Search the Community

This is more of a personal archive than a real topic, as I doubt there's much interest in this game here. Fundamentally it's a relatively straightforward resource-collecting and crafting game. The gameplay loop consists of collecting wood, flowers, stone and other materials to use for some art & craft stuff you can then sell at the weekly eponymous night market, which in turn gives you enough money to buy new gathering tools, which in turn unlock new areas with new resources, which, you guessed it, allow you to craft more stuff. You basically go through this process on repeat until you reach the final area, as every area is part of a larger story that involves a mysterious agency, a legendary guardian animal and a truckload of cats. It does mix up proceedings here and there though. The first time you enter an area you have to free a couple of caged cats and get rid of the agents there, which in gameplay speak is always a little stealth section (albeit a very simplistic one – think OoT's castle garden). Gathering and crafting involves completing short QTEs and every night market ends with a little minigame, like a play, a cat race or something along those lines. It's not really a game that'll draw you in for its gameplay mechanics, but rather its unique charm and presentation, the classic carrot dangling in front of you and a genuinely touching narrative that falls a bit into coming-of-age territory. I've heard people say they find it grindy and repetitive and I technically can't argue against it. Sometimes you need to gather certain materials a couple of (ingame) days in a row to get what you need and if you mess up hoarding season-specific items like, say, certain spring flowers, you'll have to wait for the night market in summer to stock up on them. But I still quite enjoyed it, it's super relaxing and super adorable and its quirky sense of humor and narrative can pull you along when maybe the gameplay alone couldn't. I saw the credits after roughly 20 hours but it's also open-ended, so you can still go about maxing out friendship levels with NPCs (which always involves giving them items you crafted or found) or completing the little museums with resources you found, even after the story has reached its conclusion. Switch version is a bit wonky (though way better than on release) with comparatively long loading times that also result in the music stuttering, making the whole thing feel a bit unpolished. There's also some formatting errors in the text (they have it set up to give plurals always an -s, so you end up with stuff like 'Got 10 sands' or '5 Special Nikko Flowerss'). It also, oddly, doesn't use the B button or the D-pad at all, so you have to navigate menus with the stick and close them with the same button you opened them with. But I can forgive those problems as it's made by a really small team that also had to take a long break in development due to burnout. I suspect at least the loading times being shorter on other platforms, but I also think it's really well suited to handheld play. Disclaimer: it's not a farming game, despite what this image might suggest.

Maraca based rhythm action game. The original on dreamcast was great, with maraca controllers, not played it in years mind. Was a bit sceptical about this, didnt think the joycons would work that well for the motion controls, but it works a lot better than i expected, probably partially because it seems pretty lenient in recognising hits. But at the same time it doesnt work quite as well as as it could, id expect the vr version to be better, think its quest exclusive? the music selection is sort of similar in that its better than i expected, but it could also have been better still. Didnt recognise most of the songs by name but playing through them theres certainly enough songs that ive been enjoying playing through, even though i maybe wouldnt listen to them outside the game. To register normal hits It doesnt work based on the height of the controller, it uses the angle of the controller, so if you hold your hands up the controller will angel up automatically, for middle hits your supposed to hold them straight, and for down you point them down. Its probably easier to explain how it works with a video (ill try and add one later) but theres 6 locations you can shake a maraca/controller at (top middle bottom, and each have left/right) thats how the original worked, with iirc some posing where you hold a pose. The new version has maybe too much posing and other stuff like movements/dancing stuff going on. The ones where you slide the controllers around to match movements on screen are a bit odd too in that they start far too quickly for you to follow them entirely (unless you memorise them i guess), the game doesnt care too much though and will give you a perfect hit as long as you follow the last bit ok, its sometimes a bit vague what youre supposed to be doing though which isnt great for a rhythm action game. Usually the game just gives you the benefit of the doubt and registers a hit even if im not sure i hit the note, sometimes it goes the other way though, although maybe i need to get better at it. Because of the above, if you want to play it seriously for high scores and stuff its maybe not great, although again maybe i need to get better. But i would say it is pretty fun and im enjoying it, no regrets on getting it. not tried playing with a pad yet, which worked well in the original, suspect with all the dancing/sliding going on in this it might not work as well here? the graphics i quite like (after thinking the graphics looked a bit crap in the trailer) its mainly just a load of mad stuff going on in the background, and ive got a cool hat. Its very colourful. for sonic fans the blue guy is in this dancing and stuff. oh yeah theres a roulette thing which seems odd, you can toggle it off, which i have. theres also an ios version, not sure if its quite the same game though. ive mostly been playing the songs in the quickplay mode, but there is a sort of single player thing which seems to be just challenges, most of which are quite easy so far but the one to not miss notes is really annoying but looks like it can be skipped. anyone else giving it a go? The trailer shows how the gameplay works, although in very short bits

