What Was The Last Game You Played?

[Hamish's Passenger]

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

Have you played Forbidden West?

[Miguel Sanchez]

Firewatch (PS4, 2016)

Firewatch is a walking simulator set in 1989 about a man named Henry who takes a job as a fire lookout in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming after his wife is diagnosed with early onset dementia. As things happen and time passes Henry's relationship with his wife, Jules, and his supervisor, Delilah, are explored, along with other things.

I've had two playthroughs of Firewatch and it's taken me a while to decide what I think about it. As walking simulators go it's pretty standard stuff. You walk around a fairly large area of national park with trees and canyons and rocks. You can technically explore it at will, although some areas aren't accessible until you've reached a certain point in the story. If you just follow the game as it intends however you still feel a natural sense of exploration. The park itself isn't really brimming with features for you interact without outside of the story objects, but it's pleasant and atmospheric enough to enjoy wandering about in for a few hours.

With that in mind, there are two points I need to raise as what I would consider bad design. At one point in the story, you will find a fence between you and the place you are trying to reach. You - player and character - quickly determine the fence is insurmountable. Delilah says that there were some firemen nearby recently and they might have an axe you can use to break in. I went to the place the firemen were, but I couldn't reach it. I hadn't pressed the action button enough at the fence to trigger the next part of the game. A similar thing happened later when you're directed to a certain area of the map through a coded message. I consulted the document in game with the answer and determined where I was supposed to go. Only when I got there I hadn't triggered the next part of the game because I hadn't triple checked the location in the first place, so I had to go all the way back to do that. I played through the game in one sitting over 3-4 hours and these incidents cost me at least half an hour combined. For a game which doesn't have that much to actually interact with, this is virtually unforgiveable.

Walking simulators almost always live or die based on how enjoyable it is to walk around. As much as I will always maintain that a good story and characters can absolve a game of almost all criticism, if you can't get the walking part of a walking sim right, what hope is there? Firewatch has a bold, chunky design style which I enjoyed a lot. It's first person and you don't interact with any other people so the art is very environment-centric. Reducing a national park location to bold rockfaces, trees and grass through a limited colour palette might sound boring, but it works. It has an almost childlike quality, as if someone has coloured everything in using the boldest colours possible. The grass is green, the rocks are grey, the sky is blue. It's great. The game takes place over various days and the colour combinations change through daytime, night time, sunset, and so on. Each of these is striking in their own way and now that I think about it, the night time sections are the most evocative. Here you feel most conscious of being out in nature at night, under the stars. You can almost feel the chill in the air. There isn't any wildlife to interact with, but the environment doesn't feel lifeless unless you're running around in places you shouldn't be in yet like I was. The soundtrack to this is suitably minimalist, but I honestly can't remember it well enough to say whether this is a positive or not. If it doesn't pull me out of the pleasant environment, I'm going to say it was probably fitting.

After I'd finished the game I was slightly let down. I knew that a lot of people who had played this had positive things to say about it. It took me a few days and another playthrough to realise what I'd been missing. There are effectively five characters in the game. Henry, Delilah, Henry's wife and two people who were in the park before Henry who you learn about. The game starts with a surprisingly affecting sequence with text on the screen telling the story of how Henry and Jules got married. You can make a few choices but the result always ends up the same. Even though you're just picking text options and you don't know who these people are there's a simple, effective sadness about what happens to the relationship. It's interspersed with brief parts where you control Henry as he arrives at the park, and sets up the start of the game nicely.

Beyond this, Henry and Delilah take up most of the dialogue. You can talk as much or as little as you want to Delilah when you're going around doing fire lookout stuff, and your relationship can go in different ways depending on the responses you pick. I think this is more limited than it lets on, but I'm not going to play the game ten times to find out. I think the game's pacing is partly what lets it down here. You start at Day 1 then there's Day 2 and then there are a few minutes of Days 15 and 30-something I think and while the brief conversations you have here are notable, there is a slight sense that the relationship development is being skipped. You still feel invested in the two of them, but it's always going to be hard to condense two and a half months into a few hours. I understand why, but it's a bit jarring when it first happens. When choosing the dialogue options the first time I picked how I thought I'd feel in that situation. It didn't always seem like the right option. That probably sounds about right.

