The last few games you beat and rate them III

[Ceremony]

CastleStorm (PS3, 2013)

Not long before Angry Birds was released and became worryingly popular there was an online flash game called Crush the Castle which as I understand was broadly similar in objective and execution. I played Crush the Castle, I have never played Angry Birds. You have a trebuchet, there is a castle to destroy, you get a variety of things to fling at the castle. A simple mechanic which is realised to its fullest possible extent in CastleStorm, a thing I got from PS+ ages ago.

The objective of CastleStorm is broadly similar. You have a castle, you have an enemy castle and you have to destroy it. In addition you have enemy troops on the ground between castles, and the gameplay is extended through this and your own troops you can send out or the controllable heroes you can use. There are occasional boss fights too, although the fact that there's an attempt at a story throughout the levels is somewhat laughable. There isn't really any need to pay attention to the cutscenes in between levels because they're not interesting and only mildly change the gameplay. In fact across the four campaigns (two base game, two DLC which I have) the actual gameplay is largely similar, only a few projectiles get changed in a practical sense in terms of their effects. It's when the names and appearance of them get changed that I get confused, as the things you've got used to and upgraded are now replaced with the default version because you've started a new part of the game.

These are about the only criticisms I can offer of the game, or at least of your path progressing through it. Playing through it the first time will lead to you taking a few levels to get used to things, then a few upgrading your weapons/troops and becoming more effective before you've run out of levels and get to start a new campaign. There is a lot of levels in the game with great variety between them which I'll come to later, but the game can be really frustrating when you begin (even playing on easy) because of the way you upgrade and progress. Even then, once you've finished you'll have to grind for a few hours to get the gold necessary to upgrade lots of things if you want to beat the targets on every level, that's never a good thing.

While there are lots of ways to complete a basic level, the actual requirements for doing so are varied enough that it's not possible to rely on one particular thing all the way through. On some levels you might get a bonus for not firing a weapon, on another you might be limited to one kind of weapon, or you might need to rely on one type of troop. This really helps make the game feel fuller and more interesting, as throughout the base campaigns and the two DLC the game is never boring or repetitive even though it boils down to doing the same thing over and over. Even if you factor in the amount of grinding you'll have to do to get all your weapons and stuff up to a decent standard you're only doing that because you have to level up lots of them.

Obviously there are various levels which fall under the description of absolute bullshit, but it's easy enough to beat all of them. Each level is generally over quite quickly too which helps add to the sense of progress and variety, although it at times it can go in the opposite direction and feel too short, too easy, if you're flinging stuff at a castle and can destroy it really quickly. There are other game modes and a multiplayer option besides the main story, but none of these are really substantial enough to keep your interest for long. It's probably wrong of me to criticise a game for feeling shallow when I'm praising it for being varied and fast-paced, but there's just not a lot of replay value in it. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Either way, it's an enjoyable game to play. The variety in gameplay and bright visuals makes up for any lack of depth, and you do get used to trying to aim your shots eventually. The camera control is terrible and unintuitive, but that just lets you throw out trolls and dragons to do your bidding. Great fun.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Pyre.

I rate it a masterpiece/10.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I also played through SUPERHOT. Pretty fun, although very short and a little headache inducing.

I wouldn't pay full price for it, but with the Humble Bundle it was a nice little add-on.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Valkyria Revolution

I wish I was the wordsmith some of you on here were but I'll try my best to explain why this game left such a bad taste in my mouth.

Combat

Maybe the most poorly designed aspect. The overwhelming majority of the bosses are tanks. Guess what, there are 4 classes and only 1 can damage them (like, at all) with the default weapon attack. Every other class does 1 damage or 20-30 in the case of shield bearers. Either way it doesn't matter because theres only one class thats actually necessary, Sappers. Alchemy stops time, so using regular attacks are basically pointless. Just upgrade you sappers mana meter and spam alchemy again and again until the boss is dead.

