So we have a Marky Mark and George Clooney situation going on here. I recently got a nice new pc to game on so I don't have to mess around with my laptop anymore. Also all the sports I watch are finishing up so I have got a lot more free time on my hands for a couple months before I spend way too much time watching football. I started picking up some old games and was having such a good time that I wanted to tell people about it. I am stealing KC's backlog idea and doing a thread for all the games I am playing this summer! I'll do something similar (though probably not quite as detailed) of what game I was playing and how I enjoyed it. I've got a pretty good sized list between Switch and Steam so if you have any recommendations let me know. I will start off with a big one that I just finished...

Current List

Switch
Celeste - Complete
Mario and Rabbids
Starlink: Battle for Atlas
Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy
Bug Fables
Golf Story - Complete

PS4
Uncharted - A Lost Legacy

Steam
Borderlands 2 - Complete
Borderlands 2 DLC
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit
Batman Arkham Series
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Dyscourse
Inside
Kentucky Route Zero - In Progress
Life is Strange 2
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Limbo
Ori and the Blind Forest
Telltate: Game of Thrones
Telltate: Guardians of the Galaxy
The Stanley Parable

I played the first Borderlands back in 2017 and had an absolute blast with it. I never played shooting games growing up partly due to strict parents and partly because I didn't have any interest in them. I went over to friends house who wanted to play Halo and I would mess around for a little bit but eventually got tired of it. The only reason I even played Borderlands was because of a little company called Telltale.

Tales of the Borderlands was a point and click game from Telltale that I had so much fun with and I loved the world that the game was set in which got me curious about the series of looter shooters that the game was based on. I ended up buying the GOTY edition on a steam sale and had a lot of fun with it. It also led me to play BioShock which is another great series of games. After Borderlands 1 I started the second game and got about a 1/4 of the way done before abandoning it.

I decided to start from the beginning instead of picking it up where I left of. I opted to choose to play as Zero who focuses on stealth and sniper rifles, two things I am not very good at. It was definitely fun to sneak up and kill from a distance but once the battle got going I found myself pretty flustered. I definitely might have benefitted from playing as Axton again but overall I think I ended up getting pretty good with the sniper rifle.

Overall the game was a lot of fun. The story in the first one was okay but it was expanded upon so much more in the second one. I got to learn about some of the characters that I interacted with in Tales of the Borderlands and got an experience with one of my personal favorite video game villains in Handsome Jack. The mix of humor and creativity in this game is just spectacular and all of the side characters are fun, morbid and charming in their own ways.

It did start to get repetitive at the end (it took me about 45 hours to complete the game) and some of the final boss battles were borderline not fun but overall it was a blast. I know the game is designed to play as a Co-Op but I feel like I enjoyed playing it more alone because it allowed me to explore the different areas and find hidden audio recordings to flesh out the story a little more (similar to BioShock).

I have all of the DLC as well that I have combed through. I know I will atleast play the Dragon Keep DLC, which is the inspiration for a 2022 game called Wonderlands, but I am not sure I will play any others. I still have the pre-sequel to look forward to and eventually getting to Borderlands 3. Overall it was a lot of fun and recommend it to anyone that hasn't played it yet.

Curtis @ 16/7/2021 21:29

Play Golf With Friends with us soon

Anytime I will golf

KC @ 17/7/2021 15:41

Curtis @ 17/7/2021 6:02 KC when is your next day off so we can hit the links with this man Seems like Monday/Friday is what it is going forward

This Friday!

Celeste is the next game on the list. I had heard good things about it and bought it on a whim on the Switch (don't really remember why to be honest). I had heard really good things about it and it won a bunch of awards back when it was released.

Celeste is a 2D action platformer. The story is about a girl who sets off to climb a mountain, who meets some friends along the way including the dark reflection or herself, who is sort of the antagonist from the game. For a game whose main story is only about 8-10 hours long, and doesn't have any voice acting or anything the story is really good. It dives into mental health in a real way but still doesn't come off as too much.

I don't typically like hard games. I will typically play games at normal difficulty at the hardest and in most cases don't like to be challenged. I'd rather have a quick play through with little to no deaths and get the full experience of the game then play a game where I struggle mightily during portions of the game. Well Celeste is hard af. The original levels in the game are challenging enough as it is kind of trial and error. Each original level as a number of bonus levels which allow to collect strawberries or a mysterious cassette tape which serves as an entrance into the B Side. Which takes the concepts that are in the level on the original side, and ramp it up to 10 on the difficulty. After you complete the B Side you get a C side which is a short but incredibly difficult variation of the level. And finally on top of that there is a final Golden Strawberry which is beating the entire level without dying once.

