Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Ralizah Great thoughts on First Light! I’m glad you enjoyed it. It really is a nice game and I’d agree with the 7, and with most of what you said.
Do you fancy trying out Second Son now? I would say the protagonist is a little less fun to play as and less interestingly written, but the world and overall campaign are more fleshed out and developed. It’s a longer game, with more variety of powers as you play through. But at its core, it’s more of the same, just packaged in a way that emphasizes story a little more.

@Th3solution Not right away, although Second Son is definitely on my radar now. When it hits the right price in a sale, I'll likely download it. Whatever its flaws, I can't deny that First Light was a blast, and I wouldn't mind digging deeper into this series.

@Ralizah Second Son is part of the PlayStation Hits range, so shouldn't be too expensive these days. I'm surprised it hasn't been offered with PS Plus yet, but First Light has.

I agree with the facial animation is top class, I was blown away by how good it was in Second Son.

@JohnnyShoulder It actually was a PS+ title a couple of years ago, but that was during the few months I let my sub lapse.

@Rudy_Manchego @mookysam @RogerRoger Thank you! Glad my rambles are appreciated, and not a total pain in the butt to read, haha.

@Rudy_Manchego The line of "There's always a lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a city." definitely will stick with me. I'm jealous you have it on a poster! If I was into buying merch, I'd absolutely be rushing out to buy some Infinite memorabilia.

@mookysam I will play Burial at Sea for sure! I checked, and it came with the PS4 collection so I don't even have to make an additional purchase to play it. The premise sounds really cool. I'd love to see Rapture from before it all went to hell, especially when it's through the eyes of my beloved Infinite leads. I'm a bit hesitant to jump into it right away at the risk of burning myself out, but I can't see myself being able to put it off for long.

As for the opinions on the game that you mentioned, I agree with mostly everything you said. The only thing I would somewhat put an asterisk to in my opinion was the development of the Booker/Elizabeth relationship. I loved them together obviously, but I did feel Booker's attitude towards Elizaebth switched a bit too quickly and drastically without any real dialogue addressing it. He went from "can't wait to bring this girl back to New York" to "I'LL SAVE YOU IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO, ELIZABETH" a bit too superficially in my eyes, but it didn't withhold me from enjoying their relationshop at all. Just took some getting used to once he reached that turning point!

I also didn't realise Jennifer Hale voiced Rosalind Lutece until looking it up today. Huh, never would've known. Even more reason to love Jennifer Hale!

@Tjuz I'm not a big merch fan but when we decorated the house, me and my wife agreed we could choose a few framed posters/pictures/paintings each so that was one of mine. That said, it is largely out of view.

Ooooh nice review @Ralizah !

Being a similar person who hasn't played any of the inFamous games before, like RogerRoger a few weeks back (but with the first instead of the last (?) of the series) (not to mention the general praise it already gets) seems this is the kick in the pants I need to try these out sooner rather then later!

@Zukato I am very interested in your thoughts on Deathwing. It's been on my radar for a good long while. I think the theme is enough to carry it past the storied shortcomings of the game for me, but how solid is it in late 2019. Up to date with the PC changelog?

Just finished 'Man of Medan'. Man, what a massive disappointment.

There's so much potential in a horror anthology series like this but to lead with a game like this is a very poor start and has me doubting whether the series will really last 8 games.

As the site review says, the story is just weak. The characters aren't that interesting, the dialogue is bad and overall it's just straight up not very good.

Biggest disappointment of the year for me. A real waste of potential.

Since Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is out real soon, I figured I share my thoughts on the game since I completed the base game last week.

Story: What story? You and a whole fleet end up in uncharted territory. Go explore and fight monsters.

Gameplay: As the riveting story summary suggests, you're probably playing for the battles and such. Monster Hunter is essentially a boss fight only type of game, as the point is to hunt monsters in the environment and fight them. There are areas where they have their own habitats and are found wandering around, and you actually track them down. You find enough of tracks (it doesn't take much, unless it's a story mandated hunt) and you are lead to it's area via scoutflies. It's a lot like an action RPG gameplay wise- You fight enemies directly and how well you do is affected by your weapons, armor, and the stats from your build.

