henke on 27/12/2024 at 10:00
Kingdom Eighties - The 80's theme is a pretty unexpected turn for this series, but it kinda works, in a contrived way. This is a more linear, story focused game than the earlier entries. Perhaps a bit easier too, and definitely shorter. It was alright tho!
Forspoken - It's in PS+ so I played the first 4 hours. Story-wise it starts out good and I was hooked on Frey's journey, but as soon as she gets the magical Cuff they quickly start competing in who can spout the most annoying Whedonesque quips. From there on the story is... ok, but there's too much of it. The first 3 hours are thick with cutscenes and tutorialization. Once that clears up and you're set free in the world you find out that the gameplay really isn't that great. The movement feels fast and fluid, very Prototype or Infamous: Second Son-ish, but I think what made movement so fun in those games was the city setting. When you're just zooming along over mostly flat terrain it's just not as much fun. Overall the open world is full of collectibles and stuff to find. This combined with the magic attacks reminds me a lot of Ghostwire Tokyo actually, a game I liked. But there again, the Tokyo setting was a large part of what made it good. Forspoken just offers drab landscapes, and 4 hours in I'm kinda bored of it.
Sly Cooper 2 - I'm not into mascot platformers so I'd written this off as another one of those, but the stealth and heist focus does give this one something extra. Developed by Sucker Punch who later went to make the Infamouses, the movement in this feels very slick, but there's also a bit of early 2000's jank. And while the missions offer a good bit of variety, I'm also starting to feel some repetition after a few hours. A nice game, but I don't think I'll play past the first 2 episodes.
LordBooford on 27/12/2024 at 19:52
I've been playing Chinese chess , Xiangqi. For some reason in the past couple of years there's been increased interest in it in the West. An accessible high quality computer version has appeared as well as a few book in English. Older than Western chess, maybe not quite as deep, but it's frenetic and exciting to play
Inline Image:
https://en.chessbase.com/Portals/all/thumbs/069/69221.jpeg[video=youtube;l0Lwfg0SNrw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Lwfg0SNrw&t=211s[/video]
And I also finished American McGee's Alice again for the 4th time in 20 years. Awesome atmosphere and music but gawd those boss battles are tedious.
Neb on 27/12/2024 at 20:13
I remember playing that a long time ago. I remember there's a river that runs through the centre of the board and your elephants can't cross it. Cannons take pieces like in checkers by hopping over, and the king is confined to the 3x3 castle and can't have direct line of sight to the other king (which gives you some fun options for mating).
LordBooford on 27/12/2024 at 20:20
Quote Posted by Neb
I remember playing that a long time ago. I remember there's a river that runs through the centre of the board and your elephants can't cross it. Cannons take pieces like in checkers by hopping over, and the king is confined to the 3x3 castle and can't have direct line of sight to the other king (which gives you some fun options for mating).
Yes! I'm surprised you've played, it's hugely popular in China and Vietnam yet hardly anyone in the West has heard of it. I've played Western chess for years and due to reading numerous books and playing regularly I've attained reasonable level. But when it comes to Xiangqi I still feel like a beginner. I've no idea why the recent mini surge in interest in the West- perhaps the Covid lockdown had people looking for new interests
vurt on 29/12/2024 at 11:28
Battle Brothers
I don't think it's really that good, but i keep playing it because it's kind of addicting, it has solid mechancics. I feel for it similarly to games like Vampire Survivors. I really don't think that's a good game either. I highly doubt its games i will remember with warm and fuzzy feelings in the future, more like games i'll remember as "i can't believe i spent so much time on that repetitive shit".
Yakoob on 29/12/2024 at 21:08
I somehow picked up Ghostwire: Tokyo as an Epic freebie ages ago, and on a whim decided to give it a shot. I was surprised it turned out to be my favorite game I played this year.
