GameTZ

7-Dec-03 9:25am
#1

Guru

This topic had many older posts which were moved here: http://gametz.com/Vi...

19-May-23 6:09pm
#2

Archer


Age of Wonders 4 - 9/10
Best 4x game I've played in awhile. One of those 'one more turns before bed, and then it's 2 am' games for me.

19-May-23 7:56pm
#3

Bleed_DukeBlue


Nice! I’m interested in this one. Just waiting for a PS5 physical version or for the digital price to go down.

Archer wrote:
Age of Wonders 4 - 9/10 Best 4x game I've played in awhile. One of those 'one turns before bed, and then it's 2 am' games for me.

20-May-23 3:44pm
#4

benstylus


Recently came across a Goemon game for the GBA I had never heard of. Goemon New Age Shutsudou!

Played the first couple of stages, it's a fun little platformer. But I don't like young female Ebisu as much as the standout weirdo Ebisumaru from the original series.

20-May-23 6:19pm
#5

PizzaTheHutt


Ratchet & Clank {} 8/10
Regretfully I just never got around to finishing the original Ratchet & Clank after starting it for the first time a few months ago. The end boss, combined with all the grinding I'd need to do for bolts each time I'd die (because you have to repurchase any ammo used before you died) was just too much. That was my introduction to the series and I really liked it besides the grinding and stuff that caused me to not finish it.

So I'm giving this PS4 version a try and it's a remake of the original game and like any remake should be, I think it is a better game and improved on most of the issues I had with the original.

First off the controls were improved over the original, not that they were all that terrible in the first place, but they definitely are better now.
In addition to that, the graphics actually impressed me. If this is what PS4 can do, then I'm really looking forward to starting the PS5 Ratchet & Clank next just to see how much better it looks.

Also added this time was a much-needed difficulty setting. The original game lacked that and I can certainly understand why so many YouTubers that played it as kids say they really struggled with the original game because I'm a grown ass man and I struggled too. I would have continued on with it, but again, that grinding is a mood changer. Thankfully there is a lot less grinding in this version and when you die you won't have to repurchase ammo.

I thought I'd get bored of trying to play this so soon after giving up on the original, but the updated graphics and improvements to controls help make me want to continue and I will complete it this time.

As big of a fan of 3D (and 2D) platformers as I am, I really don't know how I slept on this series for so long. I blame Super Mario Sunshine for almost killing my love of 3D platformers for most of the GCN/PS2/Xbox era. I slept on Jak & Daxter too, but I'm hoping to change that this summer and play through the trilogy.

23-May-23 3:50pm
#6

Finn


TMNT Cowabunga Collection - 8-10 I loved this, finished so many Turtles games that I never played before and beat a few that I have many times before. It was nice to finally beat Ninja Turtles (Nes) after all these years. The collection also introduced me to my new favorite TMNT game Hyperstone Heist.. not sure why but I loved the hell out of it. I also would not mind a new Tournament Fighters game...

I need to finish Shredders revenge but I am a tad burnt out right now, maybe I will revisit it in a few months.

23-May-23 5:22pm
#7

PizzaTheHutt


I started a couple of games in co-op with my friend a couple nights ago. I didn't like 2 out of the 3, but the one I did like was just far too difficult.

Wild Guns Reloaded {} 6/10
This is the one I did enjoy...for the little bit I played of it in single player. I didn't intend to play it solo though, I really only downloaded it for my friend and I to play in co-op, and for that the game is ridiculously hard and was a big factor in the score I gave it. In co-op the developers had the bone-headed idea of having the players share the same pool of lives (of which there are only 3 lives for you to share!) and there are no continues, so once you've used up those limited amount of lives, you are stuck having to start from level 1 again. You can select what difficulty to play on in single player, but not multiplayer. Again, I didn't download this to play in single player, so once my friend and I got frustrated by dying repeatedly, I uninstalled it immediately. Retro gamers will probably really like this one, though.

Haven {} 5/10
We only played this for about 2 hours, then my friend asked if we could just play something else next week (she almost never does that, if we give up on a game it's usually because I'm the one who is not enjoying it). This feels like a VN, sprinkled in with some turn-based RPG battles and then you and the other player going around these big fields collecting crap, and it's easy to get lost because too many of the areas look the same. There's some love story between the two characters that I recall reviews saying was actually decent and the best part of this game, but when the gameplay is as boring as this is I'm fine with not knowing how that story ends.

