@Ralizah Thanks for the kind comments and for reading my ramblings!
Although the game controls fine on PS5 through backwards compatibility with a controller, it probably is better with a mouse and keyboard.
I hope I'm right about the chicken accent (not something I expected ever to type out), I am a but rubbish in placing some from America. I wouldn't bet any money on it!
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Good to hear you've been enjoying Divinity Original Sin @JohnnyShoulder! I actually need to play the first as I just jumped in Original Sin II last year (It really doesn't feel like just over a year ago I was playing that though)
The combat sounds just as engaging as the sequel... There was a very good use of enviromental effects and hazards like that and there was quite a lot of depth to it with the amount of skills you could branch out into.
The writing was great throughout, fully voiced too, I loved the story and there was a whole lot of characters I found enjoyable and some great ways you could end up finishing quests.
The talking animals perk is good fun In D:OSII! Only english accents from what I recall unfortunately unlike the more varied ones you mention here but there was regional dialects used and there's still some cracking dialogue and laughs regardless.
My favourite being a turtle named Betty who you can help find love but there was so many others that were really good too and really seemed to have fun with voicing them 😁
Hopefully Divinity Original Sin keeps up it's good first impression with you!
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
.
.
.
"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
Ah yes, I thought some from here had played the sequel @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy, but could not remember! Good to know you enjoyed the sequel so much and some of the things I've enjoyed so far made intomthe game. If all goes well with DOS (that makes it sound like I'm playing it on Windows 98), I will probably pick it up at some point.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
So, June 11th 2020. The date of the PS5 reveal event. There were a lot of games shown including Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Resident Evil Village, Gran Turismo 7 and DeathLoop. However, aside from Miles Morales, most of my favourite games were actually indie games! Games like Little Devil Inside, Stray (which I’m hoping is in the Annapurna event), Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Solar Ash and my personal favourite, Bugsnax. After 6 months, I got a PS5 and got the game with my PS Plus subscription. So did I like it? Well, I’ve put 20 hours into it, done everything and got the platinum trophy. Of course I liked it.
Game:Bugsnax
Played on: PS5
The Story
In this game, you play as a news reporter who has been sent to an island called SnakTooth Island to interview a famed explorer called Lizbert Megafig. However, your ship crashes on the island and you fall off a cliff. You then meet up with a guy called Filbo Fiddlepie (yes, all the names are this dumb and I love them). He’s the (self appointed) mayor of Snaxburg. Snaxburg is a town that Lizbert and her partner Eggabell built for people who are moving to the island. He tells you that everyone has left the town and Lizbert has gone missing and is presumed dead. He tells you that there are creatures scattered around the island called Bugsnax that are bugs that look like food and make everyone happy. He says that if you catch a lot of bugsnax and help everyone who left the town with their problems, they might move back and help solve the mystery of where Lizbert went. When you eat a Bugsnak, you forever change a limb into the food that the snak was based on. You don’t eat them in the game as it’s established early into the game that your character is allergic to them so you have to feed them to your friends. This is absolutely horrific and it’s even worse on PlayStation where the snax make noises through the controller when you feed them to people, making you feel absolutely horrible. By the way, did I mention that every character is an elmo-looking thing called a grumpus?
The Gameplay
This game is mainly about catching the titular Bugsnax. You have a lot of tools like a basic trap for catching smaller snax, a bug net for catching stunned snax, a sauce slinger which launches sauce that will lure bugsnax into different areas, a launcher to launch traps in the air and catch flying snax, a trip wire to stun fast or aggressive snax and a snakgrappler which lets you grab stunned small snax from far away. Catching each bugsnak is its own puzzle. Some might require you to just plop a trap down and wait until a snak gets close while some are a bit more complex and require you to use multiple tools + harness the elements. With the trip shot, if you place it on a fire, the rope becomes fiery and you can use that to defrost frozen bugsnax or melt big blocks of ice.You also have a buggy ball which is a hamster ball containing the game’s main mascot, the strabby. It’s very cute. You have a laser that you point to make it go places. If you smother it in sauce, some snax might chase it! There is also a scope you can use to scan snax and get some info on them like the sauces they like and even get a Horizon Zero Dawn style trail that lets you see the walking pattern of the snak that then lets you place traps or sauces. This is a really cool feature and lets you plan your capture. You can also scan characters which then lets you see the characters that they like or dislike. You don’t have to do this but it’s very fun to read the descriptions of the characters.
The other story thingies
Another part of the game is helping people out. There’s Beffica who wants to spy on everyone and find their deepest, darkest secrets, Chandlo who wants to become super buff, Gramble who doesn't eat bugsnax and wants to keep them as pets (a very unsubtle vegan allegory), Cromdo who wants to make as much money as possible with scams, Floofty who wants to experiment on the process of being turned into bugsnax/snakification and their brother Snorpy who is a major conspiracy theorist and wants to find out whether the “Grumpinati” are real or not. Every character is great and all of the side stories are awesome. They're also pretty funny at times. From Cromdo’s saying “Life is like a box of trash. You always know what you’re gonna get, trash.” to Gramble’s insult to another character “You don’t know a thing about love! That’s why your wife left you!”. Pretty sure that last one wasn’t supposed to be funny but who cares? Not me!
The Dualsense
Oh yeah, this game’s on the PS5. This game isn’t a next gen graphical showcase as much as it is a Dualsense showcase. Kinda like Astro’s Playroom but the dualsense support is a bit less excessive. Each gadget has a different trigger effect. Like I said with astro’s playroom, It’s really hard to explain without feeling it for yourself. The triggers in this game are especially hard to describe, so I won’t mention them here. The haptic feedback is also used in full force here. When there’s a thunderstorm, you feel the thunder from inside of your controller, when you get hit by a hostile bugsnak, you feel the thud, etc.
