Be Excellent To Each Other

42) Fall Guys (PS4) - 8/10

Got the crown and beat the game. Great fun dis save for a few connection issues, some camera issues when you’re close to walls and *hnnngh* you can’t invert the camera. So utterly broken and 0/10

52. 11-11 Memories Retold: narrative game about a Canadian and German soldier and the relationship they build as they make their way through World War One. Aardman Animations are heavily involved so you'd expect it to be a looker, but the graphical style they go for--a weird pseudo-watercolour sort of thing--just doesn't work and mostly just makes everything look blurred and crap. The 'gameplay' is basic as shit and the plot is genuinely dumb at times. So boring, ugly and stupid is the takeaway here.

43) Hyper Scape - 4/10

Ubisoft releases a Battle Royale with the worst most generic name they could come up with and fills it with generic characters with no character and generic weapons in a generic future world that looks like Crackdown on the 360.

What’s it got going on: it’s free to play; it’s got a battle pass; it’s got a double jump which feels “a bit” Titanfall-esq but crapper; it’s got jump pads; it’s nippy and it’s got a TTK on par with Team Fortress 2 I reckon; it’s got a default sensitivity and aim acceleration that makes you fearful of touching the sticks; it’s got a move where you turn into a ball.

Ah, it’s all right but it ain’t exactly going to compete with the current BRs. I done won it. Currently it’s got a mode where it’s 24 v 24 v 24 v 24 which is a bit of good silly fun.

53. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan: spiritual sequel to Until Dawn from the same devs. Mechanically pretty much exactly the same so the real difference comes down to the story and characters; and MoM comes off very much the worse in the comparison. It's much shorter than UD at only about four hours to play through which means that it feels like things are just hotting up at the time it ends, and this isn't helped by what feels like way too much of the run-time spent on the boring setup which still barely does anything to flesh out the characters. Certainly nowhere enough to make you give the slightest shit about the 'traits' menu which shows you a set of sliders for each character that allegedly respond to the choices you made when playing as them. I mean it possibly did correspond but as it has precisely zero bearing on the game itself there's no reason to give a fuck. My real annoyance though is that I lost one character in a 50/50 choice with no way to predict the outcome and a second one because I was supposed to do something that you'd never done before in the game. I realise that's sort of the baked into the format but it's still annoying because it feels like it undermines your agency as a player. And, of course, you're supposed to play through it multiple times but you'd need to sit through hours of stuff you'd already seen just to try and do a couple of things slightly differently and it's not compelling enough to incentivise that. So, fun in places and worth picking up if (a) it's cheap and (b) you really liked Until Dawn; with the caveat that it's not a patch on it's predecessor.

54. My Brother Rabbit: ostensibly one of these hidden-object adventure games so beloved of casual players (and, sometimes, me) but it changes up the formula by giving you access very quickly to all the screens in a level and only prompting you to look for the hidden objects when you get to specific points in that stage's puzzling. In fact the way it fitted together reminded more of ancient and gentle puzzler The Little Bang Story than the more modern hidden-object adventure fare. It's all still very casual stuff but it's compelling and charming with a level of presentation beyond what these games usually serve up.

55. Flipping Death: newly deceased Penny is mistaken for the temp reaver coming to relieve Death so he can go on holiday. You're given his scythe and quick intro on it's powers then left to your own devices; shenanigans ensue. Specifically you're working your way closer to solving the mystery of your own death by helping the spirits in each level move on from their own. So it's a character-driven puzzle game that sees you possess the living characters in each level and using their abilities in order to advance the puzzles for the dead. You flip between the dead dimension (in which you can move freely as Penny) and the live side which required you to possess a living person. There's some minor barriers to that (each initial possession requires a certain amount of various 'currencies' you gain on the dead side) but it's trivial stuff and each level really comes down to (1) possess all the living people to unlock them and see what their abilities are (2) mix and match those abilities to progress the puzzles. It's pretty funny stuff and generally engaging, though the navigation can be a bit confusing and I got lost inside a level on more than one occasion. Nothing mind blowing, but solid stuff. Made by the same devs as Stick It To The Man if anyone played that last gen so expect the same sort of thing.

1. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Remastered (PS4)
2. Star Wars: Battlefront II (PC)
3. Resident Evil 6 (PC) - completed Leon, Chris, Jake and Ada campaigns
4. Halo: Reach (PC) - completed campaign on Mostly Heroic
5. Call of Duty: Mobile (iOS) - came 1st in battle royale mode
6. Outer Wilds (PC) - three endings
7. Halo: Reach (PC) - completed campaign on Legendary
8. Trivia Royale (iOS) - won Royale mode

It’s a quiz-based battle royale with ~1000 other competitors per game. I got 10th, 6th and 2nd previously before winning just now.

That sounds like it would be something I would enjoy. Might give it a look.

Downloaded, won the first game, retired victorious.

It's not a true battle royale, it's a head to head tournament. Fun anyway, but i'm still searching for a good 1-vs-100 replacement.

Got to the semi-final on my first go, keep getting plagued with American pop culture questions on subsequent attempts.

This is impressive but also required a huge slice of luck. Many a time I’ve been up against someone in the first round with 50+ wins and I end up losing 120-117 or so.

19. Lost Planet 2 - I've been playing this co op with a friend for a couple of weeks now. I found it most enjoyable! Basically, shoot everything till it dies. Good fun with an extremely phallic end boss.

20. Super Mario 64 - Easily one of the best games I've ever played. Absolute platforming perfection. I 'only' got 70 stars so I'll aim for the rest when it comes out on the Switch in a couple of weeks time.

56. Bad Dream: Coma: weird point and click thing with generally logical puzzles but a mildly annoying amount of pixel hunting in environments crammed with stuff. I got the 'bad' ending and from poking around there's a neutral and good one which significantly changes puzzles and outcomes so fair play to the dev for designing it with such a lot of replay value.

57. Random Heroes: Gold Edition: Switch conversion of an old run and gun platformer that was originally released on iOS/Android and was followed up by a host of similar styled games (League of Evil 1 & 2, Devious Dungeon and Random Heroes 2). I thoroughly enjoyed all of those on my phone and fancied a nostalgic playthrough but with the benefit of proper controls. Which is exactly what I got, although it revealed that (a) the later games were a lot more interesting than the original Random Heroes and (b) what was just challenging enough on a mobile screen was rendered incredibly easy with a proper joypad and buttons. So, fun enough given my love for that style of game but they'd have been better porting one of the later games and maybe tweaking the difficulty.

21. The new Battletoads - This is just like a cartoon from CITV or something. Quite enjoyable though and nicely presented.

44) PUBG (PS4) - 7/10

I’ve got back into this since it came to PS+. It’s janky, clunky, slow and unpolished but I’ve got a soft spot for it. Won a whole bunch of times as solo, duo and squad and then discovered it was probably filled with bots. Still, a win’s a win.

45) Nioh 2 (PS4) - 8/10

It’s Nioh. Again. Seriously, I’d struggle picking either game out in a parade. It’s a good time but it’s also too fucking difficult to solo play unless you enjoy slapping your head against a brick wall. I do, but even I got a bit tired of dying after 55 hours. Fortunately, you can call in AI buddies to help out as if they were actual people which significantly alleviates any tedium I felt from slogging through the lengthy campaign. The story was a load of bollocks and significantly worse than the first game. Also the one new game mechanics is a demon move which involves pressing R2 and a face button. The controls were already overloaded and this was annoyingly unnecessary and I kept getting it confused in the heat of a fight with pressing R1 and a face button for stance/weapon changes. It really is the flight sim of the Dark Souls genre.

1. Streets of Rage 4
2. Firewatch
3. Hotshot Racing - Won the four grand prix cups on normal.

It's an odd game - it's cribbing bits from a lot of good racers - (Out Run, Virtua Racing, Daytona, Burnout and FlatOut all came to mind) and the visuals are great, but it's only ok so far overall. Maybe Hard and Expert level will be more of a game as Normal level is an utter breeze.

I took one attempt at the first cup to get used to the game mechanics and then won every race after that at the first attempt which seems a bit weak. Also, there's very little incentive to be in first place till the last lap; the best tactic seems to be just to stay around the top three as it's much easier to build up boost when there are other cars to slipstream from. Once you've built up enough for the last lap, you can just steal away at the end.