I don't know anything about the main game mode, only played the free battle royale rip off mode. Played that mode loads. It's a rip off of that playerunknown battlegrounds (pubg) game, I'm not too up on that game but the main differences I think are that there are no vehicles in this and you can build stuff in this. There's some controversy about ripping off the idea, and maybe some other stuff, I'm not sure really. I guess the first copies of something popular always get more stick. On the plus side this game has sold me pubg and I'll be getting it on Xbox. Anyway back to fortnite, I think it's great, especially in a team, you start in the party bus with about 100 people with only a pick axe, look at the map, pick a spot to drop in, if there's people going to the same place do you try to get there first and get a gun and fight straight away, or divert to somewhere else. the map constantly shrinks in size as the storm covers the island, loot is random. I prefer to start near the outside in usually less populated areas, running in with the storm there's less likely to be people behind you, but you probably won't get as good loot as if you'd gone to a town. When you see someone do you fight or hide, there's constant decisions like this going on, it's always different and often cool stuff happens. when you get to the end do you build a fort or try and hide. I'm not sure I'm really explaining it very well but then apparently loads of people watch pubg on the internet so everyone probably already knows. I think my friend said this, it sums it up well saying it's a bit like playing a zombie/apocalypse survival film. The building works well too, you can get some really impressive structures people have built at the end. Anyway yeah it's really good, especially for free. Anyone else playing it? Oh yeah I think I should give them some money, but currently I don't like any of the outfits and they're about a tenner each or something, which puts me off, if it was maybe a pack of 5 for £15 or something, and I liked a few of them, I think something like that I'd be much more likely to spend.

A Space for the Unbound is an adventure game set in Indonesia in the 1980s. It’s about a couple of high school students but there are magical elements to it too, which gives it the atmosphere of something like a Studio Ghibli or Makoto Shinkai film. I’m impressed with it so far. If nothing else, l would love to see a Final Fantasy game made in this style.

Wasn't sure whether to create a new thread for this or put my thoughts in the original MK8 thread so I'll put my impressions here for the time being, mods can merge with the original thread if they'd rather Been playing quite a lot since I got it on Friday, exclusively Online Race. Played for 2-3 hours on Friday with the old man, another few hours later in the evening, more the next morning then I played it drunk when I got in last night So yeah, haven't been able to put it down for long truth be told, that crack level addictiveness of MK is definitely still here in spades, constantly find myself saying 'just one more race', 'must end the session on a high' and things like that. Been tougher than expected to get into the swing of things, took me a hell of a long time before I eventually won a race, was usually running 7th-10th (playing it drunk doesn't help things either) but seem to of got better today and have been finishing 1st-4th most of the time. Not tried the battle mode yet to be honest, don't remember playing it much on the N64 so I'm not sure whether I'll like it or not, will give it a go but race will always been my main priority. The new tracks are all decent but not overly impressive apart from the Zelda and Excitebike ones, absolutely love the Zelda one with the rupees instead of coins, master sword jump and the little sound effects throughout the course, the others haven't really impressed me though, good but not great, may need to race on them more before I get used to them though. As far as negatives go, had lots of issues getting disconnected from races, changed my DNS settings and that seems to of rectified the issue, unfortunately I'm not able to join friends games though , just gives me a 'couldn't connect to users console' error message so that's been quite annoying.

I bought the All in one pack for this way back in 2017, played it once, and assumed my free trial would be long expired but no, it’s still active, for however long. I played it for two hours today, basically to the end of the introduction to the game, which felt like it was more or less completely offline. Impressions so far - well the graphics show the game’s age, it was originally released in 2012 on the Wii. But the cut-scenes and close-ups are quite nice. There is no voice acting in the game but the music is nice, and already I think I’ve heard more variety than in the entirety of XI. Battles are initiated by running into enemies in the field, you can move around in battle which seems to be the biggest change, although I’ve no idea if it serves any practical purpose. Four years ago (!) I struggled with the Japanese but I can read it more smoothly now. I have a week off with absolutely nothing to do, so I’m gonna sink some time into this. It will be my first mmorpg experience.

