Games #1-20
Just hit 20, so it seems sensible to retire my first post and begin filling a new one given the length of some of my reflections.
21. SD The Great Battle (SNES) - Beaten:
15/03/18 - Time Taken: ~2 hours (Credits)
Aeon Genesis recently announced that they'd localised 5 titles in the Banpresto 'The Great Battle' series. I have zero interest in anime, but I was intrigued by the titles all being built upon different genres, and thought it might be fun to try and play through them. The first game in the series is a top down action title that features mazey stage layouts and plenty of boss fights (that I probably would have got more out of if I knew any of the source material this game was based on). Pretty fun overall. Too easy perhaps when played on Easy, so I've been trying to beat it on Normal to try and extend my playtime. I can consistently get to the last boss without continuing, but then death means you lose all special power, a tool pretty important to taking down the larger enemies in any sort of reasonable time.
22. CounterSpy (PS4 + Vita) - Beaten:
23/03/18 - Time Taken:
~5 hours (Majority of Trophies [PSN])
Richter1887 mentioned this game earlier in the thread, heaping it with praise, but also offering a PSA that its online servers were soon to be taken offline rendering a trophy unobtainable. Although I don't really hunt achievements or trophies like I used to when I had more free time, I do enjoy grinding games occasionally.
I was pretty hooked by CounterSpy's gameplay loop from my first session with it on the Vita. Traversal is fun; the semi-procedurally generated level layouts keep the largely repetitive gameplay from growing too stale; and the ability to continue your game on either platform made chipping away at this one quite the treat. I haven't started tackling higher difficulties yet to polish off the last few trophies, but I definitely intend to. Recommended.
23. Little Adventure on the Prairie (PS4 + Vita) - Beaten:
27/03/18 - Time Taken:
~90 minutes (All Trophies x2 [PSN])
Another double platinum, though while My Name is Mayo had some redeeming qualities, this really was trash from start to finish.
At around age 11 I used to make basic games using Klik N Play, a piece of software that would eventually become Multimedia Fusion 2. I'm not speaking in hyperbole when I say the platform games I made then were more functionally and mechanically sound than Little Adventure. The player character gets snagged on the tiniest bump in the scenery. Collision detection between player and enemy is laughably poor, and beating certain levels can feel entirely dependent on luck as your life bar drains at a rate beyond logical comprehension. There are no sound effects or obvious visual cue for taking damage. Level one includes a hidden area found through backtracking, but this incredibly basic design 'trick' is never employed again across the next 11 stages as they're all entirely linear. Even the menus are unresponsive. Truly dire.
24. Fragment's Note (PSM [Vita]) - Beaten:
27/03/18 - Time Taken: ~
8 hours (All Endings)
I'm not entirely sure what made me pick up a visual novel, least of all this relatively mediocre release. Seeing an English translation first through Android and iOS ports, Fragment's Note found its way to the short lived Playstation Mobile store on Vita and compatible phones.
With just three choices made within the first hour of story dictating the remainder of the narrative, the game feels very limited compared to others in the genre. It's reasonably well written, with characters that I didn't mind, even if none of them really stood out to me. The writing relies on a lot of anime / VN tropes, and while I'm not particularly literate in either medium, that I could recognise so many of the recurring archetypes in the leads and supporting cast shows that Fragment's Note plays it preeeety safe.
I played through all four endings (the failure ending for choosing inconsistently across the 3 aforementioned choices as well as the three character-centric endings) and feel compelled to give some other VNs a shot later in the year. Think I'll take a bit of a genre break for now though.
25. Cat Quest (PS4) - Beaten:
31/03/18 - Time Taken: ~
12 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
Years ago I blazed through Ron Gilbert's Deathspank games on the 360. There was something about the streamlined loot system, action RPG combat and writing that really appealed to me. They're not games I've felt compelled to go back to, but found each of them hard to put down once I'd started them.
Cat Quest gives me a very similar vibe to Gilbert's games. The writing is more twee than it is clever (and I've never been a fan of puns, something which this game revels in), but the combat and snappy pace again kept me interested for the time it took to 100% the game. The final trophy, to hit level 99, required just 30 minutes grinding at the very end of the game, a credit to how the game spreads its content.
