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What Was The Last Game You Played?


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Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (PS4, 2017)

Here's a depressing insight into my life.

Or here's an insight into my depressing life.

In October 2012, about two months after I started subscribing to PlayStation Plus suddenly giving me access to more free games than I think I'd ever played on the PS3 in the four years I'd had it, I started playing a game called Bulletstorm, a first person shooter set on a planet of some sort where you got points for killing the enemies in various interesting ways. To start the year 2022 I played Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, the PS4 version which also includes the game's DLC. Am I functionally any different than I was ten years ago? Probably not. 

Bulletstorm is the story of Grayson Hunt, an impossibly proportioned man on a spaceship who along with his friends have annoyed some other men on a spaceship and they all crash land on a planet somewhere. It turns out the planet was a giant theme park and some bad things have happened and there are now a combination of savage, deformed gangs running around along with mutated creatures who are also very eager to kill you. Your mission is to get off the planet and if you can kill General Serrano who double-crossed Gray and his men in the past, all the better. 

What sets Bulletstorm apart from the other first person shooters of the early 2010s is the Skillshot mechanic. Loosely tied into the game's plot you get points for killing enemies in certain ways, with the points being redeemed for ammo and new weapons you can unlock as you progress through the story. On the surface this sounds like a good idea for adding some variety to the formula and there are some mechanics besides guns which make this more enjoyable. You can kick enemies with an impossibly proportioned boot to make them hang in the air, lining up a shot to the head or allowing them to be redirected into a handily placed cactus, broken wall or explosive object. You also have a Leash which does much the same thing, only to enemies at a distance. 

If I'm being honest, the points don't really make a difference. You can pick up ammo from dead enemies and even if you somehow ran out, leashing and kicking would more than do you until you picked up some more. That said, there's something instinctive about playing a video game and doing stuff to make numbers appear on the screen, knowing you're responsible for it. Why shoot a guy in the chest and get +10 when you get drunk, set him on fire, kick him into some other guys and blow them up? Whether through pressure or natural enthusiasm you really do try and vary your kills as you go through the game, so I suppose it works. There are a range of weapons too, although some are a lot more effective and a lot more fun than others.

It's a good thing this is the case because in terms of plot, woof. For a short game with only a few characters (there's Gray, his half-robot mate Ishi and a impossibly proportioned girl in a tanktop called Trishka) it's surprisingly shallow. It does a good trade in one-liners, and Serrano in particular is enjoyable for how relentlessly over the top he is. Considering that's the point of the game and the gameplay though it all still feels a bit limp. There are different types of enemy and there's some effort made to explain why they're on the planet but you're so focused on killing them in flashy ways it barely registers when they show up. I just don't care about anyone or what's going on. 

I remember enjoying this when I played it on the PS3 but there's something about it now that just doesn't feel as engaging. It's a game that's supposed to be completely over the top in its gameplay and dialogue, and this is successful. It is. There's always just something that stops it being completely satisfying to play. Each weapon has a 'charged' mode which fires an extra powerful version of itself but pressing this sets up an animation which takes up a noticeable amount of time, not very helpful in a firefight when you've got three guys shooting at you and another three on fire running straight at you. The dialogue tries to be self-aware in how over the top it is but it doesn't manage this, while also managing to not be legitimately terrible. The result is something which isn't obviously enough to be overly cynical but still not quite anarchic enough to be properly engaging.

This frustration extends from the gunplay into basic movement and level design. Although you can interact with the world to kill enemies or to progress in certain areas, all the levels are linear and largely funnel you and enemies into combat arenas for you to shoot them in interesting ways. This is functional, but it makes the world itself less engaging. Giant man-eating plants have mutated and appeared here and I'm somehow not interested. This isn't helped by what I'm pretty sure is a terrible field of view. There were occasions in the game where I just felt like I wasn't seeing as much of the screen as I needed to. I don't know if I'm getting old or what but in large, open areas this definitely felt like a problem.

