What Was The Last Game You Played?

[54_and_counting]

Started days gone (i know its not new lol) enjoy the concept and what they tried to do, reminds me of a mix between mad max and last of us, just dunno if i have it in me to play another game of grab everything and craft everything 

Stick at it for a while though 

[MightBeMaia]

Finished hogwarts legacy yesterday quite fun but way shorter than I was expecting took me 30 hours to complete every main and side mission on normal difficulty 

[accies1874]

6 hours ago, MightBeMaia said:

Finished hogwarts legacy yesterday quite fun but way shorter than I was expecting took me 30 hours to complete every main and side mission on normal difficulty 

Cancelled 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Return to Arkham Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3, 2009)

2009. You remember 2009. Grey, gritty films in which Batman ran around shouting I'm Batman! then punching people who said It's Batman! were all the rage. Grey, gritty video games were all the rage. I was trying very hard to not kill myself due to a prolonged period of emotional blackmail. The time was ripe then for a grey, gritty video game in which you played as Batman, walking into rooms and punching people after they'd announced It's Batman!

In Arkham Asylum you play as... Batman, who arrives at the Asylum after having captured Joker again. Only something about it was too easy, and he doesn't seem too bothered by his reincarceration. Batman is an intelligent guy. What could go wrong taking the city's most notorious villain into an isolated island prison full of the city's next most notorious villains, as well as a seemingly endless supply of goons recently transferred from another prison? Everything, of course. What follows is Batman kicking, punching and sneaking his way through those goons as he tries to stop Joker's plan to poison Gotham's water supply. They even took the story from the films, but now that I think about it I don't understand why an island in the middle of some water is so crucial to the water of the whole city.

When it was released originally, Arkham Asylum was a revelation. Here's a third person action game with flowing combat based on timing and skill. Enemies pop up and you press the attack and counter buttons in time with their attacks and you can take down a whole room in one giant flowing combo. Between those there are stealth-based sections, where the enemies are armed and you can't afford to let them see you. I never actually played this when it was first released so I can't speak to how revelatory it was at the time, but despite the flaws I'll come to it's undeniable that when Arkham Asylum works, it's very satisfying. When you get a combo right and you get used to the rhythm of the combat, you feel like Batman. Despite being a comic book setting there's still something visceral about the combat which translates well through the medium.

The problem with that is it's not always flowing. It doesn't always work. Sometimes enemies will stand next to you and do nothing. Sometimes they'll sprint from one side of a room to another to hit you and mess up your flow, hitting you while you're in the middle of another action which spoils your combo. Or maybe one of the guys with knives will show up and because you need to press a different button to get his guard down, you'll target the guy next to him to make space and you'll hit the wrong person and you'll take damage and the combo will end. That's annoying, and one thing I can say about playing this in 2023 is that I know there's a sequel. I know there's a game where the formula is more refined and less annoying than this, and I'm not playing that, I'm playing something worse. The targeting problem isn't really something that you get used to as the game goes on, because to increase the stakes and difficulty all it can do is throw more enemies at you, making the chances of annoying interruptions greater.

I played the PS3 version of this in 2014 and the stealth sections were much more prominent in my mind than they are here. They're very much telegraphed when they appear. You enter a room with stone gargoyles high up on the walls which you can glide between. There are a number of environmental tools you can use to take down enemies, and gadgets which you can unlock as you progress. Even though there are ultimately several ways to take people out, the opportunities to use them often feel contrived and awkward. Isolating an enemy to take them out without someone seeing you and shooting is possible but often takes much longer than just swooping down and spamming the square button to knock them out. Much like the combat, you get the feeling that these are mechanics which can be refined and made more enjoyable, but it's just not the case here.

Reading about this game and the topic of Arkham Asylum in Batman media is quite overwhelming. There's tons of this stuff. Comics, books, TV, films, games, the amount of depictions of the location and the various characters is huge. There are lots of little references to various Batman characters which you can interact with, but if you're unfamiliar with them like me they won't mean much. With that said, the main story here is a bit... inconsequential. It had little bearing on the gameplay either. Outside of the punchy or stealthy bits you'll pop up in a room and need to find someone. Turn on detective mode, find a trace of who you're looking for then follow a linear path until the next bit of plot happens. Even as I was playing I couldn't really tell you what was going on.

