far scarier and more intimidating than RE4, RE2 has left me curious if the original game would ever get a similar, labour of love treatment.
Was wondering if there was a new thread, thank you @vamos
I rarely complete a game but did just that very thing a few days back.
Disco Elysium, which I purchased first week available on PS4 despite the bug warnings. Played it, was very confused, put it down. Took in the new PS5 update, looked, put it down. Carried on a save before Xmas and took it through to its final credits. An astonishing game, like really unique. The options, the characters, the music. One of those rare game where it all begins to feel like a kind of home. Also impossible to rate but my time in that place is one I will never forget. Remarkable.
Just an utter joy from start to finish. My 6 year old has no confidence with games and had asked for this for Christmas after playing the demo solidly for almost a year.
The slightest knock will usually set her back and start calling for me or my wife to help. Her favourite game up until now was Puppy Island, a game that allows you to rescue homeless dogs, dress them, feed them and clothe them. It has a mini game where you tap a single button a load of times to get the puppy over a bridge in under 10 seconds. That was too much for her.
I was delighted to see her able to take on a proper game without fear. I think this is KatFK’s greatest strength. It provides a decent challenge to young kids and helps strengthen gaming foundations while hiding it all under the cutest sunshine-and-rainbows world where deaths are hard to come by. Bosses are presented as muscle bound giants towering over your character but in reality, when you learn their simple patterns they’re very easy to beat.
I played along in the smart co-op mode which allows you to high five with Kirby to restore their health meter whenever it’s low. Often I would do this without my daughter even realising she was getting an energy boost. As she got towards the end of the game, she ran into some bosses that she really couldn’t beat and at those points I had to take over. Silly-dillo was proving a problem to me too, killing me several times over before I realised a dodge move must have been introduced at some point earlier in the game when I had been out of the room. Soon I was Dark Souls rolling all over the arena slapping the big armadillo down in a flawless victory. The very last boss is perhaps the only misstep in the game as it was legitimately hard with a lifebar much, much longer than anything else in the game and several evolutions before I finally dispatched it. No idea how little kids are supposed to get past it, but thankfully it rewards them with a bombastic Final Cut scene with some simple QTEs that I was able to pass the controller back for.
The memories of watching my kid bouncing up and down in excitement when she finished level after level will stay with me for a long time. 10/10
Some Italian fans of the original games made their own short adventure where Guybrush has to fill a bar with drinkers in order to get the bar man to help repair his ship. Barring some strangely mangled English translations, this was an impressive feat. Closest in style to the cartoonish MI3, some familiar faces return along with the familiar puzzle style. There’s only about three or four hours of gameplay but it was lovely to be back in the world and the Italian team nailed quite a few jokes in the same kind of humour as the originals. 7/10
Judging by what you said about the QTE events afterwards… This isn’t actually the last boss and there’s a couple of chunky post game things you’ve missed out on. It gets very very hard though…
Oh aye there’s the purple worlds. My older kid is working her way through those but again keeps asking me to do the bosses. Not really seen the levels though, myself.
Portal - wow, what a fun few hours that was. I can imagine it was completely mind blowing when it came out in 2007 but the gameplay still holds up really well today. Loved everything about it: the setting, the humour, the creepiness. Only negative was actually feeling like I was going to throw up whilst doing some of the flings.
Bioshock 2 was okay. Mechanically delightful (up to a certain point), and the story was decent (up to a certain point too). Rapture was criminally underused though, and it all felt a bit soulless.
Absolutely perfect. The map is big without feeling unwieldly, there’s plenty of variety with indoor and outdoor sections, and it feels like you discover something new and interesting after every infiltration. Actually struggling to think of better level design in any other stealth game. The stealth mechanics that interface with this feel slick, challenging and satisfying, as does the combat. Overall, just a really well executed experience that I kept replaying.