Also, for a game that has a lot of visual polish, it's a shame the soundtrack is so unforgettable and the speech during the race grates quickly.

I'll give hard level a go tomorrow and see if that's a better game.

I've played a fair bit of this so far and I can't put my finger on it, but there's something missing. Even in multiplayer it was mostly forgettable.

I think the most striking moment for me is when I played the Bone Yard level which reminded me of a level in FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage and it made me think I should be playing that instead.

22. Star Fox - I saw the credits roll so it counts but there's a lot more game to see. Anyway, it's slightly janky in this day and age but still enjoyable.

46) Battletoads (Xbox) - fuck you/10

It’s an utterly hateful little shit of a game. You think it’s a brawler until you realise that you haven’t played a beat em up section in ages. Instead there’s soul destroying mini-games to endlessly repeat and sections that just go on for fucking ever. The cut scenes however are great and I’d probably watch a Battletoads cartoon but playing the game? Naw, it can fuck right off.

58. Ministry of Broadcast: narrative puzzle platformer for the Switch which combines very nice pixellated graphics with gameplay that's basically a combination of OG Prince of Persia and Rick Dangerous. It was apparently compelling enough to get me to finish it but it was often frustrating, fiddly and irritating. Also the story was all over the fucking place; the constant 'humour' under-mined the attempt at an Orwellian narrative but the general goings-on were just serious enough to mean it couldn't be taken as a comedy game either.

I've just started this and my initial impression was that the humour was ham-fisted, but was hoping the writing would improve once they found a groove. Sounds like they didn't. That said, I'm enjoying the art style and setting, so will continue. Presumably not a long game.

47) Touhoo Luna Nights (Xbox) - 9/10

A game pass game that I’d never heard of, would probably never have purchased in a million years, and yet it was fucking brilliant. It’s a Symphony of the Night-lite Metroidvania but with 3 gimmicks - you can stop time; slow time and you can reclaim portions of health if you get close to an enemy or attack in a Bloodborne-stylee. Stop time, stack knife attacks and unpause for a massive burst attack. It feels great from the first time to the last. Mind you, Symphony of the Night has the better and larger map but Luna Nights has much, much better boss fights. Bosses come equipped with large health bars but have predictable patterns. Learn the patterns and wreak their shit or get sloppy and have your shit pushed in.

This has been the biggest and best surprise of the year by far. Game Pass is groovy shit.

60. Blackthorn Castle 2: another point and clicker from Synaxity who's stuff I generally enjoy and this is no different. Maybe one or two puzzles that were a bit WTF--and a couple of scenes that were in no way marked as being interactable but were--but generally good logical stuff.

48) The Division - 8/10

It’s The Division 2 but the first one. Pretty much the same game but in snowy NY.

1. Streets of Rage 4
2. Firewatch
3. Hotshot Racing
4. Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night

Finished the main game, completed 100% of the map and found all the monsters. Not sure how much more of the game I'll try and complete - finding every item and shard will probably be pretty tedious. Excellent game though - only marred by the occasional game crash in the room next to the village.

It's currently on Game Pass, so worth looking at if you liked the DS/GBA era of Castlevania games.

7. Zombie Army (PS4)

By buggery, it's fun to kill zambus. It's more of the same snipey-x-ray-gorefest as the previous games but it's made with so much love, humor and attention to detail that you can't help but love it to bits.

1. Fallout 3 again.
2. TLOU remastered.
3. Every body's gone to the rapture.
4. Beyond Two Souls. Fucking loved it.

Just bought Heavy Rain.

49) A Plague Tale: Innocence (Xbox) - 9/10

You’re a plague and this is your tale. Actually it’s a bit like Two Brothers, A Way Out and Hellblade set in medieval France. It starts off all Game of Thrones before you’re controlling a sister and brother combo as they escape a wicked inquisition trying to capture them. I was utterly amazed by it for 3/4 of the way through and then it got a bit supernatural and I cooled off a little but then people started dying and I was all in. And, man, is it pretty too. France has never looked so good through all seasons and weather effects as you traipse across fields and villages and castles.

