Topic: Games you've recently beat

Anyhoo, I recently finished my first go with Civilization 6 on PS4.

I have played Civ5 to death on my MacBook but it wouldn't be able to cope with this game so I'm so glad I finally got to give this a go. For the most part it holds up pretty well on console with the controls working fairly well. There's a few annoyances not being able to use a free cursor such as not being able to select the cities straight off (but having to select the unit stationed there and cycle through to the city) or be able to hover over your resources to see where they're being used (I started running out of oil and couldn't figure out why at all).

The game itself is solid and the new mechanics work pretty well. The new district system whereby you have to develop tiles within your city to focus on military, economy, science etc works well. You can only have so many of these depending on your city size so it makes cities feel a bit more distinct. Wonders are also closely tied to the districts and geography your city has so you can't build every wonder you want necessarily.

I will certainly be going back for another game of this at some point as I started on a low difficulty to get into the game but it made it a bit boring as I ended up wiping the floor with everyone. It certainly won't be a game I'll get the platinum for though as there are some rather niche but humorously named trophies (e.g. "Luftballoons": drop a nuke with a bomber from a base on the Nena continent with 9 observation balloons).

@Thrillho How does Civilization compare to the Tropico series? I haven’t ever played any of these. Sim City, the amusement park one, etc. I have Tropico 5 for free fro PS Plus that I could try for free. I’m not sure this would be something I like or not. People love that Civilization series though.

@Th3solution Tropico’s a good old fashioned city builder like Sim City. Civ is turn-based so basically an RTS like StarCraft but everything happens at your own pace like Fire Emblem or XCOM. Tropico’s great fun but not hugely similar to Civ.

@Th3solution Yeah, they're very different games.

Tropico is a fairly relaxed cartoony city builder but mostly played through a campaign mode. Tropico 5 is good fun (I've played it through twice after getting it on PS+) and the most in-depth you have to go would be ensuring some resources like coal don't run out, or making sure your sugar supply to your rum factory is sufficient.

The Civilization series are WAAAAY more in depth. You take your civ with their unique talents/units and set up cities and defeat the opposing civs in a multitude of different ways; traditionally via domination (capture all capital cities), science (complete certain specific late game objectives), or via top score. Other methods include diplomatic, cultural, religious ways so there are loads of ways to play and the game is set up for multiple plays due to this, a different map each time, and a whole host of other reasons (I must have had more than ten games of Civ 5).

But it is much more detailed with management of units, resources, cities and their development etc, exploration of the map, and then also focusing on your route to victory.

There are loads of difficulty settings to help find a balance that works for you but it can be a bit overwhelming. Higher difficulties mean you really need to worry about the fine details too. Having played other games helps with the general idea of the game but the overhaul of mechanics means you are learning a lot from scratch but the game does its best to guide you.

@Thrillho @nessisonett Okay, thanks for the clarification. I’m not sure why I lumped the two games into the same genre since they do sound quite different.

@Th3solution They’re both isometric city management strategy games to some degree I guess but still very different!

Tropico 5 is good fun though. It’s a little superficial at times and can get frustrating when your economy randomly tanks for no reason but I really liked the way the campaign worked.

@Th3solution 75 hours for Assassin's Creed Origins. I did play for an hour or two after completing it.

@JohnnyShoulder Oof... that’s a little more than I was expecting. I am definitely going to streamline to story missions only.

@JohnnyShoulder I put over 100 hours into and to be honest enjoyed every minute of it

@Th3solution Yep that is what I mainly did, especially towards the end. One of my non new year resolutions is just play a game and not worry too much about how long it takes to beat it. I think we as gamers tend to get hung up too much on that kinda stuff. As long as it's still fun, I'm not really bothered about how long it takes. The backlog will still be there when I've finished.

@QualityGeezer I could quite easily see my self spending that long. I may even get the season pass, the content is currently on offer.

@JohnnyShoulder it's well worth it. I bought the gold edition at launch and every piece of DLC has been quality

@QualityGeezer Good to know, thanks!

I beat Yakuza 0 last week. Going to replay Kiwami now, before moving on to Kiwami 2.

I DID IT!!

20 odd years in the making but I just finished Baldurs Gate. I’m really chuffed, some of the bosses had me stumped. Even harder micromanaging everything with out mouse and keyboard.

A well respected game I can finally cross off the list. Now do I bother with the DLC and BG2?

@DerMeister

Just beat Devil May Cry 4 there. I totally understand the criticisms most have with it, playing through the exact same sections with Dante was pretty lame. Fighting the same bosses literally 3 times in the story is stupid too. Despite that, I had a lot of fun with it. On to 5 now!

@RogerRoger yeah big time, I’m especially happy because I’ve had a hard time completing games in the past year.

