La5t Game You Fini5hed And Your Thought5

Maybe. Before that, though:




My journey through Konami's Castlevania Advance Collection is finally finished, and Aria of Sorrow is definitely the best out of the three.  It's an amazing evolution to see over the course of three years, to go from the archaic and dark-looking Circle of the Moon to this, a game that almost feels modern.  The collection of soul powers (nicked wholesale in its operation for Bloodstained), the actual interactions with NPCs, the voice samples, some actually fun tunes, the different weapons with noticeably different behaviours...  This is worlds away from that first game.  There's even a set-piece that made me go, 'Oh wow!'  (The build-up to the Legion boss fight.)

Compared to Harmony of Dissonance it is more mixed.  The lead character Soma isn't as nimble as Juste: the genius of having dodges on the shoulder buttons is gone.  He doesn't have a whip most of the time either.  HoD also benefits from not having the randomness that comes from the soul system, nor having to 'farm drops'.  (And AoS doesn't have the merchant.)  That said, AoS looks and sounds a bunch nicer, and doesn't have you travel the same castle layout twice.  Also, it's actually challenging.  Death killed me several times, appropriately.

There are still several issues with AoS that mark it out as an older game: having to shuffle souls around to navigate the long watery passages has big 'old version of OoT Water Temple/Iron Boots' energy, backtracking through the castle never feels quite as easy as it should, and there are a bunch of enemies/moments that are more annoying than challenging.  It's no great beauty either.  Nonetheless, a solid end to the trilogy.  A high 6/10.


As for Castlevania Advance Collection as a whole?  I think this is more than the sum of its parts: a real journey through history, at a point in time when one of the then-great developers was very quickly adapting to and evolving with the technology.  There are two decent games in here and one presumably playable one, especially if you like your retro; and I didn't even try Vampire's Kiss or look at the gallery. 7/10

BONUS - Melon Journey Bittersweet Memories:

Been waiting for Castlevania Advance Collection to go on a decent sale for awhile.

Hope we get Castlevania DS Collection at somepoint.

Two games recently


Played CT2 on Switch as got sent a code for it after talking to the publishers of A Space for The Unbound. Why on Switch was for handheld play, where this looks great on the OLED the colours like Riona hair really pops.

Then the sort of game being a VN, just works on a handheld as well, more so than on a TV.


I never even heard of Ravenlok till a week ago as Games Asylum himself in the discord for GA was talking about Redfall and how a better Xbox (timed maybe, also it's on Game Pass) exclusive coming out in the same week. He was right, it reviewed better by critics, and he gave Ravenlok a 7/10.  

I have to agree it is a 7/10 game, does nothing super well but nothing bad either and was the ideal game to play in between 18 hour Xenoblade 3 FR and Tears of the Kingdom.

Edit


I picked up SM3DW+BF finally about 2 weeks ago, took so long as I wasn't bothered about SM3DW as I own it on Wii U. Yet I've always wanted to play BF, was just waiting to pick up the collection for a good price just for that bit of content.

Have to say now it was very much worth picking up, as the whole vibes of BF really reminds me of Sunshine and I love Sunshine (GameCube, natch) which I always use more off. I think all of you part from maybe Balla, who was tad like me of not buying as played before, should be picking it up for a fun platforming time.

Ravenlok is a beautiful little adventure, although very simple as far as combat and puzzles go. It's clearly designed for 8-year old girls, and it feels a lot like the film Coraline. It's a good Sunday afternoon, chillout game.

I've beaten a few games recently, but don't really have much to say about them. As Dusk Falls is a wonderfully immersive drama that utilises the Hotel Dusk approach to animation, and it's one of the best things I've played that's modern, but I doubt I'll ever revisit it. If you liked Life is Strange or The Walking Dead, it's well worth playing. I've also been addicted to Vampire Survivors, a wickedly moreish rogue-lite/rogue-like/whatever the kids call it, that would be dangerous on Switch. You only use the left stick to move, but it's got a rhythm to its auto-attacks and gradually makes you feel very powerful as you destroy large waves of enemies. Dynasty Warriors meets Donut County. I have also been addicted to Mr Driller: Drill Land, which I believe was a Japanese GameCube exclusive back in the day. I've always sucked at Mr. Driller, but it still sinks its hooks into me which is a testament to its excellent design. You have to weigh up what you're drilling into and how the blocks above are affected, which when you pair with things to collect (such as air) and things to avoid (like spike blocks or rolling concrete balls) it's basically like playing Tetris with one hand and playing Dig Dug with the other. Whilst playing Puyo Puyo with your chin. It can be a bit much (for me anyway) but when you get a run going, it's brilliant.

I did pick up SM3DW+BF! It's still a great game even for me, it's just a great Wii U game reheated with an addition that's the worse for being in that Wii U game's engine.

Can you finish Vampire Survivors? From what I've seen of it I imagined that it didn't even have an end point, you just played it until your computer couldn't cope with the amount of things on screen and/or your brain dribbled out of your nose. I also sucked at Mr. Driller Drill Land, and so never moved past the demo. Definitely sounds like a bit much for me!

Coraline is a good shout for Ravenlok.