The bad stuff that I don’t like
Firstly, there’s no fast travel. This game is set on a big island. Do you see the problem here? This makes every play session feel like a chore as some of the locations you visit are pretty large which means it might be hard to remember where the exits are. Finding the last few bugsnax to 100% the game is also very tedious with re-coloured bugsnax and really hard to catch bugsnax. These are my only problems with the game.
Conclusion
So, is this game with characters called Wambus, Clumby and Beffica Winklesnoot worth your time? Yes. It is. An overall fantastic game, Bugsnax is very much worth being on your PS5 (or PS4, both versions are very similar).
Pros
-Fun characters with surprising depth
-A weirdly gripping story
-Mind Boggling puzzles
-Cool Dualsense use
Cons
-No Fast Travel
-Some tedious final Bugsnax
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
9/10 Excellent this is my longest review to date. christ, I need a life. this'll also be the last review remake for a while because I wanna get the mario galaxy review done. one of the people working on the game also said that the game is similar to bioshock so I made this
@Jackpaza0508 Great Bugsnax review!
It makes me want to try the game. I’ve ignored it since I got my PS5, but now I think I need to reconsider putting it into the backlog.
Love the Big Daddy crossover too!
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I didn't plan on writing this til now. So the pictures are just taken from Push Square's coverage of it so far and It's a, for me, much shorter and snappier affair being an impressions piece of a demo.
(Also really sorry I haven't been able to keep up with the topic or be PS much at all atm! I've seen the reviews of Ys, Mass effect 3 and the ninty battle royales among others but I just haven't had the time to read them properly. I will soon!)
Neo: The World Ends With You Demo
Eh.
For starts I really don't like the 3D animation style used in the cutscenes. It looked very cheap and tacky to me.
The models don't look great either and some of the "faceless" npc's looked really blocky and very distracting rather then how Persona 5 did the same sorta thing.
The main character, Rin, has the charisma of a wet noodle. The best friend, Fret, was a bit better but I liked the third party member, Sho Minamimoto, a bigger guy who keeps talking in math terms. I'd completely forgot their names to be honest til I looked them up.
The english dub wasn't... bad?
It was better then that absolute dreck that Square Enix used for that mana game last year. But there wasn't any standout performances and I didn't recognise any of the names despite the trailer after completing it trying to make a big deal of the english voices? Passable for sure. Did hear battle quotes waaaaay too bloody much though.
The music was absolute rubbish. Really, REALLY, uninteresting & uninspiring. I've already sorched what it sounded like from my memory but I know I didn't like it in the slightest.
... Combat was rather button mashy and honestly pretty darn easy aside from the bosses (Which were a bit bullet spongey).
I can sorta understand why the game has the different pins (attacks) changing your button inputs on the party members in an effort to keep things fresh and think of your loadout more carefully but at the same time it was pretty annoying having to constantly re-learn which buttons the new attacks are now mapped/tied to.
The enemy design of the noise was very uninteresting too with the enemies being animals just with some parts being jagged neon lines instead (Like the second boss being a gorilla with a purple jaggedy line left arm).
Alright here's some bears instead of a gorilla... But still very uninteresting enemy design regardless
... The fact I did play the entire thing which was 2 hours or so means I did like something about it. And yeah I was somewhat intrigued by the premise and where the story might lead.
There some smiles and slight titters at some of the writing, particularly with the mind reading mechanic you can do on the faceless populace of Shibuya.
But that's honestly it.
I recall seeing the original The World Ends With You's box multiple times for DS, it always caught my eye but I never got round to picking it up either.
... But after this (Espscially if it turned out they're quite similar in progression, playstyle and the likes) I can't say it inspires me to see why the original is considered a cult classic as this sequel seems painfully average at best.
@Jackpaza0508 Nice! I like that you're revisiting and improving your older pieces. And, frankly, I'm actually more interested in the game now that you've explained what the gameplay is like, since it actually sounds pretty fun.
And good job on that interesting, weird Bioshock/Bugsnax mashup image you made. It's a million times better than the hackjob I'd have cobbled together given similar resources.
Looking forward to your piece on Super Mario Galaxy!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Haha, I keep forgetting this game exists. Haven't even played the demo. To be fair, it's probably just unfortunate timing in that respect, given I've been busy with Nocturne HD and demos for Disgaea 6 and Monster Hunter Stories 2. And re-watching trailers and gameplay footage of SMT V every few hours.
I think the cult following of the original TWEWY probably has a lot to do with it being one of the first games to really go for that stylish modern young adult Japanese vibe that Atlus captured so well years later in Persona 5 (and earlier, to a lesser extent, in the original Devil Survivor).
I don't think there's even much in the way of niche excitement for the property these days, though, despite Square-Enix going out of its way to get people invested in this series (the original was remastered on Switch; TWEWY also received an anime adaptation this year; the sequel is being released on the two biggest platforms available today).
Sorry to hear you didn't get on with it, but I do appreciate the reminder to download the demo so I can actually try the thing.
It wasn't bad. I should stress that. It's no Cyberpunk that falls completely flat on it's face that's for damn sure and I don't dislike any of the characters, the combat or anything (aside from that music. Yuck.)
Like I said about the english voice acting, the demo just makes it seem excessively... competent.
I know I like slapping a score on my reviews even though it doesn't mean a whole lot... But at the same time I'll frankly be amazed if this gets scores above 7's (as is the gaming press's typical standard for average) unless the story really elevates it (Though the snippet of story was intriguing) and a 4th party member makes the combat more interesting in my opinion.
Love the new Silver avatar you're sporting by the way! I dunno much about the character at all sadly but I saw him briefly in your Sonic '06 review... Which, unfortunately as I haven't touched it, might very well be why.