Absolutely perfect. The map is big without feeling unwieldly, there’s plenty of variety with indoor and outdoor sections, and it feels like you discover something new and interesting after every infiltration. Actually struggling to think of better level design in any other stealth game. The stealth mechanics that interface with this feel slick, challenging and satisfying, as does the combat. Overall, just a really well executed experience that I kept replaying.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 7/10
Apu WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!.gif
Sadly, this feels like a very different experience than Ground Zeroes. Won’t spend too long on it, as it’s been said already, but it really feels like there was a shift in direction that happened between developing GZ and TPP. It still looks stunning, and plays really well - the mechanics are all there from GZ - but idk…the curation that the prologue had isn’t there at all, having been substituted for TWO dull open worlds, games as service features, and really unnecessary bloat. Regarding the latter (and I actually came round to actually running Motherbase - it’s a very novel way to manage upgrades) the biggest offender is the base you manage being fully explorable for no reason whatsoever. It’s so frustrating to see where the bulk of development went in favour over the template that lovely Ground Zeroes laid out.
You also get the feeling that the developers had a bunch of good ideas that maybe hit two or three times during a playthrough - e.g. finding a Bananarama cassette or flying into a mountain pass in a fuck off helicopter - but then went ‘yeah, lets make the player repeat the same mission about 100 times’. Aside from two or three ‘set-piece’ bases, which are still a shadow on Camp Omega in GZ, you’re more or less just taking endless, unskippable chopper rides to the same few identikit locations, and it gets to be a huge grind. ALSO, here’s a bunch of heavy weaponry like tanks and APCs that you’re never going to use except for like 2 missions, but we lovingly created with multiple fire modes and everything.
All that said, I did have a great time at points. Da Smasei Laman and it’s main story mission was absolutely amazing, and I loved fighting Metal Gear. The combat and gunplay are really good, and the story and characters aren’t even that bad for MGS. I just hated having to plod around the same places over and over. The missions that ramp up in difficulty in Chapter 2 (the bit after the first ending?) are admittedly a lot more enjoyable because you can’t simply walk up to everyone and tranq them in the face point blank.
Had I not played GZ, I probably would have scored this higher, but the missed potential in serving this up instead of what was promised by the prologue really fucking stings. Probably being too harsh, but expected a lot better basically.
Path of Exile 2 [Early access] - Finally finished the 3 actus in Cruel mode and yeah its a really good ARPG but my god having to repeat the first 3 acts to reach end game hurt way more than I expected so I really slowed my progress way way way down - it also doesn’t help that I’m simply not that keen on Act 3 in general and that act is LOOOOOONG. But otherwise - yeah still a really bloody fun ARPG to play. Especially as your power ramps up and you’re able to clear screens of enermies super fast - boss fights are still phenomonal. On the plus side it sounds like I’ve reached end game now its had a bunch of QOL improvments and it’s in a far better state so probably worked out in my favour in the end. Cleared my first map - no loot worthy of equipping and dick all valuable crafting currancy BOOOOOOOO.
So, this was LONG and at times an arduous slog. But I was overall positive. My main impressions are that it’s kind of everything I like and dislike about the Persona games turned up to eleven - I’ll start with the negatives. The pacing (for want of a better word) in this game is genuinely ridiculous - there are some interminably long stretches between big story developments where you’re really just doing social links and levelling up social stats. And somehow, about half way through the game, I’d maxed out all the social stats and so was left with a few evenings where there was really nothing worth doing but going through the motions and slamming that “X” button. As with the other Persona games I’ve played, I’m just left (possibly slightly unfairly) thinking: could they not have spent time making the main dungeon a little more interesting, or the locations you visit a little more varied, and cut out a few of the more inconsequential social links?
On a more positive note, this one gets closest to what I always really want to love about these games - there’s a murky weird horror energy to the premise of this game that I love. The idea of secret hour between midnight and the next day is so inspired and, at its best moments, the game resonates with this fascination I have with ordinary daytime spaces lying dormant in the wee hours. I always used to love going out on my paper round at like 5am on a Saturday (I was a weird kid) and seeing the chip shop counter kind of half-lit up and full of shadows amongst the dark shopfronts. As ever with these games, I kind of wish that that atmosphere was a little more pronounced and a little less undermined by a bunch of fuckin yakety sax music every ten minutes - but these games have a way of easing themselves cosily into yr daily routine and it was a nice space to come to every so often.