This is like a fps parkour shooter type thing, like super meat boy in 3d, like cloudbuilt, or ghostrunner with more shooting. Also its like a timetrial thing where you have to beat levels asap to get gold/silver/etc medals, which you actually need to progress. You need gold or above on a certain number of levels to progress to the next set, so far anyway this hasnt been too tricky. The levels are between 10 seconds and about a minute long so far, ive done the first 20. theres a jump button, a fire button, a switch card button, and an alternate fire/ability button, all on bumpers/triggers which is good. You pick up card and that decides what fire/alternate do, it sort of works like a context sensitive button, so youll pick up a pistol just before you need to do a double jump (pistol alternate fire is a second jump). Alternate fire also throws the card away. Other cards have alternates like a boost, or a grenade launcher you can use to blast yourself up high. Its a good system as it keeps the button count low so they can all be on the triggers. I found it can confuse me at times though because the same button does loads of different things which sort of fries my brain a bit. Theres some talking/story stuff but it seems unnecessary and can be fast forwarded. its not surprising i like this as i like stuff like ghostrunner and cloudbuilt, and so far its been really good. Unclear if the confusing multi use button stuff will halt my progress later on. anyone giving it a go?

Charming! I thought I'll give this a quick go as I was mostly free this evening. Cut to 3 hours later and 22% of the game completed. This is a metroidvania, geared towards younger games in terms of difficulty. Checkpoint's abound and death is effectively nothing more than a marker on the map (the same X that TotK used). The writing/humour is surprisingly on point. I did get the occasional chuckle from it. Donald (my selection of the roster) is basically sarcasm incarnate. So the ideal for me. The expression in the image above, sums up his attitude quite well. The gameplay is quite intuitive without being overly handholding. I know there is some variance to the abilities of each character. For example, you get a double jump ability starting off. Mickey gets a jetpack. Donald gets a rocket. Which works on a trajectory arc. Same basic idea with different execution. On the subject of jumping, as this is at base level a platformer. There is a course correcting floatiness to it. If your double jump has you on collision course with an enemy. You do have a little leeway to avoid it if you're fast enough. Aside from bosses. Enemies are also not to be fought. They are obstacles (sometimes minor puzzles) to avoid. Which too is quite refreshing. Some of the mission goals are a little repetitive, but overall strong impressions so far. Oh and please note: This is a 4 player co-op experience also. The camera pans to accommodate this in certain maps. I am however, exclusively playing this solo.

The new game from the Danganronpa people, and it is a little bit of a shift for them. Not hugely, there's still a cast of stylised characters, still surprisingly gruesome murders, and still a bunch of story. This time though its a little more gamey, you're not stuck in one location like a school, people have powers, and you're tied to a shikigami who only you can see and can take you to alternative dimensions. It's not reinventing the wheel, but it's less Danganronpa than it initially looked. I've only done the first chapter, episode, which is chapter 0, and it took me a while. You wake up with amnesia, and rush on to a train you're supposed to be on. It transpires that you're a master Detective, and there's only 5 other people on the train, they are all also master detectives (not just that they're detectives, that's the organisation they work for). They all have powers, such as being able to imprint memories on screens, or a radar that means they can tell how many people are around them. While you're locked on the train there's a murder, meaning one of the detectives is a killer. Gameplay wise, when you start to solve it, it feels a little like they're making it up as they go along. There's fights where you dodge incoming words while attacking others with the correct counter statement. There's a barrel game where you have to guess the word that leans a bit in to the fan service. It's not the games strength So far it seems good, but I have almost fallen asleep twice playing it. That first chapter, which is basically the prologue, took me hours. We'll see though, I'm in the city from the trailers now so I'm at least seeing and meeting new places and characters

I started playing this today. Only got through 3 levels because the battery was dying in handheld mode. Hard to really say anything about it only after 3 levels. It looks nice, controls well, nothing really surprising so far. Is what it looks like. I really did run the battery all the way down before putting it back in the dock, though, so that’s a good sign I didn’t want to put it down

Only played a few minutes before I go to sleep, but yep, pretty sweet so far. One thing I thought was really cool is that one of the menu options is you can change the appearance of the food in game. Could be as simple as you’re veggie or vegan and you would rather not everything be meat, but there’s also some silly options like “Castlevaniaesque” and “monster”. In related and weird news, IGN (or their freelancer) appear to have stolen an indie guy’s video review script. Apparently IGN hav taken down their review while they investigate.

