The last few games you beat and rate them III

[Commander Clueless]

Spider-Man (PS4)

Fantastic game. Only real non-nitpicky problems in my mind were the camera during contained boss fights or combat with airborne enemies, and the non-Spider-Man forced stealth sections.

The plot, characters, visuals, combat...all great. Heck, just webslinging around town and stopping random crimes might have been the best part.

I skipped most of the open world collect-a-thon stuff, but even so, the main story and secondary quests are well worth the price of entry. Definite recommend from me, and the best game of 2018 in my mind so far (with a few big ticket games left on my radar).

 

[mmalady]

just finished the mass effect trilogy...loved it overall but didn't love the ending...i would give it an 8/10....would have been higher if the combat had been more challenging....the only time my shepherd died was the final big battle before the sprint to the conduit in ME 3...but that was just twice and it was those damn banshees...loved the story and was sad to see it end....wondering if i will like Andromeda...heard only bad things from mass effect lovers....what say you?

 

[Commander Clueless]

just finished the mass effect trilogy...loved it overall but didn't love the ending...i would give it an 8/10....would have been higher if the combat had been more challenging....the only time my shepherd died was the final big battle before the sprint to the conduit in ME 3...but that was just twice and it was those damn banshees...loved the story and was sad to see it end....wondering if i will like Andromeda...heard only bad things from mass effect lovers....what say you?

Andromeda is a significant step down from the trilogy, and favours more of an open world style than the mostly linear style of the first three. It also (still) has its fair share of technical glitches.

Mass Effect is one of my favourite game series' ever, so the step down was a huge disappointment for me.


That said, I still think it's worth a play if you can get it on the cheap. Go in with lowered expectations.

 

[NyQuil]

just finished the mass effect trilogy...loved it overall but didn't love the ending...i would give it an 8/10....would have been higher if the combat had been more challenging....the only time my shepherd died was the final big battle before the sprint to the conduit in ME 3...but that was just twice and it was those damn banshees...loved the story and was sad to see it end....wondering if i will like Andromeda...heard only bad things from mass effect lovers....what say you?

I enjoyed Andromeda.

It is a bit more like DA: Inquisition in that it's open world, but I found the plot serviceable and the crew enjoyable.

A lot of the glitches with respect to faces and movements have been repaired, and I played it over a year after it was released.

As far as the story goes, there are no advantages to "paragon" or "renegade" options so you have the freedom to make decisions based on how you feel as opposed to trying to maximize your reputation in one direction.

You can also use mods on Nexus if you're interested.

The combat in Andromeda is the best of any ME game IMO, in terms of seamless movement and removing the over-reliance on cover mechanics.

If you like ME I'd say you should give it a go.

 

[Bocephus86]

just finished the mass effect trilogy...loved it overall but didn't love the ending...i would give it an 8/10....would have been higher if the combat had been more challenging....the only time my shepherd died was the final big battle before the sprint to the conduit in ME 3...but that was just twice and it was those damn banshees...loved the story and was sad to see it end....wondering if i will like Andromeda...heard only bad things from mass effect lovers....what say you?

It's been covered above but if you really love mass effect, Andromeda is worth playing, just realize two things:

1. Its a major step down from the trilogy
2. Do not be a completionist or you'll go crazy. All the little side/fetch quests are useless; do them if you come upon them but focus on the planet/crew/main missions or you'll get sick of the game before you make it to the 3rd planet.

The combat is fun, and it has some good features, but I never connected/cared about the crew, story or main character like I did with the trilogy.

 

[mmalady]

hmmmm...great tips...thanks everyone...i will manage my expectations and give it a go

 

[Ceremony]

Shadow of the Colossus (PS3, 2011 - Originally PS2, 2005/06)

After finishing this game and before starting this write-up I went back and looked at what I said about Ico. I remembered leaving the game with something of a profound appreciation for the things it did, and I felt I had communicated this well when I wrote about it. Upon reflection this didn't seem to be the case, so I hope I can do Shadow of the Colossus more justice.

There are no doubt multiple reviews of this game online which contain some variation of the phrase "it's not like any other game you've played." While there are various games you can apply this statement to, most of the time there will be something present to undermine it. There will always be elements across games that are unavoidable unless you do a genre exercise or go back in time to see actual development happen. Or you wait a few years until VR produces something transcendent. To really apply the 'unlike other games' label to releases then there has to be something else, some combination of regular features which somehow don't make you feel like you've ever felt with anything else.

It took me some time to find a picture to go with this review, mainly because I wasn't sure what picture I wanted to try and sum up the game with. Well, actually it was mainly because of the amount of pictures from the PS4 remake released earlier this year, but it was still difficult. How do you sum up this game? I suppose it helps to consider what it's about. Shadow of the Colossus is a game about a boy who wants to bring his girlfriend back to life. To do this he travels to a forbidden, sealed off land in the middle of nowhere. There's a huge temple in the middle of it. He places her on a plinth, where a disembodied voice in a hole in the ceiling talks in the second person and says they can bring the girl's soul back if he travels the land and kills sixteen "Colossi". If that doesn't sound like a good time I'm not sure what does.

Although I'm being slightly glib the game is deceptively simple in terms of what you're supposed to do. I say deceptive but that's probably wrong, because the first thing you'll notice as you take control of Wander is that you don't have any direction. You're told by the voice what you have to do and that's that. There's no mini-map. There's a map in the pause menu which isn't very clear, and is covered in clouds to start with until you start progressing. There's no HUD either, your health bar and stamina only show up when they're being expended. That's all. You can use your sword to show you where you have to go for each Colossus. There aren't any other people in the world, there isn't anything else to interact with outside of save points and some trees and lizards which give you more health and stamina.

Playing this game in 2018 should be an undermining experience. I remember playing GTA V for the first time and literally sitting open-mouthed the first time I was free to drive and I just went up the map, astonished at the size and detail. When I wrote about Red Dead Redemption I was equally complimentary about the map there and the sense of scale and isolation it imparts on you as you play, being alone in such a huge, atmospheric location. If I've experienced that, surely it should follow that an upscaled game from 2005 can't be comparable? Well, it is. I've played through it five times to get all the trophies. I finished it a week ago, and I'm still getting shivers thinking about walking out of the temple for the first time. I know that this is an upscaled version of the original, and I know the remake would probably be equally as astonishing if you played it for the first time on release, but I can't imagine what it must have been like to play this when it first came out. Even if I had been old enough I wouldn't have been able to appreciate the limits the PS2 was pushed to to make something like this work.

The first sensation that really hits you when you play is the sound. You hear wind, but it's the sort of wind you usually get in TV or films of someone at a research base deep in the Arctic wondering if they're going to be under ten feet of snow by the time day breaks. Or when an apocalyptic-level storm is approaching and just beginning to blow branches from trees and bang doors about. It's an endless sort of wind, something that can only happen when you're in the midst of something you can't fully appreciate. Then as you look around the glare from the sun hits you as you try and see how far the landscape stretches. You'll see mountains in one direction, hills in another, something impassable in another and a huge valley directly behind your starting point. Right away you feel stranded, you're in an unknown and unfamiliar location which just looks endless.

