12in12 / 52in52 Video Game Challenge in 2016

[pikapikapika]

If it makes you feel any better even though I got past the tutorial I got super stuck and couldn't continue soon afterwards ^^; no idea what to do or where to go.

[coachie]

First game for 2016 finished!

The Last Of Us

(not really a review )

After slmost three years of media hype and extreme bullying from my friends how awesome this game is and "why the hell haven't you played this masterpiece yet?" (it's not that I didn't want to ) I'm finally done with it!!!

Pro
- story (simple but effective)
- characters
- world and atmosphere
- enemy AI (when working in my favour)
- good gameplay


Con
- weapon upgrading felt useless
- Ellie running around in front of enemies without being seen, really broke the atmosphere
- enemy AI (when working against me)
- bad, bad gameplay, because I SUCK at stealth games!!!!

30h07m56s filled with 279 painful to watch deaths!!!! My deaths!

[pikapikapika]

Week 5:





Time Played? until my fingers hurt.

OLD ARCADE GAMES ARE AWESOME
This is a Wii collection of 2 of Sega's arcade classics, House of the Dead. Now... where the hell is 1? Well it's either, Sega had a Model 2 and Model 3 emulator available for Wii but not Model 1. Or it's these are the PC versions of the game ported over, which is what I suspect because 2 looked MUCH better on Dreamcast, here it's pretty low res and jagged..but still fun!!
3 came out on original Xbox so I didn't get to play it until now.





This one I had on Dreamcast and played LOTS so I know it very well, great fun arcade game :DD lots of things in the background are shootable, and the game follows multiple routes depending on what you do/shoot or people you save. It is really hard so you have to play it again and again, but you get better at it, find other ways to go.. it's great! Another thing that's great about it is, TERRIBLE VOICE ACTING which was at a time when it totally wasn't done on purpose, so it was actually hillarious!

Here's a video of me playing the first level:






Now this game is quite different! the first difference is the guns have changed from pistols to shotguns, so you do much more damage than before, but you can shoot just as far and fast as before, so it's fine. Another difference is it's a lot easier, maybe because of the guns, I don't know? You shoot your way through a high rise building and this time you can choose what floors to get off at and play the levels in any order you want. Also there are no hostages, you just have to rescue the other player (maybe it's different in 2P mode?)

Here's a video of me playing one of the levels (I zoomed in too much, sorry!):


The Wii is probably the last console that was capable of releasing old light gun games in a collection because of the wiimote, and old light gun games no longer working on new TVs (the ps3 wand too I suppose, but not many people actually have those? WiiU doesn't come with wiimotes either..) so it's a shame that only most, but not all of Sega's light gun games were brought out.
No HotD1, no Confidential Mission no Virtua Cop, also I would love a Time Crisis collection, but that would probably be on PS3 ... which is also discontinued now so.. sheesh

Recommended? Yes!
Replay? Yes, over and over again 

[shirenuファクトリー]

Week 5: Deus Ex - Game of the year edition... kinda

Maybe I won't even bother with a photo. I explained before in this thread that my sampling of the game was cut short because the game was too anxiety-inducing for me. Stealth games... ohohoo. I still got further by doing the sampling challenge than I ever would have without it, so that's cool! I'm a little bummed because I think the game could have had a lot to offer and I was a little intrigued with what was happening in the game world storywise, but eh. Couldn't do it.

In other news, I received a new USB SNES controller this weekend, so I gave a try for a few SNES games to half-assedly make up for missing out on Deus Ex. I think Kirby's Dream Course was the most fun one because I was able to actually get through a few of the courses... A lot of SNES games are just really hard, man.

[Tuffty]

That's a shame about Deus Ex. There's a lot to that game design that was revolutionary at the time, huge environments, different methods to complete an objective etc. But I can totally understand why it's intimidating though, there's a lot of mechanics at work all at once!

