Just finished the PS5 version of "Jedi Fallen Order". It's glitchy as hell and the production quality varies more noticeably from stage to stage but it was a super cheap disc and playing it on story mode was nice as a Soulsborne decompression after "Lies of P". Possibly "Cyberpunk" or a new "Mass Effect" playthrough next.
Stuck in a complete rut with modern gaming so I’ve been taking part in this year’s RetroAchievements challenge, where you have to make your way across a board every month by completing games at each space. January’s was grouped by genre and this month’s is grouped by protagonist type so it’s been nice to play games I’ve passed by over the years. So, I’ve completed rather a few games.
January (genre)
3D Platformer - Lilo and Stitch on PS1 which was pretty good. Like a simpler Crash Bandicoot and graphics were impressively similar to the movie.
Third Person Shooter - The Punisher on PS2. Insanely good. One of the best games I’ve played in years, sheer fun. A bit like Max Payne to play but with added interrogation sequences that got it banned.
Stealth - MGS Ghost Babel on GBC. Never been a big fan of the 2D games in the series but this was pretty good. Last few bosses were incredibly frustrating though.
Metroidvania - Goodboy Galaxy on GBA. A new GBA game that can actually be played on hardware and an interesting one. More a puzzler than a straight up Metroidvania but the graphics are colourful and I was pleasantly surprised to see actual animated cutscenes. Definitely worth a go.
Kart Racing - Crash Team Racing on PS1. Somehow never played it before and also not my favourite kart racer ever. Feels a bit odd to play and the adventure mode gets annoying towards the end.
Also beat Need for Speed Underground last month which was fun even if the physics are laughable at times.
February (protagonists)
Pirate - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on GBA. Again a bizarrely good licensed game. A cross between a Metroidvania and Sid Meier’s Pirates, it genuinely has resource management topped up by raiding ships in full on sea battles before boarding them like a mini level from a platformer, collecting treasure to fund ship and character upgrades. The land sections aren’t as good with irritating levels of knockback but it’s very impressive for a GBA movie tie-in. Unfortunately a bug meant the achievement for beating it didn’t pop.
Undead - Avenging Spirit on GB. I liked the concept more than the execution. Very charming but also way too hard to justify its short length.
Robot - In the middle of Megaman X Command Mission for like the 4th time. Good game but mostly nostalgia speaking. Like a lost Dreamcast game, it feels like Jet Set Radio mixed with Phantasy Star Online. Great soundtrack too. Just awful mechanics and voice acting. I dunno why I’m persevering.
Food - Egg Mania on GBA. Sh*t.
Knight/Samurai - Surprisingly few options for me here. Ended up settling on Black Castle, a weird homebrew for a budget Hong Kong Game Boy clone that I can’t actually beat cause I’m rubbish at it.
Wildcard - I’ll probably offer up Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance on PS2 for this category, I’ve almost finished every arcade mode and it’s been brilliant, I detest the original games’ engine so this feels way better cause it’s a Tekken clone. That should earn me the credit for this month and I can go back to playing FIFA or something.
Deathloop. Took me a while to figure out and execute my final loop but was extremely satisfying when I did. Overall, I had a blast with this game. It scores huge points for me for telling a great story in a way that fully embraces the medium, great performances, super tight controls and a strong sense of direction and style.
Not sure what to start next. I’ve narrowed it down to either Amnesia: The Bunker, Jedi: Survivor, Sonic Frontiers or Sifu.
@Doctor_BK My first ten or so hours with it were actually pretty similar. I’d have likely quit had I not been encouraged to keep going with it and I’m glad I did. Did a complete 180.
As for tips. I’d say first and foremost, accept that you’re going to die and get looped many times. It’s the nature of the game. Not dying only really becomes a serious goal on the final loops. Start with just exploring levels as level knowledge becomes integral. Kill visionaries for their game changing slabs, upgrades and residuum. Spend all gained residuum on infusing slabs, slab upgrades and your favourite weapons and trinkets before a loop ends. Read everything you find as these clues give you leads to track, which will eventually guide you through levels. Slowly it all comes together and, at least for me, everything just kind of clicked at a certain point. I went from feeling lost and aimless to having clear goals. The levels essentially become manipulable playgrounds. Hope that helps!