Weapons and armor are crafted from the spoils of your monster hunting, and can be made from pretty much any creature in the game, even from the fodder like a Girros. This is the crux of your stats, since this game doesn't have a real level system (If Hunter Rank did anything other than let me take better assignments, I forgot or never noticed). Weapons have quite a variety of types, from your classic bows and sword/shield combo to a transforming axe-sword and a horn. Like the instrument. I personally used an insect glaive, a bladed staff that controls large beetles, for most of my playthrough. Armor has five pieces to make a set, each piece with it's own specific ability, and can be mix and matched with other sets, although as you may guess, you get a bonus from having either a full set or a certain number of parts from a set. You can also upgrade each piece itself with armor spheres to increase it's viability.

However, I think this game kinda has an issue with certain stuff being so obviously better than others. Not in that natural progression way, but in that "why would I use anything else" way. The Nergigante gear is a good example of this, I think. I had a well enough build beforehand, but was told to use a few Nergigante armor pieces as a recommendation, and it somehow gets results despite clashing with my other stuff. This I feel kinda kills the variety of the rest of the armor if I feel I have to use a certain set to get by.

Combat itself is alright. I personally don't find it as enthralling as other action RPGs, but it works well enough. I'd say my one real issue is the lock on system and the camera associated with it. I'd rather have a janky lock on than none, especially with how often monsters move around, and how quickly. At times however, it seemed to have issues focusing on the monster, and when it was, the camera can be pretty jerky and disorienting.

Since this title is made with co-op in mind, I highly recommend playing with a group of friends, or even randoms. Admittedly, this type of RPG isn't really my preference. I don't really enjoy constantly grinding one monster just for a few parts for a piece of armor, especially if my level doesn't mean a lot. But what makes it enjoyable for me is playing it with pals. Battling large beasts with a group is very enjoyable, and the few times I played this alone, I found it unfulfilling.

Graphics/Sound: I feel like this game is kinda underrated when it comes to it's graphics and music. There are better looking games, but this isn't a slouch in it's own right. The characters look well done, and the environments are amazingly done. While I couldn't tell you the name of a single music track, the score is pretty good at being intense during a fight and enjoyable out of combat.

I feel this game is kinda flawed, but it's still a good time with friends, enough of a good time for me to put the money down on Iceborne.

I also admit that there's probably quite a bit I'm leaving out. Aside from a few events and grinding, I haven't done much outside the main story. I'm sorry if this isn't as in depth as you'd expect.

@DerMeister That’s a great summary and review of MH, very helpful. I’ve thought about playing this in the past and I played the demo / beta and it just didn’t gel with me. Your input is spot on with what I was wondering and brings a few new things to light. When I played the demo, I also was not really sold on the combat per se, and without any friends to co-op with I never thought I’d get maximal enjoyment out of it.

It is interesting to see that, as you suggest, the main component of success is having good equipment. So it’s not like a Soulsborne game where if you “git gud” with your combat skills that you can overcome these beasts with sheer technique? I’ve heard that the game is hard, but would you say then that it’s not hard like a From title, it’s just hard in the sense you have to plan your equipment utilization accordingly to be successful?
My other gripe with the demo was that the menus and crafting and items systems looked pretty complex and dense. I didn’t have the patience to tackle it and learn them at the time. Do you spend a large chunk of your playtime sifting through menus and crafting?

Finished Wreckfest... Career mode AI has been hamstrung by the last update which is a shame, with the hardest setting not really offering much, bar them purely going out of its way to kill you, which is great until they do it on a right hand turn in a race and they veer sharp left for no reason other than to kill the player and themselves.

Got the one and only online trophy to platinum it and to be honest, i'm a bit disappointed now, even though it is fun to play.... Arcade racing without some targets to aim for feels a little pointless now...