Feels like an age since we've last spoken too @Ralizah! How's nocturne treating you now that you've finally sunk your teeth into it? Handing your arse to you on a platter?
And yeah SMT V does look good 😳 -Is very jealous and is desperately trying not to port beg-
I don't think it helps that Neo: TWEWY is a sequel to a property I have no clue about beyond some nifty looking box art, that the characters are in one of the Kingdom Hearts games and the art/character design is by Nomura (Because of course it is).
Like I said to Rog up above the demo is by no means bad.
There is a level down option I could've used I suppose to make combat a little challenging (Would've appreciated the difficulty options being available to use to crank it up though) but I was also purposely making the combat go 4-5 rounds by stacking up the enemy encounters (which was supposed to make it harder).
I dunno. I'd maybe give it a look in a deep DEEP sale myself, Never say never after all right?
I sincerely hope you enjoy the demo more then I do Ral and appreciate you taking the time to read it! I've missed so many undoubtedly good reviews of yours (and Rog's) it's untrue 😂
@RogerRoger Crafting replies as long as the actual pieces of writing we toil over is part of the fun of this thread.
I totally get wanting to defend a game that people are brutal about, even if you kinda recognize that it's not great on its own terms, and even if some individual aspects of the experience work well. That's how I feel about the third game in the Zero Escape series, Zero Time Dilemma, which is widely hated by the series fanbase. While the writing and presentation were... let's be charitable and say "disappointing," it did feature a unique structure that made it stand out from other adventure games I've played, and I loved the grisly, torture porn-inspired horror vibe it had going for it.
But, y'know, following up two of the best narratives in the medium with something that almost turns narrative shark-jumping into an athletic sport is going to engender some backlash.
Nonetheless, I still can't help but like the game.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Well, Puzzle Boy aside (the fact that you STILL can't save your progress through that game, even in the HD Remaster, is incredibly annoying), Nocturne has always been one of the easier mainline SMT games if you know what you're doing. Sukukaja + fog breath + focus + [insert strong physical attack] basically neuters half of the bosses in this game. It's still fun, though, even if I can't say I miss the annoying maze dungeons filled with dead ends. I still really like the immersive worldbuilding and horror-tinged atmosphere. Being able to choose which skills your demons inherit in fusions is an amazing qol upgrade and basically makes the PS2 version permanently irrelevant in my eyes.
Been busy with school and life? I've not had a time of free time lately myself. So, yeah, it's definitely been a while! Honestly, I'm just happy most of us seem to have made it out of Spanish Flu 2: Electric Boogaloo relatively unscathed. 2020 was a ride, that's for sure. Let's not go on it again.
Any games on your immediate horizon? There's a lot of good stuff coming out lately, but I'm so hypnotized by the SMT V footage that I find it difficult to focus on anything else.
Platform: Sega Genesis (also played on: Wii virtual console and Nintendo Switch via the Sega Genesis Classics collection, which is the version the screen captures in this review are pulled from)
Completion Status: Fully completed, probably thousands of times over. I can't even imagine how many hours I've spent playing this game.
Autobiographical Note: I've played this game so many times primarily because it's my mother's favorite video game of all time, and one she's endlessly interested in replaying. Considering we don't share a lot of interests in common, it has become a unique bonding tool over the years.
The opening sequence for Toejam and Earl, which explains the events leading up to the first level of the game.
Toejam and Earl was released on the Sega Genesis in 1991 (so this year is its thirtieth anniversary). The primary creator and head developer of the game, Greg Johnson, initially conceived of it while working as a developer at EA. Having been a fan of the classic PC game Rogue, he wanted to combine the structure and design of that game with light science-fiction ideas, and developed the concept further after relating it to a friend, Mark Voorsanger. The two went on to start an independent development studio, Johnson Voorsanger Productions (later renamed Toejam and Earl Productions). Development staff primarily consisted of people Johnson had worked with previously at EA, and his connection to the industry allowed him to pitch the game to Sega, who ultimately ended up publishing the game.
The set-up for the game itself is simple enough. Aliens Toejam and Earl are traveling through space, accidentally drive their ship into a small space rock, and then crash onto Earth. The ship splits into ten pieces across the planet, and so their ultimate task in this game is to collect all ten of the ship pieces so that they can reconstruct their vehicle and go back to their home planet. This is accomplished across a set of 25 levels that, in the game's primary Random World mode, are almost all procedurally generated, although there are a LOT of patterns and commonalities that one eventually notices with the game's levels. The player progresses between levels by finding an exit elevator that will transport them to the next level (loading almost all takes place quickly in-between levels, making gameplay itself an uninterruptedly fluid experience). Think about the time-traveling phone booth in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and you have basically the right idea, except you're merely traveling through space instead of time. Levels themselves are arranged in such a way that falling off one will drop you into a random spot in the last level, so that there's a sense of verticality or ascent to your journey across Earth.
There is also a Fixed World mode where the maps and locations of ship pieces in the levels are the same every time. This is useful, I suppose, for people first learning the game and trying to understand its unique (and often downright weird) mechanics. But as with any other rougelike game, Toejam and Earl gains its appeal (and endless replayability) from its primary game modes, which challenges the player to forge a position of strength from the chaos of its randomly generated content.
Toejam and Earl can be played in single-player as either of the aliens, but, at bottom, it's designed to be a co-op experience, even being described by the developer as a "two-player game with a one-player option." It's a perfectly functional experience in single player mode, but the fun of the game is primarily found in the cooperation needed to get both aliens back to their home world safely, and even in the occasional emergent competitiveness over resources. To understand the nuances of this game, one must understand, variously, the way lives/HP/promotions work, the role presents play throughout the game, and how these aspects intertwine with the game design.
