Topic: Games you've recently beat

Mmm well it just depends on my mood @Ralizah .

Like as soon as I finished Dark Souls 3 I made a new character and dove right back in... Other times I'll go through about ten games before I finally settle on something... Usually I'll try to play something different... But yeah I'm in the mood for Resi

Plus playing another like Code Veronica or RE:3 might help me sort out my thoughts on how I feel about REmake!

Managed 100% in adventure mode on Crash Team Racing rather quickly. Was fun, I'm considering trading it in while it's still worth something decent though. I do enjoy some online play but I'm not sure this is the best game for it.

Finally got around to finishing Tomb Raider which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wasn't a big Tomb Raider fan back during the Original PlayStation era so I can't really compare this game to those ones. I didn't get every little collectible but I did finish the main story.

Next up I think I will finally get around to playing Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Katamari Damacy Reroll (Switch) - My first foray into this series in which you must roll up a ball to a certain size before time is up (though some levels have other objectives) by rolling up everything & anything from food, to people, to entire landmasses.

Pros:

• Despite now being a concept over a decade old at this point, I haven't seen anything else quite like it. It's novel, and pretty satisfying to end a level scooping up large buildings and the like with ease, after starting it being afraid of a cat, lol.
• I really enjoy that it keeps a catalogue of everything you've ever rolled up, complete with a humorous blurb accompanying each one. I love little touches like that.
• I'm not usually one to pay attention to music in games, but this one has some very upbeat and catchy tunes that play as you work your way through a level.
• It has a unique sense of humour, and I found myself chuckling pretty often.

Cons:

• While I got used to them, I felt the controls were a tad clunky/unintuitive.
• Unlike the rest of the music in the game, the soundtrack in the object gallery area gets a bit grating after awhile, plus there's no way to tell which objects gallery entries you've already viewed (new objects aren't marked as new, for example).

Overall it was a pretty fun time and am glad I gave it a go. Took me a few tries to clear that final level (where you have to make your Katamari 300M big), but once I did clear it I absolutely crushed it (made it over 800M big, which was really satisfying).

Little Nightmares.
I just started the game when I sneezed and the credits showed up! Thank the unexisting gods I only played € 5 for this experience... For the same price I got games like Inside, Unravel and Valiant Hearts: those are still little indie games, but at least they have a reason to exist.

Knack (PS4) - A first party launch mascot beat-em up/platformer.

Pros:

• From a mechanical standpoint the gameplay is solid, and while it's unwillingness to shake things up may get a bit long in the tooth by game's end, it there is decent fun to be had here if you know what to expect going in.
• It's a fair length for this type of game, consisting of 13 Worlds, each consisting of 3 to 5 levels, plus a couple of unlockable modes such as an arena battle thing that I haven't bothered with. There's also tons of hidden unlockables & a few different difficulty settings which can add longevity if you're really able to get into it.
• I actually quite liked the boss battles on offer. Yeah, there were like only four of the things, but from a gameplay perspective they were a highlight.
• It has a vibrant Pixar-esque graphical style that's mostly pleasing to look at.
• In one of the most random moments I've experienced in recent memory, during the entire end credits scene Knack shakes his booty to the song "How Ya' Like me Now", which was so absurd I couldn't help but smile.

Cons:

• The story & worldbuilding are crap. Granted, a deep story is rarely ever an important aspect of a mascot platformer, so it's really not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but because it's a Sony game and thus a cinematic focus must be inserted into it, they add plenty of cutscenes with a lot of undercooked worldbuilding and character moments that you really don't care about. Luckily you can skip all cutscenes if you really want to.
• While it has a solid base for it's combat, it does get pretty samey by game's end. You can obtain unlockable combat elements by obtaining collectables (such as a "Combo Meter" that increases your damage output with the more enemies you defeat without getting hit yourself), which can add a bit more of a risk/reward factor, but you don't unlock any of those until at least the halfway point (and that's if you managed to collect all the parts). Even being able to pick up enemy weapons or objects in the environment would have helped to spice up the combat, but there's really little of that. It's nothing really anything that the game does wrong, just obvious things it could have done to be better.
• I wish it had more platforming, because that's where it seemed more willing to shake things up. I'd say it had a 80/20 split in favor of combat, but when it did switch to more of a platforming focus, then you got things like chase sequences, little mazes to work your way through on a time limit, or scenerios where you had to guide youself through the air avoiding obstacles.
• More of a personal disappointment, but I'm suprised how western it all felt as a game coming from their Japan Studio (fron the art direction, to the characters, & world). Don't get me wrong as I love some western games (like God of War, Spider Man, Titanfall 2, and more), but I was expecting something a bit more Japanese coming from a Japanese studio, and honestly had it not been for the Japan Studio logo at boot up, I'd have assumed that it was made by one of Sony's western devs. Even in the credits it seemed like some of their western figures had some real power into designing the game (I think a Mark Cerny was the main writer/director behind the game), which is something their Japanese figures seem to lack when it comes to their western developed games.
• Knack himself is pretty ugly. Not hard to see why he didn't take off.