This sense of a small world isn't helped by the movement controls which honestly feel like something from the last century. You can't jump. You have to hold X to run. You crouch by holding L3. If you've ever played an FPS you'll read those three things and weep but if not, I need to focus on those last two. When you get shot in an FPS nowadays the screen goes red until you're able to hide and wait for it to go away. This game rewards you for facing enemies and killing them in precise, creative ways. This means you'll often have to be open to them firing on you. This means you'll get damaged and occasionally need to hide. If you need to run, you can't move the camera with the right stick to change direction because your right hand is holding down the run button. If you need to hide behind cover you need to hold down the least pressable button on the controller, which is also connected to the joystick that moves your character around. No. Please, no.

I'll let the PC players finish laughing before I carry on.

Actually no, there's nothing else. There are two other game modes - Echoes splits the game up into small, quickfire sections and has scores for you to beat. This seems to fit with the gameplay more naturally than anything else, often forcing you to be varied and quick to beat the high score. There's also an online mode where you and up to three others face waves of increasingly difficult enemies with the usual scoring system. Outside of the new locations and trying to set a score there's very little point in this though, you'll probably have had your fill of the concept by the time you get to it. It's not bad, and I actually think regular multiplayer in this game could have worked well, but it's just more of the same without the ability to pause.

I'm glad I went back to a more polished version of this game and finished it. I actually redownloaded and played the PS3 version the other day and my god, the framerate. I'll not even try to describe it. I like that a game like this was released in 2012 at the real peak of modern military shooters. It's an antidote to them and a love letter to the over the top origins of the genre like Doom, where gore and killing impossibly large and violent enemies was all you had to do. While functional in this regard, it's also somehow forgettable. It's honestly impressive how middle of the road Bulletstorm ends up being. It's not bad by any measure, but it's also just... there. 
 

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Completed Dark Souls 1 and 2 remastered in the past couple of weeks.

Dark Souls 1 still holds up pretty well, the movement and combat is definitely a lot more clunky than Bloodborne, Sekiro and even DS3. The strange thing about Dark Souls 1 was I found it way easier than the other games (barring Demon's Souls) not sure if it's because I'm more used to the series now, or its age but the most attempts I took at a boss was two. Still a very good game and I do love the feeling of everything being inter-connected. 8/10

Dark Souls 2, boy what a fucking slog this game was, 90 hours to complete the main game and DLC and honestly the DLC was very uninspiring. On the whole it is similar to DS1 but less connected and another couple of bad changes were losing bits of your health bar when you died, which seems very stupid for a Souls game and enemies de-spawning after you kill them too many times making farming a bit harder. Other than that I found it pretty easy again, the two Smelter Demons game me the most trouble, but the biggest issue with this game (apart from it being uninspiring and lengthy) was the amount of absolute bullshit in the game. In DS1 you have Blighttown, fair enough. In DS3 you have Farron Keep, fair enough. In DS2 every area seems to have some level of bullshit (poison, toxic, petrify and so on) and they seemed to have upped the amount of obnoxious shit too, like the amount of casters or bow users just griefing the shit out of you. And the worse of all, those wee fucking statues that spit poison at you, honestly the worst area of any game I think I've ever played. All in all, a real let down and I think it shows that Miyazaki was probably focused on Bloodborne at the time. 6/10

In other news I beat Genichiro Ashina today after about the 500 total attempts, so I'm working my way back through Sekiro.

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23 hours ago, ConcernedReferee said:

Bulletstorm had the sniper rifle that let you aim from a bullets eye perspective and that ruled, honestly remember thinking it was a fun game at the time 

It's never annoying, boring or even really bad, there's just not as much fluidity as I was ever really hoping for. Even that sniper is a good example. When the bullet gets close to an enemy they suddenly duck out of the way and make it much more awkward to get a headshot. The charged version is cool though, shoot one guy then move his body around before you can explode it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Ratchet & Clank (PS4, 2016)

I've played most of the PlayStation mascot platformers. Jack and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted, I've played them all and enjoyed most of them. I'd never played a Ratchet & Clank game though. Considering how many of them there have been this is a bit surprising, but at some point I got the PS4 soft-reboot/movie tie-in in my library and I needed something to play, so here we are.