The story does a lot of cool things and goes interesting places. One of my favourite moments from the game comes from an existential conversation between Denton and Morpheus, an AI, which is something that can be missed on any playthrough. It touches on subjects that when you listen to it now, were quite prophetic considering it was released 16 years ago.

[Tuffty]

February (3/12): Call of Juarez: Gunslinger



A digital only title released 3 years ago, Call of Juarez is a first person shooter set in the Wild West. The story revolves around Silas Greaves, a bounty hunter who makes it to a saloon and beings recounting stories from his past to a receptive audience of a more civilised time. What sets it apart from other shooters is that as you play the levels, Silas is also narrating the story as you're playing which then affects what you're doing in the game. The bare bones of the level will be there for you to go from point A to B but as you progress he might say "And that's when I was ambushed by bandits" and next thing you know bandits show up and you have to fight them off. I've also seen him say "The barn just appeared right in front of me" and you actually see the barn being made as part of the level for you to go into. His audience also interjects at times, I've progressed all the way to the end of a level only to be teleported straight back and replay it differently because someone poked out a flaw in his story and so Silas had to retell it. Silas stories are indeed unbelievable considering  he brushes up with famous figures from history like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and that often makes him an unreliable narrator, which keeps things slightly unpredictable from a storytelling and even on a gameplay front. But it doesn't get frustrating, as there's a bit of humour in there and you often want to see what the game has to offer next. My disappointment is that the gameplay itself is little more than just shooting any enemy you see peeking behind a corner, there are no grand set piece moments to speak of which the story could have allowed.

The actual run and gun gameplay of Call of Juarez fits comfortably like a well worn cowboy's hat. Adopting the same control scheme of any modern shooter, the mechanics are the same even though the dressing around it changes to fit the setting. So grenades become dynamite, blood on the edges of the screen to indicate you're hurt become bullet holes, pistols are six shooter revolvers etc. The difference between this and Call of Duty however is it strictly feels like an arcade shooter, focusing on killing enemies extravagantly and quickly in exchange for experience points. Being able to kill an enemy with a headshot is more impressive than a shot in the arm for example which in turn gets you more XP and you are rewarded for dispatching enemies quickly, as it builds up a multiplier score the more you kill. These experience points then feed into a levelling system, allowing you to pick out skills which benefit you such as faster reload times, being able to hold more ammo, a bullet time mode, being able to shoot dynamite out of the air etc There are three tiers of skills for those who prefer dual wielding pistols, marksman rifles and close quarter shotguns, but I stuck with the first two as shotguns were rare to find during levels and ultimately not of much benefit to me because you die so quickly in the game that there's no benefit to take the risk of getting up close.

At the end of each level you will have a showdown with Silas's bounties. These play out exactly as you would expect from a spaghetti western as the two of you lock eyes. The aim is to use the left analog stick to get your hand close by to your gun while the right analog stick is to focus on the person opposite you and you have to manage the two together. After a time, a heart pounding will sound indicating it's time to draw and kill the man opposite you before he does the same to you. You can do it immediately but that counts as a dishonorable death. Waiting until your opponent draws first and then pulling your own gun out counts as an honorable death, granting you an XP bonus, but obviously requires quicker reaction times. It maps the tension behind a showdown pretty well, but I died so many times trying to go for the honorable death for what I felt was seemingly no fault of my own so this mode frustrated me more often than not.

Speaking of frustration, this game is a serviceable shooter but I feel that I was really hampered by the PS3 controller I was playing it with. Having used the PS4 controller for a while as well as the 360 controller, going back to using the PS3 controller for this made me see how it just isn't used to shooters. The analog sticks don't line up the same way I would expect and so I had a bad time trying to line up shots and that often wound up in me getting killed due to the game being unforgiving in how many bullets you can afford to take. Not necessarily a knock on the game itself, but that was my experience of it at least. As a minor note as well, Call of Juarez also has collectibles scattered throughout the levels to find and in typical Ubisoft fashion, these are meaningful and worth seeking out as each one has actual history facts about events and characters from the Wild West.