There's a ton of Ubisoft-esque BS collectibles I found surprisingly addictive to gather (particularly the souls and yokai) - the setting is just SO well realized, and traversal feels fun (starting with running on streets to later jumping from rooftop to rooftop and flying around the city). I think what really sucked me in, are the vibes and sense of space. The whole city feels very realistic, it's densely packed with tiny details, and the graphics look gorgeous with all the dark, wet, reflective puddles. I have a bit soft spot for this vibe since I lived in Japan for a few months years ago and also enjoyed my time in Korea and Hong Kong, so I found the feeling of just walking down these street very familiar and nostalgic. There's busy downtown streets, there's quieter suburban neighborhoods, a giant mall, a cemetery, etc. a pretty decent variety of spaces (even if, at times, feeling kinda same-y)
Another thing that really shines here, is all the "Japanese Horror Spooky Shit" that keeps happening. There's a lot of subtle stuff, from all street lights turning red when enemies get aggroed, road painting suddenly detatching and floating in the wind, or objects suddenly fluttering around. Then, there's sequences where entire streets or rooms will seamlessly turn into Silent Hill-esque hellscapes, or space will invert and bend on itself like you're traversing and MC Escher painting. It's just done so incredibly well - the art and shader team did a phenomenal job there.
The story itself is fine, nothing spectacular, but the side quests, while often short, are pretty lore-heavy and interesting to learn about (and that haunted School mission with the mannequin was probably one of the best horror levels I've played since Vampire Bloodlines hotel). The combat is... Ok. it does the trick but gets repetitive halfway thru, and is really more "means to an end". Which is fine because I was really driven to find all the stupid yokai and just soak in the whole vibe of the place. The whole ending sequence where you go from room to room re-living your entire life and sad story was also surprisingly well done and emotional.
Now I'm onto Metaphor: Refantazio and, uuuh, having a lot more mixed feelings about that one......
EvaUnit02 on 30/12/2024 at 11:28
Finished Diassblo IV about a week ago. The end game content seems even more boring than the story campaign. Uninstalled the shit out of that POS. Blizztard still belongs on the great shit list of developers.
My new MS point grinding game will be The Division 1. That game on Xbox Series X is beautiful, running at native 4k/60fps. I already know that it's a solid title, having put 20ish hours into the PC version some years ago.
Started replaying Gears of War 5, this time in co-op. Surprised by how unwoke the game is, despite coming out in 2019. Kait is very feminine, still looking like and moving like a woman. They didn't copy-paste the male animations and call it a day. ((
https://web.archive.org/web/20190713014014/https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/07/12/gears-5-wont-have-any-smoking-after-speaking-with-anti-tobacco-group) They censored smoking, I recall.)
Great game, a huge improvement over the fairly roughly designed campaign Gears 4. It's a beautiful, well optimised game. The Dolby Atmos sound is truly outstanding. We just finished the assault on the Outsider village by the Swarm. Felt like I was personally on the battlefield with the sound scape all around me, super immersive.
I just finished replaying Gears 4 and the forced tower defense horde segments remain awful. The PC port has this issue where with multiple monitors the mouse cursor would keep travelling to the other screen and clicking would steal focus from the game. Playing with gamepad was the workaround, sadly. An exclusive fullscreen mode would've fixed it, but sadly this was one of the earliest DX12 only games, so only borderless window was available.
henke on 2/1/2025 at 18:02
Just played through Driver 1's Miami missions in the very good fan remake (
https://soapyman.itch.io/driversyndicate)
The Driver Syndicate. Man, what a blast from the past. I loved this game so much back in the day.
taffernicus on 5/1/2025 at 10:25
Quote Posted by LordBooford
I've been playing Chinese chess , Xiangqi. For some reason in the past couple of years there's been increased interest in it in the West. An accessible high quality computer version has appeared as well as a few book in English. Older than Western chess, maybe not quite as deep, but it's frenetic and exciting to play
Inline Image:
https://en.chessbase.com/Portals/all/thumbs/069/69221.jpeg[video=youtube;l0Lwfg0SNrw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Lwfg0SNrw&t=211s[/video]
And I also finished American McGee's Alice again for the 4th time in 20 years. Awesome atmosphere and music but gawd those boss battles are tedious.
I remember my friend who can play mahjong(well Considering me and some of my friends from my junior - high school days are mostly of Chinese descent or just say it half chinese(chinees indonesisch) ) , it seems that xiangqi is also interesting.
Tomi on 5/1/2025 at 22:25
Time to wrap up this 2024 thread and start a new one for the new year, methinks? With 770 posts - and all of premium quality of course - this thread has been the second busiest of the yearly WAYP? threads (since 2020). Nice!:thumb:
Someone else should start the 2025 thread though, because according to an ancient legend, a terrible curse falls upon those who start two WAYP threads in a row, or post in an old WAYP thread after the first full week of January. And we don't want curses or any negative stuff in here, right? :o
So long 2024! You were a pretty good gaming year, and I'm even more excited about 2025. :cool:
