What Was The Last Game You Played?

[Alex_14]

I’ve been playing Far Cry 6. Really good fun. I have read that Far Cry 5 is better but I’m maybe just a bit easily pleased. It was on sale, £20 or so.

[SweeperDee]

New COD SP was fantastic, loved it.

Multiplayer is so far not bad. Trying the R6-Siege type game mode knockout, and it’s great. I was pretty shit hot at siege back in the day and watching cod players trying to play it is hilarious.

[SweeperDee]

[Theroadlesstravelled]

Scorn.

What the f**k is this?

[SweeperDee]

Scorn.
What the f**k is this?

HR Giger inspired horror game which demonstrates that even if you don’t know that you are part of “the machine”, it doesn’t devalue the horror and pain “the machine” inflicts on those around you.

Good video about it here from one of my favourite YouTubers:

[Chris_the_rover]

Completed Ghost of Tsushima,

Enjoyed it, far too many collectables

[Clown Job]

On 26/10/2022 at 02:44, Alex_14 said:

I’ve been playing Far Cry 6. Really good fun. I have read that Far Cry 5 is better but I’m maybe just a bit easily pleased. It was on sale, £20 or so.

I’d really recommend Far Cry 5 if you get the chance to play it.

Its really good, I had so much fun with it 

[well fan for life]

Started Death Stranding. I am very, very much enjoying the calmness of walking about the place making my deliveries. Particularly after tackling rage inducing nightmares like Elden Ring, Hollow Knight and Demon's Souls. 

[accies1874]

Completed Ghost of Tsushima,

Enjoyed it, far too many collectables

I did appreciate that you didn't need to get all of them for Platinum though

[Stellaboz]

Can others please recommend Snake Eater to Baracus. Poor lad hasn't experienced this absolute classic.

[superwell87]

On 31/10/2022 at 00:17, Clown Job said:

I’d really recommend Far Cry 5 if you get the chance to play it.

Its really good, I had so much fun with it 

Aye, Far Cry 5 is a cracking game. I second that recommendation. 

[Alex_14]

Thanks chaps, will get onto it once I finish Far Cry 6!

[Miguel Sanchez]

Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4, 2019)

In the Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition, Sayonara Wild Hearts is introduced with a word from its creator: 

I'm glad it does, because trying to explain what happens in Sayonara Wild Hearts, even to an audience which is familiar with video games, is quite difficult. A "distilled videogame" which speaks to the heart is, fittingly, about the most focused way of describing it. I'll start the way I normally do with games and see if it makes sense.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a video game in which you play a girl who has a broken heart. One day in an alternate universe some Tarot cards go rogue and try to steal harmony from the world and hide it in pieces of a broken heart. The three divine arcana of the Tarot take these broken heart pieces, turn them into a butterfly and send it through a portal to meet our heroine who is lying on her bed. She tries to catch the butterfly, falls through the window on her ceiling and ends up on a skateboard, running down a track which is unfolding in front of her, with hearts on it to collect while a remix of Debussy's Clair de Lune plays in the background. 

Got all that?

Gameplay is equally difficult to describe, with various mechanical influences obvious but the result being relatively unique. It's part rhythm game, part rail shooter, part endless runner, part QTE-laden boss fight. The basic objective of each level is to collect the hearts which appear on your path which contribute to your score and end of level rank. The hearts increase in value as you collect them without failing. Small hearts are worth 1 point, then 2, then 3 and so on, with large hearts worth 25, 50 and so on. The scoring system doesn't really change the impact of what you're playing, but performing actions to receive a score at the end of a level is about as distilled an experience you can have in video games, so it's worth mentioning. The top rank on each level will require you to complete it without failing (you don't 'die', you're just reset at a checkpoint and have to start a fresh combo) and being able to do this adds greatly to the sense of satisfaction you get from completing the game. Once you finish each level there's a permadeath game mode you can unlock too if you really want a challenge.

The levels themselves vary in terms of speed, complexity and atmosphere. The game is centred around its soundtrack, a selection of dreamy pop songs centred thematically around the girl with the broken heart and the Tarot magic trying to restore her balance and the balance in their original universe. Some levels/songs are short, frantic instrumental interludes which require quick reflexes to move around and collect enough hearts. Some are full, proper songs which have the same basic framework but much more going on, whether it's chasing/fighting other characters while riding a motorbike, or a stag, or chasing a giant three headed mechanical wolf. Some of the shorter levels can feel like an afterthought compared to the more fleshed out versions, but I think this is the complaint of someone who's played through them all several times and has been listening to the soundtrack constantly since I finished playing it. The game and levels were designed to work as a continuous narrative as well as being able to play each level individually in any order without them feeling out of place, and I think this is largely successful. 

In terms of art style, the character and world design is bold and distinctive. Although there isn't actually much variety in colours per level (some are pink, some are purple, some are green and there's a bit of yellow) the backgrounds and objects themselves are all designed well enough to make the game feel like a trippy, immersive and complex world even if you're only interacting with a rigid, linear path. You can tell the style works because the only things that really change throughout the game are the colours, but it never looks repetitive. The movements of the human characters are nice too. It's a very fluid game where movement is an important part of the experience, and even though it's a bold, blocky aesthetic the human figures look natural.