26. Gun Commando (PSM [Vita]) - Beaten:
31/03/18 - Time Taken: ~
3 hours (Credits)
A Wolf3D-inspired FPS for the ill-fated Playstation Mobile platform. Each level is plain, and the game's boxy stages are filled with simple enemies that follow predictable patterns of attack, with Doom's trademark keycards not making an appearance until the last run of stages.
The game is fun enough, but the controls are truly awful. Being available on the Vita means that you can use the physical controls of the console, though right stick movement is slippy and carries a strange amount of inertia, no doubt due to the game's touchscreen roots. After the initial levels I found it easiest to play using the left analogue for forwards and backwards momentum as well as strafing motions, and fine aim controlled by sliding my right thumb across the touch screen.
Difficulty was fine for the most part, although the last few levels tested my patience. The final boss too was an exercise in frustration - the boss spawns constant waves of enemies, which brings the latter half of the 7/8 minute battle down to pitiful, single-digit framerates.
If you already own it, give it a play. If you fancy playing it and never picked it up back in the day, you're shit out of luck. The digital future bites.
27. Memories Off 6: Complete (Vita) - Beaten:
31/03/18 - Time Taken: ~
6 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
I picked up this Japanese language title in a bundle of other games that I won on eBay late one night - I have a terrible habit of making low-ball offers on buy-it-now lots just before falling asleep and sometimes end up with a bunch of dross I really didn't need or really want when I wake up in the morning.
I found a guide a couple years back that walked through this game in its entirety, signposting when to save, when to load, and which dialogue choices to pick to progress the story through to 100% completion. It's taken me a good while to get through this, just half and hour here and there, but it's finally done, platinum trophy and all. Even though I had no idea what the content of the individual storylines were, I quite enjoyed creating my own narrative to play over the fantastic character art.
28. Goosebumps (PS4) - Beaten:
31/03/18 - Time Taken: ~
6-7 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
Honestly not sure what's stranger. That Goosebumps as a license held any stock whatsoever as late as 2015; that its videogame adaptation was a single screen adventure game in the Shadowgate / Deja Vu tradition; or that it was developed by WayForward Technology.
The game itself is perfectly serviceable, though not anywhere near as knowing or clever as the film that released around the same time. It is however a fun enough romp across which lasted a decent four or so hours to finish (I played co-operatively with my partner, bumbling through some of the more trial and error puzzle solutions together), before I sat with a guide for a few hours to mop up the remainder of the trophies for finishing the game in a limited number of moves or manipulating / interacting with items and objects in ways which called back to early Goosebumps books.
29. Resistance: Burning Skies (Vita) - Beaten:
03/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
5-6 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
D'ya remember when Sony was actively supporting the Vita and attempting to make good on their promise of the fabled AAA-game on a handheld thing?
Even though Burning Skies didn't set the world ablaze critically, playing it now, several years after release, it's impressive just how much of a the big console experience Nihilistic manage to cram into this portable campaign. Presentation is ace, especially considering this was a relatively early release for the little handheld that could, and despite being a pretty bog-standard, linear FPS, I really enjoyed the 5 or so hours it took to play through.
30. Gryphon Knight Epic (PS4) - Beaten:
07/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
15 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
A shmup with absolutely none of the finesse we now expect from the genre. There are story elements, 'ship' and 'option' upgrades, simple exploration, and a range of difficulty options. Yet the game is both made and let down by its art style: huge chunky bitmap pixel art that makes hitboxes larger than they should be, scrolling a constant tear-fest owing to the massive background art, and, most jarringly for me at least, a resolution that is stretched to fill an HD screen that has not been scaled by integer.
Remember how everyone shits on Symphony of the Night for the Saturn for stretching pixels along one of its axis from its Playstation port? This whole game is like that, with all the delicate line work that has gone into the cartoony characters, enemies and incidental art, sullied by a really poor optimisation choice.
The platinum trophy was a decent challenge asking me to beat the game on all three difficulties, without upgrading or changing weapon from the difficult gun, and besting the game in under 2 hours. Some unlock conditions were a bit hit and miss meaning that I probably finished the whole game two more times than necessary, but overall, I can say I enjoyed my time with GKE, even if it's unlikely I'll ever go back to it.
