Things you love/like and dislike/hate about the games you are currently playing...

[Dalisclock]

Witcher 2

Pros: The inventory is a little easier to use then the first game and there's less crap to pick up and fill it with(like the Salamadra buttons, fruit, etc), Transitions between areas are smoother(but sometimes still noticeable) then the first game, the entire presentation is much better, the voice acting is better, the combat(while still occasionally clunky) is much more fun then the first game, I'm more invested in the storyline a lot earlier in the game, the areas are a lot more interesting and feel more organic, I no longer have to hoard alcohol to make potions, I can make gernades/bombs from the start, I have access to all the types of magic from the start, I don't have to waste an hour of game time to make a potion and I don't need to find and use a campfire and a piece of flint to make one either(which makes little sense when I have igni). The leveling/upgrade system is a lot more streamlined and intuitive. Basically, Witcher 2 is pretty much what I wanted The Witcher to be without the clunky interface, awful presentation and boring opening hours.

Cons: The game throws a lot at you and pretty much assumes you played the first game from the start, but the system and engine has changed enough that having played the first game doesn't help you much in combat. The plot references a lot of politics and characters that don't mean much to me and I played the first game a few months ago(I know Yennifer is supposed to be important from what I know about W3 but right now I just keep hearing people talk about her like I'm supposed to know her, and yes, I remember Geralt doesn't remember a lot of his past). Unlike in the first game, you can no longer drink potions in battle but now have to sit down and drink them before a battle...and if you happen to walk into a boss fight before you drink a potion(especially one that ups your health regeneration), well sucks to be you.

Hyper Light Drifter
Pros: It's a gorgeous game that feels challenging but not absurdly so, a nice story told through visuals, good combat, not to mention shortcuts and teleporters to save on travel time.

Cons: The intro movie is.....very surreal(beautiful but surreal) that doesn't actually tell you much. The western boss is a massive pain. Learning the rhythm to effectively do the chain jump(which is required to get some of the gearbits) is difficult.

 

[Kyrian007]

Grim Dawn

I picked this up on a Steam Sale and just started up a character. And then another, I wanted to see both the hack and slash style and stand-off and fireball style. Basically to see if they were balanced well for a Diablo style clicklooter.

Good: They are indeed balanced with each other.

Bad: You only need hit level 2 or 3 and you are horribly OP vs the gigantic hordes this game throws at you. This game is faaaaarrrrr too easy. I haven't kicked on multiplayer yet but honestly I don't see the point. Basically it would consist of one player goes right, the other left, they clear the map in 1/2 the time as the single-player and dogpile bosses for a laugh. Imagine Diablo if you had regenerating health that fills back to full on its own if you ever go 2 seconds without clicking on something... That's Grim Dawn.

And I'm actually kind of liking it. Sure, there's no real challenge and sometimes it's easy to walk past a critical quest point and keep opening up newer "harder" map areas while looking for a boss enemy you were supposed to fight 8 levels and 2 maps ago all the while wondering "where IS that guy?" But there are many fun things too. Like when my wizard had to backtrack to a missed quest area he was way overleveled for and enemies were dying just by running into him and bouncing off of a passive buff after a couple of hits... and to amuse myself I had him pick up a discarded 5 levels obsolete 2-handed sword and role-played him role-playing out his own Conan fantasies by cutting down the hordes barbarian style.

 

[aozgolo]

Witcher 3

Love: Just about everything
Hate: The level scaling of quests and how you will often complete quests you outleveled 20 hours ago.


Fallout 4

Love: The settlement building and crafting mechanics, as much as some people hate on the game for it, I really enjoy it.

Hate: Inventory caps, I spend so much of my time making multiple trips back and forth to conquered places to pick up junk I might need, or going dirty and enabling god mode after everything's dead just so I don't have to make a second trip.


Stardew Valley

Love: The very well designed and open ended gameplay that lets you do as much or as little as you please and feel like you aren't punished for playing it the way you want to.

Hate: The lack of endgame goals, still plenty of stuff to do but you run out of stuff to build and buy, and if you are experienced with the game you can hit this point fairly soon.

 

[Neverhoodian]

No Man's Sky
Love: The sense of wonder and exploration, along with its retro sci-fi aesthetic. I don't care if the internet has a hate-boner for the game, I'm enjoying myself with no sign of becoming bored any time soon. As I've said multiple times before, it's the kind of game you can pop in for an hour or two to unwind after a long day's work. Also, the sheer scale means I don't have to worry about getting continually ganked by some asshole player for shits and giggles.