Not much else to say really, I thought it was a decent shooter with some cute moments lent by the game's narration that was entertaining but can't really say much more than that as you're doing the same thing over and over throughout the course of the game by shooting at disposable bandits until you reach the end of a level. I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap decent shooter while yearning for a decent Western story to be told as well. And whatever you do, don't play it with a PS3 controller.

7/10

[pikapikapika]

Week 6:






Smaller screenshots may contain spoilers.

Time Played? 10 hours.

Surprise! Okay, I got a copy of this several days early and I spent all weekend playing it, so I swapped this week's original game for a later week.
This game is really good! hard, but yeah, very enjoyable. I am struggling a little with it, which I suspect is the PS4 controller's fault, also due to all the people playing are beta testers or reviewers, and they are kicking the crap out of me XDD I decided to play as Chun-Li which may have been another bad decision as she doesn't seem too strong and has a short range, but seeing as she is a short character, it's nice that it has an effect this time!
The game as it is has a short story mode for each character, which does seem to just be a prelude for the cinematic story mode that's coming for free in the summer. It also has a survival mode and (this was added in a patch today!) challenge mode.

What it does not have, and this is the first time in a Street Fighter game ever, is an Arcade Mode. The only way to play against AI characters is in Survival Mode or training, and there is NO FINAL BOSS or secret characters or anything. It seems to be geared more to online play, and Capcom Fighters Network is the biggest icon on the screen.
Online play is smooth (although in the first patch it chugged along for the first few seconds) and there are some killers out there already, which can lead to some depressing win records as people have been beta testing and reviewing for months now.

All of this could change! it's still not out until the 16th, and I've already had my data wiped from the server once already because I'm a bad boy who is playing early.
Hopefully these screenshots won't get me in trouble, and this is also why there's no video ^^;;

Another good thing is it takes screenshots anytime you earn a trophy! so.. that's where 99% of these screenshots came from

Recommended? Yes.
Replay? I will be playing this all year, pretty much!

[shirenuファクトリー]

Week 6: Ibb & Obb

Ibb & Obb is a two-player co-op puzzle game, kind of like a 2D Portal 2. I started playing the game solo ( ), but soon realized that eventually I would not be able to get the timing right trying to control both characters, so I asked Stryfe to play with me. There's no text chat option in the game, so we couldn't communicate properly, but were still able to make progress eventually, so that was fun! lol We have not beat the game, but I hope we'll still play it in the future.

To me, the game is fun and almost relaxing, except those times when you have to ponder a bit about the next move, tho I wouldn't call it exactly stressful then either. Dying is not a big deal; you don't get thrown back a long way, you just need to try that one bit again. I like this! Not every game has to be a pain in the ass (aka "challenging")!

I can't tell yet what the game is "worth" because I don't know how long it is (and I received it for free, anyway), but at least now initially it's been a nice, light gaming experience, with very simple controls, so I think you could play it even with someone who's not a very experienced gamer.

I'm pleased!

[coachie]

Second Game for 2016 finished!

Battle Princess of Arcadias



A sidescrolling JRPG that feels and looks similar to games like GrimGrimoire or more closely Odin Sphere.

I loved the look and Music and the characters (as cliched as they are) are all likeable.
The gameplay is fun, though involved some grinding, but that was probably only the case for me
I started the game in december, playing all the tutorial stuff, then left it a few weeks and when i came back, I had forgotten most of the controlls.
Since the game is so niche the Internet wasnt helpful at all!
That left me in big trouble in the combat mode called "Skirmishes" where you have to give commands to your fighting brigades and I couldn't figure out how that worked again!!!
Luckily for me, with a high enough Brigade/character Level you could simply overrun the enemy. This strategy doesnt earn you S-Ranks but wins the battle and that was all i wanted.

