Last Game You Finished and Your Thoughts MKII

I've passed it on to the devs the review, I'm thinking poor drunka as you got two great games and he's been stuck with likes of Frenchy Bird. Thankfully his last game he done was rather good.

Been a while since I posted here and I forgot to go over the last two games I finished.  

I'll start with Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited




Those who've played any turn grid based strategy rpg before or any Disgaea game before will know what to expect from the gameplay here.  It's your typical grid based strategy system, units can attack normally or use special skills that consume SP, and so on.  The unique part is the overall ridiculous presentation, from the start you can throw exploding penguins at your enemies, special skills typically involve huge over the top attacks, and eventually should you decide to grind the amount of damage you can inflict reaches ridiculous proportions.  

The story will be hit or miss for some, mostly because of the humour which is frequently crude and simplistic, yet somehow works despite that, but if you don't like that stuff you won't be getting on with the game's story.  The story centres around Sardine obsessed Vampire Valvatorez and his faithful werewolf servant Fenrich as they go on a journey to overthrow the Corrupterment of Hades.  

Personally as someone who's played a good number of Disgaea games (okay, just both versions of 2, the ps3 release of 3, and both versions of 4) this game somewhat hit the spot.  It wasn't as good as 2, but at the same time it was a far better game than 3.  If it varied the jokes involving the side characters up more often I wouldn't really have any issues with it.  

As for those who have played the PS3 version of the game, you may wonder what the Vita release offers that you may not have.  Three new story scenarios including a somewhat lengthy one exclusive to this version, as well as every single dlc character.   Essentially this was a "game of the year" edition in what it offers for returning players, for new players the vita version is unquestionably the definitive version.

Overall Rating: 8 out of 10, if you like anime styled games or turn based srpg's odds are this game will fix you up.

Next up we have Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII




Yes, Lightning is back (wait, really!?  The title left me unsure about that!) for another game in the somewhat nortorios XIII series, the concluding part of the trilogy (wait, but if the first game was called XIII, and the second game was called XIII-2, why isn't this called XIII-3?  Silly Square and your wierd names).

Despite what you may think, especially with the bad rap this got from the (seriously bad gamers) gaming press, this is easily the best game of the trilogy and one of the single most fun action rpgs I've played in years.  It was fresh, fun, and challenging.  

The story revolves around Lightning (wow, there's a shocker) who has been awoken after 500 years in stasis to a world where time has been frozen and people have ceased to age where time is about to finally run out and the world end, and is charged by the creation god Bhunivelze (probably spelled that wrong, don't care) to save as many souls as she can to bring to the new world he will create at the end of the final 13 days (13 days!?  What a coincidence...)

Yeah, not the most awe inspiring story of all time, but it serves its job as motivation.  And no, don't think I didn't notice the similarities between it and a certain Valkyrie Profile.  

The real gem here is the gameplay, which is best summed up as a cross between the 3d Legend of Zelda series and action RPGs, honestly I'd sum it up as a sort of cross between XIII and Majoras Mask.  The world itself is completely open and explorable, yes, that's right, the final game of Final Hallway 13 is actually open world!  Progression is handled through a semi-non linear mission system, as you explore the world you'll find people in need of help in various things from fetching a item to unravelling a conspiracy, completing these missions will yield two things: stat gains and a small amount of what the game calls "Eradia", which is used to extend the time left before the end of the game.

Like I just hinted, you don't level up in this game.  No, what you do is gain stats by completing side quests and saving peoples souls.  This may sound unbalanced, especially considering every battle is just the player (Lightning) facing off against an enemy, but the game was appropriately balanced around this.  

As for the battles, the highlight.  Battles take place using a sort of similar to the previous two games system, but at the same time it's completely different.  Rather than select moves from a menu the system here gives the player the ability to assign various moves and skills to the face buttons.  Each skill has a certain "cost" that it extracts from the ATB gauge, and it's up to the player to decide how to chain these together to form combos and so on.  Paradigm shifting sort of returns in that the player can have three "garbs" that they can switch to at any point in a battle (done by using the shoulder buttons), each garb has its own ATB gauge with the overall idea being that the player creates setups and shifts between them seamlessly as they play a battle.  