So, to basics: Toejam and Earl operates on a lives system. Each character begins with three or so lives at the start of the game. If you run out of lives in single-player, or both in coop, it's game over. If one player runs out of lives but the other has extra lives in stock, the dead player's ghost can borrow lives from the living player (the surviving player must agree to this exchange, of course). There are two ways in which to gain extra lives in this game: the first is to open the Extra Life present, which is one of the rarest and most valuable present types in the game. The other is to be promoted to a higher rank. As the player gains ranks throughout the game, they will usually acquire one extra life every two promotions or so. Promotions are acquired when a player hits certain score thresholds, and points are gained by uncovering portions of the map and opening presents. One point is awarded every time a map square is uncovered, and two points are awarded whenever a present is open. In this way, the game ingeniously transforms the classic mechanic of score chasing into something actually meaningful within the game itself. Promotions are also obtainable via certain presents, which will bump you up to the next score threshold automatically when opened.
Awarding points for uncovering map squares (each level's map is divided into a sort of grid, and, as soon as you enter the boundary of a square, what's contained in that space is unveiled on the map) also incentivizes exploration, but so does the prospect of finding presents and money, both of which are critical enough to the game that they warrant separate discussions. I'll start with money, since there's less to talk about. Throughout the game, Toejam and Earl will find dollar bills lying on the ground. These are useful for mail-ordering presents from mailboxes and interacting with certain friendly Earthlings (such as the Opera Singer, a portly woman decked out in Norse garb who, when gifted three dollars, with sing a loud tune that kills every enemy on screen). The most important friendly Earthling in the game, though, and the character you'll like want to save your money for, is the Wiseman (AKA the "Carrotman"), an eccentric old man who dresses up in a carrot suit and will identify your presents for you for $2 a pop.
The Carrotman is actually crucial to almost any successful run of this game. Identifying presents might not sound particularly important at first, since you identify presents by opening them anyway, but there is a very particular present that can and will ruin any positive progress you make in a run. But first, I should shift over to a generalized discussion of presents. Presents litter the Earth in Toejam and Earl, and until you either identify one with a Carrotman or open it, you have no idea what item a type of present contains. Thankfully, types of presents always contain the same item, and a successful run of the game almost necessitates finding powerful gear for the game's often challenging final set of levels.
Presents don't always contain items that are beneficial, though, and the risk and reward of opening presents is a part of the fun tension of your average play session of this game. You might open, say, a Doorway, which will teleport you to a random spot in the level; this can drop you right next to a level's exit elevator or instead drop you on an island disconnected from the rest of the level, forcing you to jump off to the previous level. You might open Tomatoes, a medium-range weapon you can use to defend yourself against hostile Earthlings (the Slingshot is an upgraded form of the Tomatoes present, and allows you to sling tomatoes almost all the way across the screen, which can allow for safer sniping of powerful enemies from afar). But you can also open stuff like the Raincloud, which places a storm cloud over your heard that randomly shocks you and removes HP from your health bar, or the Total Bummer, the second worst item in the game, which immediately kills your character. Managing these goofy items, knowing when best to use them, and understanding the assortment of gear you'll need in your inventory to stay alive adds a deep layer of strategic depth to the gameplay. Particularly considering you can share the opened present by doing so if you're on the same screen as the other player (the screen smoothly shifts between split-screen and non-split-screen depending upon how far away you are from the other play). This can obviously be good, as it allows you to double the effectiveness of good items by applying them to both players, but accidentally opening bad presents can also, surprise surprise, turn out poorly. You'll need to use good judgment on which items to open immediately and which to save for yourself (sometimes, if a mole is going to steal your presents anyway, it's better to open a good present rather than losing it to an enemy, even if it means the other player loses out on the immediate benefits).
But let's talk about that awful item I was alluding to earlier, though. I speak of the Randomizer. What does the Randomizer do, you might ask? Well, it doesn't hurt you. Not directly, anyway. What it does, do, however, is randomize the identities of all your presents, turning them all unidentified. If this happens extremely early in the game, it's not a big deal, but it's a killer later on for several reasons: if you've been squirreling away strong presents for the endgame, you'll suddenly be at the mercy of fate. Moreover, the Wiseman disappears from the game almost entirely after level 15, making it where you're likely to randomize your presents over and over as you open presents blindly, hoping to find Icarus Wings (which allow you to fly over the level for a limited period of time), Super Hitops (which allow you to spring), Extra Lives, Promotions, Boomboxes (which cause all enemies in range of its music to dance compulsively for a limited period of time), etc., entering into a nasty cycle that inevitably leads to frustration and death. And, worst of all, it effectively wastes every single dollar you've spent on the Wiseman until that point, which is dangerous given money itself is a limited in-game resource that must be carefully invested.
So what I've learned over time, after many, many runs with this classic game, is that any good playthrough is at least partially contingent on both players working together to identify as many presents as possible in order to suss out which one is the Randomizer. Typically, this involves us opening the first five or six unique presents we encounter early on in order to thin out the pool of possibilities a bit, because money is almost always very limited in this game (until you don't need it anymore, then you can't walk ten feet without tripping over dollars). When I play with someone else and we both happen upon money in the same area, we basically agree to allow whoever has an odd amount of dollars to pick it up, because that'll allow the person to identify at least one additional present with the Carrotman. After first finding the Carrotman, if the Randomizer isn't identified, then it is silently agreed that no other random presents are to be opened until we can collect enough money to try and find it at the next Carrotman. It can be a frustrating process carrying around loads of unidentified presents, not being able to pick up new presents because you can't use and don't want to drop anything, but the risk of opening a Randomizer almost always outweighs the immediate need to sate one's curiosity.