Story

goodness gracious the story is just so poorly written. Slight spoilers but basically the game takes place hundreds of years after the events of the game and you're playing flashbacks, we know that the 5 main characters were executed for treason, but that theres "more to the story". This is basically the opening cutscene of the game so dont worry, but I feel like they had a decent idea there and couldn't execute it. That seems like a story where the end was written first right? No, the ending makes almost no sense.

Graphics

For a game that needed to be scalable for a vita port, it looks fine. Nice clean visuals with some decently detailed character models.

Difficulty

Heres where it all goes to hell even more. If you're properly leveled, you can kill every enemy before the boss in one or two hits ,other than aces which take some effort. But the Bosses still have extremely large health pools which take 15-20 minutes to take down, and certain mechanics like taking out a tanks legs seem to do nothing. Their weak point is always exposed and taking out their leg only staggers for 5 seconds with seemingly no damage benefit. Still trying to figure out what it even does. Also the majority of them have large AOE instakill moves. Now most of these bosses are trivialized with a Sapper and some ranged alchemy (didn't figure this out until late game), but I just got so tired of the game I rushed through everything severely underleveled. Got to the level 70 final boss with level 43 characters and just turned the difficulty down because I couldn't damage it. I guess its partially my fault for the bad taste it left in my mouth in that sense.

Level variety

There is none, the same 5 levels are recycled over and over and you constantly revisit areas as part of the story.

I wont say I hated this game, but I really couldn't recommend it to anyone. I honestly can't see who would think this is a good game. JRPG fans wouldn't like it, Valkyria fans would hate it, and the casual gamer would think its pretty repetitive and boring.

Also this doesn't fit into any particular category but taking/losing land on the map seems to do nothing. You just lose or gain territory and nothing seems to happen as a result good or bad.

Final score 4.5/10

edit: Oh yeah, and get ready to constantly get stuck under the tank enemies when you're attacking. You think they could have fixed that, it literally happens every time.

So just to reiterate, don't play this game, but if you are, shocktroopers and sappers are the only classes you need, the other 2 are basically useless.

 

[Ceremony]

Hitman: Blood Money (PS3, 2013 - originally 2006)

When I played Hitman: Absolution three years ago I had a strange feeling after finishing it. I enjoyed the game a lot and I bought the HD collection on the strength of that (along with other pre-owned games I was buying, I didn't seek it out), but there was something counter-intuitive about it which I still feel weird about. The fact that you have to play through the game or through levels multiple times to play them well. To play them properly. Leave me to my own devices in a game like this and I'm going to kill every target by shooting them with the least amount of fuss possible. But I never feel as if the game accepts this.

Within each level where you have targets to kill there are different ways to kill them. A weapon is the easiest but there are environmental and incidental opportunities too. How are you supposed to carry out these properly on your first playthrough though? Even if you're trying to find these out you'll probably end up being discovered and your cover blown. The constant trial and error you'd need to employ to fully realise the things that are in the game is what I don't get. I don't even think it's owing to the importance I place on the first impression I have of a game. It's more the sense that you're obligated to play each level for hours on end to get the intended amount of satisfaction from it.

Thankfully I'm playing this as an HD remaster and youtube exists.

That aside it's remarkable seeing the progress through the Hitman HD trilogy. Pretty much every aspect of 2 and Blood Money are unrecognisable, save for a big baldy head. The refinement of the controls, the complexity of the levels, it's been quite the experience to see the development across the games. In 2 you had to be careful around guards, even if you were in disguise. In Blood Money you can run around in disguise with your big bald head and barcode in plain view of anyone and nothing's likely to happen. I'm still not sure if this sacrifice of realism is a good or bad thing, because it completely removes all the tension of trying to remain in disguise while making the game a much less frustrating thing to play. I suppose there's limits to what was practical to put in the game, but there's very little difficulty even on the highest difficulty.