I’d give this a solid 9.5/10 but there’s a dream sequence so it can fuck off with a 9 and a slap on the bottom. It’s currently on Game Pass and you’d be an idiot not to have a go.

1. Trine 4 (PC)
2. The Witness (PC)
3. Sunless Skies (PC)
4. Turmoil (PC)
5. Demon Crawl (PC)
6. Resident Evil 6 (PC)
7. Nier: Automata (PC)
8. Sekiro (PS4)
9. God of War (PS4)
10. Celeste (PC)
11. Hitman 2 (PC)
12. Overcooked 2 (PC)
13. Her Story (PC)
14. Finding Paradise (PC)
15. Dishonoured 2 (PC)
16. Outer Wilds(PC)
17. A Bird Story (PC)
18. Minit (PC)
19. Yokus Island Express (PC)
20. Beneath a steel sky (PC)

i thought I'd complteted this before. But clearly I'd only done something like 2/3rds of it. Complete now at any rate.

1. Trine 4 (PC)
2. The Witness (PC)
3. Sunless Skies (PC)
4. Turmoil (PC)
5. Demon Crawl (PC)
6. Resident Evil 6 (PC)
7. Nier: Automata (PC)
8. Sekiro (PS4)
9. God of War (PS4)
10. Celeste (PC)
11. Hitman 2 (PC)
12. Overcooked 2 (PC)
13. Her Story (PC)
14. Finding Paradise (PC)
15. Dishonoured 2 (PC)
16. Outer Wilds(PC)
17. A Bird Story (PC)
18. Minit (PC)
19. Yokus Island Express (PC)
20. Beneath a steel sky (PC)
21. Escape Quest (PC)

It's an escape room. with an escape corridor before it.

22. Beyond a Steel Sky (PC)

Obviously not too long or hard (about 9 hours). but fun and genuinely a little tense. And hacking was interesting as compared to endless sodding pipemania puzzles. (basically you get little programs with instructions that you can alter to get the result you want)

Although I did have to do a bloody towers of hanoi thing. Which knocks 5% off the score.

Was BASS as buggy as the reviews made out, or have they been ironed out now?

I think you’ll find they’re abbreviated to BenaSS and BeyaSS now

BASS in your face, not an 8 track

8. Zombie Army DLC (PS4)

TEAM AWESOME ZOMBIE also fucked up allcomers in the DLC, which is a helfty chunk of game in it's own right so I'm counting it as two.

Maybe, maybe if I were being picky I could moan that there's not much variety in the enemy types, and that there are very few places where you can snipe at the zumbes from miles away. But it's great despite all that. Just a fucking joy.

Didn't come across any myself. Well, I came across one where i asked man do do a thing and he couldn't figure out how to path to it for 5 seconds or so before retuning control to me (who could figure this out) and then asking him to do it again. successfully.

61. Glass Masquerade 2: unsurprisingly, a sequel to Glass Masquerade about which I said this:



It's basically more of the same so I think basically the same thing about the sequel. However playing it did highlight annoyances that were present in the original, while also bringing new ones to the table. The core issue is that everything that isn't actual gameplay is over-designed and ridiculous.

• Navigating around is slow and clunky and difficult to make out what you're doing because it's apparently more important that everything in the level hub swirl and animate magnificently. If you leave a level and want to re-enter it you need to wait for the transition to the level hub to stop all it's needless dancing around before the controls actually become usable again so you can go back in.
• It's also a sort of map layout, even though the location of each of the levels on the map is meaningless and the crappy layout means you can only ever see a fraction of the map at any given time. A simple list of puzzles to flick through would've been a million times nicer to deal with.
• You don't initially even realise that there a second higher difficulty for each level because explaining that would just be too friendly and useful.
• Even when you do eventually notice the little 'Difficulty' label in the bottom right corner and then realise you can toggle it, you're not actually sure what difficulty you're playing. Is 'club icon' hard mode? Or is it 'spade icon'? One of them's red and the other's green, should I take a lesson from that? God forbid it's actually spelled out anywhere.
• In fact, what even is actually the difference between the two difficulties? Spoiler: on 'hard' mode the pieces aren't necessarily the correct orientation and you can flip them around using the shoulder buttons. Neither the mechanic itself nor the actual controls are ever explained though.