Anyway, a few days after I'd finished I was thinking about the game and I realised something that had stopped me feeling properly invested in the characters. You don't see anyone. You see a photo of Henry and a few drawings, but that's it. Delilah is a voice on a radio. Jules is a half remembered voice in a dream. The two others from the park who I'm not going to spoil are only properly explored towards the end, and by the time this happens the reveal the game has been working to is nowhere near as mysterious or shocking as you think it's going to be. As a result the game can feel quite anti-climatic by the time you finish it. The lack of people to interact with can make the game feel empty. I think this affected me the first time around because I kept expecting to find something, but didn't.

Starting a second playthrough with all this in mind I changed a few dialogue options around. I thought more about the old park rangers who had been communicating through written letters in the cache boxes which you can find. I thought about Henry and Delilah's relationship and how on my first go I had tried to project a certain sense of character in my responses. Then on my second go as I noticed Delilah's answers were all the same I realised what the game is about. Mundanity. But in a positive way. I realised why I hadn't been able to properly understand what had been going on. It's a game about a forty year old guy in a largely empty forest in 1989. Admittedly I probably expected it to be about the breakdown of Henry's marriage through circumstances outwith his control, but it's not. But it is.

Firewatch is a game about escape. It's a game about escape from something - an event or an existence, but unlike most media on this subject it's not about the act of escape, it's what happens afterwards. It's not about the relationship between Henry and Jules breaking down then him leaving, it's about what happens after he left. The answer is a lot of nothing. Escaping your problems doesn't necessarily achieve anything when you take them with you. The game is more subtle than it first appears. It's almost as if it lulls you into a false sense of security with the nice surroundings and casually strolling around looking at them (there's a sprint button if you have to backtrack like I did). I ended up really feeling an affinity for Henry's situation. I, too, want to run away from all my problems and live in the forest with no internet for a few months. In a way it's a shame Firewatch is as brief as it is. I don't think the brevity of the actual gameplay properly reflects the character development or feeling of immersion in the world or the people. It's a game which leaves you with as many questions as it does answers, but the same probably goes for the characters in the world itself. Ultimately though, the escape will come to an end and you'll have to go back to face up to what you were running from.

Firewatch wasn't really what I expected. What I got didn't make feel good, or happy, or especially satisfied. If I'm to leave on any sort of final summation of my opinion, I think that was the point.

[well fan for life]

I have been having a lovely time playing Death Stranding recently. Just chilling in my truck delivering my parcels. I don't even know what the story is anymore. Only that Lea Seydoux turns up every so often and the dead folk want to murder me. 

[SweeperDee]

The new DMZ mode for Warzone is very good. First time COD have done something like this so if they keep refining it I don’t see how Battlefield can compete.

[Busta Nut]

what does DMZ mean?

[SweeperDee]

what does DMZ mean?

Demilitarised Zone; it’s like Call of Duty x Tarkov.

[Stellaboz]

Stray. In middle of it just now, great fun as a cat knocking shit over and running around.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Trackmania Turbo (PS4. 2016)

Does a perfect video game exist? Can it? Can a perfect anything exist in the absolute sense of the word? I've been thinking about that recently. I'm not well-versed in a wide enough range of genres but I have a vague theory that a perfect example of each video game genre exists. It's probably hard to decide on what is defined as 'perfect', and I'm sure you can get really particular about it. Can you call something perfect only if it's completely without fault? If not, is there a certain amount of faults you can accommodate before you stop being able to call it perfect? Is it going to be a law of diminishing returns if you tried to name one perfect game for each genre - if you were unable to find a game genuinely without fault but ended up having to settle for something purely to fulfil the exercise?

Trackmania Turbo is a racing game a bit different from most of the ones I've played over the years. It's a series I'm not familiar with, but conveniently it can be summed up easily. It's a time trial game. You have an assortment of tracks, a car to drive through them and target times to beat. In Turbo there are 200 tracks across four different environments and five different difficulty settings. There are other game modes and things like a custom track creator but my focus was the campaign.