My understanding of last year's Hitman game is that it's episodic and centred around the levels themselves rather than trying to put in any story connecting anything that's going on. There's been a story in every game in this collection and I can't tell you a thing about them. Even this one where I tried to follow it. There's potentially something interesting here with cloning and a presidential election, but then each level seems to take place in a completely self-contained environment with no bearing on anything else. Your targets and who they are make no difference to anything, they still all die the same way. If the future of Hitman games is to be based around specific locations and things to do within it then great, I think that makes much more sense than these straightforward linear narrative efforts. Just as long as it doesn't go into Assassin's Creed territory.

It took me some time to get these games played but I enjoyed them. They were distinctive, unique and fun, despite my inability to play them myself.

 

[crowi]

Divinity: Original Sin 2.

It's not often at the ripe age of 34 I have the luxury or patience to sink 75+ hours to a game and every single time playing it time just slips away and you suddenly notice you've been playing 10 hours straight.

This game, no loot box shit, no season pass bs, no common rpg problems where you don't recruit certain characters due to their skill set.

If you're a fan of RPGs and haven't bought this then you're missing one of the best games of that genre ever made.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Poking around in Origin Access, I played Beholder and Orwell. Two really fun indies with a highly creepy overtone....well, Orwell is more interesting than fun.

Definitely a recommend for both. Short, but sweet.

 

[Ceremony]

Big Sky Infinity (PS3, 2012)

Big Sky Infinity is a twin stick shooter which has randomly generated levels. There isn't much to say about the gameplay besides that. The runs get harder the longer you last and the more you kill, and the difficulty goes up as you upgrade your ship. Although there is a range of enemies and things to interact with, killing them always boils down to "hold the right stick to the right until everything stops moving." Aside from the occasions where killing an enemy throws out stuff that instakills you. There's something called a Vortex, I think, where you can start your ship spinning really fast to just fly through most enemies but you don't use it.

The game has a pretty appropriate soundtrack, I think, I turned it off ages ago. Techno-type stuff, mostly. The sound effects are a strange mix between classic and new sci-fi, they're perfect for the game. For reasons I will never know or understand there is a narrator, who speaks in an English voice and makes various pop-culture references in addition to insulting you when you die. I will admit, hearing him sing the Jurassic Park theme when dinosaurs appeared, that was funny. So were the Alan Partridge references. But in a game which I played for nearly fifty hours for trophies, he got really old, really fast. Actually not really that fast, he lasted longer than I thought he would.

Appropriately enough the start of me playing this two months ago feels like it took place on the other end of a black hole, but I think I remember my first impressions. When you start with the basic ship you die really quickly because you've got no shield. There's a real lack of intuitiveness when you start out which is really off-putting. Combine it with the loud music and the awful narrator and it's hard to get into. It doesn't take long to get used to it and be successful, but there is a noticeable curve.

You can play with up to four players which probably makes it easier, but, really, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you about me getting all the trophies in it.

They're all easy enough except for one: King of the Skies. Kill all bosses in one run. Sounds easy enough. Except the bosses are as random as any other enemies, and the game gets harder the more stuff you kill. So you have to hope you get all four bosses in the right order while killing as little as possible in between.

Oh I say four bosses, post-patch there are seven but you're not killing that many so you need to play it unpatched. You can't have loads of upgrades because it ups the difficulty, so you have to find the right balance between your shields. Then hope you can avoid as many enemies as you can. I had a few close runs. Once I had a run last 19 minutes (my average run was 4, playing normally) trying desperately to avoid more and more enemies, only for the fourth boss I needed to appear right as I died. Fortunately though it was one I'd had already.

It got to the point where seeing three different bosses in a row didn't even get me excited because I knew I was going to die soon anyway. One time I got three different ones within four minutes, I set a timer on my phone to see how long it would take before the next one appeared. I lasted a minute and a half before I died, where the enemies seemed to multiply by about twenty and the game went in one of its phases where anything you kill fires little black balls in all direction which you can't shoot and which go straight through you. Ruined.

