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Cyber Rat
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Oh shit, World of Horror update after a year of silence from the developer! I honestly thought this game had been abandoned but now it's finally time to go back to Shiokawa, baby. Even though it's in early access I can easily recommend it to anyone who likes roguelikes, RPGs, or horror. Now that the update is going to be adding two new cases and Old Gods at the bare minimum it's even easier to recommend, especially at 15 dollars.

 

 

Edited by Mister Jack
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  • 2 weeks later...

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2

 

Grabbed it on the Switch as opposed to the Xbox because I think it fits that platform really well, and I wasn't wrong. Obviously it doesn't look nearly as nice as it would one a new console, but being able to grab it and play for 10 minutes whilst I'm making dinner or um, taking a dump is a game-changer. 

 

The game itself? Exactly what I was looking for. I've not played a skateboarding game since Skate 2 (2009) took over my life for a few weeks, so I was a little unsure how I'd take to this, but I'm having a great time at the moment. 

 

Some of the menu's are a little small on the Switch (OG Switch), and the game looks....well rough on my TV but those minor niggles aside I'm really impressed with this port.

 

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Death's Door

 

I grabbed the Switch version of this instead of the Playstation one because I figured it'd be nice to play mobile, thought it would look great on the OLED, and also it's not so demanding that it'd be an issue on the TV, and I was right about all three.

 

This game is a lot of fun, very old-school Zelda except minus the overworld (there's a little hub area, but it's more like the castle in Mario 64 than it is Hyrule), but without the fiddliness of the old school combat. Combat is fast and responsive, and it feels great. There have been a few frustrating parts, but only bosses, and it's never made me want to quit.

 

I'm on the second world of at least 3 (as far as I can tell only 3, but I don't know yet if it pulls an Ocarina of Time and unveils a second stage), and so far I highly recommend it.

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The Gunk  

 

The first '3d' game from the Steamworld people, The Gunk is a game about um, sucking up tonnes of...you know, gunk. I'm about 3 hours in and I'm happy to report that I'm 'finding the fun' in that. It's got a highly enjoyable vacuuming mechanic, and as a Luigi fan, I do enjoy a good vacuum mechanic.

 

And whilst I don't see it seriously threatening my top 5 games of the year list, I do think it's another solid addition to gamepass, and one that's worth of a look, especially if you're looking for something linear to pass the time over the Christmas break.

Edited by danielpholt
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5 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I feel like I read something about it having to do with the way the game logic works, and it breaking at higher frame rates, but I can't seem to find it.

 

Good old tying game logic to framerate. Wasn't console game programming great back in the day?

 

4 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

If that's the case then they shouldn't be charging fifty damn dollars for it.

 

Atlus gonna Atlus. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I think with these niche JRPGs, companies know they can charge more and hardcore fans will still buy them. And, to be fair, in some cases that's probably the only reason they can keep making them. XSEED doesn't really do deep discounts anymore and NISA must operate on paper thin profit margins given how routinely their Japanese parent company seems to be on the brink of bankruptcy. Atlus probably doesn't need to do it since they're under SEGA now and aren't as niche as they used to be but old habits die hard, I guess...

 

But yeah, if that kinda stuff bothers you then it's always a good idea to check PC Gaming Wiki before buying. Especially with Japanese ports.

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30 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

Putting out a half-assed remaster and charging that much for it feels scummy.

 

I'm not sure that's entirely fair lol. A 30fps lock doesn't mean it's half-assed. We're talking about a game that was made exclusively for a console in 2003. You can't really blame them for not anticipating a rerelease 20 years in the future. Tying game logic to framerate is a terrible practice but it was fairly common back then, especially with a game that was only ever going to come out on one platform.

 

I'm giving them the benefit of doubt and could be way off here but it's entirely possible that fixing the framerate cap meant rewriting a non-trivial amount of game code that simply wasn't feasible for the scope of the project. I mean, just recently Durante's studio released a port of the PSP exclusive Trails spin-off Nayuta no Kiseki and in his blog post about it Durante mentioned that they had someone working on implementing arbitrary framerate support (it's locked at 60fps and the game's logic is framerate dependent) and they had to shelve the idea for now because the amount of work required wasn't justifiable.

 

And we're talking about Durante here! The guy that, when porting Trails of Cold Steel, got the game to run at like 90fps and went "No, this isn't good enough" and ripped out the entire rendering pipeline to write a more optimized one. Sometimes it's just not feasible.