I've mentioned some of the friendly Earthlings in this game, but there must be some reason I'm so terrified by the notion of not knowing what presents are and not having a fully stocked inventory to lean on as the game goes on, right? As it turns out, Toejam and Earl are very squishy, vulnerable, slow aliens, and Earth is full of terrifying abominations that want to eat you. Early on, you mostly deal with annoyances: Lil' Devils, who run around with pitchforks and poke you in the butt for minor damage; Hula Girls, who will cause the player to stop and compulsively dance for a random period of time, leaving them open to enemy attacks; Moles, who burrow under the earth and like to steal your presents (Moles and Hula Girls make a terrifyingly effective duo); swarms of Bees that will sting you for moderate damage; Cupids who will shoot you with arrows and reverse your controls for a period of time; etc. Most of these enemies drop off as the game goes on and the real players come out, though: Boogey Men, who are often disturbingly common in late-game sand biomes, are fast, invisible enemies who will sneak up on you and inflict pretty massive damage (hordes of these things will burn through your lives in the blink of an eye, which is why carrying some sort of weapon to defend yourself with is so important); Mimics, which camouflage themselves as mailboxes and will murder you if you get near them (patience can be helpful with these; if you stop to watch a mailbox for a few moments before approaching, you'll often see it shift its eyes if it's actually a Mimic); Chickens, which seem like a joke, but clusters of them wearing hardhats will use bazookas to pelt you with tomatoes, making them dangerous foes; and so on. The most dastardly foe is also the rarest, as he only starts appearing on level 17 and disappears entirely by level 22, but any level he's on is going to be a tense experience with a lot of hiding and running. I speak, of course, of the Phantom Ice Cream Truck. This ghostly vehicle pops in and out of existence, and you won't even know one is around until you see it materialize in a burst of smoke, barreling toward you and honking its horn. It's the fastest enemy in the game and will take off roughly half your life bar in a single hit if you're at full health, so stumbling across one of these without an escape plan of some sort can quickly lead to a game over.
Your reward for muscling through this panoply of early 16-bit horrors and obtaining all of the ship pieces (the last of which is always on level 25; if you're missing more than one ship piece on that last level, then you have to begin the tedious process of jumping down level after level, checking your status screen each time to see if a ship piece is present) is a fun victory lap where you get walk your characters down a chunk of Funkotron after they return back home. While there is technically nothing to do here but walk around, every one of the probably 50+ unique aliens you'll encounter in the street will have some unique piece of dialogue to read if you approach them. Your lap ends when your characters reunite with their respective families and the words "THE END" splash across the screen. It's a fairly satisfying way to cap the two hours or so it usually takes to complete the game, no matter how many times you've done it, although it's undoubtedly most delightful the first time you actually manage to return to Funkotron.
A promotional rap cassette
Some runs of this game are obviously more fun than others, depending on both luck and player skill, but the charming presentation helps to carry the game even in its more irritating moment. The sprite work is simply phenomenal for the year it was released, and a lot of care is taken with the animations of every character in this game to give them a unique identity, from the tippy-toe sneaking of the Boogey Man to the manic prancing and cackling laughter of the insane Dentists who like to poke you with their drills. The main characters are superbly animated as well, and you really get a sense for the momentum and weight of the both of the characters based on how they walk. This carries over into the sound design as well: when you character drink Rootbeer, for example, they're occasionally burp for a period of time. They'll shout our excitedly when they pick up money, and even tell you not to pick up more food when your HP bar is full (by exclaiming out loud about how full they are). Even the loading screens in the elevators between levels are fun, as different skits will play out between the two characters via dialogue boxes.
Another pronounced aspect of TJ&E is its funky, very early 90s hip-hip vibe, and the music is a big part of that. While a bit simple thanks to the age of the game and limitations of the hardware, the groove of the music still holds up today. The OST itself is very limited: seven tracks total, with only five of them being regularly recycled across the levels you play on, but given each run of the game is only 1.5 - 2 hours long, the experience doesn't last long enough for the music to grate. Considering how many times I've played through the game, you'd think I'd get sick of listening to these tunes, but I still like them.
In many ways, the legacy of this title is clear. It's an extremely early and very successful example of a now prevalent subgenre among independent developers: the rougelike. TJ&E adopts most of the features associated with that 1980 classic (random items, random levels, permadeath, management of limited resources, etc.) while streamlining and recontextualizing them in a way that made it where normal gamers and families could enjoy them. The dank dungeon-crawling normally associated with the genre was traded for colorful and vibrant open-air levels. The game itself was quite a looker at the time of release, and even now, its detailed sprite art and unique character animations continue to be incredibly charming, which is a big change from the very basic looking games previously released in that genre (Rogue itself is an ASCII game, and thus, like the later Dwarf Fortress, looks like hell). TJ&E has remained a widely loved cult classic for decades, and still remains the best game in the long-running series, despite recent attempts to revive this original style of gameplay in 2019's Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove. While its sheer weirdness might prove to be a barrier to some modern gamers, and it could probably benefit from a remaster that adds some QoL improvements (being able to see the Carrotman on the map like in the 2019 game would be a godsend, considering how difficult he is to find sometimes), persisting with it and learning its patterns proves to be incredibly rewarding, and it's a game I'd recommend to almost anyone, even those, like me, who are usually repelled by the rougelike formula.
10/10
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@Ralizah Oh boy, I only have weird childhood memories of being utterly confused of Toejam and Earl but it’s one of the games in my Mega Drive collection that I’ll be getting to soon! Great to hear it’s such a cult classic, I’ve heard mixed things but our tastes are pretty similar so I’ll probably enjoy it.
@johncalmc That's really cool! So you guys bonded through playing the game together?
