ONE OF US
2 Likes
Finished up the Bowser’s Fury expansion to Super Mario 3D World.
Unfortunately the main game hasn’t hooked me that well, I’ve gotten a bit bored with it only halfway through the game, and I’m eyeing a nice trade-in deal at a store so I decided to try the bonus mode to “finish it” there.
Ohh man it is fun, and it is EPIC.
The game is open-world-ish. You have to run, swim, glide, climb around this massive open lake and its islands to collect & find Cat Shines – I’ve heard the system is very similar to Mario Odyssey – and it’s pretty neat, easy, and fairly quick to get each one. Gives great satisfaction.
The game’s meat really opens up against the titular enemy: Fury Bowser. Dude is a jacked-up, Godzilla-sized rage monster who plunges the world into darkness every few minutes. And you either have to find a Shine to keep him at bay, or survive it out until he gets bored.
It is SUPER fun whenever he comes out (mostly. It’s a little too frequent.) Huge rock spires drop from the sky creating new platforms to jump on or use to hide. He has a massive fire-breath attack that spells doom. He leaps around the level to catch up with you or find a new angle on you, and is a towering behemoth.
The game literally opens with you stumbling into a massive footprint-shaped crater, and from then on it’s a great little 5-6 hour experience IMO. (Potential for a few more if you go for 100%)
10 Likes
I got the remaster Mafia, even got up to the infamous race mission. I nearly got it first time but the second place driver decided he can teleport just to stop me from being to good.
9 Likes
The rubber banding is total bs
Hopefully it won’t take 4 hours to beat it 
1 Like
It legit is, I have dealt with some whack rubberbanding (Tony Hawk games on Sick can get funny in comps) but that one try was BS. Luckily it didn’t take me four hours, it took me around twenty minutes.
1 Like
About half an hour for me but boy, did this mission reminded me why I hate racing games
1 Like
They just look so happy when you win. Luckily I have become much better at racing cars as I have gotten older, which is funny because I used to dread racing sections.
I find that the big thing is to remember to ease the throttle as you go around the corners (especially the first one), try to take the inside as much as possible and to save any desire to overtake for the straightaways.
4 Likes
My favorite part when watching that Forsen video since he doesn’t get it and he ends up spinning his car
Also in Free Ride you can replay the Race with different cars, like the hot rod 
3 Likes
I feel you. I’m an achievement junkie and (sad as it sounds) I tend to only play games that I can probably get all the achievements. I absolutely dread achievements that involve racing! 
I’m probably out of touch with more modern racing games, but I always hated the AI in these games. You’d start in last place and after a minute or so you’d work your way to the top of the pack. So clearly you’re racing a lot faster than everyone else. Yet for the rest of the race, there is no way you can ever get ahead of the drivers behind. It’s like the AI makes the leaders drive slow until you catch-up, then it makes you tow the leaders on a bungee rope for the rest of the race. You can’t shake them and every now and then they edge ahead. I noticed in your race that the same happened to you until the last lap, then you seemed to get and keep a good lead. Nicely done! 
3 Likes
Aha! This is where I come in. 
Come on, guys! Racing against AI opponents is not always that bad. They usually catching up with you is because the developers implement such rubberbanding technique (by either increasing their speed or even teleporting them right behind you) to keep the race exciting, so you don’t get bored after taking the lead and dusting everyone else. If you need an opposite example, just play GTA IV. It’s not boring, but it’s easy enough that the AI’s constant accidents can literally make you feel yourself being genetically different!
And I knew racing is not for everyone, just like how I avoid as many first person shooter as possible because I suck at it. But like Hitman, everybody starts at pacifying each npc and take their clothes to get that SA rating, right? So you will get that sense of achievement as you eventually improve racing lines and overtake technique, just like how you knew you can challenge yourself by completing a Hitman mission without all the knockouts and disguises.
Alright enough rumbling about racing. I am about to preload NFS: Unbound to the PS5. I am very excited about it!
3 Likes
I really wish I could love racing games. I watch others play them and it looks so fun. Then I take the controls and… it’s not so much fun. I’ve enjoyed Forza Horizon because they have arrows on the road (green, amber, or red) that tell you you’re going too fast on bends, but I still struggle to win races as the AI gets better. I lose my bottle when I’m doing well and mess up on bends. The best “racing” elements I’ve enjoyed in a video game is driving like a madman in Saints Row games to complete those challenges.
I love video games, but as a gamer in his fifties, I know I’ll never be good at racing games and any shooting games that require quick kills. Stealth, puzzle, RPGs, and platformers are the games I enjoy most.
Talking of which, I stumbled on an amazing game recently called Tinykin. If you love 3d platformers with lots of puzzle elements, then this could be the game for you. Along with Plague Tale: Requiem, these two are my personal games of the year.
Here’s a 3 minute review of Tinykin.
So much fun!
4 Likes
I am not very good at them but still manage to finish them and have fun 
At my best times I even activated manual shifting gears and did that by listening to the sound of the engine. And yet I was so bad at breaking I used crash barriers that aligned to the curve to guide me like they were rails. 