Edited by toxicitizen
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Horizon Zero Dawn

 

Man, this game is a long one. I kind of expected to be in and out but no. Overall I do like it since fighting the machines is pretty ace. Fight humans though is much more vanilla. I actually do think it's a lost opportunity of not having any machines to climb on to kill, like Dragon's Dogma (my favorite open-worldish game). With that said, what is there is pretty solid. I can't wait to see what they do with the sequel.

 

I do have some issues with the game:

1) Ammo. Stopping gameplay to restock on ammo all the time is not a good thing, at all. Somehow this really got to go.

2) All quests are active BESIDES the tutorials quest, which you need to toggle as your primary quest in order to complete it. This is kind of a bad oversight because I have done all the requirements for lots of these tutorials. I just frequently forget to toggle them to be my primary quest. All weapons have them so I guess I'll have fun with tutorial quests till the end game.

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Scarlet Nexus

 

This game is exactly the kind of Persona-lite that I love, like TMS#FE. It doesn't have the full life sim, but between dungeons you do little side activities to rank up your bond with your companions. It's no Persona, but it scratches the same kind of itch.

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On 1/1/2022 at 3:30 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

lol, it's funny you say it's long, when I did the NG+ recently I was shocked by how short it was.

 

I kinda agree with you both, when I played through the first time, I thought it was quite long. NG+ went a lot quicker. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having a great time with the PC port of Monster Hunter Rise. I'm so glad I waited because with so much action going on, sometimes with four hunters AND four NPC companions all attacking the same monster at the same time, I can't imagine trying to run this on a Switch. I also like that this game feels different enough from World to be its own thing and not make World obsolete. At the same time there are some things World does better and some things Rise does better, which makes both games worth playing in their own right. World has better graphics, bigger environments, and better multiplayer while Rise has better combat, more mobility, and cooler weapons and armor. I can't really definitively say one is better than the other. Not yet, anyway.

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I got my hands on Pokemon Legends Arceus before the release date. I won't spoil anything here since it's so early, but I will say that so far...I'm enjoying it! Yeah, holy shit, a Pokemon game I'm actually having fun with. What a miracle. The last three Pokemon games I tried playing were so slow and tedious that I dropped them before ever beating the story, but I think I might just stick with this one to the end. It is a little rough around the edges in some respects, of course, and it's far from a 10 out of 10, but compared to Sword/Shield and the Diamond/Pearl remake? This is feeling much closer to what I want Pokemon to be in this day and age. So far it's feeling like a good first effort and I hope Legends becomes a spin-off series.

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Nobody Saves The World

 

It's a very accessible dungeon crawler from the people who made the excellent Guacamelee 1 and the totally okay Guacamelee Two a few years back. It's bright and colourful, has a great soundtrack and is hitting all the right spots for me. 

 

Basically you'll play as this little....dude who is himself a little ineffective, however he's got a magic wand and that allows him to change into different characters, the normal stuff; a Knight, a Rogue, a Horse, you know, normal shit.

 

It's not interested in making things difficult and whilst it does get a little grindy at times, it's certainly not punishing in any real way. If you die you simply fly back to the start of the dungeon and re-enter, earning even more points towards your unlocks, and damn are there a lot of things to unlocks. It's a constant rush of upgrades and increased stats.

 

It's on Gamepass which obviously is why I tried it. Unfortunately no Switch version, which is a shame because I think this would be an absolute delight on that system. 

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I started Nobody Saves the World last night, and liked the little bit I played, but it didn't feel like enough of a game to hold my full attention, so I stopped and will probably use it as a game to play on my phone while watching TV or whatever.

 

Then I started Quantum Break, and I've liked that so far too (though going straight into this game at 30fps was painful after having been playing Halo at 120), I think I'll stick with it. I'm not a fan of the TV show cutscenes, they're too disruptive to the game, but I respect the experiment of them.

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2 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I started Nobody Saves the World last night, and liked the little bit I played, but it didn't feel like enough of a game to hold my full attention, so I stopped and will probably use it as a game to play on my phone while watching TV or whatever.

 

Then I started Quantum Break, and I've liked that so far too (though going straight into this game at 30fps was painful after having been playing Halo at 120), I think I'll stick with it. I'm not a fan of the TV show cutscenes, they're too disruptive to the game, but I respect the experiment of them.

 

For what it's worth the game definitely gets more interesting once you've unlocked some of the more advanced characters, but that's probably 2-3 hours in so I get why people might bounce off it.

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