They might say I'm mad on my BotW and TotK views but I thought As Dusk Falls was the worst game I played in 2022. Okay I did play a few worse but I had no expectations for Pupperazzi where As Dusk Falls I did and it completely fell flat.

Yeah you can finish Vampire Survivors, the maps end at 30 mins and there are various criteria that need to be hit to unlock new stages and characters, all of which lead to a final stage. It's good, get on it.

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

Buskalilly wrote:

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

I got a game just like that, though to be honest I look at Vampire Survivors and gone that's not for me without even giving it a try.


Think Balla can have those preconceptions for Forspoken due to its reviews and lack of commercial success, yet here I am to say I loved Forspoken. Now I did play the demo ways back which I liked and why I got it for my birthday, and only just now decided to play the game on Sunday just gone.

Which since then been updates etc like games get now but oddly this week was a big one due to the DLC arriving (which I may even buy, depending on how much it costs outside the deluxe edition upgrade) that I did pick a great time to play the game.

I played in the performance mode, I did try the other two modes and the game did look better, yet this is the sort of game where you want that 60fps and I still think it looked great as graphics was a negative in reviews yet running around with Frey's parkour you don't really get to look at the scenery. Then in combat the particle effects which are a lot going on from you and the enemies look fantastic and is the combat in general.

The story is decent the issue is the dialogue where Frey likes to drop an F Bomb after every other word it feels (hear FFXVI might be like that as well due to going all GoT) though Cuff reminds me of Weiss from NieR and actually the game reminds me a lot of NieR.

I believe you can also now pick this up rather cheap for a PS5 exclusive and I feel it well worth a play as I enjoyed my 17.5hrs hours of my adventure, that it currently sits as my number 3 GOTY.

Edit did pick up


Which was £9.79, which I thought was a good price for the deluxe upgrade which it was also in is £25, so Square are pricing the mini soundtrack & mini art book at £15.21 which seems a lot. #

Anyway, it is more Forspoken that takes about 2.5hrs and adds to the story, which as I say I enjoyed the game and got with this over 20hrs from the game.

Double Post as I finished another game


I don't often recommend games to Buska compared to others on here, as our tastes are rather different, even if some crossover with the likes of Pokémon, Metal Gear and MonHan.  Yet here I am to say he should be giving Star Trek Resurgence a go when he has the opportunity at sub £25 price.

Why you may ask, well STR is a Telltale-like from Dramatic Labs who are made up of Ex-Telltale talent, making the similarities rather understandable. Over the 10+ hours, you play as Commander Jara Rydek and Petty Officer Carter Diaz, giving two different views on Starfleet as a First Officer and someone in the Lower Decks with regard to missions which play out like episodes of TNG.

And that is what STR is a season of TNG with an overarching story that actually takes place 16 years after an episode in season one of TNG. Dramatic Labs nailed the feel of TNG and everything about it in STR.

If this were a Telltale game would it be one of the best, most probably not and not ever will like they have to make choices along the way or that everyone seems to be raising the people's eyebrow when they talk among other weird graphical things.

Yet with all that said, this might be the best Star Trek game there is, or least certainly the best I've played.

Okay, I'm legit interested.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balla? Judging a game he hasn't played on false preconceptions and writing it off? Surely not!

Wrong: I'm writing it off based on it being described as having roguish aspects.  Unless that too is false, in which case, not wrong in fact.



Yep, we're rolling out the big bold title for this one.  It's got acclaim enough, being touted by many last year as the spiritual successor to Return of the Obra Dinn.  I can see why... but also, that's a bit much.

If you've not heard of Golden Idol, you play as some sort of omnipresent deity with the ability to rummage through everyone's belongings during or shortly after somebody's death.  (No prizes for guessing who's dying in the picture above.)  Your goal is to use the various words you pick up from examining each diorama-like set of scenes to fill in the gaps in an explanation of the events, like this.  (That's not the actual solution.)  It's more intuitive than it sounds.

What's less intuitive is the control scheme.  This is obviously a PC game brought over to Switch, but even for a PC title filling in the blanks feels needlessly fiddly.  Why can't I just drag and drop words into the slots?  Daft.  Otherwise (a couple of crashes aside, the game autosaves and doesn't take long to load) it works just fine on the hybrid, as you'd hope from a set of dioramas without particularly graphics-heavy visuals.  The visuals are... well they're definitely striking.  The ugly potato-faced folks add an air of the macabre grotesque to proceedings, without being so horrific that they put me off like Obra Dinn's death wails did; and the art is reflected in the characters, almost all of them terrible people.  You love to see them get screwed over.

I like detective games, and I liked playing detective here.  You use the clues to find the solutions to increasingly convoluted yet never unfair 'murders' (not all quite meet the description), and doing so is taxing in all the right ways - even if you can brute force a few of the solutions once you've got most of the pieces.  My main issue with the game is that there isn't enough of it.  There are 11 cases (14 with the first DLC), and solving them all probably took me around three hours.  The game costs £17, more with the DLC.  It's debatable value for money.  

Still though, with Lucas Pope working on Playdate games, if you want your detective fix there are worse places to get it than in 18th-century potato-faced Britain.  Obra Dinn comparisons maybe be overdone, but even if the game isn't quite golden, that's no reason to idle on it.