Traversing the landscape doesn't make it feel any smaller. Trying to get to each Colossus is often as much of a challenge as actually facing them, as you're pointing your sword directly into a cliff or a mountain and you have to try and find the way around it. Admittedly there were times where I was painfully stupid in this regard. Going round and round a big mound of rock unable to find the big hole in the middle letting me in happened more than once. And not just in the first playthrough. The result of this though is that the game never feels constrained despite being in an isolated setting. You're supposed to feel overwhelmed by the size and scale of everything you encounter and you really are as you travel the landscape, with the sound (there's no music while you're travelling), the light and the layout of the terrain all combining perfectly to emphasise your insignificance.

Upon reaching a Colossus for the first time the game doesn't really change much. You have this huge, lumbering obstacle you have to overcome. It doesn't pay you any attention until you start hassling it, after which it tries to stand on you. The game still doesn't tell you what to do, unless you spend five minutes or so not touching it which makes the disembodied voice from the temple turn into Obi-Wan Kenobi, giving you cryptic advice. The transition from the landscape to a secluded spot specifically for fighting one Colossus is always seamless even when I struggled to get in, because the Colossi are all, well... colossal. You've not seen any other form of life in the time you've been travelling, then there's something as big as the cliffs and mountains you struggled past. So big even at times you can't angle the camera to see the whole of their body.

Then you try to mount the Colossus or stop them long enough to mount them and the switch to an active, involved sequence of gameplay is seamless. Entering each Colossus' domain is a challenge in itself, but figuring out what you have to do is another level entirely. The game switches from an atmospheric rambling through the wilderness at your own pace to a frantic, dangerous skirmish with something huge, inhuman and terrifying. The music helps here, with different sequences for each stage of a Colossus fight helping you feel like you're both making progress to something larger while still achieving something at each transition. Couple this with watching your stamina guage steadily go down as you slowly climb while desperately trying to cling on, and each time you face a new Colossus you still feel yourself willing Wander on as he climbs up. You don't have to do anything to hold on besides hold down a button but on multiple occasions I found myself making involuntary noises, feeling each swing and lunge the Colossi made.

I'm not sure you can call it immersion given the disparity between the player sitting in a chair using a controller to move someone up a huge creature in third person, but none of that matters when you're in the moment. The desperation you feel trying to climb high enough to rest briefly and regain some stamina before the Colossus tries to shake you off is real. Any frustrations you have with the camera or the controls - and I'll come to both of those - don't matter because they're just another obstacle to overcome. It's almost a tactile sense of involvement with the gameplay as you unconsciously react to every movement. I think it's a combination of the literal size of what you're trying to accomplish coupled with the wider sense of profundity imparted by the landscape. It was an experience just getting to the Colossus, so there must be a worthwhile reason for it. Then you have to struggle so hard to conquer something so large.

Each Colossus is fought in its own segregated area of the landscape. Some are in caves, some are underground, some are in speicific patches of the open world with different conditions. Each of them is unique to each creature. The thing that connects them to the world as a whole is the small elements of them that look similar which brings me to what I think is this game's biggest strength, that being the things it doesn't tell you. Each Colossus makes an entrance of some sort when you first encounter it. There are small signs of it existing within some sort of civilisation. Some are in full-on buildings underground. Some have signs of being an integral part of the landscape before you arrived, as if they were built in to the ground and people lived around them. Hell the 15th Colossus is described as the guardian of an ancient city, you turn up and it looks like some sort of long-abandoned Aztec ruin. As you progress and discover more of these things the questions keep mounting.

As you constantly see these things over the course of the game you start asking yourself: Why? Why is this huge central temple here? Why are there other shrines dotted around the landscape? What are those ruined arches dotted around the landscape, and other signs of crumbling buildings? The best thing I can think of as a comparison if you haven't played this is King Kong, where the crew on the ship accidentally land on an island they didn't know was there. They find a primitive civilisation which has developed around some huge, impossible creature. Only in this case, the people are gone and what's left makes it look as if they've been gone for centuries. At that point the question becomes: What are the Colossi? Did they exist along with people? Why do I have to kill them? And what's that black stuff that shoots out of them and into me when I do, making Wander increasingly corrupted looking as the game goes on?

I'm not sure trying to avoid story spoilers here is worth it but as you kill each Colossus the game never descends into feeling like a grind. Each Colossus is largely distinctive enough to feel like a fresh challenge each time. A couple of them are quite similar in design but are challenged in vastly different ways. As I've said, each battle feels like an achievement in itself, so you're always motivated to go and kill some more. This is an example of how seamlessly the story blends with the gameplay, as you get increasingly invested in seeing Wander overcome all of these challenges and as you're engrossed by the landscape and the apparent history of the area you don't really question any of the other things that go along with it. You don't wonder about the sad music and the big black tendrils coming out of the dead Colossi. You probably don't wonder about what happens to them after you kill them, where sand or plants or rocks start growing over them. And after the black things have penetrated Wander and he collapses in a heap on the ground and there's sad music, what's that shining white light? Who is that female voice?

Every part of this game discussed so far feels epic in scale in its own right, yet at the same time it all feels like smaller parts of a larger whole. The game's lack of information feeds into a sense of discovery for the player, encouraging exploration in the physical and metaphorical sense. You want to uncover the various parts of the landscape, but you also want to figure out what they all are, or where. The game is just deliberately obtuse enough to effectively straddle the line between not giving you too little or too much encouragement, and not being too obvious or too subtle. Ultimately the game builds towards the only sort of climax a story like this can have, one that leaves you a bit confused and wanting to revisit it. There's enough of a connection with Ico to confirm some sort of link between the two and it feels like too long since I played that to speak with authority, but it's definitely there.

When I'm as rapturous about a game as this I have a tendency to absolve its faults or explain them away. This case is no different, although it doesn't escape criticism completely. From a practical sense, creating a game this large in 2005 faced inevitable limits based on the technology of the time. The amount of grass and rocks that have noticable patterns of the same texture copied and pasted is... well, near enough all of it actually. You don't notice it so much when you're travelling at speed but when you do, it makes you remember for just a second that it's not real. Travelling by horse can also be a frustrating experience, trying to keep her running at speed or turn feels really clunky and unintuitive. There are a few Colossus fights where you have to be on horseback for sections and these work, just, but there are times when your immersion in the overworld is undermined because of how stupid your horse is. The controls are probably the biggest indicator of the game's age actually, as the camera often has a mind of its own and trying to climb Colossi can be complete guesswork, something which obviously isn't deliberate. I struggled badly on the sixth Colossi with this. He has a beard you have to grab on to and then climb up, but I kept getting stuck trying to go from there to his neck/shoulder, because it wasn't a seamless surface for me to climb round. Wander kept getting stuck at the bit where they joined, and it goes from a struggle to needlessly frustrating. There are other occasions where the platforming is really clunky and feels really poorly optimised.