31. Soul Dimension (PSVR) - Beaten:
10/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
45mins (All Trophies [PSN])
I'm not great with 'scary' games, and its unfortunate that so many VR titles fit into the 'jump scare the player into oblivion' mould of design. Soul Dimension is the first title in an episodic series (though one that looks very unlikely to ever see its follow up chapters given the relative silence of the developer post-release), and despite doing its best to offer a creepy atmosphere with its abandoned house setting (not dissimilar to P.T. in setup), I managed to play through it largely without issue.
The game looks great for an indie title, although sound design leaves a lot to be designed, with voice actors making rookie errors like shouting too loudly into their mics causing noticeable distortion. Puzzles are very straight forward, run time is very short, but I feel it should be commended for its locomotion choice: the player moves forward and backwards, as well as strafes using the left stick, and then uses the right stick to first point in the direction they want the camera to face, before clicking in R3 to lock in their choice and snap the camera in that direction. It's a nice change from traditional FPS controls which can cause a bit of motion sickness in people, as well as the snap turning which always makes centring your view at a specific angle challenging.
I'd be keen to play the next chapters, but, as I said, they seems unlikely at this stage to materialise. For the current paltry price of entry though I don't feel too hard done by seeing it as a stand alone experience even if the developer clearly had more to say with their narrative.
32. Parappa the Rapper: Remastered (PS4) - Beaten:
11/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
3-4 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
I love Parappa. The art and sound design is still impeccable 20-odd years after its release, but it sure could use, nay
deserves, some QoL adjustments.
Remember on the PSX when the timing windows were, shall we say, tight? Well at least you knew as a player that everyone was experiencing the same thing given the levelling quality of the CRT and its consistent, fixed refresh. With TVs now as varied as they are it's positively criminal that a rerelease like this wouldn't include some sort of lag adjustment / calibration.
Passing some levels has become a chore, with the process of achieving 'cool' now an exercise in frustration. The platinum trophy is achievable, sure, but more by luck than judgement: something you should never be able to say about a rhythm action game, no matter its age or pedigree.
33. Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (PS3) - Beaten:
11/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
4 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
The Playstation 3 is easily my least loved console. Looking at my shelves, I have around 300 Xbox 360 games and maybe 20 PS3 discs. Digital is similar, with my XBLA library maybe 30 times the size of my PSN library from that generation. Digging through my digital backlog this evening I found Puzzle Agent, a game I remember vaguely as being a Layton-style adventure game but developed by Telltale.
Firstly, the good: I really dig the artwork, the voice acting, and the Lynchian vibe the whole game gives off. The story itself was hugely enjoyable throughout, and since the sequel appears to carry on from the first, I may give it a go later in the year on my iPhone if its ageing battery will allow me to run the app.
And so to the bad: the interface (at least when played with a Dualshock on the PS3) is attrocious. Puzzles are frequently made several times more difficult than they need to be, purely because selecting options or items is so painfully unintuitive. Similar to Layton, the difficulty of individual puzzles spikes all over the place with some taking seconds to solve, needing no more than a quick glance, and others needing pen and paper, and a serious head for complex logic. Maybe I'm just a bit dense, but around half way through the game I pretty much gave up on solving puzzles logically and proceeded either by brute force or walkthrough - it was the narrative I was after at this stage, not the ability to get stumped on one of those awful 'which statements contradict which?' type word puzzles.
34. Fragment's Note: After Stories (iOS) - Beaten:
12/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
6 hours (All Endings)
A direct sequel to Fragment's Note that I finished a few weeks back. Had no real intention of playing another VN, let alone a sequel to one I thought was pretty sub-par so soon, but driving home from a wedding up the country (I was the passenger, obviously!) it seemed like a decent way to pass the time.
The previous title was very light on dialogue choices, and this sequel dispenses with them altogether outside of the starting screen which asks you to choose the girl you romanced in Fragment's Note. I played through each story, and felt that although the writing (or perhaps just the translation?) is stronger here, it's still nothing to shout about.
35. Late Shift (PS4) - Beaten:
12/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
5 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
A modern FMV game. A synopsis to strike fear into all who read it. Except, it's actually pretty decent?
What's remarkable about Late Shift is how seldom you really see the seams. It is, for all intents and purposes, just like an old Choose Your own Adventure book or Fighting Fantasy novel, but the above average performances from *most* of the main cast, a remarkably high production budget for a title that I can't imagine sold that well, and the feeling that your decisions can carry genuine narrative weight (even if on subsequent plays you notice that paths often reconverge a few scenes on) makes it a bloody enjoyable romp through its Guy Ritchie style London crime caper.
