Axiom Verge, PS4

Almost two months since I've had anything too say in this thread. I've mainly been replaying Stardew Valley (97 hours so far), which explains that, plus various changes (new job) going on in my life right now.

Anyway, Axiom Verge. It's a Metroidvania (with the focus on the "Metroid"), a genre I enjoy a lot, and I had a lot of fun over the course of my ten-hour play time. I didn't get the best ending, or come close to finding all the items, and I apparently have a whopping 8% of the possible trophies, but I felt pretty good about my plathrough; at any rate, I'm not planning to spend hours scouring the map for stray items and a few unexplored rooms. I played on normal, and found it challenging, but never really frustrating, and it could be quite atmospheric; the story is more interesting than that of many classic Metroidvania games (I mean, I loved Super Metroid and SotN, but their stories weren't exactly deep), although the protagonist is kind of thin. Still, that's hardly the main focus in a game like this. It had a few balancing issues (I found the enemies in the final level to be murder, but beat the last boss first try), and there were so many weapons that most of them never ended up getting used, but I recommend it for fans of the genre.

Looks interesting, thanks for the recommendation!

Back to the Future: The Game - 3/5

Some great moments, but also some annoying Telltale jank (including one game-breaking bug). Episode 3 is definitely the highlight for me.

BTW, make sure you've watched all three movies before playing the game.

Edit: I just realised that my reputation is 1985 :o

List of finished games in 2017

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father 20th Anniversary Edition (GOG)
Amazing game. Great art, music and story line. First time I've ever played a GK game. The newer fullscreen puzzles were a bit too easy and sometimes the older puzzles were too hard. A bit more consistency would have been nice. Some bad visual bugs along the way and since I'm a r/patientgamer I generally don't see many bugs due to patches so this was interesting. It makes me wish there were remakes of the other 2. I don't think I'll be able to play those due to outdated art/gameplay. Hopefully other Jane Jensen games are as good as this.
4/5

2 is a FMV game and is actually quite playable even by modern standards (althouugh not as good as 1).

King's Legacy

Casual game in which you harvest resources, build and upgrade buildings and fight some enemies using magic. Very similar to common time-management game, but in 3D (which doesn't work very well in my eyes) and without a time limit (which is strange, because it means you get more points the longer it takes you to complete a mission). I also don't understand why there are quite big maps when just a small percentage of it is used (the rest of the map is completely empty, you can't even find ressources there).

Not very good, but it was fine for the boring hours of two nightshifts.

Complete list of finished games in 2017

Unfortunately I know myself too well. Even if the gameplay is up to par (which I have no doubt it is), the art alone would push me away. If GK2 wasn't FMV and GK3 wasn't awful 3D I'd be eating those up.

Sometimes I just cannot get into critically acclaimed games and I wish I could, Grim Fandango being another. I've learned to accurately judge my tastes in the past several months since I bought the GF remake.

In my experience, Jane Jensen games promise good story-telling, but don't necessarily offer good gameplay. If you're patient enough to put up with their design flaws, you might get rewarded, otherwise stay away.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind

Ninja Baseball Bat Man is an arcade beat-em-up created by Irem that plays like and I think compares favorably to Konami's games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The name is pretty self-explanatory - your characters (four to choose from) are a team of ninjas that are also baseball players and most of the enemies have a baseball theme. You're going all over the world to recover pieces of a golden baseball monument that was stolen.

A lot of the talk about this game in recent years fixates on it as an example of "Japanese developers are so weird," but I'm not sure it's any weirder than TMNT and its various western rip-offs. I'm guessing the company looked at the success of stuff like TMNT and decided they wanted something similar, so they kept the ninjas, deleted the teenaged mutant turtle angle, and then came up with baseball as a replacement. Because baseball is popular in Japan. The game is just silly, good-natured fun.

Edit: Oh, hey, I should have looked up the game before posting. Turns out it was brainstormed mostly by Irem's U.S. division, and yup, TMNT was a major influence and the designer was a baseball fan.