Overall it's not the terrible game that the internet makes it out to be, but it is a pretty average experience. I'll probably try out the sequel one day because I hear it's a bit better.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Platform: PC

Genre: Metroidvania

Completion level: Main game completed with best ending. Not all quests or optional bosses vanquished. 98% of the castle explored. Roughly 14 hours of playtime.

PRO

• While leveling has a net effect on your stats over time, the differences aren't usually dramatic enough to swing a difficult boss battle in your favor. One of my biggest issues with Metroidvania-type games that feature leveling systems is that, wrongly implemented, they can trivialize the game, but I felt like a good balance was struck here. Your "load-out" when going into battle, in terms of your items, shards, and weapons, is the main thing that will help ensure victory (besides player skill and learning to avoid the attacks they telegraph, of course)
• Speaking of a good balance, I like the difficulty balancing on this game by default. It's very approachable, but some bosses will still give the player a hard time until they make some changes to their loadout.
• There's a decent amount of diversity to the types of weapons you can use in this game.
• The game's 2.5D look is awesome, especially in sequences where there's a scrolling or rotating 3D environment that you're navigating on.
• The game's art-style itself is very striking, with a lot of really bold, clashing colors that create a world which feels very stark.
• The music is awesome. Not my favorite OST in the series (that it's technically not a part of), but I think there's an argument to be made for it being one of the upper-tier "Castlevania" soundtracks.
• The combat, in-game animations, and feel of the character movement is all quite ideal. It's a very fun game to play, purely in terms of how the character controls.
• The voice acting is quite decent, all things being equal. I especially like David Hatyer's sexy, growling voice being used to bring the stoic demon hunter Zangetsu to life.

Mixed

• The "shard" system in this game, which allows you to collect and level up abilities you obtain from enemies, reminds me a LOT of Dawn of Sorrow, and of the sort of systems employed in the NDS era of Castlevania titles. There's a good amount of diversity to the types of attacks and effects that can be activated by these shards, but most of them just feel sort of... out of place for me, in the sense that I never really feel the need to switch up most of my shards throughout the game. I find a set that works for me, and I just stick with it.
• The hidden "retro" level that you can unlock. While I like the idea of a level that carries the aesthetics of the NES-era Castlevania games, in practice, it feels quite lazy, with overtly simplistic pixel art, HP sponge enemies who don't even react to being hit (like, they literally just keep trucking on at the same pace until you kill them, making it hazardous to attack them on the ground even with fast weapons, considering they'll use the momentary pause of a weapon animation to just blow right past your character), really basic level geometry with a minimum of platforming, and your character's detailed model clashes horribly with the aesthetic of her environment; the least the game could have done is transform her into something akin to the Miriam we encounter in Curse of the Moon. The boss of this level is tough because, again, he's an HP sponge, and he spams aggravating, often difficult to avoid attacks at the player.
• The plot is... I dunno. It becomes clear what's happening over the course of the game, but the actions and logic of a few major characters never fully make sense, and the story is reliant on overly-complicated worldbuilding early on. There's a story that the game wants to tell, but it comes mostly in the form of diary entries stowed away in random bookshelves and some poorly conceived "dramatic" cutscenes between characters.
• I like quests and whatnot to pad out games like this. But the ones in this game sort of suck, and are mainly "kill [x] amount of certain monsters," or centered around making dishes for people with some hard to find ingredients. In general, the rewards weren't really good enough to justify the effort I expended in the first place. Also, they need to add the ability to accept multiple quests at once. Having to individually select 12 quests in a row and skip through the quest-giver's samey rambling each time is no fun.
• In 14 hours of gameplay, I had one crash and one audio glitch after defeating the final boss that was a bit annoying. Also, the framerate juddered a bit too much in certain areas. Overall, though, performance was mostly pretty decent, and the game ran like a dream 95% of the time.