Enter The Gungeon {} 5/10
Of these 3 games this one was requested by my friend for us to play. It's no secret I despise pretty much the entire roguelike genre of games, and my friend is more of a casual gamer herself, so I don't know what it is about these games that she likes, but I'll try and stick with this one long enough until it gets frustrating enough that she finally accepts it's time to move on to another game.

23-May-23 5:23pm
#8

TalonJedi87


Pokémon Brilliant Diamond

8/10 so far from me and I’m on the second gym. Taking me straight back to my late early 20’s here.

23-May-23 9:48pm
#9

Heavyd814life


PizzaTheHutt wrote:
I started a couple of games in co-op with my friend a couple nights ago. I didn't like 2 out of the 3, but the one I did like was just far too difficult. Wild Guns Reloaded {} 6/10 This is the one I did enjoy...for the little bit I played of it in single player. I didn't intend to play it solo though, I really only downloaded it for my friend and I to play in co-op, and for that the game is ridiculously hard and was a big factor in the score I gave it. In co-op the developers had the bone-headed idea of having the players share the same pool of lives (of which there are only 3 lives for you to share!) and there are no continues, so once you've used up those limited amount of lives, you are stuck having to start from level 1 again. You can select what difficulty to play on in single player, but not multiplayer. Again, I didn't download this to play in single player, so once my friend and I got frustrated by dying repeatedly, I uninstalled it immediately. Retro gamers will probably really like this one, though. Haven {} 5/10 We only played this for about 2 hours, then my friend asked if we could just play something else next week (she almost never does that, if we give up on a game it's usually because I'm the one who is not enjoying it). This feels like a VN, sprinkled in with some turn-based RPG battles and then you and the other player going around these big fields collecting crap, and it's easy to get lost because too many of the areas look the same. There's some love story between the two characters that I recall reviews saying was actually decent and the best part of this game, but when the gameplay is as boring as this is I'm fine with not knowing how that story ends. Enter The Gungeon {} 5/10 Of these 3 games this one was requested by my friend for us to play. It's no secret I despise pretty much the entire roguelike genre of games, and my friend is more of a casual gamer herself, so I don't know what it is about these games that she likes, but I'll try and stick with this one long enough until it gets frustrating enough that she finally accepts it's time to move on to another game.
Shame you didn't enjoy Haven. Loved it personally. It's just such a chill adventure game. The RPG mechanics are very standard and unremarkable, but battles are few and far between and I enjoyed that. Loved the traversal and the survival elements as well. It's funny because I don't know anyone who enjoyed it as much as I did. The people I know who have tried it also said it was boring. But yeah, the story and the interaction between the two characters is the main hook. It's honestly some of the most organic writing I've seen in a videogame.

23-May-23 10:43pm
#10

PizzaTheHutt


Barro {} 3/10
I was browsing through my Steam library and I have no idea where this came from. I can't recall if it was in a Humble Bundle or if the developers had made it free at one point, but either way I decided to give it a shot and boy is it garbage.

This was clearly something thrown together in Unity with little effort by someone hoping to make a quick buck off achievement whores (apparently they don't only exist on PlayStation and Xbox) and I'll tell ya why: I booted this game up, then let it sit at the title screen for a bit while my Xbox controller was syncing to my PC via Bluetooth and I noticed a random achievement popped up, titled "a". A couple seconds later another popped up, titled "b". Again, this time titled "c". More and more achievements kept popping going through the entire alphabet (twice, capital and lowercase) and then some named after symbols like "/" and ">". I played a couple of races while they continued popping up. Within 15 minutes I noticed they finally stopped and I had unlocked 100 achievements out of 109 in total. It took around another 30 minutes to continue unlocking the ones that didn't automatically pop and you actually have to earn.