That does not work anymore in modern race games though, physics get too sophisticated.
3 Likes
That sounds like me in an ice skating rink. What’s the point of learning to stop when you’ve got all those barriers around the edge. 
5 Likes
Has anyone played Evil West yet? And would you recommend it?
2 Likes
Bought Spider-Man remastered for steam after seeing it have a small but noticable discount.
I played this game a long while ago when it first came out and remember liking some parts of it but overall having a mediocre experience. I hope a replay on my preferred platform fixes that, though being on pc already has its upsides of actually being able to more easily share screenshots.
said Screenshots
8 Likes
Doesn’t feature the Lizard - 0/10
2 Likes
Saw an episode of Dead End recently, where the teens are tasked with breaking up a Sweet 16 party down in hell.
It reminded me of Night School’s Afterparty so I jumped into that.
Decided to revisit it to see if I was in a better mood for it, or figure out why I just couldn’t get myself past the first chapter, and I think I’ve got it: I just don’t think the gameplay lives up to what the script needs it to be… among a few other things.
I’ve gotten past the first chapter again, but it’s still a bit of a struggle to get through.
-
I don’t have that hook or sense of mystery that Oxenfree had from the start. There’s a little of that with the question of how the teens died, but it doesn’t seem like a major issue & pales in comparison to the mysterious ghost-haunting you unwittingly unleash in the other.
-
There’s very, very little interactivity or eye-candy with the world. Oxenfree had the radio you could fiddle around with. It could find some music channels, secret Morse code I think, and also Info channels to learn the lore about the landmarks you encounter. Afterparty has… occasional demon text messages appearing on screen? Other than that it’s linear as hell (oof).
- The set-up of different areas is quite long to traverse, and it feels like some of them should have something special to do, or look at at the edges of the islands. But all I could find so far is the same taxi lightpole every time.
-
Exploration/walking around has taken a step down. I can remember there being a little 2.5D traversal in Oxenfree. A little of going further into the background or further into the foreground to navigate the world. But Afterparty only has left-right, feeling even weirder when the scenes are quite wide going towards the screen.
-
There’s no memorable music. It’s maybe a long drone, or some slow, quiet chorus, but scenes are eerily quiet when walking around. Definitely not like Oxenfree when you had this bop playing.
Epiphany Fields - YouTube
The biggest sin of all this game has is that it’s script is pretty great. Actors all do a great job so far. But I’m just not being sucked into their long, wordy conversations about how much hell sucks when all I can do is stand around and look at small, simple-looking character models.
Oh yeah, and this game has the weirdest audio mixing I’ve ever heard!! No other game does this, and I can barely fix it.
In my little surround sound setup: Speaker at front, two beside, two behind me; The characters’ dialogue all comes from behind me, and which side they’re located on the screen is which speaker is strongest.
I can slightly fix it by going to the default stereo mode, but most of the dialogue still comes out only from behind my head. It’s super jarring to say the least.
5 Likes
God of War Ragnarok. Not much to say other than it’s awesome just like it’s predecessor. Not done with it, I believe I’m half way through.
One complaint I have is regarding the implementation of the PS5 controller (Dual Shock 5) is that it got speakers. They are active while using zip lines and the sled. It sounds like ass.
Edit: Luckily I just found out that you can mute the controller speakers.
6 Likes
Over the weekend I started playing Psychonauts (the PS2 version emulated on the PS4). I just recently learned about the game, which is surprising considering I’m a huge fan of 3D collectathons. The basic gameplay is you’re at a summer camp and can explore around and collect things, but you also go into people’s minds, and those levels are a lot more ‘out there’. For example, right now I’m on a level called The Milkman Conspiracy where I need to sneak around super obvious secret agents by “blending in”. For example, holding a stop sign means I’m a road worker and holding flowers means I’m a grieving widow. And I thought 47 blending in by wearing the right clothes was a bit of a stretch! The level is set in a suburban neighborhood that’s warped and twisted that you go all around in. I thought Mario Galaxy pioneered the gravity shifting environments, but this game did it a few years before
One thing that’s interesting is there’s a ranking system where pretty much everything you collect in the game helps you level up. What’s cool is as you increase your rank you unlock new psychic powers and upgrades to your existing powers, like having your invisibility last longer or being able to chain your ranged attack to multiple enemies.
The biggest complaint I have with the game is you need to collect 2D images that are “figments of imagination”, but it’s hard to notice them sometimes because they are flat when viewed from the side and can easily blend into the background. There’s also hundreds in each level, making it annoying when you’re missing one in a level. Also, there’s a life system but when you lose them all your collectible progress is still saved and you respawn at a checkpoint with full lives again so what’s the point of even having lives?
Overall, I’m really enjoying the game and am excited to see what the sequel is like. As for going for 100% completion, I’d say so far it’s better than Mario Odyssey but not as fun as Banjo Kazooie
7 Likes