Throughout those 200 tracks I had a fairly universal response to each new one. First run, how am I supposed to do this? Second run, no really how am I supposed to do this? Then I just go slowly enough to finish and start figuring out which turn or jump comes next. The longest tracks take about two minutes so it's a relatively quick turnaround. Then I improve a bit more and a bit more until I eventually reach the point where I know I'm able to finish the track under the target time, and set about trying to be consistent enough to manage that.

I'm a bit ahead of myself here. I think even as far as tracks in the 120-160 range I was able to manage a few golds on my first attempt. It's when you get to the properly hard stuff at the end you appreciate this game for what it is. Its faults are laid bare in the process, but they don't detract from the experience. Trackmania's courses are fast. They have turbo pads, they have jumps, they have loop the loops and vertical corkscrews you need to drift round. They have obstacles and different track surfaces with different handling properties (f**k sand) and a brightly coloured environment with some upbeat electronic music in the background. The gold times need a seemingly perfect amount of momentum carried between each curve and jump, and at higher difficulties you might have several of these chained together, or a really narrow gap you need to land in or jump through to make it extra tricky.

The shift from feeling like it's not possible to get round a track never mind get round it at speed is as regular as clockwork. The sense of satisfaction with each completed track is always the same. The difficulty level spikes a bit in the final forty tracks (#180 is the true endgame, the next 20 don't compare at all) but the feeling of achievement is never diminished. Sometimes there's more relief included than others. A video game with basic, consistent controls and physics is something I feel like I don't play a lot of these days. If you play a sandbox or an FPS then you might reach a point where you feel like you can do anything. The problem is, you don't actually know where the edges are. You can't appreciate pushing your control to the absolute limit because you don't know what it is, and outside of speedruns which don't count as normal gameplay you never properly feel completely in control of a game. Here, you can. You know what the car will do. You know what will happen when you press the buttons. You just need to manage that level of control. The constant chase to replicate or improve your best corner or jump is as addictive as it is exhilarating.

It's important to stress at this point that compared to some of the aliens whose videos I watched for reference, I'm nowhere near the limits of Trackmania Turbo and I'd be nowhere near any other game in the series. There is, feasibly, an absolute limit for track times in this game (which I suppose there is in any racing game) and the level of finesse and control some people can exert trying to reach this is remarkable and well beyond my brain or fingers. However, in my time with this game I could always feel myself getting better and closer to where I had to be to beat it. I wasn't always consistent on my runs even when I knew how or what to do, but the feeling of complete control over the car and complete understanding of the surfaces/elements was something which built every time and which felt amazing when they paid off. When it comes off, you just wonder how it took you so long to finish it.

You can't spend as long as I did with Turbo and not pick up on some faults. That's the best part of six months, on and off for something which was going to be the third rarest platinum trophy I've ever earned. The biggest faults are effectively quality of life complaints. Making the menus a bit less awkward. Not being able to turn off ghosts on courses you've completed. None of these things affect the driving though, and that's what matters.

I think the only perfect video games I've ever played are Tetris and Journey. If I sat with a list of everything I've ever played there are games I wouldn't change anything about, but which probably have too many memories or experiences associated with them for me for me to provide an objective assessment of them. Trackmania Turbo infuriated, thrilled and enriched me in equal amounts. I don't know if I've peaked in terms of video game achievement (there are one or two things I'd consider harder I'd like to try one day) but if I do top this, I don't know if I'd find the journey there as consistently satisfying. Ultimately Trackmania Turbo is simply as pure a video game experience as you could hope to find. I'm still very glad I'm finished with it though.

[DA Baracus]

Dead Rising 4

Like the previous ones this is just good fun where you get to kill hoardes of zombies using various items and weapons, often combined to make amusing combo weapons. There are more vechicles this time and you can now make combo vechicles. A big plus is that the map is open, so you can fire between areas as you like doing side missions or finding blueprints for weapons etc.

The main storyline is still linear but you don't need to immediately do it as, unlike previous games in in the series, there's no timer (I assume there's one in 3 as haven't played that one)! That is the biggest plus for me, as it always annoyed me in 1 and 2 that you didn't have time to explore more and do more missions, often having to pick between doing things instead of being able to do them all. 