CON

• The in-game character portraits during dialogues are pretty shoddy looking, like something out of a game from a few generations in the past. Retro in exactly the wrong sort of way.
• The game does this annoying thing where it'll give you access to a late-game boss early, but, if you defeat him without a particular item, you'll get a bad ending. So you have to leave this particular portion of the map unexplored until you get the item to defeat him in the correct manner.
• You have to talk to Johannes to synthesize materials, upgrade your shards, and cook food with ingredients you've gathered. But almost every time I went to him to employ his services, he'd trap me in some unnecessarily long dialogue before I could get back to the game proper and save. It's, like, dude, I just want to bake a cake to eat later, I don't want to sit through some five minute conversation about your personal anxieties.
• There's a sequence where you tag alongside Zangetsu and witness just how much more powerful he is than Miriam, but the boss fight in this sequence is very dull, as it mostly involves just staying out of the way of attacks so Zangetsu can kill it, considering how much more damage he does to it.
• The final boss is a total bore as well. It's only "difficult" insofar as it has way too much health and navigating around the stage to harm it is so awkward that you accidentally trip into it over and over. The attacks themselves are almost pathetically easy to avoid.

Conclusion: Perhaps not the untouchable masterpiece some people might have been hoping for, but it's a very good "latter-day Castlevania" style experience, and, hopefully, not the last Bloodstained game we'll see. Although, if I'm being honest, I'd rather see another Classicvania-styled entry in the series from Inti-Creates, like Curse of the Moon.

Verdict: 7.5/10

Pretty sweet review @Ralizah !

I've actually been eying bloodstained ... Would it have more impact on me possibly seing as the only other Metroidvania I've played is Hollow Knight?

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I dunno. In one respect, an aspect of the impact will be lost: while it doesn't lean on nostalgia for its appeal, there are many aspects of this game that will light up memories and emotions for people who played SOTN and the GBA/DS Castlevania games back in the day. But there are no actual connections to the lore of previous games, so it's still ideal as a fresh experience in its own right.

I don't think it's quite as good as Hollow Knight, but I don't regret my time with it at all. I think part of the problem for this game will be that the gaming landscape has shifted so drastically since Order of Ecclesia released over a decade ago. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot out there like Castlevania and Metroid. Now, we're practically tripping over Metroidvania-inspired titles, and, other than the theme and stuff like Michiru Yamane's fantastic score (she worked on pretty much every Igavania release since Symphony of the Night back in the 90s), there's not a lot to distinguish it from the competition gameplay-wise. Granted, it's still far more polished than 99% of its imitators.

I think it's fine to start here. Although you could just as well start with the Requiem collection on PS4, which contains Rondo of Blood (the height of Classicvania design, and one of the best 2D games ever made, imo) and Symphony of the Night (which still holds up really well today). Bloodstained is prettier and more modern, though, so maybe that'd work better for you?

But, really, it's the music that makes this game, imo.

So I finally got out of my gaming apathy to finish a few games this last weekend.

1) Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (I have both the GC and HD version and finally completed on the HD version).

I really liked this game - a lot stems from the art style which is, in my mind, gorgeous and still looks good on my GC. It is possibly too long in some places and a little obtuse in others but overall, as I play through end to end Zelda games I missed, this one is up there. Also has very similar DNA to BOTW in a lot of ways. ALmost a post apocalyptic landscape, elements of free roam, exploration etc.

Gears of War 4: Mechanically, very much a Gears game, presentationally gorgeous graphics but missing some of the old magic. I think my core issue is the narrative issue that you get with rebooting any 'completed' story. GOW3 ended the story of the main characters and also the baddies. So the game has to explain a new world, introduce new characters, introduce new baddies. Overall it started an intriguing premise but ends it abruptely, the lead character is very very bland and none of his character arc is developed or resolved. Also, the sense of urgency the original games pushed forward was missing. I enjoyed it and will check out Gears 5 as a fan of the series but not amazing.

Also started South Park Stick of Truth and I had never played it before despite loving the series and yes, I love the game as well.

@Rudy_Manchego As with the original Metroid Prime, the item hunt near the end of The Wind Waker completely derails the game for hours on end and drastically lowers it in my estimation. And the characters dis-empowering Tetra and shoving her into the basement once she's revealed to be Zelda rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I refuse to play the non-HD version anymore because I DETEST having to use that instrument to continually change the direction of the wind.