The story was nothing special (save the world blabla) but had some nice minor reveals and worked for me. Sadly towards the end it felt, like there was supposed to be more(?) but was left out maybe because of time/money issues, I dont know.
Also the narrative had some minor hiccups.

Over all a maybe flawed but None the less enjoyable game!
(and hell i want to grind my characters to level 99 and maximum honor, as stupid as that is! )


Also I played the DLC "Left Behind" for The Last Of Us and that was soooo soooooo goooooooood EXCLEMATION MARK

[pikapikapika]

Week 7: (late)






Smaller screenshots may contain spoilers.

Time Played? Completed on 'Casual'

I had to make another substitution because I couldn't find where I put Yakuza 1 sooo.... I picked this! And what a mistake that was 

This game had some controversy about it when it was released because you're playing as the bad guys, and the end of the game you have (the choice anyway) to kill Leon and Claire from Resident Evil 2 and lots of people freaked out about it because, no-one wants to do that!
Another minor villian from RE3 shows up as a "boss" but eh.. it doesn't really do much or go far story wise, it's just a bunch of unrelated stuff that happened, ending with a mission that never ever happened.

Gameplay wise I'm guessing it's supposed to be a GoW clone? it's a 3rd person 4 man online squad shooter, where you do every boring thing you could possibly think of in a game like this, hang out behind waist high walls which are everywhere, shoot from behind the walls, avoid grenades, throw a grenade, shoot forever because the bad guys don't die, repeat 500 times.

There is, for whatever reason, a real lack of zombies, and these parts are incredibly easy to clear. One of your team will scream SPEC-OPS every 5 minutes or so, then you have to hide behind cover and shoot soldiers over and over again (again)

Here is a video of me not having that much fun


Seriously, they just stagger if you shoot them in the face with a shotgun.
Then if you ignore the "wait behind walls for far too long" rules because you're bored and don't want "TACTICAL ACTION" you die. Even on casual it was annoyingly hard.

Recommended? No.
Replay? Only for trophies buuut I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

[shirenuファクトリー]

Week 7: Fallout 2

I delayed my report by a week because I thought this game, as an RPG, needed more time. Well, I still didn't end up playing it that much more... Oop...

I've always heard great things about Fallout 2, but it's hard to get started because I don't like how the combat and movements work. Mainly I don't like how much of the combat is based on luck. Like if you replay a fight, you can lose most of your HP on the first try, then on the second try get through without a scratch, and you literally did not do anything differently. I don't understand what is charming about that.

In the time that I played I was able to clear the first temple, do two quests at the first village and travel to the town that is marked on the map... And that's really not enough to form a good opinion of the game
...I had to use google to discover how to unlock a door in the temple, if I'm actually supposed to kill things or just run through, how to rest, how to find the hunting grounds at the village (lol), and just... I swear I was playing games back when they didn't hold the player's hand. But damn, am I one helpless motherfucker.

Anyway, I definitely do not have enough information of the game to say good or bad things about it. I have to apologize for another really crap quality "review" - I'll have to add to some games perhaps at the end of the year. It would take me so much time to get into the groove of this game and I just currently don't have enough of it.

Week 8: Super Castlevania IV (SNES)

I've made it to stage 3 in this game so far and I have to say, this game is really good! Challenging and good. I feel like it introduces very naturally what you should do to proceed in a level. There are a variety of different enemies which have different types of attacks and movements. Bonus points for a Gothic setting. I'm not sure I'm skilled enough to get very far in this game, but it has to be one of the best, most 'effortless' feeling platformers I've tried. Sure I've had a few frustrating moments when my skills are failing me, but the miraculous part is that I kept trying. Do you know how hard that is to achieve? There were parts where I thought that I wasn't going to be able to get past them, but something made me try again and I actually got through. I think this game feels exactly how a platformer should feel like.


Sorry no photos, got a lot of stuff to do!!