The save system is a bit shit here. There are checkpoints in the game where it will autosave. You can't manually save and there are no fixed areas to go and save the game, unlike 1 and 2. A bit annoying at first but you get used to it.

Edited November 30, 2022 by DA Baracus

[Stellaboz]

Finished Stray last night.

 

Wonderful little game. Took 7 hours to complete but can be done in around 2 if you skim through it (there's an achievement for it so doable).

 

It's just so fun running around as a wee cat, knocking shit over including a few robots and getting up to no good.

 

It's not a difficult game, but it is fun and the story is actually very well presented, as is the world. 

 

Essentially you lose your family in a world where robots have survived where humans have died out and you end up inside a walled city, with the intention of getting out. 

Your little robot companion B12 actually becomes really lovable as well, as are some of the robots you come across.

There's also a subtle nod to Metal Gear Solid later on, in a very feline way. Absolutely loved that. 

[BFTD]

On 24/11/2022 at 20:17, SweeperDee said:

Demilitarised Zone; it’s like Call of Duty x Tarkov.

You know you're a real geek when you hear that phrase and don't immediately think of men with guns.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Bastion (PS4, 2015)

Bastion is a 2.5D button masher about a Kid who wakes up one day to discover the ground isn't the ground any more. He's on a bit of rock floating where the world used to be and there's an extremely deep, smooth voice narrating the things he's doing with a remarkable degree of prescience. After you get up and walk around eventually you reach the Bastion, before travelling into parts of the world looking for things to restore it, and find out what the Calamity is that caused the ground to disappear.

The story in Bastion is a bit nonsense to be honest and I realise as I'm trying to type it out that I really can't summarise it. Caelondia was a city which was at war with the Ura and through a few characters we meet along the way (and the game's narration) we discover the history of conflict between these two peoples. The only information you get is from the narration, so a lot of the time it's hard to think the game is something that's especially deep or fleshed-out, since you'd get a similar idea of the story if you were playing it with your eyes shut.

That isn't to say the world and the narration isn't engaging. The voice (which is from one of the NPCs) is always enjoyable to listen to and there's not really a way of describing the atmosphere he creates besides... cool. The game is relatively minimalist in terms of its gameplay, environments and music and the result is a neatly stylised experience which keeps you engaged throughout and strikes the right blend of giving and withholding detail. You're never overwhelmed with lots of information, because there isn't enough for that. There's always just enough to be getting on with and it's all so pleasant you just want to keep going.

The art style helps a lot with this. There's a slight hand-drawn feel to the ground and environments. Because the Calamity destroyed the world you have a vague, muddy background with the ground appearing in tiles as the Kid walks across it. As these appear it helps stop the game stop feeling small and constricted, creating the illusion of scale where there isn't any. It all just looks nice, and the movement of the environment is synchronised with the narration to add to it. Everything from the characters, objects, enemies and weapons all have a unique charm about them, so however you choose to play there's always something to catch your eye.

You collect different weapons as you progress through the levels. For the most part you'll have a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, and you can collect materials to upgrade these as you return to the Bastion hub world. By the time you upgrade whichever weapons you're using (or the mortar/flamethrower combo if you know what you're doing) you'll pretty much be unstoppable, but there are other decent options if you want to vary your experience. There's a basic levelling system too which gives the Kid upgrades, adding things like better damage or absorbing health from enemies. You can also add modifiers to the enemies which increases your XP and Fragment rates, allowing you to buy and use more upgrades. There's something for everyone in the weapons, and if you really really like the game there's a lot of replay value from trying different combos.

As I started writing this review I had to try quite hard to stop myself from calling the game a roguelike. It looks and plays like one (it's by the same team who would later make Hades, and it controls very similarly) and it's really the best way to describe the combat. There are lots of different enemy types which require different approaches to overcome. They all get introduced with a nice bit of backstory from the narration and it just adds a bit of character to the thing you're battering the square button at. The movement controls aren't very fluid (which makes sense, given it was released on mobile several years before PS4) so occasions where you face a lot of enemies can feel a bit overwhelming. The balance is usually fair enough for this to not be a problem though, unless you're playing with lots of modifiers. If you really want to test out the combat there are four arenas you can enter where you learn a bit of backstory for the game's four characters, facing waves of enemies. There isn't any gameplay benefit from this, but it's a good challenge.