@nessisonett Nice. As with other games in the genre, its biggest weakness is probably that it takes a lot of engagement with it to really understand how well-designed it is. And that it's only really appreciated when played with others (interestingly, despite ostensibly hearkening back to the game design of the original, I thought Back in the Groove actually worked better as a solo experience; it's just a shame the 'Newgrounds flash game circa 2010' art-style is so off-putting). It's one of the definitive couch co-op games, IMO, but that model of multiplayer gameplay just isn't as viable today as it was in '91.
I guess some people also might not like how painfully early 90's the whole thing is, but that just adds to the charm, IMO.
Finally managed to nab myself PS5, so thought I'd give some impressions of the console itself, as well as my first full game for the system - Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
The PS5
I...have always had mixed feelings about this console. PlayStation has never been my go-to brand for gaming (usually that's Nintendo - though PSone was my first ever console), and in recent years I've been moving towards PC for most things that aren't on Switch (that said, I'm a big fan of some PS exclusives such as Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank - so would pick up a PS5 regardless). With consoles becoming ever-more-similar to both each other and PCs, and with diminishing returns on hardware evolution, I did wonder how the next gen systems could excite me. I managed to pick up an XBox Series S earlier in the year and - although I think it's a neat piece of hardware and I really appreciate the new suspend feature - it as always felt like no more than a hardware upgrade to me and, to be honest, I've barely touched the thing since.
Aesthetically, I did not like the design of the PS5 when it was revealed. We've all seen the memes - it just seemed a bit too outlandish and bulky a design to fit comfortably in my living room. That said, the look has really grown on me - and I can actually say I'm a fan now. Looking back, every PS design since the PS2 has been downright boring, and I appreciate that Sony have gone with something quite different this time around (particularly after a generation in which every company, including Nintendo, just released a black box. I had even more issues with the controller design at reveal. The contrasting white and black (black dungarees on a white shirt) just looked...off. That said, this has also grown on me. I appreciate that Sony have now released alternative colours but...to be honest, I prefer the white and black now.
Speaking of the controller...now that I have my hands on it, it has quite a bit more bulk to it than the Dualshock 4. This was offputting at first - Dualshock 4 was always my preferred controller over the Xbox controller last gen due to the slimmer design, and that was already larger than the Dualshock 3 before it. That said, I've become accustomed to the Dualsense now and will happily use it over the Dualshock 4. I received 2 Dualsenses with my console - and will have to say I'm a little disappointed with the quality control here. One of the controllers seems to have a slightly shallower square button, so it's missing a lot of the tactile feel to it - I'm not sure if this is significant enough a problem to get a refund, but it's something that is really noticeable to me as a gamer. This is disappointing as, in all my gaming history, I've never really had problems with controllers (not even joy-con drift, with Switch being my platform of choice for the past 4 years) - so to have something like this right out of the box came as quite the shock.
However, that said, the controller is the real star of the show here. There's not much to say here that hasn't already been said - but the rumble is insane. I've always kinda appreciated the HD rumble of the Switch but it wouldn't even come up in conversation as a selling point for me...but here, I'm constantly impressed by the rumble effected that the Dualsense is able to produce for a variety of different situations. Moreover, this is accentuated by the adaptive triggers.
UI-wise, things are pretty decent. I've always preferred the much simpler UI of Nintendo Switch to PS's and Xbox's more bloated counterparts. It did take a while to learn to navigate this UI - especially considering the different submenu that you get when pressing the PS button (previously this would just take you to the main menu). That said, everything is snappy and easy enough to find, and the in-game progress tracking / guide feature does seem pretty neat (even if I don't have PSPlus to make use of it). My one disappointment is that we don't have a suspend feature like Xbox - that would make this the definitive next-gen console for me.
Overall I'm pretty impressed with this hardware. Although PC is my go-to system for third-party games (which aren't on Switch), I'm even tempted to consider picking them up on PS5 for the controller support and the snappiness of the console itself. Sony have done a great job of making this console stand out from both Xbox and PC, and I'm quite happy that the legacy of consoles lives on.
Finally, a comment on Astro's Playroom. This is a neat tech demo that takes things a step further by creating a collectathon platformer around the Dualsense's features, peppering a number of PS legacy references around. And it's all free (I'm looking at you, 1-2-Switch...). This was pretty neat to get a feel for how the Dualsense works. That said...I felt like I'd seen everything after the first world, and haven't touched it since. Still a great freebie though.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
I picked this up as my first game - not only because it was the game I was most excited about for the PS5, but because of the timeliness in which I managed to get the console.
I'm quite a fan of Ratchet and Clank. Perhaps not my go-to platformer, but it's probably my most-played Sony franchise outside of Uncharted, and I've previously played the original trilogy, Size Matters, Tools of Destruction, and the PS4 remake/reboot. I find them all to be expertly-crafted and addictive experience, and, although the series has evolved over time, a quite consistently good series of games that doesn't change too much from one entry to another. The new rift mechanic looked pretty cool, but I did not expect this to revolutionise the series.
Based on this - I was a bit sceptical about the asking price of £70. £70 is a lot for any game - but as someone who has never paid more than £30 for a R&C game, and knowing how short they are, I was concerned that I wouldn't be getting my money's worth. As mentioned, I'm a Switch and PC over PS gamer as well, and I tend not to buy my PS games at full price so that was an additional shock for me. That said, I'm sure there are many people unwilling to pay full price for Nintendo releases which I do on a frequent basis...