Presentation hiccups? Already played this for ..a while. I've beaten the Olaf missions and I'm onto Blue Moon's next CO. Apart from the forced* tutorial being obnoxiously patronising, something else has been bugging me already: the visuals. I'm not entirely sure the visual style of the CO's is better than the GBA original sprite work. Some of them are vaguely animated. There is some voice work. But their mouths don't move at all, and only the first word or two of any given dialogue/exchange is spoken. It seems really half-hearted. Either animate or don't. Give full speech or none. The middle ground here just makes it seem unfinished/cheap. The gameplay however, is as good as it's ever been. But the overall presentation seems disappointingly lacklustre. Hopefully something improves as the game progresses. But we'll have to wait and see at this point. *As the tutorial begins, they ask you if you've played Advance Wars before? The dialogue seemed to acknowledge my "yes", so I thought I'd get to skip the tutorial. Turns out ..not. So I don't know why they asked in the first place?

Is this an indie? I think it could be so it gets an 'indie' sticker. But the game! It's pretty good! I say pretty good but what I mean is it's text book good. It doesn't do anything wrong and it uses the 'Metroidvania' template pretty well and has some interesting uses of its mechanics (I'm getting sick of using that word but I don't want to get specific as they get kinda surprising). What I will say is that there is a flip dimensions ability that mixes things up, but only in the same way as Outland does. Remember that game? Guacamelee! is a lot like Outland in some ways so if you liked that you'll like this. But I suppose the combat is better in this. You're a Mexican Wrestler so flinging folks about is important and you do have a big repertoire of combos and moves to do that are fun to pull off and hurt things a lot. You also have a bunch of fun internet jokes to laugh at about cats and stuff in the game, you know, all that referential stuff we enjoy. Like you climb a big mountain and near the top you find the the dead body of the thing from Journey and you go 'hahaha! I know that reference! Choozo Staues! hahaha!' It's so funny, it's like those guys who make the Scary Movie films and stuff made it. In summery: a pretty well made game that is fun but with with shite, incestuous nerd comedy. Play Outland instead.

It’s as glorious as ever. The mechanics of vacuuming everything in sight is as much as a favourite of mine as cutting grass in Zelda games. It’s more beautiful than you could ask for and the details are astonishing.

This might have passed people by, but this charming indie game came out today. Played up to get the ship going so I’ve inhabited a couple of cool enemies so far. Not really spoilers considering how early it is and what has been shown. The frog is a bit of a mental jumper, the chain chomp is a cool mechanic but the dinosaur is just pure mayhem, wrecking the place at will. Controls work well, the motion stuff is a bit annoying. It remains to be seen how important that will be.

If ever a game needed online play, then this is the one. You play as 1 to 4 people all doing jobs in a kitchen making meals for people to order. If you had a full crew then you could designate jobs like, "you wash the dishes, I'll slice the veggies", etc but I played it with 2 of us and it's tough going. The idea of playing it solo just baffles me. Strictly offline co-op though so I may never see a 4 player game happen. It gets pretty ridiculous as well when the stages start shifting and suddenly all your plans go out the window when you can no longer get to each other because the two trucks that you're cooking on top of have moved lanes and there's no way to get to each other. It's only 2 button and stick game, so if you're on the Switch you can use a Joycon each. Good fun but fucking stressful.