I meant to post semi-short thoughts on some of the games I've completed earlier, but got sidetracked. =S

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Xbox 360 Version)
A game I've completed about half a dozen times, and I still enjoy playing through it. It's a platform role-playing game (Metroidvania, obviously), and despite being almost 20 years old it holds up pretty well.

Can't say I cared for the plot (pretty simple overall), but the bad dubbing during cut scenes didn't help (like, seriously, it's bad). Although a lot of Japanese games during the 90's had terrible dubs, but it was funny at times with some of the awkward lines they had. As far as gameplay goes it's still great. It still controls well, and combat is fun to play around with. I always loved the attention to detail when it comes to the pixel art, weapon animations, and most other stuff in this game. The soundtrack is pretty amazing too, although I guess I'm kind of biased towards orchestral soundtracks.

The main thing that bothered me the most (besides the hilariously bad voice acting in the English dub) is the lack of difficulty. Once you reach a certain level most boss fights will end up being over in a few seconds due to being overpowered, and it doesn't help that certain weapons in this game are completely broken. The version that I played was missing the FMV scenes due to (from what I read) storage limitations Xbox Live Arcade games had at the time. Although this version has very short (almost instantaneous) loading screens, little to no slowdowns, and an "Enhanced" filter that honestly makes the game looks worse.

I didn't play through the PSP version that was included in Dracula X Chronicles, but looking at some scenes the dubbing is much better. I'll probably try that port later this year just to see the Saturn content that's included.

Little Inferno (PC)
Got this from a GOG user years ago (not sure if he/she's still posting here). The weather outside your house is constantly snowing and freezing, and in order to survive the cold conditions you burn stuff in a custom made fireplace (the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace to be exact). From there the story is presented through letters you get from your neighbor and other folks in the city of Burnington (ha ha...ha).

You get items by purchasing them through in-game catalogs, then you go wait for those items (which can be a few seconds or up to a few minutes) to be delivered. Arbitrary wait times, just like those mobile games people hate, because funny *sigh*. You can use coupons to make those wait times go away, but you'll be waiting a good chunk of time in certain parts. In order to progress you need to combo items, and seeing all the chaos that can happen when experimenting with these things is pretty satisfying. There's not that much in the game outside of that, but not that many games give me the opportunity to burn shit (like a school bus full of children). It's a pretty short experience, but I had some fun with it.

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (PC)
A 2015 Metroidvania that I liked quite a lot. It's one of the best looking Unity games I've played so far, and it plays quite well too. Although the combat in this game is pretty much like the combat in Owlboy (AKA constantly press the shoot button until the enemy is dead while you occasionally dodge attacks), and it's honestly the most disappointing aspect of the game. Most of the enemy encounters aren't interesting, and the "boss fights" are pretty lackluster too.

But at the very least the platforming sections are excellent, and the soundtrack is pretty good. The story is pretty simple, but enjoyable (despite trying to be sad in a few places). I didn't get around to playing through the Definitive Edition content until now, and I liked it. Not exactly great by any means, but hey some of the newer abilities are fun to use (although they make certain parts of the game piss easy). The extra story bits they've added were interesting, and (of course) depressing like other parts of the game. Overall it was a blast playing through this again.

BloodRayne: Betrayal (PC)
I'll be honest, I thought the first game was a boring slog, and the second one was just putrid dog shit. I did start this game sometime last year, but decided to play something else when I was getting bored. I decided to just go ahead and get this stupid series over with. I paid money for these games, might as well finish them and not look back.

It's a side scrolling arcade game with simple combat, a scoring system similar to DMC, and it's incredibly short (you can pretty much breeze right through this in about 2-3 hours). It's fast-paced, chaotic at times due to how many enemies can appear on screen, and it's honestly the most fun I had with a BloodRayne game. Although you're restricted to Rayne's Twin Blades and a pistol for most of the game, you can pull off a few interesting combos here and there (for example, bite an enemy to infect them, send them flying to the other side of the screen with a forward kick, and cause a chain explosion after blowing up the infected guy).

