Games You Beat in 2023: PXoD Face the Music

[TheMightyEthan]

I definitely recommend playing some other stuff in between BotW and TotK, I played both almost back to back and I think I enjoyed TotK less because of it. Not because it's not a better game (it is), but just because my familiarity with that version of Hyrule dampened the sense of exploration, even though it is changed somewhat in TotK.

[Mister Jack]

You'll be glad to know that Tears of the Kingdom, while not ditching the terrible weapon durability entirely, does change it in a way that makes it much less annoying.

[Thursday Next]

20 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

You'll be glad to know that Tears of the Kingdom, while not ditching the terrible weapon durability entirely, does change it in a way that makes it much less annoying.

How?

[Mister Jack]

5 hours ago, Thursday Next said:

How?

 

Spoiler

The base weapons are breakable pretty quickly but you can attach monster parts or other weapons to them to make them last longer. So if you have a brittle sword you can put a monster horn on it and when that horn breaks, as long as you don't damage the sword too much before doing so, you can just put another horn or claw or a second sword or whatever on it.

 

[Thursday Next]

I see. I still hate it. lol.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't dislike the system, even in BotW, but I do think the weapons are too brittle, they need like double the durability.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I avoid conflict wherever possible, literally go through two fused items, so 4 weapons on one monster is really annoying. I just don't want to think about weapons that much.

 

I don't like the combat in general anyway. I'm far enough through that I shouldn't have to worry if I'm not at full health if a single bokoblin comes by. and I know it's unrealistic when you're surrounded by a  group of enemies in other games and they take it in turns to hit you, but the amount of times I've been fighting one monster and died being speared through the back by one that's off-screen is just unfair

[TheMightyEthan]

Superliminal

 

Another neat little indie puzzle game. This one I really enjoyed. It was perfectly calibrated for me, there were several puzzles where I kind of got stuck, but always I was able to figure it out before resorting to a guide. I also really liked the perspective-shifting, non-Euclidian geometry of it. It did have a few long-ish stretches that didn't have enough puzzles in them, were mostly just moving through hallways, but other than that I quite enjoyed it. It's short too, only about 2 hours start to finish for me.

 

Grade: B+

[Mister Jack]

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

 

I am one of those people who believed, still believes, and will probably always believe that Breath of the Wild was an overhyped tech demo. This, however, feels like the fully realized game that I wanted the previous one to be. Almost all of my major complaints about BotW have been addressed in some form, although sometimes I must admit some of the improvements feel more like a band-aid than a proper fix for my gripes. Weapon durability, my biggest annoyance, isn't as annoying now thanks to weapon fusing. I still think weapons break too fast unless you fuse them with certain materials, but they at least last long enough that I don't feel the need to avoid fights entirely. The dungeons are better, the bosses are better, the story is better, the characters are better, the voice acting is better, and the powers you get are way more interesting, not to mention more useful. Don't even get me started on how fun it is to build stuff. I'm never very good at building games so I was afraid it would be overwhelming but it's very user-friendly and easy to use. I was making all kinds of crazy contraptions.

 

I only have two major complaints, really. First, rain still sucks. I know there are elixirs and armor to help mitigate slipping on wet surfaces while climbing, but it really shouldn't be a thing to begin with. Rain and especially thunderstorms just bring the whole game to a halt until the weather clears up and as far as I know rainy weather has no benefit to you whatsoever. You can't cook, you can't start fires, you can barely climb, you can't equip any metal weapons or armor. Rain is bullshit. 

 

My second issue is with the new powers you get from the dungeons. I actually like them a lot and I love how they're implemented on the field, but the problem is they're activated in a way that's really clunky and no matter how careful you are you're pretty much guaranteed to constantly activate powers you didn't intend to use. There is pretty much no way around it and all you can do is learn to live with it. Oh well.

 

Still, huge improvement over BotW in my eyes. I love this game and it's probably going to be my GOTY. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, instead of the horse whistle they should have made down on the dpad bring up a wheel that lets you activate those powers (and the horse could be on that wheel too).