Hate: The lack of variety for alien settlements. You'd think galaxy-spanning races would have built more than just sporadic outposts and the occasional space station (both of which are oddly vacant save for one or two inhabitants). There's also the limited inventory (though that's gradually being rectified via suit and ship upgrades) and lackluster space combat. The procedural generation algorithms could probably benefit from a bit more leeway as well; I'm running across lots of plants and animals that look all too similar to ones I found on other worlds.

Stardew Valley
Love: another "kick back and relax" title. I like how the game allows all manner of farming, from gardens to orchards to livestock. Hell, you can ignore farming entirely and make a living from fishing if you want (which incidentally isn't nearly as hard as I was led to believe). There's also the townsfolk who, while prone to falling into stereotypes, still manage to come across as having believable personalities. On a related note, Maru is best waifu.

Hate: the speed at which in-game days whizz by. It forces you to adhere to a strict routine and discourages deviating from it. Also, I've accidentally blown money making purchases I didn't want because the game registered my single click as a double click, forcing me to either grit my teeth and bear it or quit and reload.

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
Love: The ability to mish-mash any number of iconic Star Wars characters into a crazy team. Want to have Kylo Ren fight alongside his grandfather? You can. Grand Moff Tarkin joining forces with Ewoks? Sure. Han Solo and Boba Fett teaming up? Why the hell not. It's also a good time waster when I'm on break at work.

Hate: the multiple paywalls the game shoves in your face. I realize it's a F2P mobile game, but there are better ways to implement the system than making progression glacially slow unless you throw down potentially hundreds of dollars (thousands even, if some pimped-out players I've faced are any indication). I also have issues with how rewards are distributed, with gear and character shards being doled out via RNG with low chances of actually dropping. If I wanted to be screwed over by RNGesus I'd go play a slot machine.

 

[FalloutJack]

Hate: Inventory caps.

I remember that. I remember having to make a choice on what was better, come back for more later. And then, I maxed out my perk for lugging stuff around, so that I could carry as much as I wanted and still be able to fast travel when encumbered. It IS an issue, but I like that it's solvable.

OT: I've also been playing Worms: Open Warfare 2 for PSP in my spare time. Time for a new thingy.

GOOD?: Worms capitalized on being much like an old tank-fire strategy game known as Scorched Earth, with a more comical theme that is amusing, to say the least. It's NOT Scorched Earth itself, but it IS entertaining with a reasonable selection of weapons and other items to make use of, missions and puzzles, customization, and other things. It's good if you want to relax into some strategy for fun.

BAD?: Apart from the usual gripe about your turns having a time limit, there are some failings to this game. The physics sometimes fail in that there could be some phasing into an object or a weapon (like a Sheep or Buffalo or even just a Grenade) operate in total contradiction to what you set them to do. The computer opponents will at times glitch because there will be a jump or a jetpacking where it will be scripted to go somewhere and it will go there even if the enemy has NOT made that jump or it could not have the fuel or fly through a solid object. Also, there are some obstacles which make it hard to aim or see what you're shooting at. These only affect the player. The computer is NEVER effected, all of the above means that it is LITERALLY cheating at the game. The fact that I manage to overcome it alot anyway just goes to show that I have great skill, but it's STILL a dirty cheat.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Well I may be a bit late to the party but The Last Of Us - Remastered

[The Good]

The whole game really. Played through it last weekend with my girlfriend and we were both blown away by it. Loved Ellie and Joel's story and seeing their relationship develop over the course of the game, sure it's not a massively complex story and you can kinda guess what's coming up next but that never detracts from the enjoyment of the journey. The combat is fun and the game gives you the choice of going in all guns blazing or sneaking your way through an encounter. I liked the way that going loud was usually the harder of the two options too, due to the lack of ammo and Joel's atrocious aim (Seriously, upgrade weapon sway asap, ideally it should be the first thing you upgrade)

[The Bad]

Er...sometimes the controls can feel a bit clunky, especially in more hectic fights. Also the flashlight some times
is incredibly dim and useless making it difficult to see where you need to go and sometimes it's easy to get turned around in the environment due the the lack of a map and the ones you do find can be useless due to the fact that they don't show you where you currently are so it's really hard to get your bearings.

Over all I'd give it a personal review score of 9 out of 10 - to quote my girlfriend as the credits were rolling 'that game was outstanding'

 

[Scarim Coral]

DeadStar
Like- A different moba est game while being light on the reward stuff and the general spaceship theme to it aswell.
Dislike- Matchmaking due to not really balancing out the player experience level and the lack of audience (I view it to be underrated).

Guild Wars 2
Like- The general mmorpg stuff like gameplay, weapons skins etc.
Dislike- The achievement system and the pvp

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Given the system for making all of your physical/mental/social graces better in the game, I would like to ask...is there any way of actually doing that in a manner that isn't just higher level manipulation? It's alot of work to build a conversation that makes use of logic and evidence, rather than something about the way you look and sound, which may be why it doesn't happen as often (Like, say, in the Shadowrun Returns games).

Well, i just want to feel like i had an input, a challenge...It doesn't have to be deep. Just some little mini-game or choice instead of a system that already decides for me. It feels too weightless otherwise. It's only a minor personal gripe, but it crops up in a lot of games.

BAD?: Apart from the usual gripe about your turns having a time limit, there are some failings to this game. The physics sometimes fail in that there could be some phasing into an object or a weapon (like a Sheep or Buffalo or even just a Grenade) operate in total contradiction to what you set them to do. The computer opponents will at times glitch because there will be a jump or a jetpacking where it will be scripted to go somewhere and it will go there even if the enemy has NOT made that jump or it could not have the fuel or fly through a solid object. Also, there are some obstacles which make it hard to aim or see what you're shooting at. These only affect the player. The computer is NEVER effected, all of the above means that it is LITERALLY cheating at the game. The fact that I manage to overcome it alot anyway just goes to show that I have great skill, but it's STILL a dirty cheat.

Oh shit, worms AI is infuriating! They hover between purposefully incompetent and savant levels of accuracy. Like it's patronizingly playing you instead. It is the way of the worms i guess.

DeadStar
Like- A different moba est game while being light on the reward stuff and the general spaceship theme to it aswell.
Dislike- Matchmaking due to not really balancing out the player experience level and the lack of audience (I view it to be underrated).

Hey i have that on the PS4! It's pretty good, and i agree with your issues there also.

Witcher 2

Pros: The inventory is a little easier to use then the first game and there's less crap to pick up and fill it with(like the Salamadra buttons, fruit, etc), Transitions between areas are smoother(but sometimes still noticeable) then the first game, the entire presentation is much better, the voice acting is better, the combat(while still occasionally clunky) is much more fun then the first game, I'm more invested in the storyline a lot earlier in the game, the areas are a lot more interesting and feel more organic, I no longer have to hoard alcohol to make potions, I can make gernades/bombs from the start, I have access to all the types of magic from the start, I don't have to waste an hour of game time to make a potion and I don't need to find and use a campfire and a piece of flint to make one either(which makes little sense when I have igni). The leveling/upgrade system is a lot more streamlined and intuitive. Basically, Witcher 2 is pretty much what I wanted The Witcher to be without the clunky interface, awful presentation and boring opening hours.

Cons: The game throws a lot at you and pretty much assumes you played the first game from the start, but the system and engine has changed enough that having played the first game doesn't help you much in combat. The plot references a lot of politics and characters that don't mean much to me and I played the first game a few months ago(I know Yennifer is supposed to be important from what I know about W3 but right now I just keep hearing people talk about her like I'm supposed to know her, and yes, I remember Geralt doesn't remember a lot of his past). Unlike in the first game, you can no longer drink potions in battle but now have to sit down and drink them before a battle...and if you happen to walk into a boss fight before you drink a potion(especially one that ups your health regeneration), well sucks to be you.

Hyper Light Drifter
Pros: It's a gorgeous game that feels challenging but not absurdly so, a nice story told through visuals, good combat, not to mention shortcuts and teleporters to save on travel time.

Cons: The intro movie is.....very surreal(beautiful but surreal) that doesn't actually tell you much. The western boss is a massive pain. Learning the rhythm to effectively do the chain jump(which is required to get some of the gearbits) is difficult.

Come to the warm loving embrace of Witcher 3! Don't dillydally too much there, although you'll probably be in time for the GOTY edition anyway, so continue as you were. Hyper Light Drifter is on my next buy, if not Deus Ex first.

 

[Bobular]

Halo 2 for PC

I love how its actually got different enemies with different weapons that all move differently and behave differently, it doesn't just have guy with gun, guy with shotgun, guy with rocket launcher.

I hate that it took me 2 weeks to get it to run on a modern PC. That and the flood.

 

[BrawlMan]

Samurai Warriors 4

Love:
-Being able to control 2 officers. This feature absolutely must be in every future warriors game.

Hate:
-Chronicle mode is way too damn boring and I'll probably never finish it. Every battle has completely random objectives with completely random officers and you want to just rush the commander to get it over with but noooo you have to complete these stupid objectives before the commander shows up!

-The gem weapon system just really sucks!

