April Update #1

Time for an update, sadly i was unable to post before, but i’ve got great many news on the gaming side…

The 8th was my birthday so i decided to get myself a present and got a Ps4 Pro (sold an N64 and some other stuff to get some cash) buti’m really happy with it, I was already stockpiling some games, so i have plenty of them to play.

Recent Kills

• Mafia II
  

  14 hours playtime

  31 of 67 achievements

• The Banner Saga
  

  12 hours playtime

  29 of 39 achievements

MAFIA II -Totally recommend this game! 8/10
This game is an excellent open world game, set in the 40-50s, in which you play as Vito Scaletta a man of sicilian descent, that returns from the war and gets into the mob through the way of his pal Joe. As the story unfolds he gets into deeper and nastier crimes. The Story is really deep and the characters are well written and the gameplay is quite simple but entertaining and it’s short enough that it doesn’t get stale.

The Banner Saga - Awesome Game 8/10
The Banner Saga is a Tactical game akin to Xcom or Final Fantasy Tactics, with a gorgeous hand-drawn look and great soundtrack. In it you control Rook a hunter turned clan leader as his people town is razed and his people runs from the Dredge, a race of rock creatures. As your new clan travles the land, you’ll meet new characters and take hard decisions that will mark your future, and if the clan survives or not. The Story is reaaaaally good as is the world building, and though the system is really simple for this kind of game, it works wonders on making the plot go forward. This game has no random encounters, all fights serve the story, so that’s a big plus… I’m starting The Banner Saga 2 soon, and waiting for the last part in Saga 3 this year… A must Play!

Currently Playing

• Crysis 2 Maximum Edition
  

  41 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Final Fantasy XIII
  

  19 hours playtime

  13 of 35 achievements

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• EVERSPACE™
  

  9 hours playtime

  4 of 33 achievements

Crysis 2 - Maximum Edition This is a simple shooter, you have a cloak power and an armor that makes you resist bullets. You can punch cars to squash your enemies and jump 1 or 2 stories up… But all the over the top stuff doesn’t make the game good… The shooting is stale and uninspired as are the enemies and the plot. Short Version: You have a super suit and have to stop an alien invasion while escaping from the army”… Not something i’d recommend a lot, it has some good premises, but the overall result is lame.

Final Fantasy XIII I said it before, i’m a HUGE Final Fantasy Fan. in fact i have a physical collection of all the main branch games and quite a few of the spin offs, but this game is kind of hard for me to like and to finish… The first “Corridor Section” is quite boring, the characters are uninteresting and the grind is high (specially now that i arrived to Pulse underleveled (since i never stayed grinding before, since it being a corridor with no random encounters made grinding more boring than usual)… Now my party is leveled and the fights go faster but i’m still now linking this game a lot… When i finish this i’ll most probably start FFXV and not XIII-2

EVERSPACE What can i say about this game besides go get it and play it? it’s a great space simulator with an great arcade feel and a roguelite structure that works really really well with the story. You’ll fly jumping sector to sector (a la FTL) and engage space pirates, aliens and get missions from different factions. As you get further and further, you’ll uncover more of the story, and if you die the money you collect goes toward upgrading your future ships… The Flying around, combat and mechanics in general area really well put. A Must Play in my book…

Console Gaming

HORIZON: ZERO DAWN

This is a gorgeous game open world game. In the future, humanity fell, and in the ruins the remainder gather in tribes with a medieval feel, they gather and hunt for food and survival, in a world inhabited with gigantic “feral” machines akin to animales. From the lowly sentry to gargantuan beasts of metal, you’ll have to use stealth and wits to defeat them. The Gameplay is really fast and entertaining and revolves mostly around exploration, material gathering, crafting and hunting. The Story is quite interesting, but i haven’t gotten really far yet to make an educated opinion of it…

Final Fantasy Dissidia NT

In this FF spin off Heroes and Villians of the franchise are gathered to fight for the fate of the realm. This is SP/MP game, in which you create a team of 3 characters and fight another team, either in a battle to death or a “Tower Defense” mode in which the team that downs the enemy base wins. Every character falls in 1 of 4 types with special attacks of their own pulled from the games. Also during the fight you’ll fill the Summon gauge that allows you to summon classic Summons like Ifreet or Bahamut that will aid you blasting the enemies and/or buffing you… Haven’t played online yet, but the gameplay is interesting and i’ll update you when i get deeper into it.

I’m also playing Ucharted 1 on the PS3 at the moment, and i hope to finish it this week…

If you have any comments or anything you want to chat about, leave it in the comments…

Cheers guys!! And Happy gaming!