Rift Apart is very much an evolution of its predecessors - everything good about the previous games is here: the unique worlds, the chaotic gunplay, the platforming. However there are two significant evolutions here: the cinematics, and the controls / general sense of movement. The first is rather simple to explain: this game feels like an interactive movie, and Insomniac have simply knocked it out of the part with respect to presentation and storytelling. Cutscenes are gorgeous and well-directed, and the in-game graphics look just as good. My only criticism here would be that maybe the game is lacking a bit in some of the humour of earlier titles...but it's humorous enough, I think, and I don't mind the game taking itself a bit more seriously at times for the sake of a greater overall story. Cutscenes are greatly enhanced by the Dualsense's enhanced rumble features, convincing me further that this rumble is the future for immersive gaming.
On the second: Ratchet and his new other-dimensional counterpart Rivet feel greater to control than ever. The rifts are much more of a gameplay gimmick than a revolutionary feature, but the ability to boost around and rapidly teleport through rifts during fast-paced combat and platforming adds so much fluidity to the experience - it can be truly breathtaking. The minute-to-minute gameplay is enhanced further by the Dualsense - not only is the weapon selection as diverse and creative as ever, but the adaptive triggers in combination with the control scheme ensure that each weapon feels truly unique.
A note on graphics and performance: absolutely flawless. Years of growing into a gaming enthusiast (particularly with the move to PC gaming), I've become more acutely aware of things like resolution and framerate...probably to my detriment, to be honest. But I must say, this game felt absolutely flawless in terms of graphics and performance. I chose the performance option with raytracing, and honestly never felt the need to experiment with other options. The visuals looked great on my 4k TV - supposedly the resolution falls somewhere in the range of 1080p and 1440p but honestly I thought it looked fantastic at all times. The performance was flawless - not once did I notice the game dropping below 60 fps, even in incredibly intense scenes with Ratchet launching dozens of projectiles at multiple enemies in all directions. Truly amazed by how well this game looks and performs.
Finally, a note on the new setting and characters: I absolutely adore Rivet as a counterpart to Ratchet and really hope that she appears in future entries. Same absolutely goes for Kit and...and even Emperor Nefarious, and Captain Quantum and...well, Insomniac just know how to write new characters. The dimensional rift concept opens up so many opportunities for the series and its setting and I can't wait to see where this series goes moving forward.
Bottom-line: this is a game that could not be done on anything other the PS5, which I'm really happy to see. The performance is remarkable and the controller in particular enhances the experience massively, and the rift mechanic was pretty cool if not mind-blowing. A definite must-have experience for the PS5 IMO.
Was it worth full price? Eh...hard to say. I'm happy I bought the game, but I certainly won't make a habit of buying PS5 games for £70...I simply can't afford it. That said, as my first true PS5 experience, and for such a fantastic game, I'm willing to settle on the price of admission for now.
@timleon I've heard a lot of praise about the DS5's rumble features. It's interesting to see Sony taking controller gimmicks so seriously with the PS5. To be honest, their entire strategy of leading with exclusives that show off features of the hardware seems downright Nintendo-esque to me. Although it sounds like Sony went the extra mile in this regard: HD Rumble has never done much for me, but maybe I'll become a believer in improved rumble when I experience the improved haptics on PS5.
I'm glad the console has made such a strong impression on you (although I'm not sure how I feel about aspects of the UI requiring active PS+ memberships to work properly; I'm surprised you're not subbed yourself!). It feels like both Sony and Microsoft have made an effort to ensure that their systems are up to snuff this go around (whereas, you know, the PS4 and Xbone were kind of lacking hardware-wise even when they first released). Makes me wonder if there'll even be a reason to sell a "Pro" model of the PS5, although I do still hope there's a slim variant, because the PS5 is a pretty intimidatingly massive beast of a console!
Great write-up on Ratchet and Clank as well. The price tag might be high, but you need something shiny to play on your new console, right? It sounds like a right proper showcase for the potential of the new hardware. Some games are just fantastic 'first games' to play on a piece of hardware, and it sounds like Rift Apart will be one of those games for action-platformer fans on PS5.
It must be difficult to become acutely aware of performance metrics as a Nintendo fan. I getcha, though. The community focus on framerates and frame pacing and resolution and so on really makes the old days when we were happy to play stuff like Shadow of the Colossus and Ocarina of Time at 15fps feel like a different universe entirely, eh?
@Arugula was the account deletion. I was curious myself, and thanks to our habit of responding to everyone in this thread, it took only a moment of detective work to figure out. No idea what precipitated it, but it's always sad to see an active member of the community adopt the nuclear option.
And while it's a minor inconvenience fixing the links, I've found at least one review I somehow passed over when I was creating the directory so far, so it all works out.
ZTD was an interesting game, because its mere existence was a sort of miracle to begin with. It was the third game in Kotato Uchikoshi's cult classic Zero Escape series, which started with NDS exclusive 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. 999 featured a shockingly complex and adult story for that platform, and made use of the design of the system in a mind-bendingly ingenious way to do stuff that'd have been impossible in other mediums. This, obviously, generated positive word of mouth, and the series gained prominence in the West when its sequel, the arguably even better Virtue's Last Reward launched on 3DS and PS Vita in 2012. It was still niche, but it was reviewing extremely well and helping to solidify a passionate Western fanbase.
How passionate they were in Western territories became clear after it came out that the planned sequel (VLR ends on a sort of cliffhanger meant to tease the third entry in the series) was put on hiatus indefinitely due to low series sales in Japan. A number of fans banded together (a movement they dubbed "Operation Bluebird") to boost visibility of the series and its fanbase on social media and to pressure the publisher to greenlight the final game in the trilogy. It seems to have been at least partially responsible for Spike Chunsoft finally greenlighting the game, which was finally revealed to be coming in 2016.
