Saturnalian wrote:
1) Metal Gear Solid V. (PS4)
2) Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Episode 1. (PC)
3) Battlefield: Hotline. (PS4)
4) Black Mesa. (PC)
5) Rayman Fiesta Run. (iOS)
6) Until Dawn. (PS4)
7) Transformers: Devastation. (PS4)
8 ) Half-Life: Opposing Force. (PC)
9) Lost Planet 3. (PC)
10) Stealth Inc 2 (PS4)
11) Ryse. (PC)
12) Bloodborne: The Old Hunters DLC (PS4)
13) The Escapists: The Walking Dead (PC)
14) Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast (PC)
15) Half-Life 2 (Cinematic Mod) (PC)
16) Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (Cinematic Mod) (PC)
17) Bug Princess 2 (iOS)
18) Undertale (PC)
19) Pikmin 3 (WiiU)
20) Super Hot (PC)
21) Salt & Sanctuary (PS4)
22) Titan Souls (PS4)
23) Medal of Honour: Warfighter (PS3)
24) Nihilumbra (PS Vita)
25) Beyond Good & Evil (PS3)
It's a pretty good effort at providing a Zelda experience that isn't Zelda. Good characterisation and some memorable characters, nice enough graphics for the time and some solid voice acting. I think it was the pacing and the structure of the plot that I liked most of all; you're told from the outset that you have you will have to visit 4
dungeonsplaces to finish the game and then it leaves you alone with only mild prompting to push you in the right direction. You quickly realise that the ship parts in the garage which require increasing amount of pearls (a secondary and more elusive currency) will be needed to access each area and the game does a good job of giving you just enough to buy that next part or leave you short to finish a couple of side quests or hunting out pearls in other areas of the map.
I just generally liked the whole experience. I was surprised for a Gamecube game how big the maps were and how open the world could be. You initially access a dingy to navigate around, which is fine, but when you get a spaceship suddenly you're flying over the map and finding loads of secret areas. It just looked and felt great.
The only downside to the entire game was the fucking camera. Honest to god, in tight areas you'll want to throw in the towel as you battle that fucking camera just so you can look in the right direction. And it wasn't even the lack of a proper fully functioning invert either (I didn't bother with invert and just had to customise myself to spack hands), during some stealth sections the camera will wrestle you for control. If you want to peak over objects, suddenly "down" moves the camera up a set amount to simulate peaking. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. It can't make its fucking mind up. One minutes you're trying to tilt the camera upwards to look up by pressing "up" and the camera interprets that as "oh, so you want to look at the floor do you? Here you go. Look at Jade's shoes for a minutes." There's other areas where the game takes control of the camera for a section and zooms out or points at a particular angle Resi 1 style. So you might enter a room and get Resi 1, free control or spazzy controls seemingly at random. Or when you're driving your dingy near the end in some tight corridors and the camera just fucking flakes out and only shows you the side of the dingy and no matter what you do you won't wrestle control back until you leave the area and come back in. Or when you're fighting a load of baddies in a room and can't see behind you and can't move the camera because you've stood too close to a wall that the game thinks you want Resi 1 camera directly above you for some ungodly reason.
So, yeah, the camera is a nightmare which marred an otherwise corking game.
Oh, and that last boss fight too. The boss, hnnngh, reverses your controls during a tightly times fighting sequence where you have to score, like, 10 consecutive hits in a row. Miss a hit due to the reversed controls and it's back to square 1. The fight can last ages as the score timer keeps resetting or you just die due to how unfair it is and revert to fighting the boss from the near start. Quick tip, spin the controller around for this bit. Worked for me.
So after all that do I want a Beyond Good & Evil 2? Sure, why not, I didn't realise this was a Ubisoft game for starters and was amazed that they had managed to make a really good Zelda clone (camera aside). And the ending set up a sequel anyway...which was great by the way as that credits roll is one of the longest credits roll I've ever sat through. To sit through the lot for no payoff would have annoyed me immensely but the bit at the end suddenly made it worth it.