Just a quick thread post to say I played an hour after 12am unlock last night. Played quite badly, I must have dodge-offseted all my Bayonetta muscle memory from the last time I played these games. So don't have a ton much to say, the opening has a bit of a DMC5 thing going on I guess with a fairly similar setup. I will say however that technically speaking I find the game very hard to parse visually. It's not really the framerate as such, which is quite bad but tolerable for the kind of mashing that Bayo can offer. It's moreso the image quality (lack of), visual effects and resolution as well as the alpha transparency dot matrix thing that they do with enemies which are overlapping with the camera. It's unfortunately rough stuff and it all sort of turned into a soup of purple nonsense for me in the first 'proper' stage in the game. A quick thing I can say that's interesting to me is with the summons you can queue up to two actions by them (perhaps this can be upgraded), release control and go back to Bayonetta while the demon slave asynchronously resolves all the big moves you told it to do. I think there will be some interesting synergies there. Maybe, I was really only mashing the buttons tbh, it's been so long since I played a game like this (including dmc) that my fingers feel like they're made of shite and nothing feels very deliberate That said, I'm excited to really dig into it over the spooky weekend, the horrors of poorly scaled graphics notwithstanding 😱. Will need to setup the elgato to actually capture some decent clobbering from it tho, I really need that with these games not the 30 second clip that switch does edit, some gameplay of me passing a secret mission, pogface. The monster mechanic is cool, I think the way you leverage launchers from witch time wicked weaves and can chomp motherfuckers while they're up there is some really inspired stuff so far, especially compared to Bayonetta 2

The reviews aren't lying. This is without a doubt fast becoming my favourite Zelda game of all time. The very first mission you complete for the old man is in itself a sprawling adventure despite never leaving the starting area. I don't want to say much because spoilers but I'll lay down some control impressions. At first I could see why people felt they would need a pro controller. The joy cons feel small and it's jarring after having a dualshock in your hands. However the controls were never problematic and after an hour of learning the buttons I was able to do everything I needed without a second thought. You do not need a pro to play botw any better than you can with the joy cons. The system itself works as has been shown for almost 2 months now. Everything is clean and crisp. It's lacking Nintendo charm to the ui that both charmed and put people off the system but there's still no doubting this is a Nintendo product with the little touches it has. Screen shot works great. Much much faster than ps4 as is going from the home menu to back to your suspended game. It's immediate. Images below are from my gameplay. Finally I was worried Zelda might look a bit jaggie on my large screen much like the WiiU did but I'm happy to report it's actually more gorgeous than any stream I'd seen. Now if you'll excuse me I have a plateau to leave.

Less than an hour in and from a gameplay perspective this is already deeper than any of the previous games. The levelling up system alone reminds me of FF X. You can block! You can dodge? There is something a bit off about the powers though. Which might be indicative of the One player experience. Your AI teammates don't automatically use their abilities, so the revamped combo system has to be done manually and it is a bit clunky as a result. Obviously not an issue in the slightest for those playing with others. Other than that, it is pretty good so far. At the first available option, which isn't right away, my team now consists of: Star Lord Hulk Drax Wolverine

so yeah, it's an old zelda (gb/gbc) game given new graphics, and some other changes i guess, not sure what they've changed, there's a make your own dungeon thing, and i guess any changes in the colour version (which i haven't really played) will be in there. this is one of my early gaming memories and one of my favorite zelda games, but haven't played it in a long time so not sure what i'll think of this new version. there's some stuff/puzzles that were pretty annoying in the original version which seem to have some more hints on what to do in there now (keep the sound on - the music is ace anyway) but it still seems like it could be pretty easy to get stuck, and it's hard for me to say as i do remember some stuff from playing it before. i've done the first 2 dungeons and they're pretty short and easy other than a few bits, and think i'm on one of the best bits of the game where you get iirc the difficulty picks up. the graphics are completely different, i think the new look is pretty cool, there's some framerate problems, as in it's not completely smooth but it's not really affected me. and yeah i'm enjoying it. anyone else get it, hows it going?