While the map of the Asylum is technically open world - three distinct areas with buildings which you enter at various points - there's really no incentive or opportunity to explore until you've reached the endgame. This in itself is fine while you're playing, but afterwards you realise the game ends up feeling constrained. There are some minor collectibles dotted around, but by the time you're at the endgame you'll have unlocked all of Batman's abilities so there's little benefit unless you're a completionist. When you're searching for things you'll also have detective mode on the whole time meaning the entire world is just a digital-style blue with red bits for enemies. In what's an iconic location, there isn't really much to see.

With this in mind it probably says a lot that the most memorable sections are fever dreams inspired by Scarecrow's fear gas. You move around fragments of walls and buildings while avoiding the giant Scarecrow's gaze and fighting the inner demons he manifests out of the ground. It's a great couple of sections which almost say something about Batman the character, but even then not really. Come to think of it, the villains are probably the most memorable characters in the game. You can probably say that about most superhero fiction. Scarecrow's sections are good, Joker's voice acting from Mark Hammill is fantastic. But without a real sense of location of consequence to tie them altogether, the atmosphere ends up a little flat. I know Batman is... well, Batman, but there's very little said about him, and it's hard to care about him much as a result.

Part of the reason there's little to see is the gritty grey grittiness I mentioned at the start. You forget just how dull colour palettes were in the first few years of the 7th generation of consoles. Everything in this game is some shade of grey, brown or green. The whole thing takes place at night. In the rain. The Asylum is a techno-gothic nightmare that's falling apart. It's built on a rock in the middle of the ocean. I think part of my problem with the map is that everything looks the same, so there's no sense of progression from the start of the game to the end. Interiors are all identical too. Even the enemies suffer from this. There were times where I was punched by guys who I couldn't see because they were camouflaged against the wall they were stood next to. I'm not joking.

If you really like the combat and the stealth there are unlockable Challenge Rooms you can go into, trying to set a high score in the combat rooms and take out goons in specific ways in the stealth rooms. These only really matter if you're into completionism so naturally I drove myself insane. Think of the issues I had with combat. Now imagine that but with more enemies than normal, in a confined space, and a camera that's constantly moving around as you swoop boot-first from face to face while trying to keep a combo going. Don't be like me.

It's a bit surreal to think this game is nearly fourteen years old, but I think it still holds up. If you're into Batman you'll love it. If you have no strong feelings about Batman but like video games you'll probably like it. If you have no interest in Batman and played Wii Sports once you might like this on a lower difficulty setting. I know I can't wait to see how close to madness I come when I'm playing Arkham City.

[accies1874]

I replayed them right at the start of the lockdowns and my main takeaway from Asylum was it was like a bunch of challenge maps stitched together by a creepy "world". It is grimy, like you say, but doing all the collectibles post-game in an empty, atmospheric asylum constantly had me on edge. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

On 16/02/2023 at 09:10, accies1874 said:

I replayed them right at the start of the lockdowns and my main takeaway from Asylum was it was like a bunch of challenge maps stitched together by a creepy "world". It is grimy, like you say, but doing all the collectibles post-game in an empty, atmospheric asylum constantly had me on edge. 

Maybe I'm used to mopping stuff up in games, maybe it was everything being in blue detect-o-vision, maybe it was constantly trying to get the camera to point at the ledges I was supposed to grapple to, it just did nothing for me by that point. By the time you reach the post-game you realise how small the world is and all the mystery's gone. 

[54_and_counting]

I made the mistake of playing spiderman on the ps4 then trying the arkham games, they felt so clunky and the fighting forced compared to spiderman which felt very free flowing and smooth

Probably should try them again mind you

[Guest]

Hogs of War the other night on my only game console, a second-hand PSOne. Am perfectly happy in the wrong decade (century?) with that game. 