Despite what I've said about scale and the like the game is surprisingly short. I finished my first playthrough, with a bit of added messing around, in under nine hours. It really doesn't feel like a short game as you play it, something which I think is down to a combination of each Colossi feeling like a momentous event and not really having the stomach for doing it all in one sitting. If you beat, say, four of them at once it feels like you need a break and that's fine. The game is short, but it doesn't detract from the experience. Like I said before too, some Colossi are pretty similar in terms of their design, but on a first playthrough you still have to do the figuring out how to kill it, so it doesn't feel repetitive.

In terms of replayability, there isn't any, but the game tries to give you some anyway. After completing the game you can enter a time attack mode, with time limits on each Colossi battle. These really undermine the sense of discovery and wonder you have at the game, reducing it to nothing more than constant practice/repetition/frustration and, really, normalisation of something which was a bit different. There's not really any purpose to it either, because the reward is an assortment of items that make you deal more damage, or appear invisible to the Colossi. But, you've already beat the game. If you've beat the time attacks you've beat the Colossi with the bare minimum amount of health/stamina needed, so what's to be gained from being given things that make killing them easier? The same can be said for the game's hard mode and hard time attacks. It's a case of diminishing returns as getting better at killing the Colossi doesn't give you any more satisfaction, and sucks all the atmosphere out of the game.

The only thing that can be said for multiple playthroughs or travelling the world to eat lizards and fruit to get more stamina/health (a pointless and seemingly arbitrary means of padding out a game that doesn't need it) is that if you have enough stamina you'll be able to climb the central shrine and discover the secret garden at the top that's shown in the end credits. But you can only reach this point if you've finished the game, so you know it's there. You know the suggestion that happens in the closing sequence. It's like a reward for multiple playthroughs which is undermined by everything you have to do there. It almost feels like someone in the development process panicked when they realised a game this huge was so short and tried to pad it unnecessarily. I can't say it's bad or distasteful, but it's underwhelming. It's strange. It doesn't feel properly connected to the experience I had on the first playthrough.

I don't know what I would have made of this if I'd played it when it originally released. I would probably have never finished it, getting stuck at one of the Colossi, not knowing what to do (pre-internet) and giving up. I'm glad I played it again when I did (I first played the Ico/SOTC collection in 2012) and felt able to appreciate all of the positive aspects I've written about. There are ways games can tell stories and evoke emotions in the players in the way that nothing else can and Shadow of the Colossus embodies most of them. A unique and unforgettable location which rewards independent exploration, a consistently distinctive atmosphere, fantastic music, a seamless switch between the two central modes of gameplay and an almost reluctant sense of achievement throughout, as you come to realise your progress is essential but not wholly positive. It has its faults, but purely as an experience on a first playthrough, it's near unparalleled, over a decade later. I can't wait to get to the remake.

 

[TheCanasianfrasian]

sorry man not reading that

hope you liked it

 

[Shareefruck]

Shadow of the Colossus (PS3, 2011 - Originally PS2, 2005/06)
I can't wait to get to the remake.

Unpopular opinion-- The PS3 version is better than the PS4 remake.

The remake is really impressive in terms of fidelity and spectacle, and I appreciate that they showed some restraint and for the most part didn't mess with too much, and I can say that I admire the effort anyways, but the few things they did mess with do take away from the mood/feel/ideas of the original for me, and without those elements firing on all cylinders, the game's flaws change from a feature to a bug.

In order of importance:
1. Wander's gradual transformation into a demon-man as he kills more colossi is nearly visually unnoticeable until the final cut scene. Seems like a minor thing, but that's so integral to the experience.
2. The original designed the game around the limitations of the PS2 by creating this hazy/foggy, desolate, surreal, dream-like world, which is a huge part of what made the experience so surreal and memorable. In the remake, it's just lush, green wildlife and scenery that looks beautiful in a conventional nature documentary way but doesn't create the same interesting mood.
3. Wander's face looks weird and seems less human/expressive, like a generic early 3D model face. He also looks more like a generic hero archetype and less like the frail, feminine, in-way-over-his-head protagonist of the original that is so much more appropriate for the story.
4. Achievements are ****ing stupid in general, particularly for minimal and artistic games like this one.

The PS3 version is fantastic, IMO.

 

[Jovavic]

hmmmm...great tips...thanks everyone...i will manage my expectations and give it a go

It's on sale for 10 buckes at some point every month on the PS store, it seems.

 

[Nickmo82]

The Order 1886

I just beat it today, as I work through my backlog of unfinished games prior to RDR2 releasing.

Given the amount of negative press it got on release, I didn't think the game was all that bad. It helped that I didn't pay anything near release price for it and that I generally like Victorian London themed games, but it wasn't as bad as a lot of people liked to make out.

The combat was enjoyable enough in the main, although it was annoying that if you messed up a quick-time-esque stealth kill, you'd get one-shotted back to the prior save point. The story, though not the best thing ever conceived, was engaging enough to hold my attention throught the entire game.

I'd say the main weak-points were:

• It took a long time to get going. It wasn't much fun at the start. I played a bit then took a break for a year or so before coming back to finish it.
• The ending was a bit weak-sauce and was clearly intended to tease a sequel that I'm guessing is never going to come.
• A fair few quick time sections.

The plus points:

• Graphically pretty impressive - weather, atmosphere, character models all very nice.
• Sound design was also well done IMHO.
  
• Managably short - could be seen as a bad thing, but I think it was a good length for what it was.

All in all, I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. A solid 7 out of 10. Also good for trophy whores.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - 7/10

Let me preface this by saying I didn't play any of the old school dungeon crawlers, my only experience with dungeon crawlers is Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2. I backed this on Kickstarter mostly because I saw it was made by inXile and I loved Wasteland 2. I've been looking at some of the reviews and the pros/cons seem fair from reviews but I still think the game is worth a playthrough. Here are my opinions on the pros/cons that are brought up:

Pros:

• Good puzzles - Agreed, some of the puzzles can get challenging but never overwhelming. There's only a couple things I think they could have done better when it came to riddles but overall, they were really fun to solve.
• Combat - Combat is great at the start, the grid and turn based gameplay leads to fun strategizing. It starts to get repetitive towards the end as enemy variety tails off and you get really powerful, making most battles at the end feel repetitive.
• Story - The story was never too overwhelming, it was rather simple but it was also a nice story.

Mixed:

• Skill System - It's kind of annoying at first that you can't respec characters but you end up getting so many mercenary tokens that it's not a big deal to just recruit new soldiers to respec them exactly to your liking once you realize what's worth speccing into and not. Grinding is pretty much impossible if you're stuck at a boss battle as enemies don't respawn in areas you've cleared until you advance the story.
• Load times - I hear a lot of complaints about load times. I'm on an SSD and it doesn't seem to be any different than any other game. I know SSDs are obviously faster but with all the complaints, I was expecting even longer load times than I was getting.
• Graphics - They're dated but they're fine. There's no graphical bugs, only visual bugs are with UI.