[Hart]

Since I was in the Philippines for pretty much the entire month of February, and the lack of access to the internet, here are the games that I played for Weeks 6-8: The Blackwell Legacy, Super Mario Bros., Kirby's Adventure

Week 6: The Blackwell Legacy



From the Steam store page:

When Rosa Blackwell's only relative dies after twenty years in a coma, she thinks the worst is over.  This all changes when Joey Mallone, a sardonic ghost from the 1930s, blows into her life and tells her that she is a medium.  Whether they like it or not, it is up to them to cure the supernatural ills of New York in this critically-acclaimed series of point-and-click adventure games.
When three NYU students kill themselves one after the other, nobody thinks that a sinister force is at work.  Nobody but fledgling medium Rosa Blackwell and her new spirit guide Joey Mallone.  It's trial by fire as they set these troubled spirits to rest.

Week 6 was suppose to be Super Mario Bros., but my 3DS died on me and I wasn't able to recharge it without a power converter. (That also meant I couldn't play 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors as well.) Good thing I brought my laptop with me and had this game already installed as a backup game. There isn't much to say about The Blackwell Legacy. Pretty short game. The story peaked my interest. Liked the pixelated look. Enjoyable soundtrack. I look forward to playing the rest of the Blackwell series.

Week 7: Super Mario Bros.



Who hasn't played this game? The first game I ever owned and played. Actually it was the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/Track Meet version that I owned. Not bad for 4 year old me. 



27 years later I downloaded this game on my 3DS. Didn't take long to remember where most of the Power-Ups, 1-ups, and Stars were located. Still remember how tricky Worlds 7 & 8 were without knowing the layout of the levels. Don't think I ever finished the game when I was a kid. Surprised to find out that I can beat the game without using any Warp pipes. Granted it took me about 2 hours and losing over a dozen lives.    Didn't think I would feel so satisfied to see Princess Toadstool at the end instead of Toad.

Week 8: Kirby's Adventure



Another game that I once played on the original NES and never finished. Thoroughly enjoyed it on the 3DS. Never realized it was the second game in the series. The version of the game that I played looks similar to the original. Only difference I could see is the pop-up look of the levels and mini-games when changing the 3D settings. Didn't have too much trouble beating the bosses of each level. Took a while to see their pattern of attacks. The mini-games were enjoyable. Liked Crane Fever the most. Wasn't too difficult to find all the switches to get 100% completion. Might play the extras that I've unlock after beating the game someday.

So that's it for February. 8 games down for the 52in52 challenge, 2 games completed for the 12in12 challenge.

Up next for Week 9/Month 3: Deadpool



I still need to watch the movie. Nolan North may be great for the game (and the Hulk vs Wolverine cartoon short), but Ryan Reynolds is perfect to be Deadpool.

[pikapikapika]

Week 8:






Smaller screenshots may contain spoilers.

Time Played? 3 hours.

A week late as the site was down when I wanted to post this the first time ^^;
I remember this game being a really big deal at the time! not only was it an actual 3D city, but you could swing around as SPIDERMAN in it, and fight bad guys! Today? hmm... I got a little bored

At first you're playing a tutorial mode, and there's an announcer guiding you, in the English version a lot of the voices are from the movie's cast, so the announcer is BRUCE CAMPBELL but however, this is the Japanese version so he's not in it, so instead this guy is MASASHI EBARA (I think).. who is this guy:

And I kept cracking up at him, I think he's even eating during one of the button explanations haha

So after this you're replaying the first part of the Spiderman movie and chasing the guy who killed Uncle Ben and stole his rice, but for some reason you're just swinging around finding 10 identical bald guys hanging out on rooftops, then you get to fight him.. hmm .. after that I got to a part where I was in a warehouse fighting more identical bald guys and this took me a while because of it being in Japanese and not understanding what I was supposed to do.