The game is still very cute and charming, though, so I prefer it to Twilight Princess.

Stick of Truth is fantastic. It feels like you're IN the show. The humor, aesthetics, voice acting, etc. are all authentic and top-notch.

@Rudy_Manchego The South Park games are good fun. FBW is better in my opinion as the combat is much improved but SoT was from the era when I still watched the programme so got more of the references.

@Ralizah Completely agree with all your points.The game completely slowed down and is a reason why it took me so long to finally finish it. Also agree with Tetra - she was a great character with some actualy chemistry. As for the HD, it is the best way to experience it - the additional items and controls made it a lot better (I had got probably 4-5 hours into my GC version before restarting). I'm part way through Phantom Hourglass though always have struggled with DS stylus controls.

Really don't know why I hadn't played Stick of Truth earlier. ALmost kicking myself.

@Thrillho I am pretty much up to date on the series but I have already ordered FBW. I had a feeling it would be harder going back to SOT afterwards.

@Rudy_Manchego Tetra is easily the best incarnation of the princess in the entire series. I just wish they hadn't done her dirty near the end.

The Wii U re-release is fantastic, and is easily the definitive way to play the game. I love having the map and inventory on the GamePad. The swift sail should have been in the game by default, as it makes the sailing not suck.

The TP remaster is similarly extensive, but, visually at least, the improvements are like putting lipstick on a pig. It's an ugly game, and nothing short of a complete remake would change that.

Sorry for the late reply @Ralizah didn't mean to just poof away like that

My main line of thinking was that every review I've seen, for good reason, compares Bloodstained to Castlevania and I figured whilst I'll not get all the nods or callbacks I might look upon it more favourably without any Symphony of the Night or the likes to compare it to...

I do however look forward to trying Symphony of the Night and the other 'Vania's when I can... The fact that Bloodstained is more recent doesn't bother me at all! I honestly play more older titles then new these days

Oh and that music is deeeeeeeeeelightful I've listened to Gears Of Fortune like ten times since... That string section is superb!

-Edit- And don't think I've forgotten about my REmake impressions! That's coming soon!

Tetra is one of my favourite Zelda characters. The pirates in Wind Waker are great. I never understood why as soon as her ancestry was revealed Nintendo made her so weak, because Tetra the pirate would have faced danger head on. It was worse that they lightened her skin tone.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
I'm quite near the end of Bloodstained. Although it's definitely a more "classic" design than newer games in the genre, it's so well done as a Castlevania game (which is basically what it is). Personally I enjoy that there is less crap layered on than games like Guacamelee 2. Bloodstained would be an excellent starting point to piggyback onto the Castlevania games, and in general its reasonably balanced difficulty means it is a good game for gamers who haven't played many Metroidvania games.

Also highly recommend the little NES styled Curse of the Moon that came out last year. It's brilliant!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, while I think the game is pretty good all-around, the music is the one area where I feel like Bloodstained uniformly knocked the ball out of the park, so to speak. Bringing back Yamane to do the soundtrack was the single best decision they made with regard to the game.

Mentioning REmake reminded me that I still need to play Claire's campaign in REmake 2. I think I'll complete that after Horizon and Digital Devil Saga.

Beat Telltales Game of Thrones over the weekend.
Overall I liked the game, and it kept my interest, but after our discussions of Detroit Become Human, I cant help but be frustrated by the lack of control over the narrative direction. It seemed like no matter what I did, I was funneled into gradually escalating circumstances and no matter the strategy I took (honesty vs deceit, courage vs deference, loyalty vs self preservation), the Forrester family just kept getting into a progressively dire state of affairs. I do like how the game wasn’t afraid of killing off characters and many moments were shocking, which helped to keep interest.
Graphically, the game is PS3 quality at best. Actually some PS2 games look better. The character animations are bad and the background art is even worse. It looks muddy and textures are jagged. If not for the compelling story then the game would not be worth experiencing due to its technical limitations. Alas, the game gave me a platinum — my fourth this year. So at least there’s that.

Finally finished Stick of truth as I spent some time doing all the side quests etc. As a South Park fan, I liked the game. It is also the first turn based game I have completed in many a year - I mean prob since my PC gaming days in the early noughties. It is quite simple which is good for me, only a few challenging battles. I liked the game though, really had the feel of a South Park episode and it was obviously no lazy tie in as most licensed games are.

I have the Fractured But Whole to start but might save that for my holiday in a week or so.