The controls aren't exactly flawless, but they work. Enemy variety isn't great (running into the same blue shirt guys over and over again got tiresome). This game really needed more weapons and other items, because it kind of got stale pretty quick with the low number of stuff you can play around with. The collectibles unlock extra health and bullets for your main gun, and that it. Although playing through this, the game felt like a low budget title so I guess they couldn't include much. People complained about the platforming sections where you had to hop on top of enemies to progress, but...outside of certain collectibles they weren't that hard. The boss fights were pretty underwhelming, but they're infinitely superior to the so called "boss fights" that were in the previous games. The difficulty (outside of specific sections) was greatly exaggerated, and not that hard overall. Not really something I'll revisit anytime soon, but eh...it's alright.

Blood
I really like this game. It has been among my top 5 first person shooter games ever since I first played it all those years ago. The crazy Caleb massacring hundreds of living, dead and un-dead enemies in well designed levels that are full of secrets and charm. The creepy music and weird sound effects together with the often subtle horror references makes the game a sort of dark comedy for horror connoisseurs.
Is it perfect? Not at all. There are technical issues with path-finding and sometimes brain-dead AI (other than zombies I mean) and the hit detection can be questionable sometimes.
But don't let that deter you. It may not be perfect, but I can vouch for it being one hell of a fun horror-comedy shooter. The sheer variety of levels, crazy weapons, enemies, secrets and clever little references makes it a cut above the linear, serious and gloomy shooters of today.
If I could suggest something to you: play on at least the “Lightly broiled” difficulty, so you are forced to utilize your entire arsenal. Trust me, getting passed the “tough spots”, scavenging for supplies and rationing the ammo (as if it were a horror game of sorts) is half the fun of these old shooters.
9/10

p.s.
If you don't know already: all the controls can be configured, including the mouse, through the “Launch settings” shortcut in the install directory.
Happy zombie poking.


Cryptic passage
Made by an other developer, this expansion feels a bit different than the vanilla Blood. It gives me the impression of having longer, but somehow simpler levels. Other than that, there is not much to say. It's still Blood, still awesome, not much new, but that hardly matters.
7.5/10

Post mortem
A few new enemies, a new boss, a few weapons received new weapon modes and of course, new levels. A straight forward and challenging expansion.
8/10

Law of the West is one of my old favorites for the C64 so I ran through it a few times last night. I got a decent score - only got killed once, made nice with the womenfolk, and I think I stopped all the attempted robberies on my best run. I did plug the guy with the shotgun once because it looked like he was threatening to rob me, only for the game to rebuke me for being trigger-happy. I guess I was supposed to wait for him to start shooting?

It's a pretty static experience, but I like that within its limitations you can get a variety of outcomes based on your responses. Encounters that seem hostile, such as the Mexicali Kid, can actually go very pleasantly if you select the right options. You can be a pathetic coward, or you can be a bloodthirsty psycho and literally kill everyone (you can draw and shoot any time you like), or whatever in between. The game gave me an early taste for open-ended "choices and consequences" gameplay back in the time when most games pretty much just gave you a choice between attacking or running away, and I like that it does it as a traditional western, too.

List of games finished in 2015 - 6 games - 3 GOG games and 3 PS3 games
List of games finished in 2016 - 16 games - 2 GOG games, 11 PS3 games and 3 PS4 games

List of games finished in 2017 below (6 PS3 games and 9 PS4 game so far):

1 - January 15, 23:15 - Something unbelievable has happened! 6 years and 1 month after launching Gran Turismo 5 on my PS3 for the first time, I have achieved the Platinum Trophy, and with it finished all of the challenges, which were presented by this game. I have to say, getting gold in Vettel's Challenge on Suzuka was the hardest thing, I have ever successfully achieved in any game before!

2 - March 1, 4:00 - Finished my first game of Dishonored - Definitive Edition on PS4. I have tried to go for the Clean Hands Trophy, but well, it looks like I have somewhere unintentionally killed weeper somewhere, so I have to be satisfied with the Low Chaos Trophy awarded for my first game.