Driveclub for all its issues, at least had me wanting to come back to improve my leaderboard positions, this... not so much

@Th3solution In my 20 hours or so with the game yeah I found there was a lot of time spent in menus crafting your equipment and what not, especially back in the hub section and camps. Skill will only get you so far as without good enough weapons the monsters will take an age to beat. I also didn't like that you could not pause the game whilst on a hunt, and as some of them are timed if real life got in way the hunt was basically null and void. Shame cos I enjoyed the hunting and battling of the monsters for the most, just all the other things around it felt like a bit of a chore. And the music in the main hub section was terrible.

For me, not really but even if you need to craft items or gears the process is usually pretty quick.

Regarding difficulty, from my I understanding FromSoftware's games are some of the hardest out there and if you have no problems playing them you'll no problem with Monster Hunter World.

@JohnnyShoulder Oh wow, I didn’t realize that you couldn’t pause the game either. This might be a deal breaker in and of itself. Although I managed with Bloodborne, it was a slight annoyance.
@WanderingBullet I’m no FromSoft master, by any means. I beat Bloodborne and I played the first Dark Souls for a few hours until I got side tracked. But good to know that the game’s difficulty doesn’t eclipse From’s outings.
The menu issue is more of a concern about spending a lot of time planning and perusing the menu to make your checklist of items you need. Other games with a lot of equipment change outs have resulted in me getting burned out and losing interest. I don’t mind learning a complex menu system, but I tend to be a little obsessive-compulsive about my gear and so if I end up constantly tracking my gear and what supplies I need, and do I have the best things equipped, etc. — I end up with fatigue at all the options and things to equip. There is definitely a sweet spot for ‘how much is too much and how much is not enough’ when dealing with crafting and customization of equipment.
It sounds like for you that MH hits a good level of ‘planning your approach’ balanced with ‘getting on with the action.’

@Th3solution I personally wouldn't say MHW is back breakingly hard, but it does have it's moments. The worst it got was against a late game fight against a Kushala Daora, and I thought it was one of the worst designed fights I've experienced in a long time (Didn't help my connection crapped out midway, separating me from my group and having to fight it alone). Special event quests can also be difficult, but everything else in the main game is fair enough.

You can try to beat it with skill, but as mentioned above, you'd just make it harder, and the quests have a time limit, so you can't stall the battles. You can only have 3 defeats per mission too, so getting good equipment is definitely necessary. I did spend a decent amount of time looking at what I have, so there's gonna be some prep time involved. The menus themselves can be pretty clunky. I got used to it after a while, but I still thought that there's a better way organize everything.

Something else I didn't mention is that at the hub and camps when you enter an area, there's a canteen where you can eat. Eating gives stat boosts as well as increasing health and stamina, and they last until a monster kills you. I definitely recommend eating before every battle to help give a better chance.

@Th3solution At least in Bloodborne you could find a corner with no enemies and feel safe you could leave the game unattended. With most of the hunts in MHW being on a timer you couldn't even do that. It felt a massive pain having to plan my life around doing a 45 minute section in a video game. And come to think of it most of the actual hunting I found a chore to do as it got really samey eventually. So it was only fighting the monsters that I was enjoying, which is why I gave up on it. I get that it is heavily geared towards playing with others, but I've played games like Destiny and The Division solo and found those much more enjoyable playing through the story missions.

@JohnnyShoulder @DerMeister One annoyance I had with the game is that the systems are very opaque and I had to read about them online to find out how to use them (or find out they even existed!)

I really enjoyed the combat and actually found the game easier solo. Enemies’ health scales with more people so it made it harder but also one useless person can end up using all your tries. The paleos (the little cat helpers) help distract enemies when you play solo and new skills etc can be unlocked as you play, plus you can unlock new ones you can recruit to help out which I found much more useful than other people weirdly.