The end result was... mixed. The resulting game made a number of changes that resonated poorly with the fanbase. For example, the previous two games were partially visual novels: 999 used sprites, and VLR used static 3D models. But ZTD had bigger ambitions: it wanted to be more cinematic in its approach, with the story being developed in full 3D cutscenes. But the quality of the animation was iffy, to say the least, with robotic character movements and character models that were creepy for the wrong reasons. This seems to have been a result of both a low-ish budget (cinematic games obviously require more of a financial investment than VNs primarily consisting of static 3D models) and the animation work being farmed out to a different developer, Chime.
The bigger issue, though, is that the tightly written conspiratorial science-fiction narrative that wound its way through the first two games wasn't up to snuff in this entry. The game tosses out some truly nonsensical plot beats near the end, and the twists aren't nearly as impactful as they were in previous entries.
Not only that, but a number of returning characters were characterized so differently that they were barely recognizable. Although this is at least partially explained in-game.
With all that said, the game opted for a unique structure where you experienced small flashes of memory in a non-linear manner (the characters' memories are constantly being erased every ninety minutes or so) and have to reconstruct the larger narrative from there with the help of an elaborate timeline, which was a controversial but, imo, really interesting decision. The puzzle-heavy escape room gameplay the series was known for was still fun. And it still had a lot of the fun (mildly pretentious) philosophical material that made previous games so unique.
You'd think it was pure trash based on the way people react to it, but there's absolutely a really good game in there. Frankly, it's still a pretty decent one, and only falls short because it's not masterful like previous entries.
But, woops, that wasn't even the game I reviewed, and I got lost on a tangent. Sorry. It's one of my favorite series, so it's easy to get side-tracked. I'm definitely pulling from this post a bit if I ever get around to properly reviewing the game (which I 100% will if The Nonary Games collection is ever ported to the Switch).
And thanks! Toejam and Earl is a game I have such a long history with that it's weirdly a bit difficult to convey my feelings for it. You know how some pieces of media embed themselves deeply in the fabric of your larger life? This game is like that for me.
Putting that history aside, though, I do think it nails pretty much everything it was going for game design-wise, and is one of the few games I find to be endlessly replayable.
I know most people think about Sonic games when they think of the Genesis, but, for me, this is the game that really defines the system in my mind.
We don't have the cartridge anymore, but I've found a Sega Saturn-styled controller called the M30 that can be used on the Switch, and it just works so perfectly with this game. Obviously nothing beats playing on the original hardware, but it's a close second-place for me.
I'm curious about what your bad Carrotman joke was, btw.
@Ralizah Yeah, to be honest it's the unique selling point for me at the moment (of course, the extra power and SSD go a long way...but Xbox and PC also have that!). I really hope this becomes an industry standard moving forward. I think the triggers in particular go a long way towards the immersion - it's a shame that what was my favourite controller beforehand (the Switch Pro Controller) is stuck with digital triggers...but I suppose it still works in the context of that system. And I agree about it being very Nintendo-like - Astro's Playroom actually felt very Nintendo but with a clear lick of Playstation paint to me.
With regards to the generational leap - absolutely. When I first got a PS4 I didn't have experience of PC yet something felt missing at the time. It very much felt like a slightly more powerful PS3...and that was about it. Tbh I wouldn't say PS5 is particularly revolutionary either, but it's somehow managed to capture my excitement more than the PS4...maybe because I've already tried a game that showcases the hardware quite well? (I think it took a few years before I saw such a thing on the PS4)
With regards to performance...haha well, I might have some awareness but I try to temper my expectations based on the hardware I'm using. For that reason I'm fine using the Switch for almost all games that are available for it. With consoles I usually go in expecting some sort of compromise...but in this instance, even though the compromise was made explicit to me (decreased graphical fidelity in favour of performance), I didn't feel like the experience was compromised at all.
@RogerRoger Thanks. I'm actually kinda thankful that I didn't manage to get a PS5 until now...because I think my initial experience might've been slightly different without Ratchet and Clank and (now) Final Fantasy VII Remake. That said, I have a significant PS4 backlog so probably would've taken the time to play some of that on the new hardware and would've definitely given Miles Morales a shot (I really loved the first Spider-Man game). It is a shame about the controller but it hasn't soured my experience in any way - I'm hoping something can be done about it though.
And yep, definitely do give Ratchet and Clank a try - especially if you want something that really showcases both the power of the system and the unique properties of the Dualsense.
Sounds like the game has both aged poorly and wasn't particularly well-designed even back in the day, but it's also difficult to fully lash out at something so clearly technically ambitious for its time.
I understand the conflict, though. It was basically my every interaction with Mario 64: a constant tension between "this doesn't hold up very well in [INSERT RECENT YEAR]" and "Geez, this was super impressive for a 3D platformer in '96." Even if a classic game is infuriating nonsense today, if it looked further ahead than most of its contemporaries, you can't help but find yourself simultaneously being sort of impressed with it.
Honestly, of all your criticisms, I think the most damning one for me would be that you're on QTE duty 24/7. That does sound like it'd quickly get exhausting. Which is actually one reason why I've never been a huge fan of games like Uncharted blurring the lines between gameplay and cinematics (or this, I guess). I like there being strictly defined narrative bits and gamey bits, instead of having to be on high alert basically all the time. Combining the two usually means less overall freedom of input from the player, because story beats have to progress in a particular way, and not being able to fully relax at any point.
Good piece, as always. Do you expect to attend to Shenmue III at any point? Just see it through to the end, since you've come this far?
@RogerRoger Bravo on A) completing Shenmue II, B) writing an entertaining review of Shenmue II, and C) deluding yourself into thinking there is any conceivable way you’re not going to play Shenmue III eventually.
You’re in deep now. Shenmue has your soul. And it won’t release it until you play the third game.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Forums
Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread
Posts 1,421 to 1,440 of 2,428
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic