What Was The Last Game You Played?

[Miguel Sanchez]

MediEvil (PS4, 2019 - originally PS1, 1998)

With the recent release of a new console generation the concept of backwards compatibility has been given more attention than it usually gets. Once games actually start being released for the new consoles I'm sure it'll go away again, but it's interesting to see console developers suddenly start caring about people being able to play old games when there's an opportunity for them to sell new, extortionately priced hardware compared to any other point in time where they actively make it as hard as possible to play games from previous generations. Oh by the way PS3 and PS Vita stores don't exist anymore, if you weren't aware. 

With this in mind I have always been cautiously supportive of the concept of remakes and remasters. Ever since I had the vague notion that I might get the opportunity to play the Jak and Daxter trilogy again long after my PS2 and games had been traded in I've thought it was, on the whole, a good idea. While it's easy money for publishers and IP owners that almost certainly won't be put back into new or original creations, and while it's only ever going to support games that sold really well, and while it doesn't really do anything for true historical accessibility, I like being able to play games I enjoy. I like being able to play games I might have enjoyed at the time but didn't get to play. The God of War games, the first and third Sly Coopers, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, these were all things I didn't play at the time. There might be the odd turkey (Prince of Persia) or something where I probably just had to be there at the time (Uncharted), but I still appreciate that on the whole remasters represent an opportunity for games to find a new audience, and that can only be a good thing.

With that in mind, remakes are a different matter entirely. Looking at the list of games I've played on the PS3 and PS4 I can only see one before now, Day of the Tentacle. I don't know how seriously I can consider a point and click game for the point I'm going to eventually attempt to make, but I recently finished MediEvil. Originally released in 1998 it was rebuilt completely and released in 2019. You are Sir Daniel Fortesque, a noble knight who helped defeat the evil sorcerer Zarok in battle when he tried to take over Gallowmere. Dan was actually hit in the face by an arrow as soon as he entered battle, but Zarok is now back out of hiding and Gallowmere needs saving, so he's the best available and he gets brought back from the dead to give it a try.

You progress through the various levels performing basic hack and slash combat as you do, with the odd bit of platforming thrown in. Here is where the game's age lets it down. Despite remaking the game completely, several aspects of video games from 1998 remain when they really should have been left there. The camera movement is abysmal. I forgot how annoying it is not being able to move a camera above 90 degrees in a third person game. Awful. The same goes for the life system and the lack of checkpoints. You can collect Life Bottles as you progress through the game which give you more opportunity to stockpile health, but early on in the game you won't have many and you won't have good weapons, so you're more likely to lose those bottles and die. When you do it's back to the start of the level, better hope you get luckier next time. 

The combat itself doesn't help much in this regard, never mind the weapons. While there are a range of enemies across the different levels, very often they'll attack in the same way. You get swarmed by lots of them at once, and your only option is to spam attack until they're done. You lose lots of health in the process, making a game over much more likely. This isn't helped by the sheer volume of weapons you end up with, with swords for swinging, hammers for smashing and crossbows for shooting. This means you either have to get up close to something that's going to do a lot of damage, or you fight with the terrible camera to try and shoot something you can't really see. You can use a shield too, but there's no way of countering attacks so you just turtle until it breaks and go back to the weapons. By the time you reach the end of the game and have most of the weapons unlocked the game becomes a lot easier, but the difficulty curve seems unnecessarily steep early on. 

On the subject of weapons, the game has an extremely clumsy inventory system that spoils any fluidity in combat. You can only equip two weapons at a time. If a level requires, say, three different kinds of weapons for maximum efficiency against certain enemies, you'll be opening that up and scrolling through to the one you want after every encounter. You'll also have to scroll through every weapon you've acquired. It doesn't matter that the magic sword and hammer do about ten times the damage of their non-magical equivalents, you'll have to go through all of them to get what you want. I can only believe that something as obnoxious as this and the camera were kept over from the original game. They didn't have to be. The map for moving from level to level is equally tedious, especially if you have to go back to the opening section to stock up on money and health because you got stuck somewhere else. 