When I actually finished it the situation was similar. I killed the first three within about seven minutes, set a timer. It was nine and a half minutes later by the time I was done. My normal shield was gone and had to really try to avoid stuff beforehand. Remember that as the screen was filling up and I had to kill stuff because I couldn't avoid it, and I had no upgrades in my weapons. Then the final boss appears. Probably the one most likely to go wrong, the core boss, where you have to drill in through an outer shell and shoot at a, uh, core, while avoiding a big beam going through the middle of it. Also this is with my controller that's broken, with a left stick that tracks up. My heart goes to about 150bpm instantly. Then it's gone. Killed it. Oh, what a buzz.

That single feeling of satisfaction is worth playing what's a pretty basic and forgettable game for nearly fifty hours, but then I'm nuts. The game is effectively cheap and creates this feeling by virtue of being bullshit, with noticeable wild variations in difficulty when all other factors are kept the same. Yeah it helps make you feel as if you're getting value because no two runs are the same but when you're playing it as thoroughly as I was, no.

 

[Ceremony]

Oh yeah there are other game modes but they're pretty worthless.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Batman Arkham VR - 7.5/10

I wasn't planning on buying this game at first because of the high price but a friend of mine that I share libraries with bought it as he just bought a Vive so I gave it a spin. It was really short, as expected. I finished it in about an hour. There really isn't much gameplay either which is rather disappointing considering they give you Batarangs. There's only a couple moments to use it and they're mostly just to solve basic puzzles. You're never truly in danger which makes the game feel more like more like an interactive movie than a game. But with those negative points, there are still some really good pros.

First off, this is probably the most beautiful VR game I've played. The graphics are top notch and so are the character models. I actually felt like I was there not only because I was in VR but because it all looked so lifelike. In addition to how impressive the graphics were, I was even more impressed with the optimization. A good amount of VR games have weird optimization issues even though I meet recommended requirements for everything I play and I get weird frame drops. They can get so bad I'll get some motion sickness which definitely take you out of the immersion. That being said, I never experienced that with Batman Arkham VR, which I was expecting considering the graphical fidelity of the game.

The story and theme was probably the darkest of any of the Batman games. I was a bit taken aback by some of what was going on because I just wasn't expecting it, which is good! I love that kind of stuff in games, where it actually brings some emotion out by crossing a line, even though the line wasn't that bad regardless. I suspect not many people here own a VR headset and even fewer expect to play this, but figured I'll write the story down in case anyone is interested and don't think they'll ever get a chance to play the game:

Spoiler

The story starts off with you as Bruce in your childhood in the infamous scene where Bruce's parents get killed. Fast forward to Bruce in Wayne manor and Alfred comes up to you saying there's a problem for Batman so you enter the Batcave. The whole opening sequence of going into the Batcave was actually really cool and well done. It reminded me a bit of the beginning of Half Life where you just sit on a tram with no combat going through Black Mesa. You just sit in an elevator and go down, get suited up, and slowly ride your way to your station in the Batcave. Once down there, it is revealed
that the Joker is holding Robin hostage so you try to track him down in your computer. The signal's too weak so you track down Nightwing only to find him dead in an alley. You use the forensics tools at your disposal to relive the scene of Nightwing's death for clues on how to find out what happened. It leads you to the Penguin's hideout where he tries to kill the witness that you tracked down to his hideout.

After fighting off his goons, which was really just throwing a batarang at a fire extinguisher, you find out the Joker is holding Robin in the sewers by Arkham Asylum. You find him rather quickly locked up in a cage and jump down to try to free him. While freeing him, Joker traps you too. You're both in separate cages and you need to solve some simple puzzles to free yourself. While solving them, you find out Killer Croc is lurking in the waters and you have to fight him off by electricuting the cage while you power it up to lift it off. Once you finally think you got it, Killer Croc jumps out and kills Robin right in front of you. You electricute the cage one more time knocking both of you out. Batman then wakes up in Arkham Asylum as a prisoner and you have to walk around a bit, looking into various cells until you find the Joker.