[Mark Connolly]

2 hours ago, 54_and_counting said:

I made the mistake of playing spiderman on the ps4 then trying the arkham games, they felt so clunky and the fighting forced compared to spiderman which felt very free flowing and smooth

Probably should try them again mind you

I'm about to start playing my way through the first Spider-man and the Miles game in preparation for the new one coming out in the Autumn

[54_and_counting]

34 minutes ago, Mark Connolly said:

I'm about to start playing my way through the first Spider-man and the Miles game in preparation for the new one coming out in the Autumn

Mate they are fantastic, new york is so detailed and swinging through it is tremendous 

[Mark Connolly]

Just now, 54_and_counting said:

Mate they are fantastic, new york is so detailed and swinging through it is tremendous 

Yeah, they are absolutely tremendous. Just realised I missed the word "again" from my initial post, which would have helped!

Not looking forward to doing those fucking pigeon missions again though

[DA Baracus]

6 hours ago, IncomingExile said:

Hogs of War the other night on my only game console, a second-hand PSOne. Am perfectly happy in the wrong decade (century?) with that game. 

Absolutely brilliant game. Loved this when I was younger. Always took a while to get the range of the mortar, bazooka and grenades right!

Can recall most of the levels too. Mind it took me a good while to beat the last one. Been quite a few years since I last played it but reckon I could breeze through most levels given just how often I played them!

Liked having a good mix in my squad. Always a medic, for the healing of course but also for the tranquilliser which meant the opponent it was used on would miss a go! 

Always loves the weapons drops and health drops. 

P.S. Right century as it was released in 2000!

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

Absolutely brilliant game. Loved this when I was younger. Always took a while to get the range of the mortar, bazooka and grenades right!

Can recall most of the levels too. Mind it took me a good while to beat the last one. Been quite a few years since I last played it but reckon I could breeze through most levels given just how often I played them!

Liked having a good mix in my squad. Always a medic, for the healing of course but also for the tranquilliser which meant the opponent it was used on would miss a go! 

Always loves the weapons drops and health drops. 

P.S. Right century as it was released in 2000!

Spies all the way for me, for the pickpocketing, until you inevitably have to promote to Commandos to get over water. "Over The Top" is my favourite level. The final one was a pig (oops) to complete but I eventually figured it out. Add in the Rik Mayall voiceovers which still make me laugh.......  

[54_and_counting]

20 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

Absolutely brilliant game. Loved this when I was younger. Always took a while to get the range of the mortar, bazooka and grenades right!

Can recall most of the levels too. Mind it took me a good while to beat the last one. Been quite a few years since I last played it but reckon I could breeze through most levels given just how often I played them!

Liked having a good mix in my squad. Always a medic, for the healing of course but also for the tranquilliser which meant the opponent it was used on would miss a go! 

Always loves the weapons drops and health drops. 

P.S. Right century as it was released in 2000!

Do you remember the warhammer games on the ps1, i had dark omen, was a cracking strategy game

[DA Baracus]

3 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

Do you remember the warhammer games on the ps1, i had dark omen, was a cracking strategy game

Never played those.

[54_and_counting]

9 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

Never played those.

The graphics will have dated badly by now, but it was an excellent tactical game, things like having units attack an enemy from behind gave you the advantage etc, flanking enemies routed them and they fled the battle (could happen to you as well) and you had magical items, stuff like powerful swords for your cavalry leader, a banner which meant your unit fought to the death etc

Good thing about it was that every battle almost could be done differently each playthrough

[54_and_counting]

On 22/02/2023 at 20:31, Mark Connolly said:

Yeah, they are absolutely tremendous. Just realised I missed the word "again" from my initial post, which would have helped!

Not looking forward to doing those fucking pigeon missions again though

The pigeon missions were a c**t, so were the taskmaster ones at times, general battles were good though, i loved how you simply couldnt just walk into a group and start swinging punches galore, it was like two hits then dodge a few times before going for a different enemy, using tactics like webbing a few to give you breathing space

Still think the best move was the dodge under the legs and kick them from behind, just how smooth and refined it looked when you did it 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Hades (PS4, 2021)

Quite early in my time with Hades I thought of a very clever way of describing it. While I don't write down anything about a game for its review when I'm playing it, I probably should. In this case it's only one line and I know what it was, but in the six weeks or so I spent playing it my opinion of the game changed a lot between my quip and the finish. What at the time seemed like an intelligent reference for an intelligent game now seems hollow, considering how long it took me to achieve what ultimately didn't feel like much. Either way this tortured intro will no doubt take all the charm out of my clever summation, so maybe it's appropriate after all.