[Mister Jack]

With as much care as they put into the rest of the game it kind of baffles me that they did not think of that.

[MetalCaveman]

Question about TotK

 

Spoiler

Do you still have to be near your horse for the whistle to work, or did they add the EX Saddle from BotW from the start?

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Nope, that DLC thing is not in Totk (or if it is I never found it).

[Thursday Next]

Forspoken

 

Mixed feelings about this game. I like the characters, the writing is decent, the world building is great, the combat (eventually) is really satisfying. The pacing however is all over the place.

 

There are four elements (for want of a better word) you start with the ability to sling rocks, and unlock more elements (fire, water, and weird) as you go. I'd say that the pacing goes roughly:

 

1st hour, no powers, walking around NYC, pointless exposition;

2nd to 4th hour, one power. Explore the magic world, defeat first proper boss;

4th to 5th hour, two powers. Learn about enemy elemental weaknesses etc defeat 2nd boss;

5th to 5th and a half hour, defeat third boss, unlock third power;

5th and a half to sixth hour, defeat 4th boss unlock final power.

 

At this point you immediately hit the final act against the big-bad. You never really get to muck around with the 4th power, explore the world, get juiced up.

 

Then credits roll and it's post-game mop-up time.

 

You spend at least half the game hobbled, with access to up to half your skill set, which is a real shame, because when you have access to all the traversal tools and different combat abilities, the game really shines.

 

I might come back to it at some point, but to be honest with so many other games to play...

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I finished Detroit Become Human after a very long hiatus around two thirds of the way through. I got the good ending, being pacifist and keeping everyone alive. I liked it more than I remember liking Heavy Rain, as it wasn't so unrelentingly grim.

 

The messaging was a bit heavy handed and I found manoeuvring the characters about a bit clunky, so I'd see a prompt and struggle to get back into position to activate it but overall I enjoyed it and might give beyond 2 souls a look.

[Thursday Next]

10 hours ago, TheFlyingGerbil said:

The messaging was a bit heavy handed...

 

I used to think this about the story telling in Quantic Dream games, but then you see the number of people who seem to think that Star Wars is not a story about antifa, that Space Marines are the "good guys", or that Fight Club is a blueprint of how to be cool and I think, "maybe it's not possible to set the bar too low".

[TheMightyEthan]

Spider-Man Remastered and Spider-Man: Miles Morales

 

Replayed these games on PC, and I don't have a lot to say about them, other than I still think they're great, and playing them back-to-back reinforced my opinion that Miles Morales is the better of the two. Also, playing on PC it's super nice to be able to have both high quality and high performance, instead of having to pick.

 

Grade: A

 

Yes, Your Grace

 

This is an interesting little RPG where the whole of the gameplay is you as a king making decisions for the realm. There's no combat or anything, literally just people coming to you, explaining a situation, and asking what to/for help/whatever. It's really interesting. I did think the ending fell a little flat, but I can't put my finger on why. Overall though I really enjoyed the experience.

 

Grade: B+

[Mister Jack]

Assassin's Creed Syndicate

 

Got it from CDKeys for 6 bucks because I like the Victorian aesthetic. It's fine. What can I really say? It's an Assassin's Creed game. The grapping hook was a really nice addition but other than that there isn't much to write home about. It was worth the bargain bin price I paid for it, but I'm done now. Bring on Final Fantasy XVI.

[toxicitizen]

System Shock

 

That would be the remake that just came out. The original System Shock is one of those games that I've always been meaning to play but never got around to. And now I don't need to because I feel like I just played a better version of it. Not a re-imagining but the exact same game with some modern QoL improvements. Even visually, it looks great while still using an art style that evokes the feeling of playing a retro game. Digital Foundry called it the greatest remake ever made and I can kinda see where they're coming from.