3 - April 11, 23:00 - I have reached the "Bad Ending" in Tales of Xillia 2 on PS3. As a bonus, I got the Chromatus Control trophy, for not using the transformation skill after Chapter 13, as well.

4 - April 17, 14:00 - Finished Tales of Xillia 2 with True Ending, which gave me another Trophy. It took me over 60 hours to reach the end credits. Unfortunatelly I was unable to defeat the final boss on Hardest Difficulty as all others, so I had to lower it for this last fight. 88% Complete, with only 2 more Trophies to go.

5 - April 30, 22:15 - I have finished the climb to the max ranks in Project CARS GOTY on PS4 and won the LMP1 Championship, in less than 10 seasons (6 seasons), starting with 125cc Kart Championship. Two out of three historical goals achieved. Need to do some unlocks for special invitational races and win three more LMP1 Championships for two more Golden Trophies.

6 - June 29, 14:15 - Finished my first playthrough of Tales of Berseria on PS4. All in all, it took me almost 138 hours, playing it intentionally on hardest difficulties. Unfortunately, the final bossfight was very hard on these difficulties, so I had to drop to Moderate :(

7 - July 11, 12:00 - Finished Tales of Xillia 2 on my PS3 with "Debt" or Hot Spring Ending. I had to pay-off my insane debt of 20,000,000 Gald. Still 2 Trophies to go :(

8 - July 15, 12:00 - Finally finished my way to the Platinum Trophy in Tales of Xillia 2. The Last trophy, which I was missing was the cameo coliseum fight Trophy for Cameo Ending, where, instead of my group, Elle and the world was rescued by party made of characters from Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Destiny :P (Cress, Stahn, Rutee and Mint).

9 - August 23, 18:45 - Finished Mortal Kombat XL Story on PS4. Pretty short, but some interesting changes in canon compared to original timeline.

10 - September 30, 19:30 - Acquired every DLC Trophy in Mortal Kombat XL. Most of them trivial, with one exception. I had to win Ranked game with Bo'Rai Cho without doing combo over 4 hits. Very hard to get for me, because I am the definition of average player, and being almost 40 years old, my reflexes are worse than most of the players :D

11 - October 1, 10:30 - Again Mortal Kombat XL. Finished all the towers for canon and non-canon endings with every character in game, including DLC.

12 - October 22, 15:00 - Finished Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age on PS4. Went only for main story with 1 Job License for 1 character, because I finished the game twice before on PS2 and once almost on 100%, so I wanted just experience the story without spending to much time on sidequests.

13 - October 24, 3:30 - Also finally finished all the towers for canon and non-canon endings with every character in game, including DLC in Mortal Kombat - Komplete Edition on PS3.

14 - December 8, 10:00 - Just got Mortal Kombat XL Platinum Trophy. Without excessive grinding it took me 95 hours and 30 minutes (+-). Still missing one skin for Liu Kang, and then I can put the game to rest.

15 - December 24, 11:00 - Achieved Platinum Trophy in Project CARS GOTY on PS4. More than 120 hours played so far, including online races. Still missing few championships, which are not needed for Platinum, but are needed for 100%.

<span class="bold">Death to Spies: Moment of Truth</span> (GOG) *I played the game via WINE on my Mac.

This game is the sequel to “Death to Spies”, and it’s basically more of the same without any major changes (although it did feel slightly more polished).

It’s a Hitman-style game set during WWII. Each mission is on a large map, you’re given a list of objectives and are left to decide how you want to accomplish them. There are normally multiple ways of accomplishing each one.

Gameplay mostly consists of scouting the area, watching guards, and waiting for your moment to sneak past or strike. There are a lot of costume changes, as different outfits can get you into different areas and will arouse suspicion in different classes of enemies.

I found the difficulty level of this game slightly easier than that of the first game, I didn’t come across any brutally difficult missions.

Over I thought it was very good, and I’d definitely recommend it if you like stealth games :)!