There are 7 levels in the main game which have A, B, and C sides, and 8th level which is unlocked after being the main game and has an A, B, and C side which serve as kind of final levels for each section and finally there is a 9th level that was released as a DLC which is kind of the ultimate level, much longer and much more difficult than the rest. Needless to say completing the entire game there is a lot of stuff to do. I ended up calling it quits after beating all the A sides, B sides, and C sides with the exception of the 8th level C Side. I got part way through the 9th level as well but decided it was getting too difficult for my liking.

The one thing this game does a good job on is not making dying too frustrating. Each section is pretty small so if you die you don't go that far back (this changes with the C Sections and final levels that get progressively more difficult and more lengthy). There were only a couple times during the main game and even the B and C sides that I got overly frustrated, which definitely surprised me. There were a lot of spots that I knew exactly what to do it was just executing it correctly and pressing the jumps and dashes in the correct order.

Overall I highly recommend this game if platformers are your jam. The main game itself was a lot of fun with a great story and would have been worth it just for that but there are tons of additional achievements to complete after the fact which definitely ramps up the difficulty and makes you keep at it. It also keeps track of a good amount of statistics which are kind of fun to look at.

Big Dyl's Celeste Statistics	+
Main Game Deaths (levels 1-8): 3619 deaths B Side Deaths (level 1-8): 4725 deaths C Side Deaths (level 1-7): 1778 deaths Level 9 Deaths (for the 50% I had completed): 1308 deaths Total Deaths: 11430 Deaths Total Playtime: 40 hours and 3 minutes

Started Kentucky Route Zero on PC, probably going to start Golf Story on the Switch.

Golf Story jumped kentucky route zero as I breezed through it on the Nintendo Switch. A nod to the original Mario Golf games, a Golf Story is a golf based RPG that focuses on the triple click golf mechanic that has been pretty standard in golf games specifically Mario golf. A seemingly simple concept that they nailed perfectly.

The story was a lot of fun, without going into too much detail you are an aspiring golfer who golfed as a kid but gave it up and now as an adult aspires to get good again. You journey your way through 8 different courses including a beach course, a snowy course and even a graveyard. They keep getting more and more unique and challenge as the game goes on. There are story missions and side missions to keep you busy and while it is a pretty linear game you do have to jump from area to area once in a while.

The gameplay was good but not great. The controls felt crisp and there was a lot of variety to the shots you could hit including adjusting the loft, back spin and top spin, and adjusting the curve. You could also buy clubs that go farther, go higher, etc. I do think more clubs would have been fun but you do risk breaking the game. Also it would have been nice to customize your player character a little bit because he was a bit bland. The only complaint with the gameplay was putting was pretty bad. There were no grid lines like previous golf games and you pretty much just had to go off an arrow in the corner for how the greens were going to break.

There were plenty of mini variations of golf that served as mini games and progressed the story. They included disc golf, mini golf, and lawn bowling. While none of those modes were as enjoyable to me as golfing, it would have been nice if there was a little more variation of those. Because those modes were pretty fun as well but they only had one little instance of it.

The other complaint was the difficulty. And maybe it is just because I have played a lot of golf games similar but it was very easy. The only time it was competitive was the very last tournament (which was good difficult for the final tournament). Most of the match plays that I did ended in 5 or 6 holes which was kind of lame.

The story was wacky and zany and was a good mix of rooted in golf but also entertaining and funny for those who might not just be about that golf life. For a pixel art game there were a ton of memorable characters and funny jokes and the world they built was really great.

Overall though it was a really good game. It is definitely not one I would recommend everyone play but if the trailer intrigues you, I would definitely say it lives up to the trailer. There is a sequel coming out soon(ish) called Sports Story and I am definitely going to buy that as soon as it comes out.

Summer 2022 time. Time to play some games this summer and get that list smaller. Re-did the list. Took the games I played last year off and added the new games.

Current List

Switch
Mario and Rabbids
Starlink: Battle for Atlas
Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy
Bug Fables


PS4
Uncharted - A Lost Legacy

Steam
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit
Batman Arkham Series
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Dyscourse
Inside - Complete
It takes Two
Kentucky Route Zero - In Progress
Life is Strange 2
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Limbo
Ori and the Blind Forest
Portal
Portal 2
Psychonauts
Telltate: Game of Thrones
Telltate: Guardians of the Galaxy
The Stanley Parable

Already checked one off of the list.