 

And it's not just the visuals that feel retro. You can see the immersive sim DNA with a story told through audio logs, weapons and mods, even metroidvania-like upgrades that let you access new areas. But you can tell this is the grand-father of the genre because there's not that much variety in how you tackle things and the game really doesn't hold your hand: no explicit objectives or quest markers and there's no one talking in your ear the entire time telling you what to do. You get some "live" calls here and there but they're usually mostly for story purposes and often get cut off by SHODAN before they can actually give you any useful info. You better be paying attention to those audio logs because that's where all the info is.

 

You need to figure out for yourself what to do next and I found myself googling for help a few times because I would often reach a new floor of the station only to explore basically all of it with seemingly no meaningful progress to show for it. There's a locked door here with a keypad but do I already have the code or... ? Sometimes I'd google for help and find out the thing I assumed I needed to do next was actually for much later in the game and I was supposed to do this other thing instead. It made for some aimless wandering around at times, but when I wasn't stuck I had a blast exploring Citadel Station. Until things kinda fell apart at the end...

 

Not completely. The last few levels are alright, just smaller because it's the climax of the game. But that final boss is some complete nonsense. For half of it, I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to be doing. I think they knew it was hot trash, though, because you literally can't fail lol. If you die, you just respawn with no progress lost.

 

I still kinda want to play System Shock Enhanced Edition to contrast with this one but man, those Doom graphics are gonna be tough to go back to now. Also, now that I have a better understanding of the critical path through the game, I'm curious to replay the remake and try paying super close attention to the audio logs to see if I can pick up on all the little details that are meant to guide you along.

 

I'm also looking forward to System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition more than ever now. I actually did start SS2 several times years ago but never got very far into it. Hell, I honestly kinda hope Nightdive tries their hand at remaking that one as well. It has definitely aged way better than the original but it's still from that era where 3D graphics still weren't quite there yet.

[MetalCaveman]

Seed of the Dead

 

Man this is a thing.

 

I like the concept, more shooters (FPS or TPS) with an anime art style would be most excellent, however, in this case, the execution is a mess. Not to mention the healing gimmick and some of the more... questionable content it has.

 

Gameplay is pretty janky, most guns feel useless, any of the auto rifles are so inaccurate the safest place during combat is standing right in front of them, trying to aim down sight doesn't really help either. The only cool weapon that actually sorta does work is the non-copyright infringing lightsaber.

 

One of the biggest issues is that this game is mostly made up of assets, nothing against assets, but the devs didn't bother to try and find stuff that worked well together, or that even made sense, so you'll go from a neon-lit city stage, to a hospital that looks right out of Outlast, to a "laboratory" that for some reason has demonic statues with fire coming out of them, it's all just a mishmash of different art styles, settings, textures, etc.

 

This extends to enemies and the main characters, there's a limited amount of monsters, including one enemy that's a giant dickhead (literally and metaphorically ), the main enemies are zombies, or zombie as it were, as there's only one model, enemy variety is practically nonexistent.

 

The main characters meanwhile, stick out like a sore thumb, the art for them is kinda nice, their models, not so much, animations are also pretty awkward.

 

Then there's the healing gimmick, instead of using health kits or whatever, characters here take this song very literally:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Yes, the way you heal during combat is

Spoiler

by having a quickie with any of the main ladies.

 

This is a rhythm mini-game, and completing it heals both characters and gives you a shield. The length of this and the awkward animations make this quite the annoying mechanic.

 

So yeah, this was a thing, don't recommend, can't recommend, even for me, this was a bit much lol. That said, I've been playing the sequel, and that one is quite the improvement in every category, though it also has a bunch of issues.

 

I hope Snowbreak is good, after Hoyoverse cancelled the TPS they were working on, I want more and better shooters with an anime art style, this, most certainly, is not it.

 

TL;DR: Not good, avoid, stay away, menu screen art is the only good thing about this game.

 

Grade: F (0/10)

 

 

Daemon X Machina

 

This one was pretty good.

 

Basically, this is to Armored Core what Code Vein was to Dark Souls, in short, this is anime Armored Core, cheesy melodramatic story included.