Once you open the little hatch on the door to find the Joker, he's as expected, happy to see the Batman. He laughs at you asking if you're cozy in there. You turn around to find yourself in the cell. This is where some neat stuff happens. You keep turning around and new things appear and the room changes around you while it's out of your sight, which is a really awesome experience. You spin around while you start to go insane and realize that you're just the Joker living in his sick mind living out a fantasy of the Batman's death.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Wolfenstein II The New Colossus - 9/10.

Absolutely fantastic gun play. The writing and characters are well done. The story is easy to follow along and definitely keeps you hooked, especially when you look back into BJ's past. The only issues are that some of the environments aren't the greatest and on PC, the thing was insanely crash prone. What I mean is, if you bring up the Steam overlay or try to lower the game, it crashes and then it messed up your Alt-Tabbing until you reset your PC. Damn good game that I recommend to anyone who wants to kill some Nazis. Also, the game lets you play differently. You could go loud or you could go silent and for me, I always love being silent.

 

[542365]

Life is Strange: 8.5/10

I picked this up during the Steam Black Friday mostly for my wife because she likes point and click type games. I just started the first episode thinking that I would understand the main features of the game so I could help her through it later. 10 hours later and I had finished the entire game without my wife seeing pretty much any of it

I had absolutely no idea what the game was about coming into it other than it was an easy game for non-gamers to get into. The first episode was pretty interesting, but things just kept getting better and better with each passing episode. Some of the dialogue was cheesy(actually, most of it was), but it kept me thoroughly engaged throughout with the various twists and turns in the narrative. I posted months ago in the "Unpopular Opinions" thread that I didn't care about stories in games and that I just wanted fun gameplay. I'm not sure why this one was different, but it definitely was. Life is Strange and The Last of Us are the only two games I can ever remember actually giving a shit about the story.

My only complaint with the game is some of the writing is cringeworthy, but the overall story is interesting and I just kept wanting to know what would happen next. This next part may be spoilers, but the game is like 5 years old so I don't care too much. I'm also annoyed that we never get to meet Rachel even though much of the game is figuring out what happened to her and why she left Chloe. It would've been nice to get some sort of appearance by her.

Now I need to find a good deal on the Before the Storm DLC.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Midnight Club LA: Complete Edition - PS3

8/10

 

[Ceremony]

Puppeteer (PS3, 2013)

I have no interest in the rage I'll experience recalling the LittleBigPlanets by looking up what I said about them some months ago when I finished them, but here is Puppeteer, a game with more than a few similarities and an unmistakable influence from Sony's favourite seventh generation mascot, that being a brown stuffed toy with no personality or characteristics or featues at all.

You are Kutaro, a small boy who's been kidnapped by the Moon Bear King who himself has stolen the Moon Stone and turned into a, er, puppet. With the help of some fairies, a pair of magic scissors and various other powers you collect along the way. The story's nice. It's childish in the sense that The Unfinished Swan was in that there's obvious influence from fairytales and the like, but on the whole it's much better than any story from a LittleBigPlanet. The characters are much more rounded and distinctive, even if there's eleven bosses you have to fight over twenty one levels. The result is something that's much more engaging throughout, which compensates for some of the flaws I'll come to later.

The reason I'm reminded of LittleBigPlanet so much is the gameplay. A 2D platformer with a tiny little playable character and various ways of interacting with objects in the world. The gameplay is very similar but so much better in most respects because there isn't a recurring sense that the world is just a collection of elements that have been plopped down. The levels are made, and expansive, and varied, so there's a much greater sense of depth.

The gameplay itself certainly is varied, although a little overwhelming at times. The magic pair of scissors Kutaro has function as his main weapon and allow him to get around areas, so there's a lot of airborne platforming which adds a different dimension to things. The only problem here is that when you're in the air it can be much harder to control your direction. On top of the scissors though you get loads of things - you get bombs, body slams and a grappling hook, all of which pop up in things you have to move or interact with to advance. There's times in the middle when some of these things feel overwhelming, you've barely learned one thing and now you've got another new one. The body slam in particular is barely used. It's a small complaint, but some better decision making or implementation would have helped.

