Topic: Games you've recently beat

@RogerRoger It's funny that you call the menu and item management "cumbersome" in the remake, because I think the OG Game Boy version would have killed you. They removed probably 90% of the tedious pausing and item switching crap that was in the original game, where you only had two buttons to work with.

@RogerRoger Enjoyed your review. I liked this reimagining of the LA and I had little attachment to the original as never actually owned it, just borrowed it. I would agree though that I found the final 2 dungeons far less enjoyable than what had come before. Of course, that is probably more to do with the original design and limitations. I would be interested in your view of other Zelda games, maybe 3D ones.

@RogerRoger

??

The Joycon controllers should have just as many buttons as the Pro controller - triggers included.

Anyway, just the fact that you don't have to pause and equip the power bracelet every time you want to move a rock or a pot would probably make me enjoy this remake significantly more. Also, the game not popping up sllloooooooowwwwww text boxes any time you get near a rock without that stupid bracelet equipped. Based on what I've seen, I think the amount of menu fiddling in this remake would be fine for me, considering you can have more than one thing at a time equipped.

RE: unlocking jumps... you have to keep in mind that pre-BotW Link, despite his adeptness at sword combat, is physically unable to jump. He can kind of roll-hurl himself off of ledges toward other surfaces, but, when it comes to directly defying gravity in an upward direction, he requires the aid of mystical tools to unlock the ability to do so.

@RogerRoger Whoa whoa whoa - wait a second, that woman was a prostitute? I just thought she was an instagram star. Mind blown...

I’ve just completed Horizon chase turbos Summer Vibes DLC. It took me less than an hour to get all the super trophies. Which given that it took me a month and a half to get the platinum on the base game is really short. The difficulty is also lower than the final few master tournament. It ads one new car with a number of skins and 12 races only one of which is on a new track.

Yes 😀. @Kidfried

I completed the Modern Warfare Remastered campaign yesterday. Speaking as someone who never played it first time around, I can say it still holds up. The levels are well-designed, the characters slightly more well-rounded than your average grunts and the shooting is absolutely rock solid. I know 'Call of Duty game features good shooting mechanics' isn't the type of bang-up-to-date news people visit this site for, but there you go.

I think it was just the sort of game I needed to get me back into the groove, after a bit of a post-Sekiro lull.

@Frigate A remake of MoH Frontline would be amazing. Me and my mate played that game non-stop, I think it was summer 2002. Probably my favourite FPS. Call of Duty World at War went some way to recapturing the feel of Frontline for me.

Celeste

WHAT IS IT?
A precision platformer with controls and gameplay reminiscent of earlier titles such as Super Meat Boy and Slime-San where you play as a depressed young woman named Madeline who is determined to climb to the summit of Mount Celeste, which is filled with mysteries and danger. She meets a variety of eclectic characters on her journey and is forced to confront a dark reflection of herself that manifests as a physical entity on the mountain.

PLATFORM
Nintendo Switch

LEVEL OF COMPLETION
Completed the normal levels for Chapters 1 - 8 and collected all the strawberries. Also unlocked and completed the B-side levels for Chapters 1 - 7 (Chapter 8's B-Side is locked behind an extra set of collectibles that are especially hidden with each level, and, honestly, after spending 25 hours over 4 days playing this, I'm a bit exhausted). Didn't complete the recently released Chapter 9 DLC, which I hear is the most challenging part of the game, but I'll come back to it someday.

GAMEPLAY

The game is organized into a variety of chapters. Each chapter will generally advance the story, and is composed of a long series of primarily single-screen platforming challenges. While the game only requires the player to do the bare minimum to navigate to the end of the level, there are a host of collectibles, hidden and open, to collect along the way. Strawberries, the most prominent collectibles in the game, are objects that you usually have to go out of your way to collect. Normal strawberries also you to collect them however you like, but they usually require the player to complete the platforming challenge they were obtained during before the player is allowed to collect them. If you die immediately after having grabbed a strawberry, you'll have to go back and try for it again. Alternative strawberries include ones that are formed by collecting a certain number of items throughout a room without touching the ground, and one with wings that will fly away if you use your dash ability trying to get to them, forcing the player to rely on normal jumps and platforming mechanics to reach them. Each chapter will also have a crystal heart, which often requires extremely out-of-the-box thinking to obtain, and a B-side cassette, which unlocks a harder and often much longer version of a given level as an optional challenge.

Celeste's controls seem simple at first, but there is a ton of depth to the platforming in this game. Most of it won't be accessible to normal players, although the good news is that most people should be able to beat the game in its default difficulty with just normal jumps and dashes.