I spent most of MediEvil trying to like it in spite of these problems, and I actually did. This is the sort of game that gets described as charming, and it's easy to see why. Each level and the characters in it are all vividly realised and diverse, with a humorous send-up of horror and medieval surroundings perfectly balanced and always engaging throughout. Even though I was disappointed to see that Dan doesn't really have much to say (understandable given he has no lower jaw) there's still a distinctive personality there, as there is in all of the other characters, good and bad. The environments and sounds all add to this experience, and it's clear that a lot of care and attention went into the remake. The fact that a game released on CD in 1998 could take up 38 GB on a modern console is proof alone of that. 

When I played Psychonauts last year I thought it was a game brimming with so much imagination and creativity that some of it felt wasted. It wasn't explored and utilised as thoroughly as it could have been. Or maybe I'm just used to things being stretched as thinly as possible in games nowadays. Either way, I found MediEvil quite similar. From level to level there are different characters, bosses and clearly different stories and backgrounds to each area which come and go pretty quickly. There are information points dotted throughout each level you can read for some background but even these are brief and don't really offer any sense of immersion. I'm assuming this is a product of the game's age and isn't really something you could have affected in the remake unless you completely changed the game's content, but it does leave you feeling a bit empty.

Looking back at what I've said here this still feels like a really critical view of me playing MediEvil for the first time. I went in wanting to like it which is probably clouding what I'm saying, but despite its flaws there are things to enjoy for newcomers like me. There is some satisfaction in the gameplay once you're far enough into it to know what you're doing. The designs and the characterisation are impossible to dislike, even if lots of them are desperately fleeting. As remakes go... I've only ever played one other. Maybe I'll get to the Crash Bandicoots this year. As remakes go this seems like it is both an entirely new game but entirely the original game too. That probably explains why I have so much criticism, but still think it was good. 

[Stellaboz]

I loved Medieval when it first came around in the late 90s. A good bit of fun without being too taxing and a solid enough story to get by until Blockbuster had something else available to rent.

[GNU_Linux]

DUSK (2018, New Blood Interactive)

Pretty neat fully 3D occult horror themed boomer shooter. Think Quake meets Blood & a more straight faced Redneck Rampage.

Edited January 12, 2021 by GNU_Linux

[NotThePars]

I finally got back to Final Fantasy XIII after hitting a brick wall called the Proudclad back in November. Finished it today. That was a pretty good game in the end. The slog and corridors that comprise the first 15-20 hours of that game make sense narratively but it’s rough in the moment when it feels like it’s never going to end. When the game opens up though, it’s well-earned and I loved that. The final stretch hits a nice crescendo and it would’ve worked as a satisfying conclusion for the world although I’ve read that the sequels are pretty good. Got XIII-2 downloading as I type this.

The battle system is also, to an extent, unfairly caricatured as “hit A and the game plays itself” but it’s understandable why it’s dismissed that way. Once I understood the game systems though, I really dug it. The paradigm shifts and everything that goes into them pre-fight and in the moment is a lot of fun and involves a lot more thought than I think is even conveyed by the game’s tutorials. All in all, it’s a game I ended up really enjoying and it obviously clicked with me enough to become only the third FF game I’ve ever rolled credits on. Could I recommend it to other people? I’m not sure given the level of time it takes for it to click. It’s a good game though, I think.

 

I also finished Kingdom Hearts 3 (the 10th or 11th in the series) but playing all of them in about a month and comprehending what exactly happened is too much for me to write about. I'm glad I finally finished a "trilogy" I started literally 18 years ago. That's about it.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Fun fact: Back when I played FF13 I played, as I do, with the aim of unlocking all the trophies in it. There's a trophy for having owned every weapon/accessory. You don't need to have them all at once, you just need to have had them at some point. I didn't sell anything as I played through the game, with the idea that I'd unlock the base versions of everything then work on upgrading them all once I'd reached the endgame. I had the strategy guide for the game, so I ticked them off the list in that as I got them all.