Fortunately, all the gameplay is solid. Even being able to control the secondary character with the right stick becomes second nature after a while, although I could definitely see younger players being frustrated as they start. It's a two player game and someone else can control the second character, but then that's not really applicable to me is it. Either way there are lots of things in the background of levels to interact with, and there's a real and obvious amount of pride that's gone into the depth of the game world.

The presentation of the game is really distinctive. It's modelled in the style of a stage play, with a narrator and audience noises as the action unfolds. The stage outline can make the screen feel strangely congested at times, but the narrator and all of the characters are all well-written enough that none of it ever gets boring or over-bearing. There are seven "Acts" and three levels within each and each world is unique, so there's a good sense of depth even before you get into the bonus levels and the collectibles.

As far as downsides go, there are quick time events in the boss fights. Nobody ever likes those. I don't think there's anything wrong with QTEs as a concept but it's effectively the same principle as a normal game - press buttons in the right sequence to succeed - only giving you a much longer and more visible time to press each button. I don't get the point.

This was one of the games that had been on my PS+ backlog for over three years and if it's on yours, and you have kids, or a girlfriend who's nagging you to let her join in your hobbies, give it a go. There's enough solid gameplay to keep you occupied and the world is entertaining, if the ending is a little saccharine. And it's much better than LittleBigPlanet.

 

[542365]

Lol I loved playing through the LittleBigPlanet games with my wife. So funny and frustrating. We had a great time.

We just played through Life is Strange: Before the Storm DLC. Not nearly as good as the base game IMO. The story was compelling in parts, but it didn't leave me wanting to figure out what happened next in nearly the same way the first one did. I also don't like that they changed voice actresses for Chloe. Ashly Burch is the reason I bought the original game in the first place, booted up the DLC and was pretty bummed that it wasn't her voice. She's coming back for the next DLC though so I'll play through that when there's a good sale on it.

 

[Nickmo82]

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter - 7/10 Good if you like that kind of thing; terrible if you don't. A few poorly designed sections of the game marred my enjoyment somewhat.

Dishonored 2 - 7.5/10 Good stuff again. Enjoyed the original but waited an age to play this one. Good fun for the most part, though I lack the patience to play it "properly".

South Park: The Stick of Truth - 8/10 I bought the sequel in the black friday sale and this came with it free (2 games for 1 is why I picked it up TBH). Good fun if you don't mind gross-out humour. Really silly but enjoyable.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Arizona Sunshine - 9/10

One of the best VR experiences out there. I played through it in co-op with a friend of mine and we had so many great moments. Even just joking around and doing random crap like him pretending to be a shopkeeper and then I go from being a customer to holding him up. There's just so many fun things you can do in VR and it's awesome having a friend to play through it with. The game itself was really fun even if it was just a standard shooter. Mechanics felt great, graphics were really good, the game world felt alive. I was kind of hesitant with the price tag, I bought it on sale for like $30, but I'm glad I got it. It only took about 2 hours and we beat it in one session. There was a few moments where the game was acting up big time though which put a damper on things a couple of times. Also the co-op needs to be reworked a little bit. Only the host can interact with story objects and some things don't duplicate. There was only one flashlight and my friend couldn't see what he was doing in the dark which really screwed things up and made that mines segment just unfun. Still, a great experience. If you have VR, especially if you know someone else who does, give Arizona Sunshine a go.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Beat again:

Saints Row 2 - PS3

8.5/10

 

[mouser]

Shadow of Mordor. 7.5/10

Fun mechanics, enjoyed the storyline. Feels repetitive at times, but still a lot of fun.