Eventually I got up to where the videogame exclusive characters were in it, like the Shocker and the Vulture, but I wanted to do something else at that point, lol.

I hear that the actual game only lasts for about 3 hours, so maybe not understanding things actually helped since I didn't manage to finish it, it was okay I guess!

Recommended? No
Replay? Maybe.. not sure.

[Tuffty]

March(4/12): Broforce



Available this month on PS Plus, Broforce is a 2D pixel art side scrolling platform shoot em up with an interesting hook. Think The Expendables but where every TV and action movie character you care about is in it and playable. You start off as Rambro (no, not a misspelling, every character will have Bro shoehorned into their name somehow) and move from left to right shooting up enemies to reach the goal. Along you way you will save other Bros, scattered through the stage. Each one, when rescued, acts as an extra life and also becomes your new player character. The more you rescue, the greater the pool of choices becomes as they are all randomly selected. Each character can only afford to get hit once, take a hit and you die where you respawn at the last checkpoint with a different character.

There are a large number of characters to play as and the draw for me throughout the game was to see which character you could unlock next. The game feels like an homage to 80's action flicks and each character has their own unique weapon or abilities to distinguish one from the other. Commando (Brommando) uses a rocket launcher, Robocop (Brobocop) has a gun which fires larger burst rounds the longer you hold the fire button down for, Machete (Brochete) throws machetes around and can shock enemies if he hits an enemy with a gruesome melee attack. Amongst the rampant testosterone, the game also includes female heroines to the team too, Ripley, Kill Bill's Bride and Cherry Darling from Planet Terror, all unique from each other and require a subtle difference to how you play the game.

The game itself is pretty straightforward with the exception of destructible environments. Bullets, bombs and explosions can affect the terrain and shape how you handle situations. Can't get up because a team of bad guys are looking your way? Shoot the ground from underneath them and watch them fall to their death. Chain reactions are frequent, as one explosion can lead to another and another and another and another, where it feels deliberately designed in order to display as much anarchic chaos as possible. There is co-op multiplayer as well, but I tackled the game single player only to completion with relative ease with the exception of some later levels and boss fights.

My biggest complaint with the game is that the random selection of bro's can often screw you over sometimes when you're randomly assigned a Bro and it's not the best fit for the situation. When a boss fight shows that throw grenades into it's mouth deals the most damage, it doesn't help when the game chooses a melee only character to work with who's a poor match against someone who you can't get close to due to a barrage of fireballs. It leads to a frustating death and depending on if that was your last life, having to go back to the checkpoint and work up to the boss fight again hoping for a better match up, where the chances get less frequent the more Bro's you unlock. Boss fights can also be hit and miss depending on which character you have, I particularly struggled with a boss for 20 mins only to get Ba Baracus and have his flamethrower defeat the boss effortlessly.

There are some noticeable technical issues too such as big framerate drops, especially on later levels where more explosions causes the game to crawl to the finish line rather than power slide through it. Don't know if this is true for any other version, but on the PS4, there is also a consistent bug where almost 2-3 seconds into the start of a level, the game will refuse to accept any input you make from the controller. Your character won't move and you can't attack for about a second. Mostly it's ok but where death can be frequent and restarting a level is common, then this adds up and can get frustrating. In particular with levels which require you to dodge enemies right off the bat.

Ultimately, it's a fun game, the draw of seeing more playable 80's action heroes realised in what looks like a gory Saturday morning cartoon is what kept me interested, but the game is challenging and fun to play. Also, the ending song is almost worth a point in itself, I'm singing along to it as I listen to it again here.



7/10

[pikapikapika]

Week 9:






Smaller screenshots may contain spoilers.

Time Played? 3 hours.