There is genuine tension in certain scenes, some well written dialogue (though also some stinkers - the opening monologue was almost enough to make me stop playing the first time through), and a decent amount of entertainment to be had, especially when playing with friends and shouting through choices during the slim decision windows the game affords you.
Also, (whisper it now), but it's a hell of a lot better than Hidden Agenda.
Played through two full legit games, then mopped up trophies using a guide.
36. Back to the Future: The Game (PS3) - Beaten:
13/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
12 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
More like Back to the PS3 Backlog, eh?
It's an early Telltale game, so expect more puzzles and less choices, an often recycled cast of characters and locations, audio visual glitches, but a mostly enjoyable experience. Some puzzles were great: classic point and click item based solutions that made sense. Some were not so great: repetitious back and forth affairs that grew tedious to execute way before their resolution.
37. Squareboy vs Bullies: Arena Edition (PS4 + Vita) - Beaten:
13/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
5 hours (All Trophies x2 [PSN])
Double platinum again.
I like side scrolling brawlers. Streets of Rage 2 is up there with my favourites of all time. Squareboy, perhaps unsurprising, is unlikely to make the cut. The move set is surprisingly varied, though often the controls can let you down meaning you just resort to some simple but effective moves like the dash to cheese your way through almost every encounter.
On my first Vita play through I thought that space management ('zoning' I guess?) was the most important skill to learn when playing this game, as it seemed absolutely vital to your survival. Getting cornered by two or more enemies pretty much meant instant death if one lands a hit, as your character has no invincibility frames whatsoever. The final stage in particular took many attempts as I kept getting combo-ed into oblivion by groups of enemies who staggered their attacks, thus taking away any opportunities for me to escape.
On my PS4 play through, I suddenly realised that pressing attack and jump together when stuck in a group of enemies pulls of a classic 'desperation move' yet costs no life penalty. This meant I absolutely pissed the run through the game without a single death. No idea how I missed this on the Vita, but it at least made my second go a bit quicker than the first.
38. Pixel Gear (PSVR) - Beaten:
13/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
5 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
One of the first VR titles I got with my headset, Pixel Gear is a basic wave shooter that stands out from the crowd because of its fantastically accurate Playstation Move tracking. Seriously, this feels better than some games that are compatible with the Aim controller.
I'd beaten pretty much the full thing and uninstalled it, but realising I was just a few trophies away from a Platinum, I gave it another hour or so and unlocked the last few tasks I'd left outstanding.
Lots of people whined when Limited Run Games announced Pixel Gear as their first physical VR release, but I honestly think it's a standout indie title on the platform and deserves more recognition than it got at PSVR's launch.
39. 36 Fragments of Midnight (PS4 + Vita) - Beaten:
16/04/18 - Time Taken: ~
2-3 hours (All Trophies x2 [PSN])
A procedurally generated speedrun punisher platformer that uses the now passé 'Limbo' artstyle. Performs like an absolute dog on Vita, but is buttery smooth and a real joy to control on PS4. Kinda reminded me of the type of platform games that you'd get on the ZX Spectrum that would randomise key item placement, give you a tight time limit to beat the game, and then really test your patience by making every enemy and obstacle a one hit kill.
40. A Way Out (PS4) - Beaten:
30/04/18 - Time Taken:
~9 hours (All Trophies [PSN])
Well I wasn't expecting
that. It's a co-op only narrative game based around two guys breaking out of prison in order to track down a mutual enemy.part way through the game I felt myself questioning how necessary the co-op mechanic was as it often seemed to be reduced to ''be in the same place at the same time to open a door", but later scenes really make good on the game's promise. The final act in particular only works because of all preceeding scenes, and let me tell you, it is
brutal.
Go in cold, and if possible, play in old school couch co-op mode. Recommended.
Games #41 onwards
NOW PLAYING
I'm notoriously bad at finishing games, so who knows if I actually get through these to completion.
Gravity Rush 2 (PS4)
Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit! (Vita)
Poi: Explorer Edition (Switch)
Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden (PC)
Super Gun World 2 (PS4)
Final Fantasy I (PSP)
