The First Play Thread of First Plays

[dataDave]

They’d only give me €20 for trade-in, so I’m stuck with it.

The main game is an insane hybrid of fighting that feels like it’s been lifted from the Scalebound cutting room floor with the easy-auto difficulty turned on from the first Bayonetta (there’s your 9/10 reviews), platforming (the most atrocious you’ve ever seen) and exploration through PSP-calibre action RPG environments, and insane set-pieces which are funny to watch but are in no way fun to play. Each level is a mad mixture of all of these elements and you’re constantly yanked from one to another. Even being switched over to Viola (the new character) is a massive re-adjustment every time because it feels like she’s been dropped in from some other game they were working on at the last minute just for the ****ing laugh.

The enemy design is another huge letdown, and I don’t mean the way they look - I couldn’t care less about that - I’m on about their behaviours and reactions. They’re so shallow and repetitive and honestly there’s absolutely ****all to them at all. Only the small humanoids come with audio cues, and a couple of the heavies, but that’s it. It’s really inconsistent and leads to excessive confusion when you have a group of different enemies on screen at once. Even the enemies off-screen will attack you and shoot you with lasers without any signposting whatsoever. That’s your punishment for not completely obliterating everything with Demon Slave like you’re supposed to! Demon Slave, the new feature where you stand still and summon a big clunky demon to hit things in a completely unsatisfactory manner. You can switch demons around to layer their attacks, however I’m on chapter 11 now on Hard and I’ve not had to really do that at all yet.

I’m going to push through with it and try to unlock the Witch Trials. If I can salvage a few good encounters out of this I’ll be happy. I guess the Rodin fight awaits.

I hope Astral Chain is good, because if it isn’t I’m done with buying their games.

[Golgo]

I confess that I too was waiting for @dataDave's sage verdict. Reading between the lines of several reviews it sounded like Platinum went for an everything-and-the-kitchen sink approach, rather like the last No More Heroes 3. I was kind of hoping Platinum could hold the pieces together much better than Grasshopper have done recently. From what Dave and others say, though, it sounds like a similarly spectacular but undisciplined mess. I'm never going to be a top player, though, so I'm tempted to give it a go just for the silly OTT spectacle.

[kryss]

Anyone played After The Fall?

[Tobal]

Pentiment on gamepass - looked pretty interesting from what i remembered of E3 trailers, best described as point and click adventure game without the puzzles(so far 40 mins in), set in the1500 hundreds in Bavaria, starting in a town/village, early on its about building a background for your character which i'll assume give you extra reply choices when chatting to people, so far i've 'studied' in Venice, did a bit of study on medicine, astrology and the natural world and i act like a bit of del boy trying con a buck and run shady schemes... you occasionally get answer help from an inner monologue for what is basically Good, neutral, evil conscience characters. Will go back to it once i finish GOW2 off.

[QualityChimp]

Anyone played After The Fall?

@Asura, haven't you played this?

It does look good!

[Asura]

@Asura, haven't you played this?

It does look good!

I will, soon. I never bought it in the end. If I remember rightly, it was because the reviews said the lobby system was quite rudimentary and it came out around the time of the Quest 2's big Christmas, and people told me they regretted buying it because that January the lobbies were full of screaming 10-year-olds. I was going to pick it up in the future when they added friends-only lobbies.

[Neon Ignition]

I hovered over that last night but was put off for three reasons. One, that on PSVR is suspect it's largely dead. Two, that the reviews suggested it was a limited experience. Three - It's by the devs of Arizona Sunshine and for me that game didn't deliver.

[Asura]

I hovered over that last night but was put off for three reasons. One, that on PSVR is suspect it's largely dead. Two, that the reviews suggested it was a limited experience. Three - It's by the devs of Arizona Sunshine and for me that game didn't deliver.

It's cross-play, so while I can't say much to the other points, you'll be okay with #1

[Neon Ignition]

I imagine the disadvantage of the Move Controllers will hamper it enough. For some games they should have allowed the navigator controller to work with 1 move.

[Neon Ignition]

A little of the way into The Last of Us Part I, it's... not really changing my perception.
The thing with remakes is that they don't just look better but they reimagine or retool a game to bring something aged up to modern standards. If they solely improve the visuals then I don't really have much care for the extent of effort made - it's a remaster. That's exactly what this is, the intro sequence looks good, for some reason it doesn't look as strong after that even though it's a step up from the prior version. To play though it is literally the same, it's the Remaster with makeup slapped on it effectively. It's not helped that in every meaningful way Part II is superior so that emphasises how much this is a step back. It's simply just one of the most unnecessary remakes of recent years.