 

Gameplay was pretty neat, close to AC4/ACFA in terms of speed, with some enemies just zipping around the battlefield at Mach 666.

 

You can equip three weapons, two in each arm and one shoulder weapon, there's also pylon weapons, you can swap between your currently equipped arm weapons and weapons stored in your pylons whenever, which gives you some freedom in terms of strategy and equipment. You also have support weapons, this range from extra boosters, to grenades and healing items.

 

The main thing here is Femto energy, you can use this for a couple of different things, normally it acts as a bit of a shield, but you can also choose to redirect it to increase boost speed, or weapon damage. The damage boost is super useful and was my most used ability.

 

Weapon variety is nice, there's a lot of weapons that are just upgrades of basic ones (so assault rifle, assault rifle 2, assault rifle 3 etc.) but there's still a bunch of stuff to choose from, including variations of some weapons that have an autofire mode, which means they will automatically fire on any enemy in range. Not really useful as they don't deal as much damage as manual weapons but it's neat that they're there.

 

Enemy variety is somewhat limited, but for a game like this it doesn't really bother me, the fights against the other characters were the highlight, much more fun and challenging than just wiping out normal enemies.

 

Boss fights on the other hand can be a bit annoying, specially the first one, since you won't have weapons that are strong enough by the time you face it, so it's just firing at a bullet sponge, occasionally going after the weaker enemies that spawn and that are there to help you recover ammo and energy.

 

I did have a couple of issues while playing though, during one mission, enemies bugged out and became immortal, I was sure I was doing something wrong and there was some strategy to dealing with them until I looked up a guide and realized it wasn't supposed to be like that. During another mission and enemy glitched through the ground, making it impossible to deal with them, which meant that I had to restart the mission. There was also an unwinnable mission that I restarted a couple of times before realizing you're not supposed to win, learned this after reducing the enemy's health to about 20% and then noticing that no matter how many times I hit them, their health didn't go down any further.

 

Finally, the last boss was the biggest annoyance. A long level where you have to fight two of the strongest enemies, followed by a really annoying boss that's incredibly hard to hit as it doesn't zip around so much as it just teleports around the arena. Then finally the actual last boss, which is the bullet sponge to end all bullet sponges, insane resistance to all attack types, some really annoying attacks, including one that just outright steals your weapons from you and an arena that isn't really suited for that kind of fight. Thankfully you don't have to go through the whole thing when retrying, otherwise I doubt I'd have bothered to finish the game.

 

Story was kinda cool though, although the silent protagonist thing doesn't work here. Characters will talk to you:

 

"We need you in the briefing, we could use your opinion"

"What do you think about this?"

"What is your answer?"

"Are you ready?"

 

And other stuff, and yet your character never responds, not even in text, even during cutscenes, your actual character (outside of your mech) only shows up a couple of times.

 

This leads to some rather awkward moments were certain characters might as well be talking to themselves.

 

All in all, I'd highly recommend it if you're interested in this kind of game, specially with AC VI coming out soon, bonus, if you've been claiming the free games on the Epic store, chances are, you already have it.

 

TL;DR: Anime armored core, really cool, annoying last boss, but overall, highly recommended.

 

Grade: B+

[TheMightyEthan]

Control Ultimate Edition

 

Replayed this game cause I got hyped from the Alan Wake 2 announcement, and it's somehow even better than I remembered.

 

Grade: A+

[toxicitizen]

Yakuza 4 Remastered

 

I put this one off for like a year because of how utterly miserable of an experience Yakuza 3 was but that turned out to be a mistake. This one is actually pretty great! I played on hard again, because I don't learn from my mistakes.

 

Fortunately for me, the combat in this one is nowhere near as obnoxious as in Yakuza 3. There's still some bullshit with boss enemies attacking or blocking in the middle of your combo string, which might be deliberate but seems fucking insane to me. And some large groups of enemies in some chapters will sometimes decide to all try to hit you at once and you end up getting stun-locked for a solid minute, which seems like incredibly sloppy combat design to me but what do I know? Anyway, the game overall was super fun so unlike the miserable slog that was Yakuza 3, here it's a minor complaint.

