The last few games you beat and rate them 5

[Frankie Spankie]

Thank Goodness You're Here! - 8.5/10
This is basically a Saturday morning cartoon of British humor. The game play is rather simplistic, you run around a small village helping people and getting into mischief. There are tons of jokes all over the place that will have you laughing from beginning to end. It's short & sweet, it doesn't overstay its welcome at a little over 2 hours. It's an absolute joy to play in and afternoon and I loved every minute of it.

 

[Shareefruck]

Thank Goodness You're Here! - 8.5/10
This is basically a Saturday morning cartoon of British humor. The game play is rather simplistic, you run around a small village helping people and getting into mischief. There are tons of jokes all over the place that will have you laughing from beginning to end. It's short & sweet, it doesn't overstay its welcome at a little over 2 hours. It's an absolute joy to play in and afternoon and I loved every minute of it.

"I can't keep pretending anymore, Roger. It's just too big!"

I was not at all a believer in that Untitled Goose Game type of gameplay loop until Thank Goodness You're Here gave their spin on it

 

[x Tame Impala]

Gris - 3.0 (Very Good)
Had preconceived notions heading in, but this was actually way better than expected in most areas, and seemed to nicely sidestep a lot of pot-holes that I thought it was going to step into.

Expected great visuals, but the designs/art direction, shapes, and color sensibilities were even more impressive and striking than I expected. Probably up there for me in terms of best looking games overall.

Expected slightly contrived, conventionally swirling new-age-y "emotional/theatrical" music that would make my eyes roll a bit, but I was actually surprised by how it felt more adjacent to the Hiroshi Yoshimura ambient stuff that I've been so into instead (that guy's influence on videogame music is really feeling notable). Was still skeptical in early chapters, but green and blue really had a flavor that sold me, and now I'm outright curious about checking out the soundtrack.

Expected really bare bones/borderline non-existent mechanics and level/puzzle design, and while yeah, it isn't SUPER deep, it actually felt surprisingly satisfyingly designed, intricately thought out, and elegant for the limited thing it was going for-- just enough to scratch an itch. The steps to the puzzles do seem to move slower (and involves more meandering walking) than the actual quality of the puzzles justify, but that slowness also feels pretty justified by the atmosphere.

I don't think the themes outright felt like inspired brilliance or anything (which certain other "Games as Art" games have for me), but it's still a nice little cohesive concept done well. In this case, the general aesthetics/mood are significantly more notable than the actual meaning for me, personally. That said, the storytelling DIDN'T feel emotionally manipulative like I dreaded (Hate that Ori brand of emotional storytelling).

I guess one extremely small nitpick would be that its cinematic presentation awkwardly seems to take control from the player a little earlier and more often than felt natural.

Games played from 2018:
Celeste - 5.0 (All Time Favorite)
Into the Breach - 5.0 (All Time Favorite)
Shadow of the Colossus - 3.0 (Very Good)
Gris - 3.0 (Very Good)
Bomb Chicken - 2.0 (Positive)
The Messenger - 1.5 (Neutral)
God of War - 1.0 (Negative)
Spiderman - 0.5 (Bad)
Iconoclasts - 0.5 (Bad)
Detroit Become Human - 0.0 (Terrible)

You thought Spider-Man was bad!? How?

 

[Shareefruck]

You thought Spider-Man was bad!? How?

It's been a while, but I thought it was just another shiny/soulless and basic-mechanic-ass movie game where people praise the storytelling because of how closely it comes to the quality of what amounts to a crappy MCU movie that was never any good in the first place, personally. Plus, design-wise I just don't think very highly of the beat'em-up type of genre to begin with (outside of maybe something like Sifu), nor have I clicked with any high production value Sony Interactive game (which never feels like a cohesive/creative/inspired idea to me-- just a scientifically determined mish-mash of what is generally expected in a game).

Other than making web-slinging feel good/right, I just didn't see anything worthwhile about it.