As for the game itself, it's garbage like I already said. There's no career mode or anything, just single races. 19 tracks in all, but you only need to race on the first 10 if all you're playing it for is the achievement points. The graphics are crap that would look outdated even on a PS1 and the engine noises/audio is so dull. If I could say one positive thing about the game, it'd be that the controls are alright, I guess. I mean, you're pretty much just pressing down the A button and steering the car, it's not complicated and I never needed to hit the brakes a single time because you're never going fast enough that you would need to brake. I kept the difficulty at whatever it was set to by default and I never lost a race.
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@Heavyd814life admittedly Haven is probably not the type of game I normally would play. It only made it onto my radar because it had co-op (though it feels limited for whoever is player 2). Do the choices you make really have any outcome on the overall story? Just from the couple hours we played I didn't get the impression they mattered very much.

23-May-23 11:32pm
#11

Anxiouz


Dead Space Remake (PS5) - 9/10 - DS via back-compat on XSX is rather fantastic, and I played the entire DS trilogy on XSX last year. But even still this is such a wonderful game.

I know a lot of where I need to go and what I need to do but have still enjoyed every minute of this. I just played through RE4 Remake (PS5) before this and honestly this feels very similar. So this feels like where we are in this gen's tech right now. But I find DS more interesting and engaging than RE4 Remake. RE4 was amazing until about 1/2 way through when it turned into a different game.

I don't want to start getting neg'd for RE4vsDS comments but DS is so damn good. The HUD being your character and weapons has never been done better. The 3D audio isn't as good as Callisto Protocol (where I could hear enemies in specific pipes above and around me) but it is nice and the controller rumble is constant and well done. Plot is great. I'm a fan.

24-May-23 12:53am
#12

SupremeSarna


I had a nice bit of luck when I found a flea marketer selling Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for $5. I'd heard it was an underrated gem for the early 3DS, and I was looking out for it, so $5 CIB was a great deal.
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://i.imgur.com/...[/imgt]

As it so happens, this is an amalgamation of the semi-recent Disney Epic Mickey series and Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse . So unlike the rest of the Epic Mickey series, this one is a 2D platformer that uses old characters, terminology, and moves. The evil witch Mizrabel has taken over the Castle of Illusion in an alternate world called Wasteland, where forgotten characters and video games wind up. She plans to steal Toon Heart Power from other Disney characters to get back to the Cartoon World and wreak havoc, so Oswald the Lucky Rabbit summons Mickey to thwart her.

The platforming is pretty good. You can bounce off enemies to gain vertical height and make them drop hearts or money. You also have the Magical Paintbrush from Kirby: Canvas Curse to fire paint or thinner projectiles. At certain times, you may be forced to use the Touch Screen to draw or erase objects from the world, whether it's creating a cannon to launch yourself or removing a spiky block. This becomes a minigame of tracing a predetermined shape or efficiently scratching out that shape, respectively, and the better you do on the minigame, the more effective the results. While I do like the concept, it honestly gets pretty repetitive tracing the same outline or deleting the same hazard a dozen times in a world. I also wish Mickey could run faster or dash forward; he's pretty slow on the ground and has a floaty jump.

Throughout the game, you'll run into many classic Disney characters in need of rescue. While GameTZ's audience may be familiar with the likes of Snow White and Pinocchio , Renaissance characters like Ariel and the Beast also appear. The most recent faces here are Rapunzel and Pascal from 2011's Tangled. (I personally think adding Wreck-it Ralph could've been a clever choice--this game released a few weeks after his film, and forgotten video games are established to enter this world, so it would've worked perfectly for everyone.) Either way, the developers clearly did their homework on these characters. They all talk convincingly like their movie counterparts and reference lines any fan will appreciate. The Peddler from Aladdin, for example, notes that I'm "only interested in the exceptionally rare," and offers to sell Mickey magic beans at one point. Mickey turns him down, saying that he knows magic beans all too well--a reference to the Mickey and the Beanstalk segment from 1947's Fun and Fancy Free. Donald none-too-subtly hits on various princesses, which seems to be a facet of his character, and I think started in 1944's The Three Caballeros. It's entertaining seeing Mickey meet and pleasantly chat with all these icons!