 

The story is actually pretty good. At its best moments I was reminded of Yakuza 0, which is basically the highest praise I can give to one of these games. And at one point Majima referenced something that happened to him in the 80s and I got really excited that the game would have some kind of retroactive tie-in with 0 but it turned out to be some other event that happened 2 years before 0.

 

I went into the game fully prepared to complain that there wasn't enough Kiryu (and he does play a disappointingly minor role in the game) but I ended up loving the new characters way more than I expected, so it turned out to not be such a huge deal. Akiyama is just a great character and Saejima is a fucking badass brick shithouse of a man that lifts dudes over his head and throws them into walls. What's not to love? That being said, most of the combat issues I described happened with the other characters. Once I finally got to play as Kiryu, it was like turning the game's difficulty down. I guess normal people just can't compare to the Dragon of Dojima.

 

I was kinda meh on Tanimura as a character but apparently he doesn't come back in future games because his voice actor quit or something. The best part of his section was the gameplay because it kinda felt like proto-Judgment but we have Judgment now and Yagami is a much better character, so I guess that worked out in the end.

 

Speaking of Judgment, maybe it's because it's the last one I played before this but I kinda felt the game's age while playing Yakuza 4. The textures on non-main characters are just a blurry mess and Kamurocho feels way more artificial by comparison. It's really tempting to jump right into Yakuza 5 so I can get the PS3 games out of the way and only have the more modern Dragon Engine games left but I'm worried about getting burned out on the series. Think I'll probably give it a month or so to play something else and come back to it in the near future.

Edited July 5, 2023 by toxicitizen

[Mister Jack]

Final Fantasy XVI

 

This is quite a departure from the traditional FF experience, but one thing I always respect in this franchise is that they try new things. It doesn't always work out, but they aren't afraid to take risks, which is admirable. In this case, they sure did do a lot of things that will probably piss off purists. Clive is the only controllable character, the combat is purely action based, there are no airships, the world is made up of large hub areas instead of one seamless map, the story is firmly rooted in medieval times, there is significantly more gore and swearing, and there are several series staples missing such as cactuars, tonberries, and status effects. 

 

But let's say you're okay with all these changes. How does it hold up as a standalone game without the FF legacy to live up to? Well, pretty decently, I'd say. While the combat was clearly inspired by games like Devil May Cry, it also isn't as complex or as difficult as a true character action game, which is by design. There is a hard mode, but you only get access to it in NG+, which I think was a mistake because the game is kind of easy in normal mode. You get access to a sword, magic that you shoot like a projectile, a handful of command abilities, and equippable special abilities granted by the game's summons. Once you're fully decked out it's got a decent amount of depth without being overwhelming, but it'll take you a while to get there because Clive's combat abilities unlock over the course of the story. The first few hours are pretty simple and button-mashy. Normal enemies you can just whack to death but for large enemies and bosses you will need to use the right abilities to quickly fill their stagger meter and then unload on them with your hardest hitting moves while they're down.

 

The game also has a LOT of cutscenes. Apparently 11 hours worth, according to Youtube, and I could definitely see some people getting put off by this if they're not used to Kojima-like storytelling. Fortunately, I found the plot rather engaging and the characters pretty likable. In fact, this game has what is now my favorite Cid in the franchise, even more than FFVII's Cid. It had shades of Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy IX to me, which are two of my favorite games in the franchise, but of course your mileage may vary. One thing pretty much everyone can agree on is that the voice acting is probably the best it's ever been in a Final Fantasy game. A really nice feature is the Active Time Lore. At just about any time, including during a cutscene, if you're having trouble following the story you can hold down the touchpad and it will pause the game and bring up a small menu of relevant people and places that you can quickly read to bring yourself up to speed. As many people and countries as there are getting constantly discussed, this is a big help in making sure you don't get hopelessly confused.

