Topic: Last Game You Beat

Spider-man 2. same as it’s predecessor but improved with what you’d expect from a sequel & weighed down by the same flaws as the first game to

spider-man 1/2 are both 8/10 games

Alan Wake remastered. So I had a very good time with the game so I can very much recommend the game anyone who is looking for something interesting to play. It also exceeded my already quite high expectations. Alan Wake actually reminded me very much about the earlier Silent Hill games (which is a very good thing).

@oliverp I have the two backwards compatible Alan Wake games in my backlog. Have you tried the Project Zero/Fatal Frame games? I'm a big fan of them. I couldn't resist mentioning them because of the Silent Hill mention. Off-topic: Pikmin 4 is the next Nintendo game I'm buying, I loved the first three but my favourite is 1.

@nomither6 Yep, to me is like watching okay films, much like most PS exclusives.

Assassins Creed 2 - my first time playing it as well and I enjoyed it.

@Banjo- Oh thanks for the suggestion I will keep the Project Zero games in mind (I have thinking about playing them sometimes but not got around to it so far). .

I finished up both Spider-Man 2 & Super Mario Bros. Wonder last weekend.

I thought the story in SM2 was perhaps a bit weaker than the first one, but they managed to build on the already fantastic gameplay in meaningful ways (gliding in regards to traversal, web line in regards to stealth, new venom strike & symbiote moves in combat). Really fun time.

As for Wonder, it's just one of those games that gives you that childlike sense of wonder (pun intended) that reminds you why you fell in love with gaming in the first place. It's endlessly creative, shakes up the 2D Mario formula in ways I appreciated, and the post game world has some great platforming challenges (like usual, I wasn't able to beat the final post game gauntlet level though). Could have maybe used a bit more boss variety, but other than that I found it pretty much faultless.

Congrats to the both of them snagging TGA nominations, though I'm not sure what I want to win (alongside these two, I was also a big fan of TotK & FFXVI this year, though the latter didn't make the shortlist for the big award).

Finished up Valkyrie Elysium yesterday. It's a bit brief by RPG standards (I finished it in just about 20 hours, & I believe even managed to get the best ending), but that wasn't a big deal because there's not much story to it (most world building & background lore is relegated to environmental pickups called Hollow Blossoms & Verdant Blossoms which give you notes about the state of the world, and the latter particularly are important for getting the best ending. Also, you learn most of the deeper aspects about your party members by completing each of their own side quest lines, though I don't think these effect ending outcome).

Combat is really quite fun & snappy (you can lock on & zip to enemies from quite a distance away), and there's a lot of different ways to get the edge on your enemies (each enemy type is weak to one of the ten or so different weapons you collect, and each also has one of 5 elemental weaknesses, which you can take advantage of with magic attacks. Also, each of your party members has an elemental affinity & summoning them to fight by your side will coat your weapon with their element & amp the effectiveness of your magic attacks of the same type), with bosses usually having different points you can attack & dismember from them. That said, at least on Normal I was able to get by easily enough just by taking advantage of element weaknesses (I usually only took the time to take weapon weakness into account as well during boss fights).

It has a few small issues, like the fact that it doesn't feel buttery smooth 100% of the time (this is a very mid budget cross gen title, so the PS5 shouldn't have any issue at all), but the drops weren't as noticable as they were in Star Ocean: the Divine Force (which I also really enjoyed, BTW), so not a big issue. Also, you can only have so many weapons, magic, items, etc. equipped to their various quick access slots, so in the latter parts of the game I often had to pause at the start of nearly every single combat encounter in order to reassign slots (usually magic, since there are only 4 quick access slots, but 5 element types + healing magic, the latter you'll want to have equipped to a slot at all times since use of healing items negatively affects your mission completion grade if that matters to you. Grades don't effect which endings you have access to though, so it's not a big deal if you don't grade well).