-Lack of English voices really kills immersion and forces me to always divide my sight between the subtitles at the bottom and the action

-Kenshin Uesugi's stupid Burger King hat.

-In story mode there's really only one way to go through a stage. A lot of the stage is blocked off by closed gates (X's on the minimap) and it stinks!

-Nobunaga Oda should've been crazier and more evil! He's hands down the best character in the game but it seems like he was barely there!

You're right about chronicle mode and the gem weapon system. I've already got 65% of that mode done, and I 'm starting to get bored.

Samurai Warriors 4

Love

Combat is fast-paced. Compared to SW, DW is slower, even with the latest installment. DW8 may have more weapon variety, but SW4 has the speed.

* The graphics are pretty; especially on the PS4. This is a minor thing, but after looking at the, mostly, dull brown environments of Dynasty Warriors 8, it's good enough.

* Swapping between two warriors is must stay for Warriors style games, and I wish Omega Force would use this gameplay mechanic more often. Think how much more ground a player can cover in the other spin-off games.

* Koshosho is hilarious, out of place, and I love it! She looks like a woman for the 1970s that time traveled to 16th century Japan.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/dynastywarriors/images/f/fa/Koshosho-sw4.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140317151125


Hate

* Half of the campaigns are short. I don't expect them to be 15+ hours long, but what's the point of having 55 characters when the campaigns only last about 4 hours at most. If most of the campaigns were about 8 hours long this would not be a big deal. I know there is DLC, but from the looks of it, those extra stages might as well been on the disc. And speaking of DLC, Shoobie, don't bother with SW 4-II, it's just a lazy expansion pack that might as well been downloadable content with one extra character, some minor gameplay improvements (they get rid of the awful gem system), but a worse story, even shorter levels, and much less content.

* Any weapon with a stimulus perk level between 3-5 (five being the max) breaks the game and turns Nightmare mode in to a complete joke. Once you know how to clear objectives on the hardest difficulty, you can weapons with high stimulus. Sometimes the regular weapons end up being better than the rare weapons themselves. For those who don't know, stimulus is a perk that let's you last in rage mode longer (time slows down; you attack faster), and every time you defeat a certain amount of enemies, or level up, you get a time boost for that mode. Meaning a good or even average player can stay in rage mode for the entire stage. This can be fun at first or great for clearing hard objectives in certain stages, but it does get boring after while.

* Classic costumes are DLC. Really Koei-Tecmo? You had to make all of the alternate costumes DLC?

Odin's Sphere Leifthrasir


Love

* Beautiful redrawn graphics and 2D artwork made for HD.

* The combat is fast paced, combines the best of Muramasa and Dragon's Crown. It's already aging better than the PS2 version's slow paced combat.

* Epic story with a well done English dub. The game made me care about the characters, and managed to make almost everyone sympathetic, or at least understand their motives. Vanillaware knows how to make male and female characters, a lot more than most developers or publisher these days. Yes, some of the female characters are on the fan-service side, mainly Velvet; yet she is likable and I found her story the most interesting out of the five. None of that "yeah, girl power" or "sticking it to the man" attitude or obnoxious trite. That and Oswald's too. I'm a sucker for Black Knight archetypes.

* Does Norse mythology better than what God of War IV has to offer.

Hate

* Grinding can still be a bit of a pain, but is nothing compared to the original.

* You can't choose who you want to play as first. The player is required to go through a certain order of characters first. There is always going to be a character nobody enjoys playing because of their play style being awkward. Almost all of the characters I enjoyed playing expect Mercedes. Her story is great and she a well developed character, but Mercedes is a ranged fighter in a heavy melee style game. It works, but she is not the most fun to play as.


* Getting the true endings is a *****. I am going to look up a guide, because I still have to finish the game.


* Classic mode is pointless unless a player is curious or a nostalgia filter fan of the PS2 version. While most of the slowdown is gone, the combat is slower compared to remake mode, and is obnoxiously difficult. Inventory management is more of a hassle, and for me, is just not worth it.

 

[hermes]

Batman Arkham Knight

LOVE: More Arkham Batman. Even when it doesn't feel as fluid, it still works great, and the stealth sections are very satisfying.

HATE: The parts were it is not "more Arkham Batman", specifically, how they force feed the Batmobile into everything. Fine, you have the damn thing, and driving around in it is satisfying... but handling it on almost everything else feels incredibly unhandlable. Combat, stealth, riddler puzzles, detective mode. It is like they forced every single mechanic of the game into a batmobile version and call it a day.