 

My main criticisms of the game are its easy difficulty and the fact that most of the sidequests boil down to "go here, kill this." You don't want to skip them though because some of the sidequests unlock important upgrades or even gameplay features, like a rideable chocobo. If you play it, I recommend not using any of the auto-dodge or auto-combo rings that you are given in the beginning because they turn the game into a brainless button masher and also hold you back from using the most efficient combo strings. Think of this as something like Metal Gear meets Devil May Cry meets Asura's Wrath.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

That Which Gave Chase

 

This is a cool little indie horror game, in the style of a PS1 game. It's in the arctic, you drive a dogsled, and there's creepy shit happening. It was pretty cool, and definitely different. I'm not 100% sure if I liked it, but it was only an hour long, and I definitely liked that it was different, so I'd still recommend checking it out if it sounds interesting.

 

Grade: B

[MetalCaveman]

Hero By Chance

 

A tower defense game, looks and plays like old flash games lol, still kinda fun though.

 

Grade: C

 

Warlord by Chance

 

A sequel to Hero, some improvements to gameplay, character art, unit variety, etc.

 

Both are pretty cheap, so they got that going for them, but if you were to be in the market for a game of this style, I'd recommend Duel Princess instead, way better all around.

 

Grade: C+

 

Mortal Shell

 

A fun Soulslike that has some interesting gimmicks. For starters, you can't customize your character or make builds, instead, the game has the shell system.

 

There are four shells, your characters, they each have different stats and skills, so one is the all around jack of all trades, one has a ton of HP but almost no stamina, one has a ton of stamina but almost no HP, one is specialized on using skills.

 

The shell mechanic also plays into death in this game, dying doesn't send you back to the last checkpoint, instead, you're kicked out of your shell, revealing your true form, in this form, a single hit kills you, but if you can get back to your shell you can continue, there's even a shell that allows you to unleash an explosion when recovering your shell. Normally you can only do this once per checkpoint, but there are skills that allow you to regain this ability after defeating some enemies.

 

There are items that allow you to change between shells whenever, though this items are consumable so best use them with care.

 

There's only four melee weapons, but each have a couple of upgrades that unlock skills, the mace was my favourite, skill 1 covers it with fire, dealing damage over time, while skill 2 does a powerful attack that explodes and damages all enemies around you.

 

There's also one range weapon, the ballistazooka, a fun weapon that's pretty useful for dealing with enemies from a distance, but that takes forever to reload.

 

Then there's the Harden mechanic, you can't block in this game, not in the normal way at least, instead, you use a skill called harden, which turns your body into stone, allowing you to block one attack. This can be used defensively, but I found more use offensively, attack an enemy, harden when they're about to hit you, continue attacking. The problem is that it takes a bit of time to get used to the timing and the cooldown. One of the shells can be built around using harden more often, the others sorta need to work around the limitations. There's also a parry, but the timing is hard to get down.

 

The highlight for me however, is the soundtrack, or rather, the soundtrack pack that's available for free. This replaces boss tracks with songs from Rotting Christ.

 

Not to say that the base OST is bad, it's just, kinda bland IMO, the Rotting Christ stuff is way better and still fits with the theme and atmosphere of the game, there's only one boss were I would replace Ze Nigmar with something like Demonon Vrosis or P'unchaw Kachun-Tuta Kachun. The usage of

Spoiler

Χ Ξ Σ

for the last boss was awesome.

 

There were some issues though, some enemies are really annoying, specially the crossbow dudes, I had some bugs including one which forced me to restart the game. Some enemies would sometimes skip their getting up animation and instead just automatically teleport and hit me, other enemies would sometimes freeze after blocking with harden and the biggest issue I had, this game makes my GPU fans run at almost 100%, even after lowering a bunch of settings, fans still ramped up a ton.

 

The hub area is also a mess to navigate, even a map doesn't help that much since everything looks the same and it's all a labyrinth.

 

TL;DR: Fun Soulslike that's a bit rough around the edges but still worth it, Rotting Christ should appear in more games.

 

Grade: B+