 

[Shareefruck]

I'm not much of a gamer, but I just played a bit of Until Dawn with friends and one thing that kind of annoys me is when they try to pass off the whole "Yeah, it's very tropey, but that's an intentional creative decision" thing as if that amounts to anything. It's not playing with these tropes in any way, commenting on or fleshing them out, or putting any creative spin on it, and it doesn't feel like much of an homage.... It's basically just using the same tropes and cheap gimmicks the exact same way any sincere attempt to use them would for the same commercial purpose. All this money, effort, ambition, and technical perfectionism channeled into an experience that is ultimately only able to unironically achieve the equivalent of a crappy B-movie. Making that more immersive/interactive and branching off more possibilities (that are basically just a random combination of the same thing) doesn't really make that any more worthwhile, IMO. It's kind of just a lame roller-coaster ride.

 

[JaegerDice]

Horizon: Zero Dawn - 10/10

I'm going to be honest, I'm overlooking a bit of jank around the edges in that score. It's there, and every so often getting caught on geometry or whatever does infuriate me.

But it's so minor in the scope of everything else.

I love this world.

I love how they take that old adage that 'any technology, sufficiently advanced will appear as magic' and basically build a plot, a history, around it. One that makes sense both as far as human action, and as far as technological solution. It's heady sci-fi, and yes some leaps are made, but the small things like the various audiologs, holograms, emails, etc, all make it so believable.

I am stunned visually all the time. Both artistically and technically. This game has such great visual design, sometimes I stand there and look at characters just to pick up details in their wardrobe.

I love using the bow and rope weapons and traps to pick apart groups of robotic enemies.

Human enemies are less fun, but fine.

I completed this game 100%, and I'm honestly ready to do it again on new game plus.

Zelda is really the only game I enjoyed more this year.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Could've mentioned it a while ago, but might as well say it now.

Breath of the Wild - 10/10, an absolute masterpiece and right now my second favorite game of all time and challenging Chrono Trigger for my favorite game of all time.

 

[JaegerDice]

Could've mentioned it a while ago, but might as well say it now.

Breath of the Wild - 10/10, an absolute masterpiece and right now my second favorite game of all time and challenging Chrono Trigger for my favorite game of all time.

The only things keeping it from usurping Super Metroid as my favorite Nintendo game of all time are

1) The Divine Beasts didn't make for great dungeons. If anything, they were the low points of the game.

2) Look... let me make a fire when it's raining, or let me climb when it's raining. Don't make me f***ing sit and wait til th rain clears up to get up this ****ing mountain.

3) The weapon breaking frequency got a tad ridiculous, especially once you're toward the end of the game and have great gear. I just stopped looking for trouble with goblins, because I knew it was just unnecessary wear on weapons I'd rather keep for Lionels and Guardians and stuff.

That's pretty much it.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Metal Gear Solid V - 9/10

It took me way too long to play this game. It's what you'd expect out of an open-world Metal Gear game. The gameplay is solid and making it open world worked out great. I love open world stealth games where you can make your approach from whatever angle you want. My big gripes about it are that the story starts off really slow. After the first two missions which feels like Metal Gear, the next few hours are basically like a generic stealth game. There's no craziness like you're expecting out of MGS until you get like another 6-7 hours in. The story was great once it starts rolling and I was having a blast. The side ops can feel pretty repetitive at times but if you space it out with different types of side ops or just circle the map doing them as you see them, they don't feel so burdensome. I think realistically if you just enjoy stealth games, you'll enjoy most of the side ops anyway. Just go to a random camp and try to extract a target without being seen, it's a lot of fun. I also hated one of the late missions. Without spoilers, it was Episode 45. All I'm going to say without spoiling much is make sure you developed some powerful equipment because you're going to need it. I went really stealthy so didn't bother developing the really powerful stuff and I felt punished in playing that way on that particular mission. I also wish there were some more crazy boss fights. There weren't many at all. I feel like the bosses were a great staple in the Metal Gear series, they were almost non-existent in this one. Overall though, awesome game. The story was top notch, gameplay was amazing, just a couple minor tweaks I would have made to make it that much better.

 

[Gardner McKay]

South Park: The Stick of Truth - 8.5/10

Only thing I have to pick at is that it was too short. Overall the game was so much fun and absolutely hilarious.