PRO:

• I REALLY like how the game tells you how many strawberries are in each section of a chapter, and lets you jump right into that section to collect what you need. It also seems to autosave after successfully collecting a strawberry, which allows the player to jump in and out of stages at will.
• Immediately restarting players at the start of a room when they die during a challenge is central to encouraging them to keep trying at a challenge.
• The best levels in this game integrate level design/exploration/aesthetics/theme to create one compelling whole. The Mirror Temple near the middle of the game stands out in this regard.
• I really like the way the ending changes depending on how many strawberries you've collected. Very cute.
• I was tempted to create a separate section for this observation, since it could be either a pro or a con, depending on the person. The developers of this game seem to have a deep love for Nintendo games, and you'll find design aspects here that reference the Big N's games constantly. Characters jabber in a soft nonsense language reminiscent of Animal Crossing (thankfully, these sounds lack the ear-shredding quality found in another recent Nintendo-inspired indie adventure, Yooka-Laylee). Many of Madeline's abilities recall gameplay from older Nintendo games, be they the Super Metroid-esque wall jump exploit you can perform to conserve stamina, "wave-dashing," or the obviously Cosmic Mario-inspired sequences where Madeline's shadow mirrors her movements and kills her if she catches up.

CON:

• Crystal Heart locations are often unintuitive. The one in the second or third chapter (I forget) has you dashing upward by phasing back and forth between screen transitions. It's a clever design choice, but the problem is I don't recall the game ever making a point of introducing this aspect of the design in any way, which makes it feel less like a collectible and more like an Easter Egg. Except late game content is hidden until you obtain these collectibles.
• I don't like the level design in the B-sides. It's reminiscent of a lot of Super Mario Maker levels I've played insofar as they rely on repeatedly pulling off a certain series of platforming moves in exactly the same way in a sequence until you clear a room. Like many Mario Maker levels, these platforming moves are forced by covering nearly every inch of the screen that you're not supposed to touch in instakill spikes. It's incredibly uncreative and lazy.
• More broadly, there are too many levels, even in the main part of the game, where there's little to no design openness. More often than not, there's only one correct way to clear a challenge, and it even requires identical timing with the jumps and whatnot.
• This might seem like a weird criticism, but the way platforms are oriented within levels in this game often feel very inorganic and abstract, as if they were designed for a video game and nothing else. Compare to a game like DKC: Tropical Freeze, where every level element feels like it belongs within that environment, and elements work together to create a coherent environmental picture.
• Celeste sometimes teaches game mechanics passively through good level design, but oftentimes it leaves the exact operations of things a complete mystery. The game really doesn't explain its stamina system, for example, and good luck consistently triggering high jumps on springs and bouncy clouds until you figure out the timing that the game gives you no idea about.

STORY/CHARACTERS

Celeste is marginally more engaging than games with similar mechanics and challenges due to how the game structures the levels in such a way that you feel like you're going on an adventure, as opposed to just trying to go from left to right in linear stages. Part of this is due to the light narrative focus. The best stages in this game combine a persistent narrative thread with complex, exploratory level design, which helps to develop the context that Madeline's journey up the mountain is a sort of psycho-spiritual odyssey for her. Not every stage is like this, but these sections help to distinguish Celeste from many of its indie game peers.

Plot-wise, a lot of interesting ideas are hinted at or suggested and then promptly abandoned throughout the game. While this is frustrating in some respects, I do like how the developer keeps the game laser-focused on Madeline's subjective experience throughout. Not every game needs to be an epic, or deeply plumb the mysteries and lore of imagined settings; for better or for worse, whatever bizarre contrivances are hinted at throughout, it's just set design for Madeline's journey of personal growth.

There are a number of colorful characters that Madeline meets on her adventure, and they're fun, but mostly underdeveloped, and are typically characterized by one overriding character trait. As mentioned before, the game is focused on Madeline, so the rest of the characters who aren't Madeline (or her double) end up going fairly undeveloped.

ART/CHARACTER DESIGNS/MUSIC

I'm a bit conflicted here. While the game's environments often make wonderful use of color to offer up vibrant backdrops, the pixel art for the characters is horrible. There's no detail to them at all. I obviously don't expect hyper-detailed WayForward-esque sprites, but this, at least visually, often feels like about a thousand other lazy indie games out there.

The CGs that periodically pop up during chapters and bookend each chapter are frequently adorable and full of personality.

The game is more consistently excellent on the music front. Composer Lena Raine's gorgeous tracks, often piano-dominated, exude a variety of emotions and do a great job of immersing the player throughout. There are some really stellar remixes from other artists during the B-side levels as well. There aren't too many indie games with soundtracks this good, honestly, and it's another element that really elevates Celeste above its peers.

CONCLUSION
Celeste is a fun, challenging, and fairly memorable platformer with a strong central narrative, compelling music, and a lengthy campaign that rewards players who persist and attempt to engage with as much of the game's content as possible. Terrible pixel art for the characters, lacking character and story development (not related to Madeline), and some quibbles with the game design drag it down a bit for me, but I enjoyed my time with it.