Staggering is also back, albeit in a newish form.  Rather than pummel a foe until they hit a threshold and become staggered you have conditions to meet that will drive up their stagger threshold, which can range from simply hitting it with an elemental weakness to blocking their attacks (the better your block timing the better the effect), and so on until they eventually stagger.  Like the previous games staggers are when you inflict your main damage and go on the offence, with your plans involving figuring out the best ways to stagger a foe and then killing it.  

Like all action games timing plays a part, with all skills having a "perfect" execution period that, when nailed, makes the skill better. For guarding this means blocking basically when an attack lands, and with your attacks this means timing your input at a specific part of the chain. It takes a while to get used to, but by the end I was occasionally nailing the timing for full attack combos and loving it.


The game was a blast to play, battles were a perfect cross between action and rpg, exploration was extremely fun thanks to the open world and beautiful environments, and the story was serviceable with an awesome finale.  Honestly I'd rank this by far the best game of the trilogy based on the game parts alone, they were that fun.

Overall rating: 8.5 out of 10, exciting, fresh, innovative, words I very rarely merit uttering yet in this case I actually do think they fit.

Stuck it to Stick It To The Man! on eShop.



A very unique, funny and personable experience, but also a slighty samey, piss-easy game. Still, pay more attention to the first part of that last sentence and enjoy it. Good stuff and at one pence more it would be WORTH £7, 7/10.

BoxBoy

Just the right length, and does a great job of telling a story without using words. Possibly as a negative I'd say I didn't always retain knowledge of the mechanics, which suggests it might be them (or I'm a complete dumbarse). So, like everything else, 8/10

Massive Chalice

A really, really good XCom-like strategy game. Playing this made the wait for Splatoon fly by.

I read your review of this last night and it sounds great just a shame I don't own an XO or PC.

Fun fact: wrote that review in bed, wankered, after the wrestling and a pint of vodka-quavers-and-midget-gems

EofGizmo whom you may know now did this review for Gintendo of Full Blast which I gather would be the last game he finished unless he's finished something in the last 24hrs or so.

After a serious amount of time in the Grindcopter, I beat

Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones Thunderflash Edition

or IEGOCSTE, for short. I also reviewed it here, but here I can give it the score I want (again):

15/20

The Evil Within



I really enjoyed this a lot though at first I did wrestle with the controls for a bit and didn't like how zoomed in the camera got when you aim your weapon, certain mechanics (mainly the stealth) are a bit broken or it seems like it was something left over from a very different game.

For example: There are various beds, lockers cupboards you can hide in/under but past the early chapters this is barely used at all though at one point I did use it to great effect by surprising an enemy that was making a lot of noise on it's way towards my location.

One great thing it does is the crafting system for your crossbow weapon, you can mainly only get ammo for this by disabling traps for parts
but the risk/reward of this is said traps can also kill enemies as well, so yeah if you're a fan of survival horror then this is a must play.


Score: :medusa: out of :medusa:

Knights Of Pen & Paper II

Main thoughts here. Nice enough game but really lacking a spark.

My Bloo Kid 2 thoughts can be found here

Persona 4: Arena






Not much to say really.  It's a sequel to both Persona 3 and Persona 4, it's a fighting game, and whether one likes it depends entirely on whether they like Persona 3 and 4, suffice to say this is one of those "exclusively for returning fans and newcomers should start with the previous instalments" sequels.  Mechanically it's completely sound, presentation is slick and as stylish as you'd expect from modern Persona, and the story mode is as long as you'd want it to be and despite being a fighting game not even close to skimped on.  

Speaking of the story mode, I'm going to have to give a shout out to Labrys part of it, touching stuff right there.  

Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10, redundant for anyone not already a fan of the rpgs, but an excellent game for those that are.

I bought recently on my American PSN account The Last of Us Remastered ( your no problem mas ) for £9.90 which I though was rather cheap for the second coming, multi player and this DLC that's £7.99 as a standalone on the UK store.

So just made sense for the few squids more to get the full package.  But on to Left Behind which I've wanted to play since it came out as DLC on the PS3 but had moved on by then that I never the chance to play unless I rebought The Last of Us at the time.

Well I can say that the weight worth it,  after hearing all those good things about Left Behind. I can only agree,  I would go almost go as far as saying preferred it more than the actual game.  Just fantastic Story Driven DLC and quality work yet again from Naught Dog,  bring on Uncharted 4.

9/10

Splatoon (single-player campaign)



Few people buy an online shooter to play through the story. I haven't, either, but I do really like being able to put 'Beaten' next to my games on Backloggery, so here we are. It's slight but entertaining, even though the difficulty curve is more uneven than a big list of odd numbers. There are traces of Super Mario Sunshine and even Galaxy in its DNA... but the online is where it's at.

13/20

(add 5 for the full game, I'd say)

Wow! I would rate the single player more highly than that, even without the multiplayer! As is, Splatoon is my favourite game so far this year. I've beaten the singleplayer and found every scroll, though I've not yet done any Amiibo challenges. I'm also a level 20 in Turf War, but only a B- in ranked.

I definitely think I've played enough to start the pseudo-review Splatoon Diary I want to write, as I don't think a traditional review is the way to write about something which will be continually changing but I do have lots of thoughts I want to write down (which is why Gintendo exists, right?) and I also think if you put a disk on shelves and charge money for it, it is subject to scrutiny.

I suppose it doesn't help when you're monumentally turd at shooters in general. The single-player is smooth, beautiful and fun - but we clashed like Abraham Lincoln and Robbie Williams.

That explains it, as I'm a God among mortals who dominates everything he turns his attention to.

Praise the Drun!

ZeroJones wrote:

Praise the Drun!

If only I could be so grossly intoxicated.

I just finished up with Le Tour de France 2015.

Metroid II Return of Samus




First of all to my complete delight this is a no map system Metroid game. Your mission is to eliminate all Metroids on planet SR388.  

Now you would think you'd be getting lost all the time but the areas are sign posted really well by discarded metroid shells (do Metroids have shells? Probably not) and once you kill a set amount in the area an earthquake tells you are done and you can move to the next area which was previously underneath lava.

Not going to lie about half way in I did get a little lost but after an hour of searching I turned it off and when I went back to it the next day I found where I needed to go within 10 minutes, I personally loved plotting out the map in my mind and figuring out where to go all by myself (I realise not everyone will though) but the world isn't too big or closed off by needing certain abilities.
Though the abilities do allow you to explore a lot easier, the spider ball is particularly good early on so you should be able to make good progress somewhere, the metroids themselves make up the majority of the boss fights but these aren't too difficult but they do have various life cycle stages to keep it interesting, there's a few surprises in there as well.

Lastly, I have to say this controls extremely well for a gameboy game actually I'd even say it controls better that the NES Metroid so quite a technical feat overall and I had fun playing it.

It's one I've always meant to play, but I'm put off by the size of Samus's sprite.

I did a search for the game's map, wondering if the reason it was omitted was because the game world wasn't big enough to warrant it, but it looks like a decent sized game!

JayMoyles wrote:

It's one I've always meant to play, but I'm put off by the size of Samus's sprite.

I did a search for the game's map, wondering if the reason it was omitted was because the game world wasn't big enough to warrant it, but it looks like a decent sized game!

In what way are you put off by the sprite? Too big/too small?

I imagine they omitted a map due to memory constraints of the gameboy & yeah it is a decent sized game, my overall completion time was said to be 6 hours 51 minutes.