I only played this for a little while as I am pretty far behind with these and have another one to play too!
I wasn't expecting this game to be an FPS, so it really reminds me of Skyrim. I know it's a lot older so maybe it was influenced by this game, it's okay so far! Generally the missions I've done take a reeeallly long time, but I think that's more my playstyle than the game? I was similarly slow in Alien Isolation, which is another game this reminds me of, but I do feel like I'd rather play that again first, than play this one again, but maybe one day.

Recommended? Yes
Replay? Yes

[pikapikapika]

Week 10:






Smaller screenshots may contain spoilers.

Time Played? 105 minutes.

^ It's amazing how well the last few screenshots captured my facial expressions while playing this 

I realise I'm probably going to be told how I'm doing it wrong, this game is so amazing and there are SO many ways to do each level and it's so enjoyable and I'm quitting too early and being an asshole for not enjoying this game. But, I don't care, I didn't like it, I'm an asshole!

This isn't my first bad experience with Hitman, I didn't like the original game mostly because of clunky controls and anytime I tried to do what the game asked of me all hell broke loose and I did it wrong, and died, repeatedly. I also played the recent one with the nuns, I think I beat that on easy, which is what I tried to do with this one.
I died on the first non training mission like 15 times before I quit, bored and pissed off.

This one has good controls but the menu and window size were unresponsive and this was already pissing me off before I even started anything XDD so not off to a good start. I don't really know what this game expects, but I was doing the stuff it suggested, like throwing coins, walking towards the ! points, but it didn't work and guards would literally teleport in behind me and other unfair stuff.

I just wanted to play the game on easy to see what it was like but... 

Recommended? No
Replay? I'm not very enthusiastic about it

[shirenuファクトリー]

Week 9: Tomb Raider: Legend

I feel like I'm really failing this challenge...

I only played this game for about an hour. I actually really liked the beginning, how the controls are taught etc. It uses the rather typical "learn by doing" method, except if felt more natural than in some other games because you were actually making progress in the map as you were learning. Tho some things still feel clunky to me, like when you want to jump down and instead Lara clings on to the side of the platform you were just on. lol

Anyway, what halted my progress so soon? The stupid checkpoint save system, really. There was a part I found challenging that took place after a somewhat time-consuming puzzle, so every time I died at that point I had to re-do the damn puzzle because saving after completing the puzzle made no difference. And the reasons for dying were so dumb, too; the game says if you press F you will drop down to the ledge of the platform you are standing on,  but I guess you have to be facing it a certain way because I kept falling off when the F wouldn't work. And this part is followed by a part where Lara ended up hanging with just one hand and there is supposedly a way to fix it but I missed the advice on how to do it so..... Yeah. ANYWAY once I was faced with the puzzle for the fourth time I decided I did not have "time for this shit" and I quit. I really have a limited time for this challenge so if I feel like I have to re-do the same thing over and over again instead of making progress, what choice do I have but to quit?

Aaahh it sucks to be so bad at video games...

I'd still like to give the game a new try when I can just chill and play because it did seem fun, but now is not the time. It SEEMED fun.

[Tuffty]

I realise I'm probably going to be told how I'm doing it wrong, this game is so amazing and there are SO many ways to do each level and it's so enjoyable and I'm quitting too early and being an asshole for not enjoying this game. But, I don't care, I didn't like it, I'm an asshole!

This isn't my first bad experience with Hitman, I didn't like the original game mostly because of clunky controls and anytime I tried to do what the game asked of me all hell broke loose and I did it wrong, and died, repeatedly. I also played the recent one with the nuns, I think I beat that on easy, which is what I tried to do with this one.
I died on the first non training mission like 15 times before I quit, bored and pissed off.

For what it's worth, despite the praise it got, I dislike Blood Money the most of the series. Really felt something was missing from it that previous games had. Plus the way save files work in that game is abysmal as it only saves the progress you made in that session so if you had to leave and come back to the game you would have to start the level all over again.

[shirenuファクトリー]

Week 10: Her Story

Her Story is really cool! ... I had a pleasant 86 minute session and I feel like I "finished" the game (I didn't see all the videos, but whether you want to look them all up is up to you)...