I might as well have stopped after the "soft-reboot/movie tie-in" part to be honest, because this review is only going in one direction after that. You are Ratchet, a small, light brown furry thing of indeterminate age and you live on a planet dreaming of one day becoming a Galactic Ranger. One day you try out and you get turned away, then a small talking robot falls out of the sky. You name him Clank, then you go off and save the world. 

As this is my first Ratchet & Clank game I get the feeling I'm missing some story. This isn't helped by this game throwing characters and locations at you constantly with seemingly very little connection from one world to the next. You go to a planet, you complete one or two objectives, you meet some people, you go somewhere else and do it again. There's never a chance to build any knowledge of what's going on or who anyone is, and there's no real reason for me to care either. 

With the game being released alongside an animated film I get the sense it's aimed at a primarily younger audience, and this shows in the gameplay. I called it a platformer to begin and this is somewhat generous. You control an anthropomorphic being that can double jump. That's about as far as the platforming goes. There are some occasional puzzles thrown in that are either much harder than the gameplay or proof that I'm going senile in my old age, but the only thing that's really sticking with me in terms of gameplay are the weapons.

Ratchet has a wrench which he can perform melee attacks with. This is useless against pretty much everything except small enemies which are more effectively and satisfyingly dispatched with a proper gun anyway, so it's useless. Throughout the game you unlock sixteen weapons of various different styles which gain experience and can be upgraded the more you use them. I cannot overstate how frustrating the weapons in this game are. For a start, outside of two different kinds of rocket launcher, almost none of them seem to do any damage. Even fully upgraded, you could enter a room full of the toughest enemies, use up all of your ammo for one weapon and still not manage to kill all of them. This reduces battles to enemies to nothing more than holding down the fire button and hoping you don't get hit. 

You know how in games with multiple weapons there's an easy way to switch between them? You might press right and left on the d-pad to cycle through them, or hold down a shoulder button then pick one with one of the sticks. You do that here too, only because the ammo runs out so quickly you'll be switching through them constantly. And you'll have to swap pages of them to actually see all of them. And you'll spend most of the time looking for one that's less upgraded than the others because you feel compelled to use those, meaning most of the time you're forcing yourself to use weapons that do less damage.

There's a quick swap feature which lets you assign a weapon to each button on the d-pad but this is somehow even more infuriating than what I've just described. It changes with no reason or warning, so you can press a button expecting something to start firing and then it doesn't. Then half the time you'll have to bring up the menu to change your options here anyway because the four options you've got set up have all run out of ammo. 

None of this is to mention that gun battles against multiple enemies are a cluttered mess on-screen anyway. You can't see a thing that's going on between you and your constantly changing weapons, the multiple enemies and multiple types of fire that are coming towards you, the bolts which you collect from enemies to buy ammo and upgrades with, it's all just dreadful to try and follow as it's happening.

Nothing sums up how hollow the game is and how awkward the combat is quite like Challenge Mode, which is effectively a New Game Plus mode you unlock at the end, just in case you want to play it again with slightly stronger weapons. There's a multiplier here which increases as long as you hit enemies without being hit yourself. The higher the multiplier, the more bolts you get. It's impossible to maintain this, and it's impossible to realise when you get hit. I didn't realise how bad this actually was until I played Challenge Mode but it's honestly amazing seeing proof of something which is happening in such a clumsy way you can't actually tell first-hand.

In playing this game I can see inspiration from some of the great action adventure platforming experiences I've had in my life. At least in gameplay and setting, I'm saying nothing about the story or the characters. These glimpses are so small though that I'm not even frustrated that a great and popular PlayStation series has been so disappointing in my first experience of it, I'm just glad that it's over and I don't have to think about it anymore. I don't know who this game is supposed to appeal to. As someone new to the series I'm not motivated to play any of the older games (and I can't do so easily because what is backwards compatibility?). For someone who does like the series, is this a good example of why? I doubt it. 

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On 13/02/2022 at 09:44, 54_and_counting said:

Just done another run of xcom 2 only this time with the "war of the chosen" addon installed, definitely makes it more challenging but the added resistance faction troopers help alleviate that to an extent

Cracking game that every mission can be different depending on rng and methods used, 

Agreed, but it annoyed me that there's a couple of missions that get removed from the campaign when you play WotC, including one that involves a returning character. Stupendous game either way; the wean asked me last week if we could do an XCOM playthrough again, as he likes to watch me play it.