None of the above are deal-breakers because it's usable enough once you've figured it all out, but it's so utterly unnecessarily awful and you do feel the game's fighting you ever step of the way. Also, some of the above stuff wouldn't be as big a deal when played on a TV, but on the Switch Lite screen it's annoying as shit.

1. Trine 4 (PC)
2. The Witness (PC)
3. Sunless Skies (PC)
4. Turmoil (PC)
5. Demon Crawl (PC)
6. Resident Evil 6 (PC)
7. Nier: Automata (PC)
8. Sekiro (PS4)
9. God of War (PS4)
10. Celeste (PC)
11. Hitman 2 (PC)
12. Overcooked 2 (PC)
13. Her Story (PC)
14. Finding Paradise (PC)
15. Dishonoured 2 (PC)
16. Outer Wilds(PC)
17. A Bird Story (PC)
18. Minit (PC)
19. Yokus Island Express (PC)
20. Beneath a steel sky (PC)
21. Escape Quest (PC)
22. Beyond a Steel Sky (PC)
23. Shapez.io (PC)
In as much as you can complete it. fully upgraded and done all the designed shapes.

1. Streets of Rage 4
2. Firewatch
3. Hotshot Racing
4. Bloodstained - Ritual of the Night
5. Submerged. Completed Campaign mode

Wasn't expecting it to be such a short game. I was wondering what would happen once you find all the supplies to nurse the boy back to health and as it turns out, that the entire story, sorry 'campaign' mode. I can't see me bothering to fully explore the map and find all the secrets, so time to find the next game to play instead.

62. The Touryst: a generally wonderful exploration game with platforming elements and a unique high-res voxelly art style which has a sort of tilt-shifted thing going on, a lot like the recent switch version of Link's Awakening. You're dropped on an island and through exploration, dialogue and puzzle solving you work you way onto and around a number of other islands picking up side-quests and main story progress as you go. You can, and indeed have to, move back and forth amongst these islands as you find items and new abilities which unlock story progression or advance side quests; the latter of which often involve simple mini-games like surfing or drone-racing. The highlight of these is probably the arcade where you need to beat the high score in three arcade homages (Bombjack, Arkanoid and an F-Zero style racing game I'm not familiar with).

The only downside is that one of the dungeons involves some platform challenges that made me want to fucking murder the developers. 3D platforming can get all the way to fuck in general (aside from the glorious Astrobot of course), but there's something about the visual style and camera in The Touryst that makes it even harder than usual. Not a problem at all in 99% of the game but a few rooms here were utterly teethgrating. Oh, and there's a single physics-y puzzle in the very final dungeon that took a lot of footering around to sort.

Anyway, aside from the above I had a lovely time with it and it's well worth playing. Definitely one of the best things I've played on the Switch (though I realise that's not a high bar because of the kind of stuff I'm avoiding on there).

1. Trine 4 (PC)
2. The Witness (PC)
3. Sunless Skies (PC)
4. Turmoil (PC)
5. Demon Crawl (PC)
6. Resident Evil 6 (PC)
7. Nier: Automata (PC)
8. Sekiro (PS4)
9. God of War (PS4)
10. Celeste (PC)
11. Hitman 2 (PC)
12. Overcooked 2 (PC)
13. Her Story (PC)
14. Finding Paradise (PC)
15. Dishonoured 2 (PC)
16. Outer Wilds(PC)
17. A Bird Story (PC)
18. Minit (PC)
19. Yokus Island Express (PC)
20. Beneath a steel sky (PC)
21. Escape Quest (PC)
22. Beyond a Steel Sky (PC)
23. Shapez.io (PC)
24. Elsinore (PC)

Game is based on a fairly simple premise: Someone from Shakespeares Hamlet is stuck in a time loop and would rather hamlet be a bit less of a tragedy than written. Figure out ways to change events and find a new future.