March '18 - Report 1

Recently i’ve been playing a lot of console games, specially since my collection keeps growing (as well as my steam backlog), I know most of this games are old so reviews may be needless, but since i’ve been playing on PC since before the PS3 came out, i’m playing exclusive titles or games i haven’t bought for PC when ported (Like bayonetta).

I’m really excited as well, to look at my Final Fantasy Collection grow, i got in the mail original copies of FF7, FF8 and FF Collection, and with that i complete the main series games… now off to keep collecting spin offs…

As to what i’ve played recently:

Bayonetta - Beaten

I found this game to be a really fun action game in the vein of DMC, but with a lot of tongue in cheek jokes (really bad and cheesy as well), a huge ammount of gore and a ass-shots galore… I think the game takes the route of oversexualized females and crancks it up to eleven in a sense that it’s so nonsensical that it can’t be taken serously and more as a critique on the issue in general. I got to say the combat and controls are really tight as in any Platinum Games game and it’s quite fun to beat up angels… The torture attacks and the climax attacks with the Wicked Weave are quite awesome. Only gripe is that it’s not a game to play with your kids around…

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Episode 6)

Started this game a couple of days ago, and it feels like an oldschool Tomb Raider with a male character, but it doesn’t seem to add anything new to the “Indiana Jones genre”, except that the main character has even less compunction to kill anything that moves than Lara or Indy (he usually killed nazis so he had no reason to feel bad)… All in all a good game, but nothing to write home about… I’ll update when i finish it…

Well… that’s all for today, i’ll get back to you when i have something new to add…

February End Report

• Saint Seiya: Soldiers' Soul
  

  2 hours playtime

  2 of 50 achievements

Bought this gem recently, it’s a cool looking fast fighting game that feels a lot like watching an episode of Saint Seiye (with the exeption that fights are lightning fast). The mechanics are quite simple and it’s not possible to do a lot of comboing/juggling and all that, but to pass time it’s a cool game and real fun to beat up your friends using whatever’s your favourite Saint (Ikki rules!!!)

Okay, after finishing Scanner Sombre, I decided to boot up the PS3 i bought a few months ago and used to play mainly fighting games, and start playing the other games i have for it.

ASURA’S WRATH - COMPLETED

This “game” is non-sensical and sometimes feels more like watching an anime show, than actually playing a game. It’s basically a movie with QTEs and some fighting or shooting sections in wich you control Asura, an demigod that was betrayed by his demigod buddies but came back for revenge and kills them all. You’ll punch Giant Space Fingers, get skewered by a sword long enough to cleave the moon and go through the earth all the way to the other side, and even destroy the planet’s will to satiate your warth. Fun-ish and quite short, it’s not a bad game and the sound and visuals are gorgeous… i’d recommend it.

THE LAST OF US

Finally I started playing this game, the story so far is good, doesn’t seem to be as awesome as i’ve read it to be, but it’s not bad. In fact something that bugged me a lot is that i’ve read a lot about ellie’s “weakness and being defenseless” but on the first scene that you have trouble (when you’re stopped by the cops, she just mercilesly stab the cop in the leg. Granted, she is in danger of being killed but she doesn’t seem defensless at all… I just reached the section where they go outside, so this is not a final review, so i’ll write a new one when i’m done with it.

Cheers and Happy Hunting on March!!

February 2018 Report

I’ve been quite busy this last month, organizing a Site for GGJ in my town, spending time with the family and work. I’ve played a bit of everything, here and there (PC, PS3, Wii, SNES and some other retro consoles).

On PC this is what i’ve been doing lately. Mostly playing games i was hyped about and got dissapointed…

• Final Fantasy XIII
  

  17 hours playtime

  12 of 35 achievements

• BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk
  

  11 hours playtime

  7 of 40 achievements

• Satellite Reign
  

  11 hours playtime

  3 of 40 achievements

• Scanner Sombre
  

  28 minutes playtime

  no achievements

Scanner Sombre Okay… what to say about this game, the premise and the looks is quite interesting (as a gimmick mainly) but the gameplay (not that i was looking for a lot in a Walking Simulator) is really bland, you have to hold LMB through the whole game, and it get’s quite annoying, and the “not being able to see and having to map” is really bland since you will almost never have to stop walking, just walk toward where it’s darker and you’ll bew able to go forward…. Most Walking Sims keep you hooked with a cool or interesting story, bu this game tries to be “dark and mysterious” but the story is not interesting, and it all appears as simple text in the top-right corner so unimportant that it can almost go unnoticed (you’ll miss nothing if it does)… All in all, i can’t recommend this game, and I can’t understand why so many upvotes… it’s a cool tech demo, and concept, but it’s been overstretched too far as it is at the moment…