VERDICT
8/10

Finally finished Okami HD on the switch. I've been playing on and off for a couple of months. I love the art style, the water colour cel-shaded art and the general aesthetic throughout the game. The music is also fantastic, particularly the early game. The writing is largely excellent with some decent humorous interludes but some of the narrative from a key protagonist gets to be a pain in the arse! The gameplay and level design are a mixed bag, some of the dungeons and bosses are brilliant but long before the end of the game the majority of the routine goons and world traversal become a bit dull. The game is too long, I cant help bur think it would have been better if it was 10 hrs shorter!! Overall i enjoyed the game but i really find it hard one to recommend to others. Given how old the game is, its aged well but its design is showing its age and some of the repetition feels unnecessary.

@Ralizah great review, cant wait to try it out after I finish bastion! Did you play the new levels they released and if so, did they just integrate these into the 8 chapters?

@R1spam No. Chapter 9 is supposed to have some of the hardest challenges in the game and take multiple hours to complete, so I'd like to get to it after going back and trying out the C-sides for each level at some point.

@RogerRoger Nice, I'll keep an eye out for that.

@R1Spam I played Okami HD last year. Beautiful game, absolutely gorgeous, but you're right it's so bloody long! It's like Return of the King, there are about three bits where you think 'right here we go, this is ending now'.

@R1spam Okami ends, like, three times before it's actually over. They just kept tacking stuff on.

Also, the dungeons are too puzzle-free to make the Zelda nerd in me happy.

Weirdly, it was actually Issun's endless misogyny that wore on me the most. How I longed to squash that bug!

Did you play primarily docked or handheld? I really liked the touchscreen implementation of the celestial brush.

@Ralizah Nice review and good screenshots

Celeste is one of many games on my radar that I'm sure I'd enjoy but don't think I'll ever get around to playing but that does make me want to add it to the ever expanded backlog..

@Thrillho

Thanks It'll be a challenge for games on older consoles, but for PS4/Switch/PC/Vita games, there's no real reason not to include them. It's always fun to actually physically see what the game in question that is being reviewed looks like.

Honestly, even a month ago, I wasn't planning on playing Celeste any time soon either. It was just one of those "one day" sorta games. But it won't on sale for a price I've been holding out for since launch ($10), so I thought: "Why the heck not!" and bought it. Initially, I was intending to wait and make this the first game I played on my Switch Lite, but my curiosity got the better of me, and that clearly didn't happen.

I don't think it's some sort of modern classic of the genre like some people do, but it's well worth picking up, on sale or at the normal asking price.

@Ralizah Wonderful and entertaining review to read, as always. I don’t really have much interest in Celeste since I’m not much of a platformer fan, but I’ll bank it in my memory in case I get the urge.

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I finally put Marvel’s Spider-Man out of its misery. Completed the story and 100%’ed the map. So much has been said about it I really won’t report more. @mookysam said it all the other day much better than I could have.
Interestingly, although I’m glad to have finished the game, and I feel like the length was just about right, I find that I am craving more open world icon chasing. My plan had been to continue to work on my Valkyria Chronicles 4 playthrough (I’m finishing up chapter 7, at about 20 hours in - I figure I’m about 1/3 of the way through the game), and then add a completely different type of game as my other game to rotate in with it. But I find myself considering another open world game to replace Spider-Man. I’ll let the dust settle a little bit and see what strikes my fancy.

@Ralizah yeah issun's busty lady routine completely wore thin, and I don't think I would have thought differently of I had played it at launch! Also wearing how he spells somethings out to the nth degree, leave some player agency. I've only ever played botw so would love to give an older zelda game a go sometime. I played mostly in handheld, though there are sections where the touchscreen didn't feel precise enough (like the susano power slash sections) and I used my pro controller in table top mode.
@Gremio108 great analogy!! I remember reading the book and being like, they've thrown the ring in the bloody volcano, why is there still a 150 pages left?!

Nice review as always @Ralizah

I'll admit all the praise I've heard for Celeste before yours is typically "best game evarrrrrr" which just seems to rub me the wrong way nowadays after all the hype I've heard for various games over the years that I didn't end up enjoying... So it's nice to hear yours being much more reserved but still very positive too.

Also that pixel artwork is rather naff... All over to me but the characters do look especially rough

The tracks you chose from the soundtrack are quite nice on the other hand!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yeah, I usually steer clear of almost anything that's generating such ridiculous levels of (usually undeserved) hype and praise. Humans are herd animals by nature, so they're more likely to exalt or pile on a game when they see a lot of their peers doing the same. And, to be honest, the sprite work put me off the game for a long time.

The artwork for the environments on a pure design level isn't great, but the fantastic use of color helps to redeem them to some degree. But, yeah, the character sprites are pure garbo. I initially wasn't a huge fan of the artstyle employed in the character portraits, either, as it struck me as a bit Tumblr-ish, but it grew on me.

Yeah, the music is uncharacteristically good for the type of game it is.

The music in the B-sides is often, unfortunately, much more chiptuney and can get a bit grating due to the fact that those levels get quite long (up to an hour for some of them, in my case) and the music tends to stay the same throughout.