Cons:

• Optimization - For a game that certainly doesn't look great, it's hard to run at a good frame rate. I should be maxing out my framerate with my PC and it was hard to maintain 60 FPS. The gameplay is turn based so the frame rate can be tolerable but still a problem nevertheless.
• Bugs - I only experienced a couple crashes and once the audio turned off with the exception of certain actions. I was dealing with a lot of UI bugs during combat though. Sometimes the combat system was lagging behind and I would sit there for about 10 seconds until I was able to take control again. The characters were still animated, the game wasn't completely frozen, but it's as if the game had to process the information for what to do next.
• Repetitve - The game gets really repetitive towards the end. I loved the first half, I still liked the second half but it started to draw out. When you're just starting, there's a lot of variety in enemies and abilities as you unlock new abilities but about half way through, you get all the abilities you want and you start just running into the same enemies over and over.
• Lack of tutorial - There's quite a few things they really don't explain well at all. One of the most annoying was unlocking new abilities and not know how to use them. You can only have 4 abilities in combat per character and have to choose them through your inventory screen for each character when you unlock a new one.

I know there are obviously more cons than pros but I still think the pros outweigh the cons. I kept coming back for more. I actually finished the game in 2 weeks, putting in about 40 hours in total, despite the fact that I didn't think I'd have much time to play games during that time. I kept making time because I was enjoying myself. It was a cool world and the combat was fun to go through. Overall, I think it's worth the buy but you may want to wait until it goes on sale. If you're an old school dungeon crawler fan, this review might not be for you since I don't have a reference to the older games.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Gorogoa - 9/10

Gorogoa is an incredibly unique puzzle game that involves moving pictures around a 2x2 grid to make a character or object move towards an objective. The tricky thing about this is that each picture has sections you can move around or zoom in on so you have to look through all the options, twist them when able to, and figure out how to position them to move towards your destination. I've never played anything like it and it's beautifully done. The only complaint about it is that some of it isn't obvious and you kind of just accidentally fall into the solution. It's rather short too, it took me about 1.5 hours to beat. I would have loved for the game to have lasted longer than it did.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Apparently I'm the only one beating games lately.

Head Lander - 5/10

I got this game a while ago after seeing TB (RIP) praise it and I finally gave it a shot this week. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed. It's pretty much a 2D adventure game where you control a head that can take control of any robot you run into in the game. You'll need to get certain robots for security clearance to open up new paths. It looks like it's built like a Metroidvania but there's almost no reason to go back at all. I think there was only one spot I noticed that I could have gone back for after getting a new power and I didn't feel much reason to do so.

The combat is really bland and you're better off just flying around trying to pop off other robots' heads off, disabling them in the process, rather than fighting them. The boss battles were the only saving grace for combat but there was only a couple of them throughout the game. Exploring was really obvious with virtually no secrets to find and they weren't very rewarding either.

It had some nice humor in the game and the aesthetic is great but that doesn't save it from being a very mediocre game. I can't recommend this. There's so many games out there to play and there's a lot that are worth playing before Head Lander.

 

[Jasper]

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - 7/10

Let me preface this by saying I didn't play any of the old school dungeon crawlers, my only experience with dungeon crawlers is Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2. I backed this on Kickstarter mostly because I saw it was made by inXile and I loved Wasteland 2. I've been looking at some of the reviews and the pros/cons seem fair from reviews but I still think the game is worth a playthrough. Here are my opinions on the pros/cons that are brought up:

Pros:

• Good puzzles - Agreed, some of the puzzles can get challenging but never overwhelming. There's only a couple things I think they could have done better when it came to riddles but overall, they were really fun to solve.
• Combat - Combat is great at the start, the grid and turn based gameplay leads to fun strategizing. It starts to get repetitive towards the end as enemy variety tails off and you get really powerful, making most battles at the end feel repetitive.
• Story - The story was never too overwhelming, it was rather simple but it was also a nice story.

Mixed:

• Skill System - It's kind of annoying at first that you can't respec characters but you end up getting so many mercenary tokens that it's not a big deal to just recruit new soldiers to respec them exactly to your liking once you realize what's worth speccing into and not. Grinding is pretty much impossible if you're stuck at a boss battle as enemies don't respawn in areas you've cleared until you advance the story.
• Load times - I hear a lot of complaints about load times. I'm on an SSD and it doesn't seem to be any different than any other game. I know SSDs are obviously faster but with all the complaints, I was expecting even longer load times than I was getting.
• Graphics - They're dated but they're fine. There's no graphical bugs, only visual bugs are with UI.

Cons:

• Optimization - For a game that certainly doesn't look great, it's hard to run at a good frame rate. I should be maxing out my framerate with my PC and it was hard to maintain 60 FPS. The gameplay is turn based so the frame rate can be tolerable but still a problem nevertheless.
• Bugs - I only experienced a couple crashes and once the audio turned off with the exception of certain actions. I was dealing with a lot of UI bugs during combat though. Sometimes the combat system was lagging behind and I would sit there for about 10 seconds until I was able to take control again. The characters were still animated, the game wasn't completely frozen, but it's as if the game had to process the information for what to do next.
• Repetitve - The game gets really repetitive towards the end. I loved the first half, I still liked the second half but it started to draw out. When you're just starting, there's a lot of variety in enemies and abilities as you unlock new abilities but about half way through, you get all the abilities you want and you start just running into the same enemies over and over.
• Lack of tutorial - There's quite a few things they really don't explain well at all. One of the most annoying was unlocking new abilities and not know how to use them. You can only have 4 abilities in combat per character and have to choose them through your inventory screen for each character when you unlock a new one.

I know there are obviously more cons than pros but I still think the pros outweigh the cons. I kept coming back for more. I actually finished the game in 2 weeks, putting in about 40 hours in total, despite the fact that I didn't think I'd have much time to play games during that time. I kept making time because I was enjoying myself. It was a cool world and the combat was fun to go through. Overall, I think it's worth the buy but you may want to wait until it goes on sale. If you're an old school dungeon crawler fan, this review might not be for you since I don't have a reference to the older games.

How would you compare it to Grimrock 2? I really liked that game but got stuck at a certain point and gave up. I don't want to skip this one if it's gotten mixed reviews just because of the genre and an unfortunate launch.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

I liked both Legend of Grimrock games more than Bard's Tale but remember Grimrock 2 was tricky and I had to refer to a guide a couple times. I didn't really have to do that with Bard's Tale. It's really straight forward and the puzzles aren't so confusing that you can't figure them out, unlike some of the riddles in Grimrock 2 (mainly using that serpant spear to enter the pyramid which I had no idea about and threw the thing somewhere random, I spent forever finding that thing again.)

I would definitely recommend the Grimrock series over The Bard's Tale but I still enjoyed The Bard's Tale.

I also read a lot about the reviews and people seem to dislike the game regardless of its poor optimization as well. I would just keep that in mind.