Bastion is a pretty short game but it just works very well. The whole thing feels very tightly controlled from a creative and mechanical perspective. It's pretty short and the story/characterisation is very direct, but everything feels like just the right amount. I don't think there's anything about it I'd change. Maybe the effectiveness of the shield at countering attacks. That's about it. I enjoyed it and I'm glad I finally got around to playing it.

[Gaz]

I really enjoyed Firewatch, even if the ending was a bit poor.

I'm currently playing through The Long Dark, which is a survival game set in the Canadian wildnerness. You have to constantly look for resources to keep warm, rested, satiated and hydrated.

I think it started off as an online survival game but then the devs released a story in different episodes. There are currently four episodes and another one to be released. I'm on episode four and really enjoying it.

[superwell87]

1 hour ago, Gaz said:

I really enjoyed Firewatch, even if the ending was a bit poor.

Aye, the ending wasn't the greatest, but was not the worst. Overall it was a good game, with a decent story. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

On 02/12/2022 at 20:23, Gaz said:

I really enjoyed Firewatch, even if the ending was a bit poor.

I'm currently playing through The Long Dark, which is a survival game set in the Canadian wildnerness. You have to constantly look for resources to keep warm, rested, satiated and hydrated.

I think it started off as an online survival game but then the devs released a story in different episodes. There are currently four episodes and another one to be released. I'm on episode four and really enjoying it.

 

On 02/12/2022 at 21:47, superwell87 said:

Aye, the ending wasn't the greatest, but was not the worst. Overall it was a good game, with a decent story. 

I alluded to it already but I think the ending was fine. I was disappointed at first because of the apparent mystery the game leads you towards, but the twist is that there is no twist. There's not supposed to be. Henry and Delilah are trying to escape and want something spectacular to take them away, but there isn't anything. 

[DA Baracus]

Thought Firewatch was decent.

Anyway:

Return to Monkey Island

The art style is a little jarring at first, but you quickly get used to it, and then it's like jumping back in to the first two games. 

There's a lot of familiar characters and locations, as well as some new ones. There are puzzles aplenty, with the obligitary couple of frustrating as f**k ones.

Mostly really enjoyable stuff, especially since it's on Game Pass.

The ending can f**k right off though.

[DA Baracus]

Vampire Survivors

Fucking hell, can already feel I'm going to be hooked on this, and I've only done a few run throughs after installing it earlier.

It's a pretty minimalist game where the basic premise is you simply have to survive by avoiding waves of enemies. The catch? Each minute stronger enemies appear. Oh, and the enemies come from all sides of the screen. Fortunately your character has weapons, and you can upgrade them and get new ones. However, you'll need to do lots of playthroughs to get the gold to upgrade your stats. The longest I've survived so far has been just over 10 minutes, although I've only had a few goes.

I'd strongly urge you to give it a shot. Takes about 2 minutes to download and install, and it's also free on Game Pass.

[BFTD]

7 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

Vampire Survivors

Fucking hell, can already feel I'm going to be hooked on this, and I've only done a few run throughs after installing it earlier.

It's a pretty minimalist game where the basic premise is you simply have to survive by avoiding waves of enemies. The catch? Each minute stronger enemies appear. Oh, and the enemies come from all sides of the screen. Fortunately your character has weapons, and you can upgrade them and get new ones. However, you'll need to do lots of playthroughs to get the gold to upgrade your stats. The longest I've survived so far has been just over 10 minutes, although I've only had a few goes.

I'd strongly urge you to give it a shot. Takes about 2 minutes to download and install, and it's also free on Game Pass.

£3.19 on Steam just now too.

Looks very Smash TV.

[Steve_Wilkos]

Downloaded Mass Effect Legendary Edition (currently on PS Plus monthly games)... fired it up for a bit last night and did the Eden Prime mission, still amazing after all these years. 

[scottsdad]

Is F1 manager any good? I saw this and kind of thinking about it. 

I haven't played a game of any kind for months but thinking ahead to the christmas break.