The last boss was a real pig, spent about an hour getting hammered like this. Although I am not trying in the video, I actually lasted longer than when I tried putting up a fight 😂

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=G8Hwwv956A4

The controls were the other half of the battle.

I played and finished Afterparty this week. It's the follow-up game from Night School Studios, the creators of Oxenfree. I was personally completely unaware of it's existence until very recently despite loving Oxenfree. Great premise, so I just had to pick it up. I love a good weird take on any subject matter, and the setting of hell is ripe for crazy and funny situations. I like that they went a completely different tone with this one versus Oxenfree as well, but ultimately the game very much fell short.

At the heart of the game is the friendship between your two playable characters, Milo and Lola. I can't say I was very invested in their relationship throughout, and I actually ended up seeing myself rooting for them to be torn apart. I was actively trying to sabotage their relationship with my dialogue choices as the game was slowly coming to an end, because in my head that was a better place for the story to go at that point than for them to stay together as BFFs. That was a weird experience for me considering how likable the characters in Oxenfree were, and how I really believed their relationshops and wanted them all to thrive. I think the problem with Milo and Lola, without getting into spoilers, is that a lot of their conflict in the game is centered around one certain thing that keeps being repeated. It really doesn't help to add any stakes to their relationship, especially when the positive aspects of the relationship seem to be more interested in breaking the rule of "show, don't tell". I felt like I was more often being told why they are good friends than seeing them actually interact as good friends. It just didn't feel like a particularly well written character bond to me, and that's a real shame as the game basically rests on the shoulders of that.

Despite it's shortcomings there however, the game generally does have good dialogue. Dialogue is obviously of the utmost importance in a game in the style of Oxenfree/Afterparty, and it mostly doesn't disappoint. There's a lot of fun jabs and exchanges throughout. The real star of the game is Erin Yvette's Wormhorn. She plays Milo and Lola's personal demon whose mission it is to make their life hell and feed into their worst fears and insecurities. Although that sounds like it could be a very intimidating character, the character of Wormhorn is actually very upbeat, fun and sympathetic. She's just trying to do her job and everyone is making it far too hard! Yvette brings the perfect voice to the character with a playful and hyperactive performance. Her scenes are incredibly well done, and more often than not quite creative. These sequences stand out so much that I honestly felt like I was missing out whenever she wasn't on screen.

The story of the game is actually very straightforward, as opposed to the very mysterious and twisty nature of Oxenfree. The game quickly feels like one giant fetch quest divided in many other fetch quests. Luckily the game's personality makes up for it's somewhat uninteresting story progression, but I really wish they had put more effort into making the storyline feel more organic and not like a checklist. The highlights of the story are easily the beginning and end of the game. Unfortunately, thanks to this game's choice/consequence nature, there's two endings and I felt like I had gotten the wrong one. Despite technically having "won" the game I felt incredibly unsatisfied with my ending and would have really preferred the other one. I don't think either ending really does fit the bill, but the other one certainly would've been a slight improvement.

Speaking of the choice and consequences, while not at all in-depth, I did feel like it offered enough for me to not be bothered by it. There's definitely some branching paths and different choices you can make that felt to me like they had an impact on my experience, and that's really all I can ask for with a small-scale game such as this. It's probably the part of the storyline that I feel like they handled best. The whole drinking gimmick did not affect this system in the slightest however, and that was quite disappointing. I was excited to see what they could do with this, but ultimately it just amounted to ever decreasing extra dialogue choices that didn't really help most of the time. Getting a drink also felt like a complete time-waster, as I feel like I had to sit there for at least 20 seconds just to get a drink. It was tediously slow.

I do quite like the score they employed for this game, and there were some really good sound effects too that are still stuck in my head. The sound design in general was really well done, and it's one of the few aspects of the game I can give any real praise to. I'm personally not really a music/sound person when it comes to games ever, so when I do notice it, it really means something! I wasn't a really big fan of the art style, because the faces of Milo and Lola looked incredibly low poly to me and it was very distracting. Hell looked quite good, but there was absolutely zero substance. It's a lot of long walkways with barely anything to interact with in the way. The world felt very shallow in that sense, and the dialogue went quiet more often than I would've liked. Not to mention the amount of times dialogue would decide to cut off, which is a highly irritating pet peeve of mine.

All in all I had a good enough time with the game. It definitely felt like a drag to finish at some points, but there were enough fun situations and dialogue along the way that it never felt like a chore. It's a tremendous step down from Oxenfree in my eyes, so if anyone is interested I wouldn't go in with high expectations left over from that game. Afterparty is a solid 6/10, but it could've been so much more.

@Tjuz I think I liked Afterparty a little more than you but I think almost all your points are fair. The drinks element seemed like it could be ignored for the most part and I had a lot of performance issues when I played.

@kyleforrester87 Reported for Spam. And not the ham either.