So... I finished The Council a couple of days ago. I'd been interested in the game ever since it first came out and bought the full season earlier this year, but only got to it now. The allure of this game for me was it's mix of political intrigue with my ever so beloved choice/consequence system, and luckily. It didn't quite disappoint. The choice/consequence system was really well done, and I love the RPG aspects they added to the concept. Tying it to in-game Effort Points was clever as well, since it made you think a bit more strategically about what dialogue you should go for when. Luckily the mansion had more than enough Royal jellies and Carmelite water lying around to keep filling your bar up again. There's lots of different variations that can happen in the game based on your choices, and even about 7 or 8 different endings. It's not quite Detroit: Become Human-level of intense path plotting, but certainly a step above Telltale's efforts with their system.

As I said, the political intrigue was also a reason I was very interested in trying this game, and up to about episode 3, it was so far so good. Lots of plotting and scheming from all the characters, and it was a lot of fun to navigate that. Then... a certain plot twist happens in episode 4 that almost comes out of nowhere and completely changes the direction of the entire story. I won't spoil anything, but it's easily one of the best "so bad it's good" things I've ever seen in a story. The game continues to go absolutely insane, and while it's all just hilariously cheesy and not very well done, it's still thoroughly entertaining and is probably the most fun I've had throughout the entirety of the game. It's B-movie enjoyable, except not a good B-movie. It's so conflicting, but I can't say I hated it.

The game looked surprisingly good with it's animations, character models and whatnot. It's definitely a lot of Eurojank, but it's all still quite impressive for a studio's first effort. I mean, sure, some character models look like they're not fully grown fetuses (looking at you Washington and Napoleon), but others look great. The animations are also hit or miss, but there's quite a lot of them and I appreciate the effort. It was very apparent when they just weren't bothered to make an animation for an action though, as they'd just make the game fade black for a second. Speaking of hit or miss, the voice acting was the same way. I wasn't actually that bothered by most of the voice acting, despite people saying it's awful. I thought some of it was actually quite good, but it certainly was mediocre for the most part. The way the main character says "amber" any time you pick it up is hilariously horrible though, with the emphasis on hilarious.

My biggest frustration with this entire game is that it would occasionally have entire chapters just be puzzle after puzzle. Most of the puzzles in this game weren't fun to do, since there was a lot of exposition to go throuth before you could logically even start thinking about a possible solution. Even then, it wouldn't always be quite clear what to do, even while using skillchecks. Those chapters were absolute slogs, but luckily the brunt of it was in episode 2, and it calmed down a bit afterwards. I used walkthroughs a lot just to get through puzzles as quickly as possible, as I really could not be bothered to even try and figure them out myself. The biggest offender there was in the final episode, where you're tasked with trying to put together a story of 6 pieces, but they give you another 6 of red herrings. Add a large environment where you're just slowly walking around, and even with a walkthrough it felt like it took far too long.

I was somewhat disappointed with the very, very end. Not the ending I personally got or anything of that sort, but after you receive your personal ending it pretty much immediately goes into screens writing about what the characters did after the game. It functions as an epilogue, but it happens so abruptly. I was disappointed I didnt get to talk with any of the characters post-fiasco, most of all Emily. There was A LOT to go over there, yet I didn't get the opportunity! It felt odd. They also don't specify what happened with your own character after the game, which is a bit of a shame. I'll just imagine he went back to his detective job and started a family or something.

So yeah, overall it's a bit of a mixed bag. I think it's definitely worth trying it you're into choice and consequences like I am, or if you very much enjoy getting to laugh at cheesy B-movies. It's by no means perfect, and those puzzles really do put a damper on the experience. I can't really condone a sudden plot change like presenged here either, despite me thoroughly enjoying the madness it brought with it. I'd say it's a 6/10 experience. I think it's a very solid first effort for the studio, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on what they do next. With some better writing, a bigger budget and less puzzles, I think they have the potential to make something genuinely great.

Tagging @Th3solution for good measure.

@Tjuz Awesome review! I haven’t picked it back up yet but I will definitely finish it eventually to see this crazy twist you speak of.
In my experience of 3/5 of the game, I completely agree with your assessment. Well, except I think you like the voice acting a little more than I do. But yes — “Amber!” 😂