Hades is the sort of thing you'd get if Kafka wrote the Odyssey and it was made into a video game. You play as Zagreus, son of Hades and heir apparent to the Underworld. Only it turns out the Underworld is an eternity of admin and filing and never leaving and never dying and doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over I stopped typing that after my first mistake and one day the young Zagreus decides he's had enough, picks up a big sword and leaves his bedroom to go and fight his way out of Hades and to the surface. What follows is a roguelike perspective on Greek mythology with vivid environments, rounded and complex characters, and comprehensively great voice acting.

Once you leave your father's domain you're faced with a series of rooms and an assortment of increasingly tough enemies. You'll get so far and then you'll probably reach an enemy that you can't overcome. You'll die, you'll return to Hades and he'll laugh at you. Then you go and try again, with the rooms changing each time under the guise of "underworld escape attempt deterrent." This means each gameplay sequence is technically different in a way which ties into the actual setting of the game, which is an effective ay of creating depth. Rather than try and brute force your way through a particular enemy or room, you have enough of a sense of variety to force you to change your strategy.

As you go through the various rooms you collect rewards once you've defeated all the enemies. The Olympian gods pop up, give an extremely charismatic speech in support of you escaping the Underworld and joining them, then they give you a choice of powers to affect your attacks or other gameplay modifiers. There's no real subtle way of saying this but each god is brilliant. Even though you only see the text and hear the audio to go with one of a couple of still images, there's an incredible sense of depth to every character in the game. And not just because you can end up reading dozens of them for each person. Even with just a cursory knowledge of Greek mythology you just instantly buy into every character you talk to. You want to know more about them, you just want to hear them talk more because it's so enjoyable. Even the ones who don't like you, like the boss fights at the end of each stage of the Underworld. Every character in the game is great, without exception. Patroclus and Thanatos are a bit miserable but they've every right to be.

During your returns to your bedroom you can use rewards found in your escape attempts to upgrade various things - you can unlock powers which affect your rewards or health, and you can unlock bonus resources to use when you're out on a run too. Despite not really paying attention to it when it was released I feel like I knew a lot about Hades already - its story and gameplay were centred around this sense of repetition and gradual strengthening. The story and gameplay balance each other out enough that to get to the 'end' - which is ten successful escape attempts - you'll feel a genuine sense of character and statistical development which all just feels natural. The game probably gets a solid twenty to thirty hours out of this, and for a small(ish) indie developed roguelike that's commendable. It's been a while since I've played a game where I think "Oh I'll just put this on and oh look it's several hours later," so I enjoyed that sense of childlike obsession again.

One thing I need to add here is to say that if you're struggling to make progress in your escape attempts you can turn on God Mode. God Mode increases your damage resistance by 2% every time you die, so even this feels as natural as the rest of your gradual development and strengthening as you keep playing. The problem is I don't see how you can play without this turned on. I'm going to complain later about how long it took me to finish Hades and I'd probably still be playing it now if I hadn't used this mode. It's got nothing to do with my playstyle or the weapons or upgrades, the game is just very punishing. Once you've finished the game a few times and are used to everything, if you turn God Mod off you realise just how significant the difference it made was and if anything that just makes it worse. That's when you really wonder how you're supposed to play without it. There's a Hell Mode too where everything gets harder if you're a complete masochist, but as it is I don't think it's a good thing if you can spend as long as I did with a game and feel like you needed to make it easier to actually finish it. 

In addition to the various godly boons and upgrades there are (eventually) six different weapons you can use, and four different powers you can give each of those. After escaping to the surface once you can also add modifiers to your runs such as time limits or giving enemies new powers. Based on everything I've said the gameplay possibility is endless and you'll never tire of interacting with the various characters as you find them. It's at this point I have to say though that it... doesn't. 