Every toon you save gets or joins a room in the Fortress, your home base. They then give you sidequests to do, which upgrade their room when completed and earn you Toon Heart Power. Since you need a certain amount of power to unlock the next world, doing these quests is inevitable. They usually task you with retrieving an item/character from a previous stage or talking to another rescued Toon. While I didn't mind it at first, it's definitely needless padding. Whenever they ask you to find their thing, the thing then appears in an already-beaten level, so it's not like you can pick up their item on the first trip to save time. The best you can do is take on as many sidequests as possible and then collect numerous things in one go. Additionally, upgrading every character's room to the max doesn't do anything whatsoever--not even a buff against the final boss or something. I needed to grind a little money to get that 100% completion, but I'm not sure that was worth it. The final world gives out the most cash per stage, and the stages there are a drag.

Lastly, the music is unremarkable, and Mickey never shuts up in play. He makes sound effects wth every action, which gets grating. Fortunately, the art direction is very high-quality! The sprites, backgrounds, and portraits are shockingly good, which made it all the more enjoyable to play. My total play time was 20 hours, though apparently most people complete it faster.

My rating: 7.5 out of 10.

27-May-23 2:23pm
#13

PizzaTheHutt


Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix {} 5/10
A month or two ago I bought a Humble Bundle of kart racers and I decided this will be the first one I try. I hope the rest in the bundle can only be better than this.
Overall I'm not impressed with it. This is one of the most bland kart racers I've played in a while. It's not that it's a bad game, it just feels like wasted potential of the Nickelodeon license because they didn't even bother getting voice clips of any of the characters, which kills a chunk of the nostalgia factor that I wanted to play this for in the first place. When you hit an opponent with an item you don't hear anything from them that even acknowledges it, just the boring music that plays through each race. As for the controls, the karts handle alright, but the default assigned buttons are not ideal. The gas is assigned to RB and the drifting to LB. I'd personally rather have those assigned to the right and left triggers, so I go into the options menu to change it (it's a very basic options menu btw, you can't even adjust anything like the resolution) and while it does let you make some changes to the controls, you can't assign anything to the left and right trigger buttons specifically.

There are 32 tracks to race on, which is a good amount, however most just aren't well designed or fun to race on. A diehard Nickelodeon fan might be able to guess what track is from which franchise, but some of them still have me stumped. They just don't scream "Nickelodeon" the way that recent Disney kart racer got it right with that IP. The character roster is a decent size with 30 characters in total, but I'm not familiar with some of them, they're from series that started after I outgrew the channel. They should not be charging $40 for this and I'm glad I didn't pay anywhere near that for it.

28-May-23 7:44pm
#14

PizzaTheHutt


MotorStorm: Apocalypse {} 8/10
Do you wanna know how I know this game released in 2011 without having needed to look it up? Because the minute you reach the title screen they start assaulting your ears with dubstep music. Gross.

Crappy dubstep soundtrack aside, this is a damn good game. I really wish Sony didn't kill this franchise off. These were good games, and among the nicest looking racing games of that console gen. Obviously they're no match for current gen racing games, but this one still looks good, and I really like the way the environments collapse around you, altering the track layout for the following laps (you can argue Split/Second might have done it better, but I think both games do it well for different reasons).

I have no problem so far with the track designs, though I haven't raced on them all yet. And the vehicles all control well (thankfully haven't been noticing any input lag because I'm streaming this on PS+ Premium instead of playing on the actual PS3). I really am liking this game, but if I could change anything about it, it'd be the soundtrack (I miss when consoles let us use custom soundtracks) and maybe the cutscenes (or how they're written) because some are just really corny. Oh, and also make the difficulty a tad easier. As much as I enjoy some of the MotorStorm games, I have not been able to actually complete one because they always reach a point where the CPU is just too damn good.

30-May-23 2:46am
#15

Bleed_DukeBlue


I’m up to the final boss, and Dead Island 2 has been a great surprise. I really expected it to be bad given how long it was in development and all the drama with new devs coming in. It’s really quite fun though (especially in co-op) and is giving me more Left 4 Dead vibes than Back 4 Blood did.

30-May-23 9:24am
#16

sinnie


Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:
I’m up to the final boss, and Dead Island 2 has been a great surprise. I really expected it to be bad given how long it was in development and all the drama with new devs coming in. It’s really quite fun though (especially in co-op) and is giving me more Left 4 Dead vibes than Back 4 Blood did.
Great game, had a blast with it. I didn't do any co-op my first play through but I wanna go back and play as another character and try.