If it helps, my ratings shouldn't really be looked at as some evenly scaled way of evaluating how competently made something is, it's more like a measurement of how much I give a crap/see value in something. If I'm completely ambivalent, I'll be tempted to just give something close to a zero and be done with it, and spend most of the scale differentiating between the things that I actually find kinda neat. I hate how typical rating scales basically dedicate 6-7/10 points of differentiation between things that are ultimately not worth damn. Instead, I just have three buckets to put things I ultimately don't like in.

 

[PeteWorrell]

I can understand the feeling about Sony games. I enjoyed games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War 2018 and Spider-Man but for some reason i have no desire to play the sequels. I might get to God of War Ragnarok eventually but i am in no hurry to do so.

 

[pistolpete11]

My review of Spiderman was "it's fine". Production value is good, but it's mostly mindless slop. Haven't thought about it since I finished it and haven't been even tempted to play the sequel

 

[Jovavic]

I'm not much of a comic fan but I found Spiderman and the Miles DLC decent enough, tried them on a whim when I had Plus.

 

[Shareefruck]

Yep, pretty much what everyone else is saying. Mindless slop/decent enough might as well just be nothing for me.

 

[robertmac43]

IMO Spider man 2 is much better then 1. Movement is better, story is better, combat has more variety with both Peter and Myles. Personally, I loved it. I also recognize I'm a massive Spiderman fan to begin with.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Mindless slop is harsh! Did you play on the hardest difficulty? Combat gets more intense that way. They were both 8/10 games for me from what i remember. Great production, good story, did a great job of making you feel like Spiderman. Not flawless games of course but I know I couldn't get through God of War at all or Horizon and yet had no problem deep diving into both of these games.

 

[pistolpete11]

Mindless slop is harsh! Did you play on the hardest difficulty? Combat gets more intense that way. They were both 8/10 games for me from what i remember. Great production, good story, did a great job of making you feel like Spiderman. Not flawless games of course but I know I couldn't get through God of War at all or Horizon and yet had no problem deep diving into both of these games.

If there's a difficulty level between normal and the hardest, that's probably what I played it on. Combat was a too button-mashy from what I remember. The areas where you could stealth around and capture guys in webs was fun, but got repetitive. Same with the web slinging. The boss fights were entirely forgettable. I'm trying to remember one to comment on, but coming up empty. The story was equally forgettable.

It was highly polished. They accomplished what they set out to do. Just kind of generic for me. I ended up playing while watching/listening to podcasts.

I liked God of War, but I understand and agree with a lot of the criticisms of it. It was one of the first single player games I played in probably 10+ years at the time, though. So it had a different impact, but I think the story and atmosphere were all way better than Spiderman.

Horizon is one of the few games that I finished that I wish I would have bailed on.

 

[Shareefruck]

I don't really think of the term "mindless slop" as referring to a game's difficult/level of challenge, personally. It's more about how uninspired and uninteresting something feels to think about, engage with, and conceive. You can crank up the difficulty in just about anything and it could be intense.... but.. many would still feel "mindlessly intense", if that makes sense.

But I dunno, beat'em'ups in general, even 2D side-scrolling arcade ones (things that I can often be won over by sprite art alone, which I'm a major sucker for) just tend to make my eyes glaze over, and rarely feels beautifully/intricately designed to me, personally.

 

[pistolpete11]

I don't really think of the term "mindless slop" as referring to a game's difficult/level of challenge, personally. It's more about how uninspired and uninteresting something feels to think about, engage with, and conceive. You can crank up the difficulty in just about anything and it could be intense.... but.. many would still feel "mindlessly intense", if that makes sense.

But I dunno, beat'em'ups in general, even 2D side-scrolling arcade ones (things that I can often be won over by sprite art alone, which I'm a major sucker for) just tend to make my eyes glaze over, and rarely feels beautifully/intricately designed to me, personally.

Difficulty plays a factor. If you can run into any situation like a bull in a china shop because you are essentially invincible, that's a whole less engaging than needing to analyze the situation, develop a strategy, and then execute on that strategy.

It's by no means the only thing, though. There are 'easy' games that are still rewarding and 'hard' games that aren't any good. With Spiderman in particular, though, I don't think difficulty level is really the determining factor.