Speaking of games he likes to watch me play, I finally gave the Gauntlet reboot a shot recently, and it's quite fun. Diablo for babies, but it's entertaining, looks nice, and the different characters give it a bit of variety. Also, Thor the Warrior is genuinely funny. Think it might be a lot of fun in co-op, but I can't persuade the child to team up with me, the wee shite  :angry:

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8 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Agreed, but it annoyed me that there's a couple of missions that get removed from the campaign when you play WotC, including one that involves a returning character. Stupendous game either way; the wean asked me last week if we could do an XCOM playthrough again, as he likes to watch me play it.

Speaking of games he likes to watch me play, I finally gave the Gauntlet reboot a shot recently, and it's quite fun. Diablo for babies, but it's entertaining, looks nice, and the different characters give it a bit of variety. Also, Thor the Warrior is genuinely funny. Think it might be a lot of fun in co-op, but I can't persuade the child to team up with me, the wee shite  :angry:

Cant remember that mission of the returning character, haven't played the vanilla game in ages so mind is drawing a blank, 

Loved the missions with the lost in it, some amount of headshot carnage, especially when your guys are trained up a bit, 

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7 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

Cant remember that mission of the returning character, haven't played the vanilla game in ages so mind is drawing a blank, 

Loved the missions with the lost in it, some amount of headshot carnage, especially when your guys are trained up a bit, 

She's not actually in the game, but it's the one where you discover that the creepy German doctor Vahlen has been performing unethical experiments and has unleashed even tougher aliens as a result.

Ah, I've just noticed that was part of a DLC that I already had when I first played the game. It's the DLC that's cut from the game if you play WotC, which is a shame.

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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 10/10

Magnificent. Brutal. Beautiful. Heart-pounding. Fascinating. Frustrating. These are just some of the words you could use to describe this game. 
I'm not as big a fan of this as Bloodborne or DS3, however it is not far behind. It is significantly more linear and a lot more overt in its storytelling, meaning there is, sadly a decent amount less environmental storytelling, which is a shame. 
Combat is very good, the posture system is great and learning to mikiri counter and jump on people's heads when they go for a sweep attack are very satisfying once you know which is which, more difficult if you don't, like me, understand Japanese. The pacing of combat is similar to Bloodborne and again having no shield really encourages you to be on the front foot most of the time which I love, although I do prefer Bloodborne.
The aesthetic is gorgeous, feudal Japan always looks beautiful with the pampas grass and cherry blossoms and Sekiro really leans into that, the buildings and monuments are beautiful too. 
Enemies for the most part are a bit human and not eldritch monstrosity enough for me, there are exceptions of course. However with most of the enemies being human-ish I feel that seems to add a bit of grounded-ness and also adds to the intensity and speed on most of the fights. 
The bosses are rock fucking solid, dirty cheating b*****ds, I have never felt unfairly wronged more often in a Souls game than in this, easily the hardest in the FromSoft games. However with that there are some truly memorable fights, Guardian Ape (both times) is a really intense and satisfying fight, Lady Butterfly is an early skill check and very difficult, Owl (father) is one of the most intense fights, same goes for Isshin Ashina the Sword Saint (and absolute cheating c**t) the sense of achievement when you beat them is incredible. Even Gyoubu is a really cool set-piece boss. 
However I would like to add a special mention for the little bitch Genichiro, absolute w**k-stain that I beat of three separate occasions and just wouldn't fucking die, until he did. Hope you enjoyed the many lightening reversals I did to you, you little c**t.

Only real negative if you will was just how difficult some of the bosses could be, and you would literally just have to facetank them until you done it, unlike other Souls games where summons were available, I think maybe either have summons available as a last resort or, and I think the game would really benefit from this, it should have something similar to the rally system in Bloodborne to allow you the chance to get some of your health back. In Sekiro I think it would work because it would be a genuine risk for the players because the enemies are so aggressive that if you go in for the rally and f**k it up, you're basically guaranteed to die.