To add insult to the injury, the riddler puzzles that are just races are almost breaking the fourth wall in pandering: so, you are the great mastermind, and your big plan is make me run in a poorly made Mario Kart course? Is that your big intellect at work and how you have outsmarted me by making a curve too steep? The elevator section that preludes them is just icing... I know the idea is to make the Riddler insufferable, but all it achieve is making the developer team look just as narcissistic and insufferable by having a character boast for several unskippable minutes about what a great job they made. Whenever he talks about how smart he is by designing a race track (and, by the way, you are pushing it by calling a race track an "intellectual challenge"), I can't stop picturing him as a game designer and makes me want to punch him.

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

Dragon Warrior III

Love:
- Combat that resolves quickly
- The evolution of the party from only one guy in Dragon Warrior to now being able to fully construct your party
- The fact that party members have a randomly assigned personality that affects their stats
- The opening of the game where the Hero/player undergoes a personality test of questions and a scenario that determine your stat growth and the fact that these questions and scenarios are selected from a randomized pool, meaning no 2 playthroughs and characters are identical

Hate:
- The ultra-slow pace
- Vast amount of grinding
- The usual NES-era JRPG problem of not quite enough direction given to the player
- The story or setting hasn't evolved: we're still heroes in a fantasy world saving everyone from an evil Dark Lord.

 

[Euryalus]

I struggle to understand how this game is so well regarded outside of its decent writing and world building.

I was under the impression that that WAS the only real reason it was so well regarded. I mean the context gives the gameplay more oomph than it would have otherwise, but really it was just an ok Gears of War clone with pseudo RPG elements.

 

[chrissx2]

Kingdom New Land

Love:

-artstyle
-atmosphere
-soundtrack

Hate:
-lack of content
-limited amount of control over your units

 

[Poetic Nova]

FEAR.

The good:
AI is really bloody good, up to the point of scaring me more than Alma. Great atmosphere.

The bad:
Some sound design is grating on me (mostly the footsteps). Buggy, very buggy.

 

[Kingjackl]

Dark Souls 3

Like: The gameplay loop, the enemy design, the variety of options.

Dislike: PVP. I got into it late on NG+, so now everything's just a high-level meta of community accepted builds. No room for people just trying stuff out like me.

The Witcher 2

Like: Good writing, compelling sidequests, variety of choices.

Dislike: Weirdly grainy graphics, infuriating inventory system, weight restrictions, dull combat.

 

[Laughing Man]

Grand Theft Auto Online

It's called Grand Theft Auto the one thing you would think they could at least get right would be the god damn fucking auto part of it however the racing in the game is a total joke.

Where to start.

Car physics, broken at best, made up as the game goes at worst, clearly linked to host connection, lack of mass, weight and gravity seems to be something that suggests it has an effect on the car rather than a constant factor. The entire car handling model has been ruined by two factors 1) The ability to turn and move the car while it is in the air (yup cars in GTA are fucking planes it would seem) and 2) The ability to flip cars when you roll them.

The catch up which is so broken that I assume they allowed the pet retard at Rockstar to not only design, code and implement it in game but then ran the entire process through the company monkey to play test it.

All of this becomes obvious in the latest dumpster fire (no lets get this right, it's not a dumpster fire it's two hobos who started a dumpster fire while they had a shit throwing battle in it) of a DLC. The Stunning Cu.... ooops sorry Cunning Stunts DLC.

Finally the player base for this game, well remember those shit fighting dumpster hobos I mentioned earlier? Yeah they look like royalty compared to the average racer that takes part in most of the GTA Onlines 'racing'.

So yeah this is something that pisses me off.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

Natural Doctorine (PS4)

Love:
- A SRPG where positioning actually matters! Tanks can actually take hits for other weaker characters, rather than the attack phasing through them to hit the weaker characters behind them. Also the strength of your combos is determined by the distance between the characters, with longer distances meaning bigger bonuses.

- It's super unforgiving. Its refreshing that I actually have to think about positioning and unit compositions otherwise the game is all too happy to kick my teeth in if I over extend my party.

Hate:
- The portrait of one of the female party members is a headshot of her doing that "looking over her shoulder pose" that is basically a means to show off her tits and ass at the same time (were they actually in shot). Its not a huge thing, but it did respond to seeing it for the first time with an exasperated "... Really?".

- It's super unforgiving. I'm pretty much resigned to playing this on Saturdays, as that's about the only day that I have enough time to get a decent session in when I'm not mentally tired from work. One wrong turn is all it takes to get a game over at some points and I get sloppy if I'm not paying close attention to what I'm doing.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I've been away from home for so long and so busy, I have no current game...