Berserk it’s a Musou Game with a Berserk skin. The missions are quite straight forward and the gameplay is what you’d exprect in the genre, what makes this game shine is the voiceacting and the anime sequences… the main drag on this game is that as all musou games it can get repetitive really soon…

Satellite Reign This game was a huge dissapointment for me, since i was a huge fan of Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, but what this game promised it’s lacking in spades… Syndicate wasn’t a stealth game, but this mostly tries to be that, cover in combat is hugely important and the gameplay is quite slow in general, and the missions are all the same, go to X point and Hack X machine, or enter Y building or bribe Z person… Lackluster and i really don’t know if i’ll try to finish it or not…

Final Fantasy XIII Okay, this is a real heartbreaking moment for me, since it’s been my favorite franchise since I fell in love with FFVII (in Fact I have original copies of all games since the PS1 came out. The story is unnecesarily convoluted and standard, a lot of jargon is thrown around and that makes the story harder to follow. The characters are uninteresting and kind of cliché, there is no world to explore, the game is just a long corridor, interrupted by long cutscenes and a lot of boring flashbacks… but what i dislike the most is the actual combat (the bread and butter of a jRPG). The game tries to turn classic FF turn based combat into something akin to realtime, you control only 1 character, and trying to actually choose your attacks is kind of pointless so it boils down to spam “auto-attack, change formation to heal or buff or better attack the enemy, spam a untill enemies are dead” and not quite a lot more… The game looks and sound awesome, as most FF games do, but it’s getting really hard to push forward… I replayed FF7 like 9 times, and most other games have had 2 or 3 runs, getting through all the content, sidequests, hidden bosses and stuff… All in all, it’s hard for me to recommend this game (and even harder to know i still have to go through FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns that have the same combat system…

Well… that’s all for now… see you soon…

January 2018 Report - Back in Action

Okay, i’ve been away from the site for about a year, it doesn’t mean I haven’t finished any games, in fact i finished quite a lot.
The other day, steam messed up all the categories for the games in my library, so I decided to come back and record wich were finished and wich weren’t…

Since 2018 started, I finished two short games already:

• Seasons after Fall
  

  6 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• Maize
  

  3 hours playtime

  no achievements

Seasons After Fall Is a short puzzle platformer in which you control a fox (dominated by some kind of spirit) in search of renewing the cycle of the seasons and performing the “Ritual of the Seasons”… I got to say the game is not bad, but i wouldn’t recommend it unless you are really itching for a game in the genre or grab it really cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it looks and sounds great, but the platforming is bland, the puzzles are almost nonexistent and the general gameplay is boring. The controls are super floaty, and you’ll have to retry some platforming, not because of dificulty, but lack of responsiveness. Also you’ll spend lot of time backtracking, it’s almost like the name should have been: Bactracking Simulator…

Maize is a simple first person walking simulator, with a nonsensical story about gubernamental experiments on sentient corn… It’s not bad, but it’s not great either.

January Report

This month has been a bit slow on the gaming side, but i’ve spent quite a bit of time with my family and also ran a site for Global Game Jam last weekend (where i created a a game as well… bug ridden mess, but works, well enough)… Anyway… onto my report:

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
  

  10 hours playtime

  19 of 60 achievements

• The Deadly Tower of Monsters
  

  5 hours playtime

  25 of 25 achievements

• Planet of the Eyes
  

  2 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

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• Pressured
  

  88 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Planet of the Eyes is a short platformer in the style of limbo… but it has nothing that makes it stand out… it’s quite meh…

• Pressured is a simple skill/math game where you have to do additions before the time’s up… the graphics and audio are terrible…

• Deadly Tower of Monsters is a great review of the Metroidvania genre. You have to traverse the world, climbing up the tower in order to defeat the evil emperor, but at any moment you can jump off the tower to lower levels… The Sci-Fi B Movie theme is greatly done and the game can get a lot of laughs out of you… A truly recommended game…

• Metal Gear Revengeance is a zany spin-off the MGS franchise. You control Raiden, a Cyborg ninja that hacks everything that comes in his way apart with his sword… It’s fast paced badass action. The story is crazy as hell as always, mixing politicss, serious world issues and giant robots…

Well… that’s all for today…

It's a start!

First of all, Happy New Year!!! I’ve still haven’t gotten around to write up a battleplan for this year, and i haven’t had a lot of time to play, but this is what i’m currently playing and my finished completed games this month.