I just wrote a massive post about this that would have got me lost of pluses and a pulitzer prize but I lost it all because my laptop is an utter fuck. Anyways, this should be called Donkey Kong Country Again But Looks Lovely because it really does. I don't have your fancy schamncy Xbones and PS4's but for cartoony graphics these are awesome, DK's fur in the opening cut scene looks amazballs. I still have Donkey Kong Country Returns pretty fresh in my mind so this feels like more of the same just with some bells and wistles. I played DKCR on the 3DS so I'm enjoying having this on the big screen. More of the same means the same controls which still have the same problems. You can whiz about like a trooper, doing you platforming as demanded but there is still that horrible delay between pressing the jump button and actually jumping that I could never get on with. He does the same when he rolls too, you hit the L or R buttons and there's a couple of frames of animation that leave you vunerable before he launches his attack. Ive played up to halfway through the second area. The first area is the normal introduction, all jungle with a few underwater bits. The underwater conrols are nice by the way, you have a thrusting manouver that propels you through the water with speed, you can also use it to launch out of the water when near the surface. Worthy of note is how the music changes in to a nice chill out version of the current score, DKC has laways gotten water music right. The second area is WIndmill Plains, I kinda wish this would have been first, its different enough to convert anybody who thinks they might have just picked up the previous version again. The music has been good too aand it has an autumnal setting that feels nice and fresh. The main differnce this time round is the introduction of Dixie and Cranky inside the barrels as well as just Diddy. Diddy still has his jet pack to boost your jump, Dixie gives you extended height on your jump similar to Yoshi with that dip and extra effort at the end and Cranky has a pogo stick jump a la Duck Tales (awoo-oo) that you can perform indefinitely if you so choose. It lets you jump on spikes and other surfaces that would otherwise kill you. There are only 6 worlds this time around but the individual levels are longer. The first boss fight was a bit drawn out, that cunt took some hitting and I fucking howled when i died after hitting him about six times but falling prey to the poopy jump delay. Its good so far, i guess that's all you really need to know. Haven't.encountered any ice yet.

Only put about 1.5 hours into it but happy so far. Think Metroidvania X Dark Souls with some extra gruesome and stunning imagery and you’re about there. Feels a bit slower and more deliberate than what I was expecting - was thinking it was going to be more Dead Cells than Dark Souls in this respect - but most importantly it feels and controls really well which is essential because it’s bastard hard!!! Don’t know if I picked a particularly difficult route to take first (top left of the map) but I’m getting battered. Its got a upgrade system too and feel like I could do with a couple of the extra abilities. Got a fair amount of upgrade points but I’m miles away from the area where you buy skills. Hoping another opens up soon. Good game so far, recommend it if the Metroid x a 2D Dark Souls sounds appealing.

Heretics Defeated! So far, very good. Only got in an hour today (for now) but I'm enjoying everything about this. From the "Happy Tree Friends" aesthetic. To the distinctly Isaac/Gungeon feel to the combat. The cult building aspect so far is the newest gameplay to me and the most intriguing. It reminds me of both Freedom Fighters and the base building of Suikoden. I have fought one boss and indoctrinated three followers into my Cult. While grinning from ear to ear at the presentation.

Played this over the last few weeks, its only really the 2nd 2d standard kirby game ive played (robobot being the other). Its a sort of basic platformer where you get all different powers copied from enemies, like theres one that turns you into a sort of streetfighter character doing dragon punches and stuff, a superman type character, electric attacks, fireballs, everything. And you can sometimes get super powered up and go nuts with a massive sword or turn into a giant snowball - the different powers are what i think makes it fun. Overall i enjoyed it, its often a lot of fun. There are some boring bits mind and i just sort of beat the bosses by well i dont know but not with skill anyway. I sort of like that its easy though as im not good at these sort of platformers. I dont think its as good as robobot. the challenge levels are really good though, you unlock them as you get tickets which you find in levels and theyre like shorter score/time attack levels based on a specific power up, you can go for gold/silver/bronze medals, i mostly got silver, a few golds too, some of which took many retries. Theres about 10 of them, shame there arent more. exploration to find hidden stuff was fun sometimes theres loads of other stuff you unlock but seems to be mini games, that you can play on your own but seemed more aimed at multiplayer so i only tried a few of those. overall this was pretty good, recommended if youre after playing some more kirby, but probably not the best one. edit - this was originally a wii game, not sure what changes there are in the deluxe switch version.

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, just got my rental copy. But I notice it’s only recently come out on Xbox, so better late than never I guess. I’ve done the first two missions so far, and it’s quite fun. You play as either a male or female kung-fu student, seeking revenge on an enemy gang. The twist is that every time you die, you get immediately resurrected, but age one year. You start off at age 20. Supposedly as you get older, you get stronger, but age too much and you get weaker. The combat seems straightforward enough so far. I’ve enjoyed smashing bottles on people’s heads, slamming them into walls. It also turns out you can attack people in mid conversation. So while enemies have been giving me exposition, I’ve dashed in and punched them in the face. Good times.