I didn't actually get around to cleaning it up until years later. I tried to work out how much money I needed and what was the quickest way of getting it. The weapons in particular were annoying because each character had eight different weapons that you had to upgrade and each of them needed a different amount of XP put into it and then a different component to finally change it into the new one. Plus each character had a 3rd stage "Ultima Weapon" which needed a special catalyst which you could only get by fighting one of the insanely strong turtle enemies which you basically needed fully upgraded gear for anyway. 

Going by my posts on the internet at the time it took me around 30 hours to grind for all of this stuff after spending ~95 hours getting to that starting point, although I had over-levelled in a few places in the story just to make sure I could get through without too much stress. I miscalculated how much money I needed to get all of the things I needed and I was getting bored so I was selling stuff to try and speed up the process and that just made it worse.

I had the vague notion of finishing the game before the end of 2017 so there I am on Hogmanay, having finished work and gone home to finish the last couple of things I needed. The trophy didn't pop as soon as you got the last item, you had to go and see someone to unlock it. I went and talked to them and you probably know where this story is going by this point. No trophy. I didn't know what I'd missed.

Luckily I'd kept a few different save files in case anything went wrong so I was back to the beginning. I spent the first week of 2018 running along a corridor near the end grinding two battles over and over. I started watching Zero Punctuation from the beginning again as I was playing, I went from ~2008 to 2012, just watching one video after the other. An extra 30 hours for that.

Maybe one day I'll play them again (oh yes, I've also finished 13-2 and 13-3) if I take leave of my senses. The music from 13 is genuinely brilliant throughout, however:

 

[Stellaboz]

13 is pish, couldn't get into it and the characters are all awful, except for Vanille.

On that note though, I have all the cards in Witcher 3 but it didn't give me the achievement. Ragin'

[Mr. Brightside]

On 30/09/2020 at 22:55, Gordon EF said:

Finally done this c**t it.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I would just like to say, I beat Dark Souls 3 and its DLC in the summer and my reaction to defeating Darkeater Midir and Dancer of the Boreal Valley was a lot more sweary than this, but I can fully appreciate the sentiment. There are few things as satisfying as finally taking down a Soulsborne boss.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Mr. Brightside

[Gordon EF]

59 minutes ago, Mr. Brightside said:

I would just like to say, I beat Dark Souls 3 and its DLC in the summer and my reaction to defeating Darkeater Midir and Dancer of the Boreal Valley was a lot more sweary than this, but I can fully appreciate the sentiment. There are few things as satisfying as finally taking down a Soulsborne boss.

I'm a glutton for punishment. I've beaten Bloodborne and moved on to Dark Souls 3.

[NotThePars]

4 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Fun fact: Back when I played FF13 I played, as I do, with the aim of unlocking all the trophies in it. There's a trophy for having owned every weapon/accessory. You don't need to have them all at once, you just need to have had them at some point. I didn't sell anything as I played through the game, with the idea that I'd unlock the base versions of everything then work on upgrading them all once I'd reached the endgame. I had the strategy guide for the game, so I ticked them off the list in that as I got them all.

I didn't actually get around to cleaning it up until years later. I tried to work out how much money I needed and what was the quickest way of getting it. The weapons in particular were annoying because each character had eight different weapons that you had to upgrade and each of them needed a different amount of XP put into it and then a different component to finally change it into the new one. Plus each character had a 3rd stage "Ultima Weapon" which needed a special catalyst which you could only get by fighting one of the insanely strong turtle enemies which you basically needed fully upgraded gear for anyway. 

Going by my posts on the internet at the time it took me around 30 hours to grind for all of this stuff after spending ~95 hours getting to that starting point, although I had over-levelled in a few places in the story just to make sure I could get through without too much stress. I miscalculated how much money I needed to get all of the things I needed and I was getting bored so I was selling stuff to try and speed up the process and that just made it worse.

I had the vague notion of finishing the game before the end of 2017 so there I am on Hogmanay, having finished work and gone home to finish the last couple of things I needed. The trophy didn't pop as soon as you got the last item, you had to go and see someone to unlock it. I went and talked to them and you probably know where this story is going by this point. No trophy. I didn't know what I'd missed.