I think what I like best about the "distilled videogame" approach is how although most of the levels take in the pure genres I've described, and although the apparent intention from the game's creators was to make this as accessible as possible regardless of the player's experience, there are still nods to gaming history that pulled out some long-forgotten, aching nostalgia from somewhere in my brain. There's one level which evokes various things including Tetris, Asteroids, Bubble Ghost and the original Game Boy, but it marries this with a VR headset and Sayonara Wild Hearts' own core gameplay loop in a way which is worthy and appropriate. This is only my own knowledge of video games here, Wikipedia tells me there are many more influences besides this, and I'm sure these are just as keenly felt if you're able to recognise them. If you're going to put references to something like Tetris in your video game you have to earn it, and this absolutely does. The Heartbreak Passage interlude levels borrow a lot from the Disco Trip sections of Rayman 3 which is an automatic exemption from criticism in my book. Back when the Game Boy Colour was one of my main consoles I had a 92 in 1 cartridge from a local shop (which had several repeats and scrambled versions of Pokemon Gold and Silver so it wasn't 92 at all). I had these games and I played them despite not understanding them so when I'm playing this game now and chasing after a character who's putting a cartridge in their headset to make the games appear while a voice dripping with longing croons "I'm too young to remember/When the world was alive/I'm too old to start changing/And too tired to remind" the experience is simply heartbreaking.

Which leads me nicely into the music. As I said earlier, the shorter, instrumental interludes are nice on their own merits but can feel a bit throwaway. Some of them might only last a minute or two and you're so focused on trying to pick up hearts and not run into a wall you don't feel as attuned to the music. When you're more familiar with the game and have played all of the levels several times this is just exacerbated. I wanted these to be more, and I ended up increasingly conscious that they weren't. The full songs are something else though. It's not my usual genre, but I've enjoyed listening to these on their own since I've played the game. While reading about the game's creation I discovered the demos of these songs and how they were originally written/intentioned to be a lo-fi surf rock kind of affair, and that just wouldn't have worked at all. The modern, energetic female vocal pop style works better on its own merits, but also complements the art style well. The whole thing feels like it could be a dream, and this sense fits together well with the overarching story and the point of the story. If you read this far, even if you don't play the game or even watch the game, listen to some of the songs. Musically, lyrically, they're perfect for what's happening onscreen.

While the levels were designed to be one continuous narrative as well as playable individually, where the game does lack is in bringing them all together. I mentioned the Tarot cards earlier. I don't know anything about Tarot or arcana. Each level features one of the cards which comes up on screen either at the start or end and they correspond to something which is part of the level, either in how you play or how the level is designed. The card flashes up onscreen and it's so brief you barely have a chance to see it or figure out what it is. I feel like this is an important aspect of the game's message (there's even a special pack of themed cards you can buy from the Annapurna website which I'm very tempted by) but it's really hard to see what the relevance is when they're this fleeting. I think even if you had prior knowledge of the cards you would struggle to understand their significance here. It's not that there's a lack of context for what you're doing, but that the context is provided but not really explained or given any time for the player to explore it themselves. I like the game, I want to know more about this, but I feel like I'm not able to. This also extends to the player character, who we only really interact with visually. We see her go through a change over the course of the game but she's mostly along for the ride during levels. We don't know much about her outside of the framing narration which is quite superficial in this respect.

I think my problem here is that everything I've described is largely an emotional response to the game. The gameplay is refined enough to be instinctive for me, someone who's spent the best part of the last twenty five years playing games. It's simple and accessible enough that I just know what I'm doing. The simple art style and prompts add to this as well. As much as this is all very effective, it does mean the game can feel slightly superficial. It starts with the girl being broken hearted and ends with her being restored by her experiences,  but throughout there's virtually no exploration of her or what she's doing. I've seen some theories in YouTube comments and they make sense but it's not an exaggeration to say that the game offers nothing, other than maybe saying love is a way to overcome your obstacles. It's probably a nitpick from me having run through the game so many times over the past few weeks, but I want to be more invested in the player character than I feel I am. Is it a positive if the game affects me so much that while I recognise it's brilliant, I want even more of it? I think so. 

I went into Sayonara Wild Hearts not knowing what I was going to play. Even in my first playthrough I didn't quite know what was happening. If you play the whole thing and watch all the cutscenes it will take around an hour to complete. After the time I've spent with it, I don't think I can imagine my life without it. Make of that what you will.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I didn’t like Far Cry 6. I didn’t like the weapons or the combat.

I thought it was the worst game of the franchise

[Stellaboz]

I need something big to get ripped into in a couple of weeks with the wife away.

Gta,rdr, ME legacy and FF7 all recently done. 

Tempted to go back into Skyrim

[Mr. Brightside]

Dad of Boy 2 tomorrow, my man.

[SweeperDee]

Sonic Frontiers is some laugh. A good laugh right enough. Hopefully this is the groundwork for a Next-Gen Sonic Adventure game.

[Gaz]

I'm playing through Jedi: Fallen Order. Which is very good. The map sucks, though.

[J_Stewart]

I need something big to get ripped into in a couple of weeks with the wife away.
Gta,rdr, ME legacy and FF7 all recently done. 
Tempted to go back into Skyrim

Playing Horizon: Zero Dawn for the first time at the minute, about half way through and really enjoying it. Good open world without being too big, plenty to do, and story is excellent so far. Would recommend

[Stellaboz]

11 hours ago, J_Stewart said:

Playing Horizon: Zero Dawn for the first time at the minute, about half way through and really enjoying it. Good open world without being too big, plenty to do, and story is excellent so far. Would recommend

Played it a few years back, speeds up like mad near the end but aye fun game.