 

[Jasper]

Thanks. Yeah I think I had to resort to 'cheating' on some of the puzzles in Grimrock 2 a bit more than I'd like to. I might give it another try.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Contrast - 6.5/10

Contrast has a wonderful, dark aesthetic and the devs played off of it very well. The story is pretty nice as you help a girl help get her parents together. You control a character who can either live in the current world or in the shadows. You'll need to activate lights and move objects around to cast shadows that you can move across to reach higher platforms and solve puzzles. The puzzles are never overly complicated but the platforming in the shadow world (which is all 2D) can be infuriating. Oddly enough, the 3D platforming felt great and I never had a problem with it. Sometimes in the 2D version, you'll just pop off the wall and have to re-do a section and some of them can be tricky to make all the jumps. The game is rather short and I 100%ed it in 3 hours. Overall, I would still recommend it for how unique it is but be warned, those shadow 2D sections can become infuriating.

 

[Nalens Oga]

Persona 5 is on sale on the PS3 for $20. Thinking about getting it but also don't wanna spend more than $10 on a digital PS3 game in 2018, maybe the physical copy.

 

[Shareefruck]

Tetris (Gameboy version) - 5.0 (Masterpiece)
Decided to play this on a whim until I could pretty consistently get the rocket-ship ending. I had a great experience, and it holds up as every bit the masterpiece today as I assume it did when it was released, IMO. Perfect game that is still beautiful (aesthetically, too, which is amazing because most Gameboy games look like ***)

Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition - 3.0 (Very Good)
It's bizarre to me how Street Fighter fans have such high standards that SFV seems to get treated like a blacksheep/disappointment. It's not quite as strong as some of the 2D ones, but it's still really mechanically rich/deep/balanced/tasteful, visually looks better than SFIV, has its own worthwhile quirks and is a blast to play. I just kind of hate all the extra special costumes and such.

Cuphead - 2.0 (Positive)
Finally finished this. It's one of the more visually dazzling and impressive video games I've played (though still not as impressive to me as something like Metal Slug). That alone is more than enough for me to admire this game. However, it's a bit overrated and seems to rely on a lot of goodwill from the way it looks-- it feels more like an amazing feat than an actual great, well-designed/conceived game that feels good, IMO.

It doesn't communicate feedback very well, the way the backgrounds/characters look and mesh together aren't properly designed to direct your eyes to the correct spots and keep you focused on where you are/what you're doing (the visuals actually get in the way of the gameplay), and the high difficulty feels more like a tedious gimmick than something that feels inherently fun to speed through and get good at (something that its primary influence, Contra, excels at, for example).

Shovel Knight (haven't gotten far yet) - 2.0 (Positive)
Retro games are right up my alley, and it's a labor of love that I can appreciate, but I actually don't completely love the clunky feel of the mechanics, the level design, or the aesthetics as much as I want to. It seems to be emulating a lot of the kinds of early NES platformers that I don't feel all that strongly about being good games, like Ducktales or early Castlevania. Other than Megaman 2, but it's not nearly as conceptually tight, musically inspired, or aesthetically charming as Megaman 2, IMO. Maybe it'll get better.

Also, what is it with retro game developers playing off of nostalgia but not understanding that those types of aesthetics work best with scanlines/a CRT filter?

 

[Voodoo Child]

Apparently I'm the only one beating games lately.

Head Lander - 5/10

I got this game a while ago after seeing TB (RIP) praise it and I finally gave it a shot this week. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed. It's pretty much a 2D adventure game where you control a head that can take control of any robot you run into in the game. You'll need to get certain robots for security clearance to open up new paths. It looks like it's built like a Metroidvania but there's almost no reason to go back at all. I think there was only one spot I noticed that I could have gone back for after getting a new power and I didn't feel much reason to do so.

The combat is really bland and you're better off just flying around trying to pop off other robots' heads off, disabling them in the process, rather than fighting them. The boss battles were the only saving grace for combat but there was only a couple of them throughout the game. Exploring was really obvious with virtually no secrets to find and they weren't very rewarding either.

It had some nice humor in the game and the aesthetic is great but that doesn't save it from being a very mediocre game. I can't recommend this. There's so many games out there to play and there's a lot that are worth playing before Head Lander.

I've got a beer you need to hold and the size is terrifying, but I'm used to the reaction

The only game in my collection I haven't played...by that I mean I had played them before, just not on this specific package.

I started playing Drake's Fortune on 9/1/2018 and finished Drake's Deception on 9/28/2018, and had been adding things to this review day by day.

This rambles so tl:dr:

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (1), moments of brilliance mixed with idiocy. Doesn't do anything really better than any other game in series.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2), incredible. The best story, historical lore, writing, set pieces, villain and setting in the series.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (3), very, very good. The best puzzles, control, gameplay and character building in the series.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (4), a letdown for me personally. However, it has the best presentation, graphics and gunfights in the series.


Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (PS4)

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

This game is eleven years old and it shows.

Nate isn't mo-capped, which when you're like me and you played 2-3 first is f***ed, and he jumps like a little ballerina.

The gunfights, fights and the platforming elements are so janky that even on easy mode you die at least 50 times on a playthrough.

The game is too darkly lit, as such ledge indicators are hard to spot, and so you die a ton more than you need to.

There's too much enemy jump-out, like the other games have to a degree but at least they justify it, 'I just broke into this tomb and I'm the first person here for 2000 years...well, me and that guy over there with the shotgun'.

It lacks insane set pieces like the Nepal + train from II (pretty much all of the second act of 2) or the cruise ship leading to the airplane in 3.

The vehicle sections - read the jet ski sections - are a mess, but I also thought they were kinda fun.

There aren't enough slow character-building moments like the Tibetan village from 2 or the time in Yemen with Elena in 3.

But...

The story, while not as good as the other games, is still very very good and plotted well, the game moves along at a good quick pace.

The characters were excellent from the start.

Lots of good snappy dialogue and cool historical minutia and so on.

The graphics for the most part hold up.

For me, because I had only played it once before like three years ago, it was the hardest game and I died by far the most.

I'll give it a 7.2/10.
Death estimate: over 60


Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

The point at which the series and its subsequent titles became 'must own' games, but I still think even nine years later that this is the best game. Not exactly a hot take as its pretty much the consensus (although lots of people seem to prefer A Thief's End for some reason - me personally I like to play an Uncharted game and shoot a ton of guys and climb a little and fight supernatural stuff, not spend twenty minutes climbing, two minutes shooting and repeat, more on that later), but it's well earned here. I've played this game probably 7 or 8 times and it's the only game I've done on Crushing (this time I played these games all at normal; I am not needlessly hardcore).

Production values have been upped significantly, from the backgrounds and graphics to the voice acting to motion captured Nate, first class all the way.

I'm awed that in two short years they were able to improve upon so much from the first game. Naughty Dog must have gotten a huge cash and personnel infusion after Drake's Fortune.

The game starts with a bang, as Nate needs to escape from a train perched precariously off a cliff in the Himalayas.

This opening act, which I suppose is more of a prologue, also serves to introduce controls and gameplay elements.

Chloe and Harry are two more A+ characters. Lazarevic is a fully fleshed out villain, compared to the constant peek-a-boo the first game had that got to the point that I didn't even know who I was trying to stop, I mean damn, first it was Roman, then Eddy, then Roman again, and then Navarro? It isn't Kuja-Necron bad, but it wasn't handled as well as it could have been. Lazarevic is an ever-present menace throughout the game.