Overall another fantastic game from FromSoftware and I would slot it easily into third place being Bloodborne (11/10) and Dark Souls 3 (10.5/10).

I am now off to replay HZD in preparation for the new one, and after that it will be time for Elden Ring, which I am buzzing for.

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3 hours ago, BFTD said:

She's not actually in the game, but it's the one where you discover that the creepy German doctor Vahlen has been performing unethical experiments and has unleashed even tougher aliens as a result.

Ah, I've just noticed that was part of a DLC that I already had when I first played the game. It's the DLC that's cut from the game if you play WotC, which is a shame.

Ah the alien rulers dlc, you can add it in to WotC in the options menu (along with other stuff like double the mission timers, double the advent timer etc) i think you can still play the dlc, but f**k having one of the chosen and one of they alien things on the same mission, thats a hiding potential lol

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5 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

Ah the alien rulers dlc, you can add it in to WotC in the options menu (along with other stuff like double the mission timers, double the advent timer etc) i think you can still play the dlc, but f**k having one of the chosen and one of they alien things on the same mission, thats a hiding potential lol

Nice! Will remember that for next time.

Although, yeah, you're probably right on that one  :shutup

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On 17/02/2022 at 21:05, 54_and_counting said:

Ah the alien rulers dlc, you can add it in to WotC in the options menu (along with other stuff like double the mission timers, double the advent timer etc) i think you can still play the dlc, but f**k having one of the chosen and one of they alien things on the same mission, thats a hiding potential lol

I'm sure that happens, does it not? I love Xcom, but my one criticism of WoTC is that maybe it drags it out a little too long. I felt those games were massive, with long periods at the end where you already had everything researched and a couple of full squads just ploughing through missions. Maybe I'm just too slow.

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43 minutes ago, GAD said:

I'm sure that happens, does it not? I love Xcom, but my one criticism of WoTC is that maybe it drags it out a little too long. I felt those games were massive, with long periods at the end where you already had everything researched and a couple of full squads just ploughing through missions. Maybe I'm just too slow.

They probably extended the game length by popular request. The most popular add-on for the original game is entitled Long War  :P

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6 hours ago, GAD said:

I'm sure that happens, does it not? I love Xcom, but my one criticism of WoTC is that maybe it drags it out a little too long. I felt those games were massive, with long periods at the end where you already had everything researched and a couple of full squads just ploughing through missions. Maybe I'm just too slow.

I think WotC is a bit longer aye cause of the constant covert missions and the introducing of the factions, but you can still blitz the main story mode quickly enough if you have the characters free to take on the missions 

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5 hours ago, BFTD said:

They probably extended the game length by popular request. The most popular add-on for the original game is entitled Long War  :P

 

9 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

I think WotC is a bit longer aye cause of the constant covert missions and the introducing of the factions, but you can still blitz the main story mode quickly enough if you have the characters free to take on the missions 

I think one thing we can all agree is Xcom is fucking brilliant.

As an aside, have you guys played anything else Xcom'y that measures up? I tried that "invisible Inc" but I wasn't keen, but I'd love something else similar that is as good.

 

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2 minutes ago, GAD said:

I think one thing we can all agree is Xcom is fucking brilliant.

As an aside, have you guys played anything else Xcom'y that measures up? I tried that "invisible Inc" but I wasn't keen, but I'd love something else similar that is as good.

No, and I do keep an eye out for anything that looks like it might be similar. I just couldn't get into Xenonauts. I think John Romero and his wife recently brought out a mafia game that was supposed to be a bit XCOM-y, but it got mixed reviews.

I remember eventually liking a game called Dead State, but it was difficult to get into - a bit of an odd cross between XCOM and the original Fallout games. Kind of live action until you get into combat with zombies, then it becomes turn-based. There's a complete playthrough on YouTube, so maybe take a look and see if it looks interesting.

It's nothing like as good, and you'd need to be OK with 16-bit era graphics, but I quite liked the Space Hulk game that was being made about fifteen years ago. They got a cease and desist letter from the Games Workshop, so had to change certain aspects and released it as Alien Assault in the end. It's free, so it costs nothing to try.

 

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