Edit: some things the game doesn’t really explain but were an odd stumbling block for me:
If your slab slots are full and you want to pick up a new slab, you have to have a slab equipped in order to pick it up. You’ll drop the equipped slab but as long as it’s infused, you’ll only lose it for the remainder of the current loop. Same for weapons.
This one’s pretty specific but without spoiling anything, generators can be accidentally destroyed! You’ll thank me later 😄
Mines can be disarmed but you have to be crouching.
Turrets are a great friend, as are the quicker hacking and double jump trinkets.
Just finished off the main story on Assassins Creed 3: Remastered yesterday… and am now working my way through the considerable side content for 100% completion. Really liked it fair play, the American liberation setting, the split between city and frontier locations… and the naval stuff too, of which there was a fair bit more of it than I expected.
Not quite my favourite AC game (I’d probably put Unity, Odyssey… and maybe Black Flag above it) but a classy game nonetheless.
@colonelkilgore Yeah, AC3 is underrated in my opinion. It was the game that really started the ship-faring sub-genre in games. I felt like it was the perfect amount of ship and sea content, and then when they made Black Flag they went overboard (pardon the pun). I’ve still yet to play Odyssey, which I think has a lot of sailing in it too, but with Black Flag I just dreaded the mechanic, whereas in AC3 I always looked forward to the ship parts as an occasional diversion.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution so Odyssey was my first in terms of naval content… and I’d say that it probably is a little simpler that that of Black Flag (probably more to do with the technology of the era more than anything else) but there is a lot of it (probably as much as BF). It’s frikkin beautiful island-hopping around the Aegean though.
I’m with you though, I think 3 is very underrated… and while I enjoyed the Ezio trilogy, I thought this was better than all three.
And now I'm done with all the DLC for Control as well. A bit of an uneven experience with the DLC. The Foundation, as I mentioned earlier, was repetitive and dull and felt extremely padded. The Alan Wake DLC was a lot better, especially if you're an Alan Wake fan. Had a fun boss creature you were chasing all over the place, but also this felt like it overstayed its welcome a little bit. Overall, a really great game with DLC that felt uninspired.
@FuriousMachine Ah nice achievement. Cool that you got to the end of the game and played the DLC as well. Was it a hard or easy game, like what difficultly setting did you play it on? Can mention that I have been temped to buy Alan Wake 2 as of late but think that I will wait a little bit more before I grab it hehe.
So I started… and finished Spec Ops: The Line today and it was everything and more than I’d been led to believe. Incredible game! An excellent narrative, as everyone always brings up; with themes and storytelling techniques not really seen much in gaming (nor even in film much anymore, mores the pity) but it also plays brilliantly… and what a soundtrack too… capped off with Jimi Hendrix’s 1983… (A Mermaid Should I Turn To Be) during the credits!
I can only imagine what games these guys might’ve produced had they been able to carry on. Will be real keen to see what the writer does with Insomniac’s Wolverine.
Played through on Suicide Mission difficulty (which I found really quite difficult tbh) so god knows whether I’ll be able to make it through the FUBAR run but I’ll be giving it the old college try for sure.
@colonelkilgore Nice, it was viewed as a landmark game back in the day, a shooter with a well told story...shocker.
The fubar difficulty is supposed to be pretty difficult, I didn't even try it back in the day.
@CaptD yeah I have no doubt mate… I’d say that the Suicide Mission difficulty was already more difficult than… say Crushing on the Uncharted games. It’s gonna be painful for sure 😅
@oliverp There is no difficulty setting in Control, which had me a bit wary at first, as I'm not very good at action games and can get easily frustrated. I needn't have worried, though, as I didn't have any problems with the combat. There were a couple of boss battles that were challenging and required a few tries, but the checkpointing is for the most part fairly generous, so I felt it went pretty smoothly. I would recommend checking out a guide for tips on which abilities to level up first (short answer: health) and, once you acquire the levitation ability, a guide to all the hidden locations. Finding hidden locations gives extra ability points, so this ensures that you're in good fighting shape for pretty much every encounter.
The DLC was another story, especially The Foundation, but at that point you're given the option to activate Immortality and One-Shot Kills from the options menu, which is a godsend for the encounters that may end up becoming more frustrating than fun. At least, it was for me.
Hope you'll enjoy it, should you decide to give it a go. I absolutely loved it!
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