Current Targets

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™
  

  6 hours playtime

  5 of 63 achievements

• The Deadly Tower of Monsters
  

  3 hours playtime

  15 of 25 achievements

• Deep Dungeons of Doom
  

  2 hours playtime

  9 of 46 achievements

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• Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide
  

  3 hours playtime

  21 of 70 achievements

• Nova-111
  

  6 hours playtime

  1 of 11 achievements

• DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE
  

  4 hours playtime

  6 of 50 achievements

January's Kills

• SHOCK TROOPERS 2nd Squad
  

  57 minutes playtime

  7 of 10 achievements

• Retro/Grade
  

  6 hours playtime

  3 of 21 achievements

SHOCK TROOPERS 2nd Squad is an arcade Classic!!! i can’t count the ammount of time i’ve passed with SNK games on the arcades, and later using NeoRage! A great top-down shooter, but Shock Troopers 1, is better. Still this is a must!

Retro/Grade is a rythm game in witch you control rick on his ship going backwards through time. There’s no actual reason on why he’s going back, the graphics and story are just there so it’s not another guitar hero or whatever… still it’s a fun game. Recommended.

PS: I’ll be writting up an attack plan soon, but definitively i’ll move away from the “small batch” format, since i always end up playing other stuff…

Two more down!

• Mirror's Edge
  

  6 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Polarity
  

  3 hours playtime

  2 of 10 achievements

As I said, having some time off on my own, has allowed me to plow through my backlog.

Regarding Mirror’s Edge, finally I was able to play this game, when it came out, my machine couldn’t run it, and after seeing all the comments about the poor combat and stuff, i stayed away from it. But I got to admit, the game is a action platforming gem. The narrative is awesome too. Totally recommend this game.

Polarity on the other hand, is a game i got from Bundle Stars puzzle bundle a while back, as i love Portal, Talos Principle and games of that kind. It’s clearly and indie game, no quality graphics or sound, but it’s a fun little game, if you have an itch to scratch. The main problem, is that the maps are all quite simple, and I was able to run though them in less than 3 minutes each… so the game can be quite short. It has a split screen coop mode (that i haven’t played - HELP WANTED to get the achievements), and a Vs mode as well… Not a bad game, but not great either. Get it on sale!

It just keeps coming!!!

Okay, I know i said the last one, was the last of this year, but i’ve been able to really sit down and kick som backlog butt!

I finished the following games today:

• RONIN
  

  7 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

• Strong Bad Episode 4: Dangeresque 3
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Strong Bad Episode 5: 8-Bit Is Enough
  

  54 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Antichamber
  

  4 hours playtime

  no achievements

I completed the Strong Bad series of games… I got to say i enjoyed them but they are no The Walking Dead or The Last of Us, Telltale did a good job making this games.

Regarding RONIN, I came in with different expectations, i thought it was a stealth game, when in fact it’s more akin to Kill Bill, you’re the gal on the bike with the katana, that goes about killing EVERYONE around… The turn based combat works awesomely with the genre. Really loved this game…

I saw Antichamber around, and decided to give it another try and finish it… I’m counting it as beaten because i got all weapons and cleared the game, but I didn’t get all the secrets blocks and stuff… but i can’t take this game any longer… First it seemed cool, but most of the puzzles are weird and the game is just not fun (this coming from a guy that loves Portal and all the other FP Puzzlers)…

Also, I just finished Titanfall 2 on Origin. That game is AWESOME as a single player experience (great story, level design, action and gameplay), sadly, the MP is kind of dead, with all the other MP games around… But i totally recommend it, get it on sale, support a nice studio (that decided “No Paid DLC”) and enjoy a great shooter game!

One more Update!

Okay, i think this might be my last update this year (prior to my yearly balance post. This has been a good year indeed. Now, to the Update:

I’ve Beaten the following games:

• Mortal Kombat X
  

  31 hours playtime

  18 of 73 achievements

• Portal
  

  6 hours playtime

  7 of 15 achievements

I played Portal back when it came out, but it was my seafaring years, so i didn’t have it on Steam. Recently i got it from SG, and as i’m trying to clean up my account, finishing short games i decided to give this gem a spin. I got to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it again, as it was the first time, but i’m kind of stuck on the challenges, so for now, i’ll be content with what i’ve done, and i’ll go for those achievements in the future (distant, probably)…

Also Finished MKX main storyline, and i’m playing to complete the krypt and other achievements… Sadly, most online achievements i won’t be able to get, since i get a reaaaally low connection speed to MK’s servers, and i can’t seem to connect to any players (maybe since i have no fights on MP, i don’t get people of my level to play against…

Ok… that’s it for today… Cheers…