26) TIMEframe (PC)
I'm not entirely sure whether I've played this before. You get 10 seconds of your life played out in slow motion (the world that is, not you, you move pretty quick) over 10 minutes. It's pretty shit but pretty.
It's free if you want to download it.
https://x70x.itch.io/timeframe-original-prototype27) I Am Alive (PS3)
I don't think I've played and enjoyed a game in recent times that is so massively flawed, has terrible execution, is so utterly frustrating and looks rough as shit. Oh, and the story is the worse kind of bullshit too -
"Hey, stranger, I've just met you so can you go and get me some medical supplies?"
"Sure strange man, it wasn't like I was looking for my family or nothing. I could use something to do. Oh hang on, I
did have a family I was looking f..."
"Look, are you going to get those supplies or not."
"Ok."
"Cool, they are dangling from a crane in a box on the very top of a destroyed skyscraper. You like climbing, right?"
"Do I!"
Anyway, think The Last of Us before TLOU came out and shitter. The grizzled main character is slightly less grizzled and there's a female child companion but more whiny. The world is quite good though, there's some unknown disaster that's fucked up the place good and proper. Everything is fucked and falling over and there's dust everywhere,; so much so that near the ground there are dense pockets that will kill you if you stay in them too long. The world is grey and there is no colour whatsoever in the entire game. It's not quite black and white but it might as well be. The dust fog is so think that you cannot see 5 foot in front of you and looking at anything in the distance is next to impossible through the thick dust haze everywhere. I liked everything about this world and the dust everywhere proper good shit but also it's a bit shit because the game is on a budget and last-gen so the effect isn't fantastic and requires a little imagination. Y'know, that thing in your head before 60FPS was a thing.
The game is split into 3 main parts: climbing up shit and across shit; fucking people's shit up and map navigation around a slightly open world-ish area.
The climbing is weak with fiddly controls; there's a stamina bar that is fussy and requires management and maintenance, and worse of all the stamina bar is tided to music that activates when you climb anything, or run, or do a particularly big poo. The music is supposed to build tension - since if you run out of stamina you will fall off stuff and die - but the music just ends up being ridiculous as it starts up as you just run down a street or jump up one level - things that don't need tension. Had they just put the music near the end of the stamina bar it would have been fine but it's just daft. Anyway, the climbing is ok. Just ok but some sections are fucking irritating but then again they do a terrific job of maintaining the tension because you only get 3 restarts/deaths/lives before you have to go back to the start of the chapter. Bit harsh but sure does build tension better than that fucking music cause you don't want to play an entire chapter all over again.
The combat is awesome though. You die quickly and you don't want to use up a restart so you're worried about every encounter. The maximum amount of bullets I ever had at any one time was 4. Four bullets, and by then I was encountering people 4 or 5 at a time. We're not talking Resi 1 stingy amount of bullets, we're talking early Manhunt levels when you first get the gun and can't ever find anymore bullets. The combat has so much in common with Manhunt or Condemned but it has its own thing. How to describe it...
You can have an empty gun and still point it in faces. And if their weapon isn't also a big fucking gun then they might get scared of your gun so you can threaten them and get them to lay down their arms or tell them to back up so you can get them near edges of holes and then boot them off. But if you've got two people with knives then you want to keep an eye on both of them so you have to keep them both in view. Kicking one into a hole might make the other worry you'll kill him so he might lay down his arms but take too long and they'll think you're bullshitting and bumrush you. Or you've got three folks and one has a gun and you've got one bullet. The guy with the gun ain't gonna take your shit so you'll have to kill him first and that might be enough to persuade the others to get down on the floor but let one get behind you and he'll have a go. So add varying amount of ammo, people with guns and knives, your desire and need to save bullets for when you actually need them and you've got a receipt for some fucking awesome conflicts. It's such an interesting but flawed system but leads to some glorious dynamic events as you try and bullshit your way past goons with only an empty pistol or shoot it out with a room filled with machete wielding nutters.
It's rock solid for a game that only lasts 5 hours but left a decent impression on me. And, fuck me, it's a Ubisoft game again! I didn't realise they had any good ideas only a few years ago but, hey, they did. Still, churning out the same bollocks now though, aye?