So this game is apparently a successor to Limbo but I didn't realize that until after I finished the game. Seems like its not really that related so I don't think it ruined Limbo for me. Inside is an atmosphere heavy 2D side scroller that is pretty heavy on puzzles and trial and error. It is not an overly long game (took me about 4 hours from start to finish).

The atmosphere is beautiful. It was such a creepy and unique world and there was always a story being told in the background even if it didn't relate to what you were doing in the game. Such a dark world full of mystery and honestly that is such a big part of the games popularity.

The gameplay was fine. It wasn't clunky or anything, the puzzles were pretty clever but not overly hard but sometimes you had to be creative to come up with the solution. Nothing felt unfair but it never got that complicated either.

In the end I enjoyed the game and would recommend it, but I think it may have been a tad bit overrated.

Minor Story Spoilers	+
I think there could have been a little more digging into the story. I am not sure the connection from the beginning chase scenes to the final discovery in the lab.

Excited to get back to gaming. not sure what I am going to play next. Leaning towards Rabbids or Crash for the Switch. I got about 1/2 way through Kentucky Route Zero last year but not sure if I'll finish it. It was kind of dragging.

This was how I felt about playing Crash 1. Play Stations big platformer mascot, one of Nicole's favorite games I was pretty excited about it. And I am going to harp on some of the things that drove me absolutely nuts about this game but overall it was fine. There were definitely times I enjoyed playing it and enjoyed the challenge but growing up loving easy baby mario games, this was not exactly my cup of tea.

I played this game as part of the N-Sane Trilogy on switch so the graphics were upscaled and looked pretty good. The first couple levels were good but then it felt like the difficulty fell off of a cliff. I think my biggest frustration with this game was the lack of depth perception when it came to the jumps, specifically when you were going forward (towards the screen), the bridge levels were some of my least favorite and jumping forward was such a pain. The side scrollers were great and I didn't mind the challenge as much on that. The other thing was the hit boxes just seemed so inconsistent and the fact in a lot of cases you died after one hit caused for a lot of frustration deaths that I felt were unfair.

The world progression was fun, Starting in the jungle, going through the village, and Cortex's factory before climbing the mountain all felt fluid. The story was okay, the story as a whole made sense but I feel like it could have benefitted from a few more cut scenes, especially when introducing the bosses. Of course I don't think the cinematography of video games had really taken off yet because even like Mario 64 didn't have much in the way of cut scenes either.

The bosses were fine. I thought they were all pretty creative characters but it was really just trial and error. Especially with only one life, though on a lot of them I sucked so much I eventually got an additional hit, they got kind of annoying dying quick. The final boss was a little underwhelming (though again the hit boxes were whack on those potions) but still felt satisfying to finally "beat the game".

My original plan was to try to 100% everything, or atleast get all the gems. For those who have never played it, you earn a gem by breaking all the boxes in a level. Except there is another caveat, you cannot die on the level at all. This makes things very difficult considering the levels are on the longer side with 2-3 minutes being on the lower side. I had gotten 5-6 gems when I finally got all the boxes on a 4+ minute level only to die on the last jump. I was still in the first island "easy levels" so I decided that I was not going to get the gems. Part of what makes it even more frustrating is there is no way to "restart" the level. In order to satisfy the requirement for the gem you have to exit to hubworld and re-enter the level for it to be your first try. I think I would have been more willing to attempt it otherwise but the 30 seconds to re-load the level really adds up. It made me think back to Celeste. This and the forward jumping were my two biggest gripes of the game. Thankfully as I have started playing two, this requirement has switched back to only getting all the boxes.

Overall, I am happy that I played the origin story to Crash as I am enjoying number two so far, but anyone that wants to play it I recommend just playing the base game and not focusing on getting it to 100%. It is a fun series with unique ideas like the boxes, and the 2D/3D hybrid that make it a good time.

Finished Crash 2, will post something this weekend on it. Much better. Gonna start 3 soon (Nicole stole my copy)

Started Mass Effect, only about an hour in but the story seems super fun and lots of dialogue options to enhance the story. Unfortunately the legendary edition has shitty controller support so I have to play on mouse and keyboard which has been challenging.

I think part of the issue is it being on origin. I looked up the problem and it seems to be pretty common. There seemed to be a fix where you can bring it in to steam and do it that way but I haven’t tried it yet.