That said I would have liked more exposition with Elena; she was cold as ice when you meet her here but by the end of 1 she was ready to have Nate's babies. What happened there? We can't chalk everything up to 'women are crazy'.

Gunfights, fighting and platforming have improved by miles, very little jank and way less accidental death than the first installment. The indicators for where Nate needs to climb are far better marked which saves you like twenty deaths on its own.

The game comes with it with the action set pieces; helicopter battle, train battle, tank battle? The train level, where you start dodging signal lights and bullets and weave in and out of cars and take down a helicopter with an RPG, then get a sniper rifle in the tunnels before having to take another chopper down with a TANK, before being shot in the gut and saying 'if I go all you f***ers are gonna go with me...', is it one of the greatest levels in gaming? Absof***inglutely!

More smaller moments between characters also does a good job at establishing and fleshing out their relationships. This game had by far the best bantz in the series.

If there's one quibble I have its that the last act of the game drags on for way too long. The last act is; be somehow fine after a day's sleep after losing half of your blood in the train sequence (maybe Tenzin gave Nate some Cintimanni water?), find out what the Cintimanni Stone does, return for an awesome tank battle, then a less awesome driving sequence, break into the monastery, solve a few puzzles, kill some guys, get to Shambhala, fight the mutants, then some guys, then some mutants, then more guys, solve a few puzzles, kill Lazarevic and finally escape the monastery (while fighting mutants), that's like half the game there, they could definitely have shaved off at least a quarter of the monastery.

About the only area I rate Drake's Deception higher, aside from some smoother gameplay, is that the narrative and plot is far more even.

Game also could have used more Sully, but what couldn't use more Sully? 'I'm sweating like a hooker in church', 'you brought a hooker to church?', 'why not?'

An action packed, rip-roaring ride from start to finish with infinitely smoothed out gameplay and controls, a great story, excellent character development and a memorable villain.

Any beyond reasonable criticism and it's like complaining that when you go out with the model you're f***ing doesn't look super hot between the hours of 3:30 and 4:15 pm for some reason.

9.7/10, one of the top ten big budget games of the decade.
Death estimate: I counted 11.


Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Certainly not as good as Among Thieves, but by no means a bad game. I rank the series overall as 2 > 3 >> 4 > 1. This was probably the 4th or 5th time I've played it.

Graphically and musically it's about the same as Among Thieves, but it refined several key gameplay features - hand to hand combat has been improved immensely for one, as have any battles that involve vehicles, of all the games in the series, this one plays the best.

Drake's Deception also has the best and most interesting puzzles the series has to offer, the 'torch' puzzle and the 'French game show' puzzle, and if you've played the game you know what puzzles I mean - are brilliant.

That said, Naughty Dog definitely programmed up the amount of 'bullet sponge' enemies have. It takes eleven rounds from a pistol to drop a guy with no body armor? Please, but then again Nate would be a cripple by chapter 4 of the previous two games, so realism isn't what they went for there. I died in a lot more gunfights than I did in 2 and 1.

The game has Sully in a big and important role, no way I can complain there, Sully is a gem and an absolute Hall of Fame character, high praise in a series with few weak or tacked on characters.

While overall I find neither the story or the villains as compelling as I did in Among Thieves, it's plotted much better - no last act that while enjoyable has me saying 'so...this shit gonna end anytime soon? Is Shambhala is about the size of New York City? How come they couldn't see it from space?', no in media res beginning (imr, which 2 did right and 4 did poorly, is very risky and a lazy storytelling device). From start to finish the game moves along at a breakneck pace, but also finds time for smaller, more personal moments.

In my opinion the only real storytelling misstep is following up the insanity of the cruise ship and airplane with twenty minutes of Nate tripping in the desert, which sucked a lot of the air out of the game's finale (I think it should have gone cruise ship - desert trip - airplane - Iram of the Pillars).

I like that the game has a tremendous variety of locations, we're way past the first game taking place solely in the tropics and 80% of the second game taking place in Sikkim/Nepal/Tibet (and the final game being 75% Madagascar). The London Underground, Colombia, rural France, Syria, a Middle Eastern city and the Rub-Al Khali Desert, it was a nice change.

If there is another Uncharted game, and I doubt it but never say never - I would like a great variety of locales and even the option to choose locations, with the effect of each choice being felt through the game and having a bearing on how the game ends.

Aside from the first game which served to introduce the characters and the series to us, each game has a theme.

Among Thieves is about how far Nate is willing to go and showing that he's not just a grave robber but can be heroic.

A Thief's End is about Nate's old life pulling him back in and righting an old wrong.

This game is about Nate finding out about the strain his lifestyle puts on the people closest to him and questioning certain loyalties (Cutter, Elena but most of all Sully).

One criticism people have of this game is that it's 'set-piece to set-piece and thin on story', which I think is a little unfair for reasons stated above.

That said the set pieces are back and in fine form. Sure nothing tops the train from the previous game (few games do - it's up there with the Spirit Temple, Memoria, Riften, Dead Man's Party and Terra Tower as my favorite 'levels' in modern gaming), but the cruise ship and airplane are both legit, and the French castle was pretty insane.

Charlie Cutter is a fine addition to a growing cast of great characters. Talbot and Marlowe are good villains with proper motivations, though neither of them chew the scenery quite as good as Lazarevic did in the previous game.

The history between Nate and Sully, a key focal point of the series being finally shown here, is tremendously well done, even if it's a touch predictable (come on - did anyone really suspect Sully would ever betray Nate?). I think that this game has the best character building of any game in the series.

Chloe and her perfectly rendered ass are back for a few chapters, but while during Among Thieves I was clearly on Team Chloe, this game put me on Team Elena and I've stayed there. Sure, she's tired of the bullshit and gets a little naggy at times, but the things she does for Nate show she's a ride-or-die chick - she's in it for the long haul.

All that being said...it just feels a little too familiar, a little too 'been there done that'. It improves on some of the things 2 did, but not to the massive degree 2 did on 1.

9.3/10. A definite must own, but it doesn't reach the heights of its predecessor.
Death estimate: 25-35

I'm giving the package an overall score of 9.2/10.

Lets be real here; unless you want the origin story and to see how everyone met, there's no real need to play Drake's Fortune - there are moments of brilliance and series staple gameplay concepts established, but it's a rough outing all around. I've played it twice now and that's enough.

Among Thieves is in my all time top ten games - crazy considering I'm the type that prefers deep and long RPGs like the older Final Fantasy games, hybrid RPGs like The Witcher 3 and the Mass Effect Trilogy and action-adventure games like Horizon Zero Dawn and the Zelda series. Storytelling, character development and polish are strong points. I will definitely play this game again at least a few more times.

I would say Drake's Deception is somewhere in my top 30, closer to 30. A great game cursed because it came after the game that preceded it; parallel it to Nico Hischier, who is a fine player...but he's no Auston Matthews and certainly not a Connor McDavid, but I'll absolutely play it again sometime.

You can probably get a second hand copy for less than a pizza and a six pack, you could do a lot worse.