Dunno what’s next - might go back to my continuing big Final Fantasy playthrough, despite not being in the same state of emotional turmoil that defined my playthrough of I through III. I don’t have much of a memory of FFIV and I know it’s the one people claim is the first proper good one.
Disco Elysium. Just finished this three years after starting it. Think I stopped before after getting wound up by it crashing, but it got under my skin and kept going back to it. I’m not sure what to say about it - it was like walking around in a weird fog, in a good way. Excellent game. The crashes were annoying - kept happening more and more towards the end. Controls on Switch are shit too - would have had a better time with a mouse. Great Sea Power soundtrack.
SteamWorld Heist 1 has long been my favourite of the series. TBSs are my jam, but it’s rare to find one with such robust mechanics, that finds such a good sweet spot challenge-wise and uses free aim in such an enticing manner. I’ve found every other SW game to be fine but never found them to have much replay value. So I was right on this one.
I’m comfortable saying this is the best SteamWorld game, seeing off Steamworld Dig 2 by dint of being meatier and more confident about itself. It wisely alters little about the original Heist’s core gameplay, which has always been the best of Thunderful’s homegrown experiments - robust TBSing, finds an excellent sweet spot challenge-wise and uses free aim in a really satisfying way, constantly enticing you to try taking trickier shots to secure more loot. It just adds more, way more, with a reasonably enjoyable overworld to potter around in. I finished it in 40 hours, which feels generous for a game I paid 12 quid for.
The game gets you to off-class your guys, so you wind up mixing and matching different skills with different weapons. I found this pretty fun - putting Perfect Aim on a rocket launcher was a nice moment, as was conversely putting Double Shot on a sniper rifle - but it did mean the characters became a bit blurry to me, their strengths no longer easily remembered by the end. Also thought it was a bit annoying you basically had to make sure everyone took a turn as a Boomer so you could unlock 3 equipment slots, that should have been a universal upgrade. But overall it’s just really fun. I’d happily take a third helping of this.
As ever with SteamWorld games, I’m sat there at the end pleasantly entertained and wondering what it is about them that makes me like them but not love them. I think I just find the whole premise perplexing and a little bit annoying from a meta-narrative perspective. In the face of all accepted logic, the studio chooses to keep hold of its setting and instead continually change genre, a choice I find admirable and bold - but the weird thing is it feels like they don’t actually give a fuck about the setting. There are loads of things that simply make no sense within the logic of the world (never mind the water, where are they getting the coal? Where are they getting the diesel? Where are they getting the bones? Why are they making such a big deal about giving each other their limbs, can’t they just make more of them? How can there possibly a steam-powered medieval period they’re constantly harkening back to?) and are just never addressed. It’s like, who cares dude? Cartoon robots. Except clearly you do care, because you won’t let this setting go and you’re constantly referencing everything else that’s happened in it. This game is much too hard for babies and is premised on total human extinction but it runs on baby show logic. Baffling.
Also Steam Powered Giraffe are fucking awful, sorry. Knocking a full half point off for continually forcing me to listen to their guff.
Technically, I completed this over a decade over but I didn’t play the DLC back then so I finished that off before ending up doing a no kills, no alerts, Blink level one only run. God I was crap at this game and stealth titles in general when I first played it so I have to credit playing through the Metal Gear Solid series and Hitman (and realising that you can take advantage of the save system) for improving on that front.
Doing a low chaos run with no other powers may have affected it because it’s probably the least fun way of playing but I don’t think my feelings for this game have really changed ten years on. I admire it for its level design and its game systems but the characters, their motivations and the plot itself are so surface level that the experience of playing it just leaves me a bit cold.