50) LUMO (PS4) - 5/10

LUMO is a homage to Head Over Heels and all the Ultimate games. It’s entirely unchallenging, untaxing and unremarkable for 3/4 of the game. Then it throws in a load of difficult platforming sections. Well, it might not be difficult if you could move the camera but, as we all know, platforming in a fixed isometric view fucking sucks donkey dick. I wanted to stab a fork in my leg as I died for the hundredth time as I couldn’t possibly tell where a platform was. And to compound matters it does a shit job of placing indicators on the screen that might give you a clue as to the height and position of yourself and a platform or obstacle, y’know, like a fucking shadow on the floor. Some platforms don’t even cast shadows or in tall sections of the game the shadows might be off screen, or platforms suspended above fucking black pits!? I know it’s a love letter to those old games and it’s mainly made by one guy but someone should have had a sodding word with him when playtesting. And it’s also a bit amateur looking and sounding, mind you, not offensively so but it needed, say, some unique artstyle perhaps to make it stand out. And it crashed on me twice.

So yeah, if you like those old games I suppose you’ll still find the gameplay alright I guess and the various Easter eggs and references dotted around to 80/90’s gaming stuff raise the odd ‘I remember that’ that makes it worthwhile to knob around in. Lord knows where I picked this up either, I think it was PSN ages ago.

63. Assassin's Creed: Unity: it's sort of an odd way to experience these games given the order I've played them (9, 10,11, and now 8) and it certainly makes you appreciate the improvements in traversal and combat that were made. Origins and Odyssey were relatively big changes so really the best comparison for Unity is to Syndicate which directly followed it and is very much the same type of game. Syndicate improved directly on Unity by adding the grappling hook which made stealth encounter much more fun and it's presence is missed here. I also personally felt London was a more compelling setting than Paris, possibly because I've never visited the latter.

All that aside, the game's still decently fun, though you are absolutely fighting the controls for a lot of it's runtime. Even by the very end of the game your character would still utterly refuse to enter a window right above him or dive entire storeys to the ground instead of nimbly leap to the rope less than a metre in front and all that sort of aggravating shit. Also, I'm definitely reaching the end of my tether with open world maps covered in fucking icons because I basically yomped through the main story here and did the bare minimum of side quests. Although that was partly because they were almost always the same sort of shit so it's not like they actually provided any kind of diversion from the main game which is somewhat missing the point of them I feel.

So, yeah, decent enough stuff if you haven't already played loads of this kind of thing and if you can forgive the sometimes-terrible controls.

I stupidly bought Odyssey at the same time as starting Far Cry 5, so I suspect I'll have had my fill for a while before I can stomach another Ubi open world. But I'm looking forward to it as I love the setting and I'm interested to see what these major changes to the game are (last AC game I played was Black Flag which I bounced off because the ship combat could go fuck itself).

There are definitely going to be changes from Black Flag but if you hate the ship combat then you probably should've picked up Origins instead (which is actually the better game to my mind anyway); Origins has like two ship combat encounters and that's your whack but Odyssey bakes the fucking ship right into the game. You have to use one to navigate around all the islands and there's some mandatory ship encounters and you need to use it if you want to complete one of the major side-quest chains. It's also way, way, way, way, way, way too fucking goddamned long. Origins was a big game but was nowhere near as bad.

Curses! Ack well, I'll give Odyssey a go at some point and, if I dig it, will give Origins a rattle.

I think I'm increasingly of the opinion that most additional modes of transport in games are shit. And when I say that, I think I specifically mean horses and boats, which are almost universally things that are entirely unsatisfying to control.

- Witcher - shit horse
- MGS V - shit horse
- Horizon Zero Dawn - shit dino horses
- GoW - shit kayak
- Ass Creed - shit galleons

Are there any good sea-faring vehicles out there? And indeed is there a good horse to be found?

AC: Origins makes extensive use of a horse for distrance travel and I found it to be totally fine. You can whistle for it and it'll appear wherever you are and it's easy enough to control. I haven't played any of the other horse-heavy games you've listed there though so don't know how it compares.

Ghost of Tsushima has a pretty good horse

Argo

Red Dead has horses, obv. They work pretty well, although I don't like that they can be killed.

Also their balls shrink when it's cold.