And just for shits and giggles, since I have A Thief's End, which I fired up on the 29th and finished October 8th.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End:

Good thing about the Uncharted series? They pack in a lot of lore and story, but you can bang a game off in a weekend - a heavy weekend mind you, since the games are 15-24 hours long each, but it's still possible. They're the type of game that you can pick up for half an hour before you go to work - try doing that with Horizon Zero Dawn and you call in sick.

I'll serve you the hottest of takes and tell you that I was not very impressed with this game, and my second playthrough did little to change this.

Graphically the game is a step up, as it should be considering that Drake's Deception came out four years before The Witcher 3 on a last generation system, and looks just as good as it does. The game is gorgeous, the series continues to set the curve with its graphics.

But now, the problems, or at least the problems I personally had, and we start with Sam Drake.

He's caught a lot of heat as it is, and not that I think he's a bad character because he isn't (though I wouldn't call him a great one in the vein of Sully, Nate or Elena either) but isn't it a little funny that over the course of three games, there was zero mention of him? Remember in 3, that scene in Yemen when Marlowe has Nate's file (just before the awesome chase sequence with Talbot), there's not a single mention of him? Marlowe's file mentions his mother and father, but his brother who was in the same line of work isn't in there? Not even a throwaway line about a deceased/whereabouts unknown brother? For games so well written, to use such an obvious MacGuffin as the foundation to build a fourth game on is weak.

As a character he can handle his own, but aside from being brutally self interested, he's just too...Nate-like; the sense of humor, knowledge, banter, its all the same, Nate needs someone like Sully or Elena to play off of.

The 'flashback' chapters where you play as 13ish year old Nate and 18ish year old Sam are fun and have a great atmosphere, but are not as effective as the Colombia flashbacks in Drake's Deception.

After Colombia you knew who Victor Sullivan was and what he was about and it pushed the story forward. These scenes were just more exposition for the story and shed light on...Nate's mother, who up until now hadn't been mentioned?

I guess they had to do it: the first game was about Nate, the second is about his relationships with women and the third is about his relationship with his father, so they had to make this game about his mother, but it didn't hit me hard because like Sam, nothing had been invested into it so far; it literally came out of nowhere.

The controls are still good, but they removed some of the indicators and changed the tightness - in my opinion, Drake's Deception controlled perfectly. Fist fights have gone from graceful and complex in 3 to button mashing. They did however cut down on bullet sponge, which is nice when you get into one of the like nine gun fights in the game. The rope is also an excellent new gameplay feature, and vehicle handling has been improved, but the swimming is garbage.

My single biggest beef with this game is that its comparatively light on action and doesn't have a unifying set piece like the previous two games did, something like the train in 2 or the cruise ship in 3 where you can say 'remember that?' and hear 'it kicked ass!'.

Where are the set pieces? Where's the epic impossible shit? I can respect that 2 set the bar high in that regard, but at least 3 attempted to jump over it. The best set piece in this game? A car chase sequence that's like ten minutes long.

In Drake's Deception there was literally either a fist fight or gunplay in every single chapter until the desert freakout. This game felt like I had to climb or drive for twenty minutes to kill five guys.

The real jam is that the shooting was excellent in this game and they barely used it.

And where was the cool supernatural angle the first three games had? 1 had a plague that turned people into those things from I am Legend but slow. 2 had the Cintimanni Stone basically being mana and bestowing God like powers, 3 used the same angle Liam Neeson used in Batman Begins, a water-based hallucinogenic. In this game a bunch of greedy pirates got together...and back stabbed each other over money? Who could have seen this coming!?

For me at least, I'll never forget the first time I played Among Thieves and after all that shit - helicopter level, the train, and then that freaky Yeti thing attacked me; I'm a history buff and one of the biggest appeals of the series to me is that they feel like an alternate history. Keeping that stuff out of the game was a huge misstep.

After going through three games featuring the same controls, gameplay and progression, I felt that the game was often tedious and stale in this fourth installment, especially when you get to King's Bay around chapter 12. It felt like the game had way more climbing than all the others. I think if there was a new entry into the series, a reinvention is in order - a subtle one like God of War and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but there are a few things I would like to see changed.

Elena somehow knew exactly which hotel Drake and the boys were staying in Madagascar, and then later knew exactly where to find Nathan in a ditch on an uncharted island? A Deus ex Machina for the ages (in a series with a ton of them) and a story hole you could fly an Airbus through that could have been explained with one simple line, 'Chloe told me she heard you were at an Italian auction house and you were looking for Henry Avery's treasure', I could totally see Chloe and Elena still being friends, or at the very least keeping correspondence.

I said Among Thieves has an overlong last act problem, well multiply that by three for A Thief's End. Up until this point the games followed a general structure: start with a legendary treasure with no apparent antagonists - > investigate and uncover secrets and antagonists - > travel and unlock puzzles just ahead of the antagonist - > learn that the artifact you seek is 'cursed' and the antagonist seeks it for power or nefarious personal gain - > confront and eventually kill the antagonists and escape.

This game, already suffering because it has no supernatural elements, did little to make me really think the stakes were high.

'So Avery's treasure doesn't have some fearsome mystical ability that can be weaponized and sold to the highest bidder? Why does Rafe want it then? He's already rich.'

'He just wants it so everyone stops saying he was born with a silver spoon in his ass.'

'Why does Sam want it then?'

'Oh, Sam just wants the money.'

'Okay that's kinda lame, why is Nate involved?'

'He wants to save his brother.'

'So he lied to his wife, who has never ever been unreasonable, to save his brother who he hasn't seen, mentioned or thought of in the last fifteen years?'

'Yeah, that's about it.'

And I'm already bored.

Rafe and Nadine are terrible villains. 2 gave us Lazarevic who was an awesome psychotic Balkan warlord, 3 had Marlowe, a connected old money British secret society lady. Rafe is...a rich kid with penis envy?

They at least tried to make Rafe compelling by having him there during the prison chapters, here's how Rafe should have been done; orphanarium, between Nate and Sam in age he's a frienemy of the boys and he's affable enough but with some psychotic tendencies, he gets adopted by a rich guy explorer who is so impressed with him he leaves him his fortune when he dies (or did Rafe kill him?)...but he's got a chip on his shoulder because Nate had beaten him to every punch and this is his revenge. THAT is a relatable and motivated villain!

As for Nadine, well she has an army and Sully knows her?

Literally anything would have been better than what they did with Nadine, which was have her show up for a cutscene here and there and throw a few kicks and punches (and those fights would have been fire, if the game kept 3's fight controls...). Maybe Nate and Sully could have screwed her father over in the past?

Lastly it pains me to see what they did to poor Sully. They aged his model almost a decade when three or four years at most passed between Drake's Deception and this game, and they took out all his gold dialogue. He says more awesome shit by the end of chapter five of Drake's Deception than he does in this whole game, that dog won't hunt.



Before I assign my score why not just list what I like and dislike in bullet points.

Like:

- Top notch presentation; graphics, music, all of it.
- The rope should have been in Drake's Fortune.
- Driving sequences much improved.
- The puzzles are pretty good.
- Badass new weapons and improved shooting mechanics.

Dislike:

- A lot of the core gameplay is starting to feel stale.
- Sam Drake is a good not great character that was shoehorned in with no previous mention.
- Poor villains and low stakes.
- No cool supernatural stuff.
- Set-pieces are of lower quality.
- The game is light on action.
- A severely overlong final act.
- Less key Sully.
- No cameos of characters we wanted to see (Cutter, Chloe).

This game came bundled with my PS4, I would have been letdown if I paid $74.99 for it.

8/10, if this was my first game in the series, and I'm not trying to be a hater, I would probably think it was the ****, but it wasn't and I saw a lot I didn't much care for.

***

The format has become stale by this point. If there's ever another Uncharted game (we just got a new awesome God of War game after eight years, don't say it won't happen), here are a few things I would like to see:

- Can we get some context-sensitive dialogue and Gameplay choice options? Say the wrong thing here, get a worse ending. Nate can choose to go to Scandinavia with Elena, or send Chloe and Sully there while he and Elena go to Sierra Leone or something like it? Nate's been at it long enough that he should have a solid team.

- Uncharted will always be a linear story-and-character driven platform and that's okay, but they could add some RPG elements; weapon and outfit customization 'this shirt reduces fall damage by 5%', 'this holster gives Nate's pistol an extra round', 'using this gun more means over the course of the game it becomes more accurate and deadly' etc., passive abilities unlocked with ability points ('Nate can jump 10% further', 'Nate gets an automatic full clip of ammo every five enemies killed', 'with this ability hidden treasure indicators are twice as bright' etc.,). They don't need to go crazy and have Nate gain levels and you need to be at a certain level to use a weapon or advance the story, but just a little would dramatically deepen the game.

- I had praised the use of the rope in 4 and in doing so I realize Nate is a treasure hunter. Shouldn't he have tools of the trade at his disposal beyond a gun and a rope? Flares, compass, lockpicks, explosives, fake documents and all that? Maybe he could even start carrying his own lighter? Maybe instead of a bottomless bag (another RPG convention), you can load out three of these items on Nate and two on Sully/Elena? The amount of puzzle options this could open...

- Nate spends all his time in jungles and deserts and ruins...how come he never has to deal with snakes, spiders and crocodiles? I would like to see the game using 'natural hazards' more.

- I don't care if they need to fit him with an exoskeleton, Sully needs to be Drake's main companion in every game. Elena was very good as always in A Thief's End, but a whole game of her and Nate? Bantz are bone dry at the end of A Thief's End because Nate spent the last few chapters walking on eggshells trying not to piss Elena off.

- In A Thief's End, most levels were climb ten minutes, shoot five, climb ten, solve a puzzle five, shoot five and escape. I like having all three in a level, but why not have levels with heavier shooting elements, and others with more climbing and platforming? Among Thieves did this perfectly.

- Jungles have been a setting in three games and featured prominently in two, if they're not going to make it more interactive then I'm tired of the jungle. Give me one of the Poles, or a boreal forest, or a coral reef, or a city or even another desert before I see the jungle again.

- You find random treasures to unlock mostly crappy bonuses. Why not have a central base to display them, or a market to sell or trade them?

Uncharted Character Depth Chart:

Awesome, need to be in all games:
Victor Sullivan
Nathan Drake

Extremely strong and memorable:
Elena Fisher
Zoran Lazarevic
Chloe Frazier
Harry Flynn
Marlowe
Charlie Cutter
Talbot

Blah:
Sam Drake
Rafe Adler
Eddy Raja
Nadine Ross
Atoq Navarro

20 of my favorite games in the order to which they came to mind (I just played TW3, it could be my new #1):

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Chrono Cross
Final Fantasy III
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Final Fantasy X
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Suikoden III
Mass Effect 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2
LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue Complete
Final Fantasy IX
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Horizon Zero Dawn
Resident Evil 4
Chrono Trigger
Suikoden II
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Bayonetta - 9/10

Bayonetta is by no means new but it's new to PC. This is my first chance at getting to play it and I loved it. It's as good of a spectacle fighter as you can get. The story is awesome, the character interactions range from cute to bad ass. It really has a little bit of everything whether it's something serious or light hearted. Platinum did a great job in that regard. The gameplay is as smooth as can be and the PC port is great.

My only complaints are the camera which felt awful to control. For some reason, and only for half the game, the Y axis was permanently inverted. I would switch it in the options back and forth but it had no effect. It didn't start doing that until the midway point either, it was bizarre. But even that aside, the camera control is kind of wonky and doesn't feel as fluid as it should be. Also, a more minor inconvenience, but you seemed to always get attacked immediately after a cutscene. You had to remember to dodge immediately and if you weren't ready when the cutscene ended, you would just instantly take damage. There wasn't many health pick ups but you can buy them cheap in the stores which are often enough. Dying will replenish your health to full even if you reach the checkpoint at low health but it has a bad effect on your score. Fortunately, I personally don't really care about the score so that didn't bother me much but it is worth bringing up.

Overall, I'm glad I played it and definitely recommend it if you haven't yet. I've played all the other Platinum games on PC and now that I have a Switch, I'll be picking up Bayonetta 2 as well.

 

[Jovavic]

Persona 5 is on sale on the PS3 for $20. Thinking about getting it but also don't wanna spend more than $10 on a digital PS3 game in 2018, maybe the physical copy.

I'm about to finish it with 100 hours on the timer, good cash spent to playtime ratio

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Dex - 9.5/10

Dex has absolutely become one of my favorite indie games of all time, even one of my favorite games. It's a 2D RPG that plays like a beat em up platformer. It's absolutely what a 2D version of Deus Ex would be. The story was great and it even had a lot of side missions. Everything felt meaningful and accomplishing side missions had effects on the rest of the game. Every single character is voice acted and they did an amazing job with it. Even the aesthetic is great. My only complaints were the beat em up combat felt rather plain. It worked perfectly fine but I just wish it was a little more in depth. Also, some of the animations looked kind of clunky but the game handled very well. That being said, Dex is absolutely a must buy. I don't know why nobody's talking about it and why I didn't play it sooner. I'm glad I played it now though, better late than never.

 

[Oscar Acosta]

Spider-Man (PS4)

Just the first few moments, the way the game starts and you jump out the window from the cut scene into instant action. Awesome. To have a boss fight to start the game, awesome.

That's about the sum of the entire game. Just fun and incredible. The story is actually engaging for a video game, I may have actually teared up a bit at the end, being a fan of the comics and how much non-spoiler reminded me of my own Mom, running a soup kitchen and they just made Peter Parker such a likeable character in this game. The gameplay is sick. Unlocking everything a lot of fun. NYC never looked so alive in a game before. It's fun to just high five people on the street.

Love all the references to what Spider-Man actually deals with in comics, J Jonah Jameson always good for a laugh, etc.

It's just such a fun game. Except gets bogged down with way too many sneak around as Mary Jane, sneak around as Miles Morales missions. It grinds the fun of being Spider-Man to a halt. Once in a while, ok, but every 3rd mission, it gets really old.

9/10