I don't really want to say more because I went in blind and I think that's the best way to do it... :3

Worth checking out for a bit of "detective work" :3

[Tuffty]

March (5/12): Galak-Z



Also available this month on PS Plus, Galak-Z is a 2D space shooter with roguelike qualities. What immediately grabs you about the game is the style. If the above picture didn't make it obvious, it wears it's affection for 80's mech anime like Gundam on it's sleeve and that is present in every aspect of it's presentation. The art direction is reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon and even hitting the pause screen produces a similar effect as you would pausing a VHS tape. Sadly that's about all I have to say around this aspect. The story just isn't there, communicated in very brief cutscenes at the beginning of a new Season (more on that below). All you need to know is that you're the sole pilot of a much larger spaceship that has to make it back to Earth. That's about it for the whole game. The protagonist and the female commander of the ship, Beam, throw out a few funny quips here and there but not enough to make you care about the characters or the overarching plot at all.

As for the game itself, it is divided into 5 'Seasons' (aping the TV show format I described above) where each one is made up of 5 randomly generated levels that must be played through in succession before you can complete a Season and move onto the next one. The closest comparison to any other game would be with Gradius, as you pilot your ship blasting enemy spaceships, pirates and giant bugs into pieces with your lasers and missiles. The roguelike qualities come in as stages are randomly generated, from level design right through to the upgrades you can collect during the mission. Each mission is either 'Destroy this' or 'Collect this', with no impact to the story whatsoever, but the main draw for me has never been the primary mission objective but what upgrades you can collect. Some allow you to change the performance of the ship itself like booster capacity, thruster speed, temporary shields etc while others can change the effect of your lasers from widening the spread to being able to bounce off walls to setting enemies on fire. These upgrades can then carry on through to the following levels. As such, because each level arrangement is randomly generated it's not necessarily about knowing the layout of levels or enemy placements but rather more on how capable you think your ship is and how you can handle it in certain situations. You can boost, dodge, circle strafe, lock on and fire missiles and even change into a laser sword wielding mech that can grab enemies and objects in the environment to throw at others. There are also random environmental hazards to deal with as well like lava or electricity conduits. As you can imagine, the hunt for upgrades is important, especially when you consider the penalty for failure.

For you see, if you die, you not only lose all those upgrades you collected, but you lose all of your progress into the season as well and have to restart from the beginning. Not at the beginning of the level mind you, from the beginning of that season. There were a few times I made it to the final level, died and had to restart all over again from the first level onwards. The penalty for death is as brutal as it sounds. Granted, each level takes maybe 10-15 minutes to complete, but it is so frustrating and disheartening to reach the end, lose maybe an hours progress and have to do that all over again just to get back to where you were at the chance of making it past a difficult boss. Or even at any point in a level because the random nature of the game can work against you and result in a swift death. And no, the randomly generated levels and missions doesn't help this as you will still end up going through the same looking environments and same enemies, only slightly arranged differently. It also doesn't help when the game deliberately places multiple difficult enemies by each exit point of a level, preventing you from progressing until they're all defeated which can cost you to lose missiles and health points which carries over to the next level.  And unlike say, Dark Souls, which counterbalances its strictness with largely dependable enemy placement and behaviour, in Galak-Z the randomness that comes with each retry adds one layer of complication too many.

Also, I mentioned there were 5 seasons as shown on the main menu, but the 5th one was greyed out when I came to it. I felt I perhaps missed some hidden conditions to unlock it but it turns out that Season 5 isn't even completed or will be patched out to the PS4 anytime soon so...yeh. Ultimately I came away disappointed, it had much promise in the beginning but the game quickly shows it's cards too soon with little incentive to go on to complete it as there's just no story there and the gameplay will quickly get as repetitive as the sound bites that the pilot will say on destroying an enemy for the 100th time.

5/10