30-May-23 8:40pm
#17

Anxiouz


PizzaTheHutt wrote:
MotorStorm: Apocalypse {} 8/10
It's been years since I played it but once I started getting familiar with the tracks I had a lot of fun with this back in that era. Learning what jumps between buildings were death pits vs potential shortcuts helped. The first couple times around each track was a bit too much trial and error though.

1-Jun-23 3:39pm
#18

PizzaTheHutt


Layers of Fear {} 9/10
I'll start off with a pet peeve of mine regarding games like this: when I'm playing a horror game, I want to feel like I am constantly in danger. What I don't want to have to do, is stop and read these torn papers/newspaper articles that are scattered around an abandoned house/mansion just to be able to get a little backstory. So many horror games these days are guilty of this, and it just bugs me to the point where I just skip most of them. The only time I want to stop and have to read something is if there's an upcoming puzzle and the solution will be in whatever document thingy I'm reading, otherwise just find a different way to fill me in on backstory at the start of the game. At least this game works it into the story, because you're playing as an alcoholic husband whose marriage is falling apart and you and the wife are not on speaking terms, so you each leave notes to each other and that's basically how you'd communicate.

So that's pretty much my only complaint. The rest of the game is solid, and is one of my favorite horror games since Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The game does a good job of playing mind games with you, kind of like Eternal Darkness did back in the day, but this is way more scary, Eternal Darkness was like a kids game in comparison. There's a good amount of jump scares, but they don't overdo it with them. Keep in mind this is one of those "psychological horror games", so it's more about giving the player a creepy experience, there's no combat in it and you're not fighting back against these ghosts and demons because they only exist in the character's mind.

If I could change one thing, I think I would have chosen to buy this on PlayStation VR instead, as all horror games are just automatically going to be more scary in VR, like, that's been scientifically proven. I've heard it was a bit of a lazy port though.

1-Jun-23 10:13pm
#19

Anxiouz


Gotham Knights (PS5) - 6.5/10 - I finally put some real time into this and although you can find some fun here, it's clumsy, kinda dull, and the inventory stuff is overly complex. Being able to choose from a few characters (each with their own play style) is nice. But once I used Red Hood who had a distance gun weapon, that's all I'm ever going to use.

Crafting new equipment and merging/applying mod gems(?) to things makes you constantly check if you can upgrade something...and usually you can't. Most upgrade unlocks happen in batches as you complete core missions.

Because of how sparse and simple the game is, the "it's only 30fps" argument isn't an issue for me. It plays fine and looks ok. I got this for maybe $20-$25 and it's not terrible at that price, but it definitely doesn't have the fun factor of the Arkham Batman trilogy. For $20 or less this is decent. But I'm also starting to see (like Assassin's Creed) where you get to a point, and then are required to level up (to have a chance) at certain missions to continue the core plot. That blows. And I've seen more than a few side missions to clear buildings of enemies that literally have the same exact floor plan, same exact enemy placement, and same chests in the same locations. At this point when I start one of these I can breeze through the pattern in like 2 minutes now since I've seen it 4-5 times.

The batcycle is a nice ride but it feels SO unbelievable slow it's shocking. Eventually you earn traversal skills (Red Skull can just "magic jump" in the air continually to stay afloat) and although they are ridiculous, it does make the game more fun.

1-Jun-23 11:17pm
#20

Slickriven


@PizzaTheHutt I presume that's the newest rerelease, if it's out now, correct? I played the original a few years back and the sequel earlier this year and found them both to be decent games, but near completely non-scary. Atmosphere was good in them, better in the first, but once I caught on to the idea that if I turn around the scene might change completely, then that tactic lost it's chance to affect me and the scare fell apart from there.

2-Jun-23 9:56am
#21

benstylus


I finally tried out Immortals: Fenyx Rising (got it as part of a b2g1 sale at gamestop sometime last year)

I am sad that it is as good as it is. I really wanted to hate it. But it's really good. Totally a breath of the Wild ripoff in terms of gameplay so far except I haven't had my weapons break.

So because of that, BETTER THAN ZELDA.