Luckily I'd kept a few different save files in case anything went wrong so I was back to the beginning. I spent the first week of 2018 running along a corridor near the end grinding two battles over and over. I started watching Zero Punctuation from the beginning again as I was playing, I went from ~2008 to 2012, just watching one video after the other. An extra 30 hours for that.

Maybe one day I'll play them again (oh yes, I've also finished 13-2 and 13-3) if I take leave of my senses. The music from 13 is genuinely brilliant throughout, however:

 

Yeah, there's no chance I'm doing that. I read about the Trapezohedrons or whatever they're called and decided against that pretty rapidly. 

Agree on the soundtrack as well. Maybe one of the top 3 battle musics and the Barthandelus boss fight music is bombastic to the point of being nearly overblown.

3 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

13 is pish, couldn't get into it and the characters are all awful, except for Vanille.

On that note though, I have all the cards in Witcher 3 but it didn't give me the achievement. Ragin'

I would've agreed with this before I finally stuck with it. Anyone that said Vanille was the only one they liked with that voice actor is going on a list though.

[Stellaboz]

Only because I had a thing for her, nothing else.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Lightning: Good c**t

Snow: c**t

Sazh: Astonishingly racist

Hope: f**k off

Vanille: Catnip for paedos

Fang: Technically and mechanically the best character who you only get to use after 20 hours so you don't bother

[Mr. Brightside]

I'm a glutton for punishment. I've beaten Bloodborne and moved on to Dark Souls 3.

It's a really fucking great game tbf and only a couple of the bosses were particularly annoying.

[Gordon EF]

Just now, Mr. Brightside said:

It's a really fucking great game tbf and only a couple of the bosses were particularly annoying.

I've only got to two bosses. The first one I beat on the second attempt, the second one I one-shotted. So they're a huge step down on difficulty from the early Bloodborne bosses. But I think jumping straight from one game to the other has meant I've gotten through the early stages relatively trouble free.

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Lightning: Good c**t

Snow: c**t

Sazh: Astonishingly racist

Hope: f**k off

Vanille: Catnip for paedos

Fang: Technically and mechanically the best character who you only get to use after 20 hours so you don't bother

Agreed on most of that. Snow being Troy Baker when he was still figuring out what his vibe was is so funny to me.

[Miguel Sanchez]

3 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Agreed on most of that. Snow being Troy Baker when he was still figuring out what his vibe was is so funny to me.

Didn't realise he was voiced by Troy Baker. Explains a lot. 

[Busta Nut]

Is Xiii in 2 parts? I mind playing that I think but Never got into it

[NotThePars]

16 hours ago, Busta Nut said:

Is Xiii in 2 parts? I mind playing that I think but Never got into it

It's a trilogy.

[NotThePars]

I finished Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare after starting the game over 4 years ago and forgetting to go back to it.

It’s fine. I think it’s substantially better than a lot of the other campaigns because it’s in space(!) and it’s very, very cheesy. You even get a wisecracking robot companion and some good television acting talent as support. It’s ultimately “The Expanse if it was directed by the Department of Defense” which means any pro-USSR sympathies are stripped out so you’re left in no doubt the UN marines are the good guys and the Martians are the bad guys. Am I the only one who thinks Kit Harrington is similar enough to Steven Strait to further justify The Expanse comparisons? Also you get to space Conor McGregor so that’s fun.

[BallochSonsFan]

Railway Empire.

It's like electronic crack.

Seriously. Setting up the lines on your 4 platform stations so that each station can access multiple routes and then sitting back watching your trains glide past each other when your signals are set properly is bliss. Or using the little rural stations to get resources for your city industries. It's just great.

You even get to ride in the engines of any of your routes if you want.

Red hot sex with Triss Merrigold it is not. Proper sad b*****d material playing with a glorified digital train set, but it's just really fun.

[BFTD]

Sounds absolutely ripe for a Witcher crossover. Wait for the DLC.