[briareos_kerensky]

Front Mission 1st: Remake

Without knowledge of the upcoming European physical release, I went for the digital version.

The game includes the original SFC campaign and the PS1 campaign, both playable in modern and classic mode.
Classic mode is the original game with remade graphics but fixed camera and old unit and weapon balance (I don't really know if they are using the SFC, PS1, or DS version though); modern includes camera pan and zoom, rebalancing, and some QoL improvements. Can't find a list of what was actually improved, but the new 3D graphics are the obvious highlight.

I have only played handheld, and on the Switch's screen graphics are sharp and detailed, with some nice touches like sand blowing on desert tiles. Animations are very basic, but every wanzer is a composed of completely modular components, so it's understandable. I'd say graphics look better than Tactics Ogre Reborn, though the interface is still incredibly close to the original, and it can be quite cumbersome to use, especially when outfitting wanzers.
Unfortunately the base game hasn't changed much, so missions (even with movement multiplier on to speed up battles as much as possible) tend to drag a lot: in the beginning you can't aim for a wanzer location, so you could end up spending several turns hitting legs or arms without hitting the body, the only way to destroy an enemy unit.
The AI seems quite stupid too, multiple times I was able to block an enemy unit between two terrain features and other enemies would simply get behind the first, even if they could easily bypass obstacles and swarm you from all sides.

Character portraits look like a weird miz of redrawing and AI upscaling: main characters seem to have first upscaled and then retouched, secondary characters like shopkeepers seem to have been simply upscaled, and some of them resemble more huge blobs of colours than human beings. The campaigns use Amano's artwork, they could have done the same for character portraits.

Not bad, but they could have reworked more things to make the game flow better...and maybe not publish it as the same time of Tactics Ogre Reborn and not advertising it all.

[Tobal]

Forspoken demo on PS5 - dull ubisoft like rubbish, unplayable in anything but performance mode, looks and feels last gen, its like they took FF15 and remade it, that horrible sluggish movement, the holding down of buttons, spell selection wheels on every button, they added horrible wall running that is more like goating your way up a mountain in skyrim... and the worst voice acting from the main girl and the speaking equipment side character, in the way it is emoted and what SE have given them both to say, feels like it's taking the mickey. And the main girl looks like some dead or alive lifeless doll, the face just doesn't animate.

Had to turn off the feedback and vibration, both completely over the top and not required in what will be long action RPG game, after 15 minutes of fighting it felt like i'd been on a jackhammer, also turn on auto collect in the accessibility menus if you intend to try it out.

[kryss]

I'll not both freeing up space to download it then.

[Neon Ignition]

Sniper Elite 5
I'll never enjoy these as much as when they were linear ala SE2 but this was fine. It's really just a more densely mapped extension of what SE4 did and feels somewhat PS3 era but it does its job

[Tobal]

SD Gundam battle alliance, not worth a full thread. A mobile game ported to consoles and on gamepass with i assume most of the MTX cut out. It plays ok enough like a stripped down Gundam (Dynasty) Warriors, quick and heavy melee buttons, boost/dodge/block, Shoot gun and 3 specials.

in game battles are you speeding around smacking up other super deformed grunt suits before a 'named' suit/pilot turns up and you fight them, the specials are the only real differences and are normally related the mechas signature weapons (Guncannon gets a bazooka and that artillery crouch position). You can take in 2 wingmen from a raft of named pilots and level them up to.

Structure is, do story missions which are a know battle pulled from the entire gundam franchise up to Blood Orphans release (there are some buyable DLC missions for Hathaway Flash and Narrative), where what should happen is changed by the rival suit being replaced another, changing history. When you beat the mission you can redo it as it actually happened.

Outside of fighting, expect the usual current Gundam game stuff of visual novel crap in a homebase and spending your rewards on upgrading the suits you unlock.

My main reason for sticking with is the fan service, 50 plus tracks pulled from the actual shows which is a rarity (no OP/Ed's, mainly themes and battle music), voiced pilots and pretty much every gundam show having some representative there, even if it is only the main Gundam Suit and/or Rival. The real downer is no Tallgeese 1 or 2, there are along of Wings suits but only the crappy Epyon makes it in on the badguys side.

Makes me miss an actual new Gundam Warriors game and not that that awful Breakers series.