Also not really an issue, but I get the feeling that a 5th party member was planned but cut at some point. There are enemies that are weak to Darkness, and while you do have access to Dark magic to counter them, there is no Dark element party member you can team up with to get the boosts you can get with the other element types. Plus, none of the bosses are weak to Darkness, even though there are a few that aesthetically/thematically SHOULD be (they're usually weak to something random like Lightning, or even weirdly enough Light, which is thematically their own element).

Anyways I picked it up during the PS Store's Black Friday sale for $30 (it also came with a free copy of one of the older Valkyrie Profile games, which I'm not sure if I'll play), and am glad I gave it a go.

I just beat Persona 5 Tactica on GP. For the most part, i really loved this game. I thought the gameplay loop was addicting as most games in this genre usually are for me.

However, you are constantly bogged down with conversations that can sometime take up 60% of your gameplay sessions.

I get this is a persona spin-off, but more often than not, I'm sitting there reading text rather than playing on the maps. It left me skipping most of the dialogue throughout the 2nd half of the game. The first half of the story was great, I just got tired of waiting to jump into battle.

And since I felt as though the game was dragging on, the last 3 battles I just played on safe mode since I was ready for it to be Over. The rest of the game was played on normal which felt just right in terms of difficulty.

But, the last kingdom had you revisiting bosses that were sometimes a slog to get through. With that said, I was simply winded and just wanted the game to be done with.

I really liked it overall, and its still a recommendation for anyone who likes the genre. Just note there's a truck load of dialogue that can be tiresome.

Finished Witcher 3 and the DLC this last week, continuing my efforts catching up on non-nintendo games from the last 10 years!

Really struggling to resist immediately restarting it, ng+, despite having 20 or 30 more games downloaded ready to go!! I want to move to Touissant...

Halo 4
Ok, so I am new to the whole Xbox thing, I bought mine Serise S in December of 22, and over the course of that year it’s become my go to place to game by a long shot. So I started playing through the Halo franchise cuz, you know, halo😂. I love it, I dabbled with it in a cousin’s Xbox as a kid but actually playing it I am now a huge fan.
So Halo 4, it’s kinda a weird on, not as bad as many people make it out to be but I totally get why many wouldn’t dig it. It all just felt a little weird and I felt like it went a little to hard a little to fast on the lore. I like halo lore, I’ve read a few of the books but if all you play is the games it’s a little much all to quick.
Overall I’d say I liked it well enough though.

@Dimey my favourite game since I played it on Switch (what a great port by the way!). I have since replayed the main campaign on Xbox but not yet the dlcs

@phillipgcox I was also new to Xbox this gen and halo is not really my thing but Gears though... I now Adore!! Give it a go you have the chance.

I also tried gears, it being another tent pole franchise and all, I like it, not as much as halo but I’d say I am definitely a fan. Still working on it though, so far I’ve only played the first 2.

Back to the Future the Game.

absolutly no regrets usig the most powerful gaming machine ever made to play a wii game! I enoyed every hammy second of it.

@Banjo- While initially hard for me to grasp what was so enjoyable, your review has made me reconsider some things. I might boot it up on Game Pass soon

@Edwirichuu Cool 😁.

Sonic Frontiers

The open world component of the game certainly has its flaws, for example collecting the various memory tokens becomes repetitive in the long run and personally I would have preferred slightly smaller islands. The game levels, on the other hand, are perfect, fun and frenetic. It is a 8/10 game for me.

I finished Baldur’s Gate 3. Very impressed! It really sets the bar for this sort of game. I managed to get a happy-ish ending (I went to live in Hell but at least I had my girlfriend with me). There’s also a nice epilogue set six months after the end where you can catch up with your crew. And I didn’t have a single problem with lost saves or anything like that.

El Paso, Elsewhere - finished it last night. Before that was SW Jedi: Survivor and Alan Wake 2.

Just finished Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams Dry Twice. Very very funny game and it is better than the first one. Even if some parts are a bit too difficult and I’ve encountered some graphical/localization issues, it was very enjoyable!