When you start and as you're uncovering the story, it's great. You enjoy just about every aspect of what you're seeing and it's fine. At some point though you realise that there are only four areas, and actually the enemies are quite limited. The layout of the rooms themselves don't make a difference, they all look the same anyway. Asphodel is filled with magma that gets in the way. Elysium is full of annoying respawning guys with shields. Styx is filled with those stupid poisoned rats. And unless you're using the gun or the bow and arrow the most effective combat method is to aim at whatever you want to die and press triangle, square and circle at the same time. Calling the late-game of Hades a button masher almost feels generous, but I would on occasion feel some pain in my hand when I'd been spending too long spamming all the buttons at once. I'm not old, shut up.

Although my journey to the platinum trophy went well beyond what most normal people would experience with this game, for once I can say my complaints were almost completely within the game's natural length. There's an epilogue some time after the end and it takes a while to get there. That's when all the problems come to the fore. The gameplay is what it is. The characters are all still interesting but when you want your conversations to reach a certain point to trigger an event, you realise they just won't shut up. Being able to romance some of them is of scant benefit, but I will commend the writing for taking something as established as Greek mythology and doing something human with it. You just get fed up listening to it outside of the gameplay which you're not invested in anymore, and the environments which have all blended into one. 

Before you notice that though, the environments are great. The 2.5D sort of top down isometric rougelike stuff is great when it's done well, and Supergiant is a studio which does this about as well as anyone. The visuals are bold and detailed. The sound is vivid and brutal. The various boons and powers all add visual variety, and as I mentioned the depictions of each god... every character even, are just perfect. Even when you're button mashing you do still notice how good the game looks.

I don't think it's fair for me to judge this game based on my experience with the last 50% of my time with it. It's not fair, but that's probably going to be my lasting impression. It took me about a month and a half of pretty regular playing to finish everything and for at least those last two weeks I just wanted it done. After I'd finished everything else trophy-related I was speedrunning as quickly as possible to get it done. Does this qualify as actual commentary on the game's quality or content? I'm not sure. I've never really been into measuring a game's worth by how long you can spend with it, but I think I've realised there is definitely an upper limit to that.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Miguel Sanchez

[Clangers]

Diablo 4 coming out in a few weeks, genuinely been wanting this game longer then The Rangers have been in existence, just realised I had bought Diablo 3 on the PC, Xbox360 then extra Act version, then on the Xbox One, Switch and XBox X! 
Man am every developers dream! 

[accies1874]

Resident Evil VIlAGE (or however they've titled it)

I've really liked the RE games I've played, but I've definitely come to to accept that they gradually get worse as the game goes on. The first one got worse once you started going into the labs, RE2 Remake probably peaked in the police station (still loved the rest tbf) and 7 definitely peaked in the main house.

In this, everything after House Beneviento is a step down. That and Castle Dimitrescu are both absolutely class for different reasons. The latter is a really great stalker area (my favourite aspect of 2 and 7 with Mr X and Jack Baker) and House Beneviento is a chokehold of atmosphere that actually pays off with a mega creepy release of fear. Those might, off the top of my head, be the only two points where I felt properly powerless too. Dimitrescu because your weapons are useless and Beneviento because your weapons get taken from you. It was only when I got to Heisenberg's Factory towards the end when I started actually worrying about my ammo, and that's because you fire a hell of a lot of bullets there as opposed to the ammo really being limited. With that, the lack of storage crates (although still plenty of content management) and the inclusion of the merchant, it did feel a bit removed from what I love about the franchise, but none of that ruined my enjoyment, it just made the game feel a bit blander. The bosses are intense, but when you're shooting someone with a tank, it kind of feels like you've moved too far in the wrong direction. 

Apparently some of the above is similar to 4 (which I haven't played but will give the remake a bash when it drops in price), but it actually felt like a remake of the first one at points, especially in Dimitrescu and Heisenberg's areas. I've been curious about how a ground-up remake would look for the original (cautiously curious given how crucial its limitations are to the gameplay) and I think I got a tiny window into that in those parts.

7 was more up street - its setting and characters are just more my kind of horror - but as long as they don't venture too much into inconveniences such as a story (which this kinda did), I'm gonna continue to enjoy these games.