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Hey there forum fools! It's April and you know what that means...time to take those DVDs out of your PlayStation 2, gesture to your Xbox Kinect, find 6 AA batteries for your Game Gear, and put a game key card in your Switch 2. That's right, it's the fourth month of the year and this will be the 6th annual Four on Four community event!
The basic idea is to complete four games from four different systems during the month of April. This will encourage us to play more games as well as games on different systems. Feel free to modify the rules as you see fit. You could use the system the game was originally released on rather than the system you played it on. Maybe you just play four games on four different systems without beating them.
Just post the games you are playing and what system you are playing them on and have fun! I also like to report back when I beat or complete a game and have this temporarily take over as the "What is the last game you beat?" topic of the month.
(https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/taipei-taiwan-september-large-pile-video-game-systems-isolated-white-large-collection-video-gaming-systems-158767754.jpg?w=768)
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I rolled credits on Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche yesterday. I played the game on Switch. With the game originating as an April Fools joke it felt appropriate for this week. The real joke was just how short it is. In about 45 minutes I completed each of the three stages. I cannot seem to find any collectibles, achievements, or harder difficulty to prolong the game. I even replayed the first stage in that time looking for more to do. What is there is clever and the animation and writing are up to Way Forwards usual standards. I usually think games are too long but this is the rare occasion where I would have wanted more. If you can get it cheap and enjoy a novel shooter I would still recommend it.
(https://i.imgur.com/OMpOQFE.jpeg)
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I don't think I'm going to be able to fulfill the requirements of the scenario, but what the hell. Let's talk about the latest Fatal Frame 2 remake.
I beat the game last month, but I'm currently working my way back through it completing all the newly-added Side Stories and endings, which I mostly accomplished last night. I just have 1 last ending and a ton of point grinding/Specter hunter to complete before I'm done with the game. Problem is, that last ending? It's tucked away behind beating the game on the highest difficulty mode, which I'm going to want to fully upgrade my camera for beforehand.
I own the Wii remake, but I never got around to playing it. From everything I've heard, this remake is more a remaster of that Wii version with additional content than its own game. You can certainly see that with the annoying "slowly reach down to grab an item so a ghost hand can randomly grab you" mechanic, which all the Nintendo-era Fatal Frame games have.
In general, this is a engaging enough remake of a good game, but it feels like with every good thing they added there had to be an incredibly annoying or stupid element to counterbalance it. The camera has 4 different filters now for combat variety, but 1 is objectively better than the other 3 so you'll exclusively see the world in purple vision if you're paying attention.
The game contains side quests now to flesh out the minor storylines in the background, but many of them can only be done in the final chapter and they all come down to running back through areas you've already explored getting jumped by the same 2-3 wraiths every other minute. And so many of those side quests are practically pixel hunts, where you can only progress by photographing particular areas at a particular time with a particular camera filter. You can and probably WILL spend literal hours running in circles in the dark trying to figure out what the game wants you to do. The game WILL hint you towards what filter you should be using, but only if you're standing in the right area with the camera raised to begin with. Unfortunately, while it's nice to have these side stories, they don't really add anything to the story that wasn't already pretty clear from just progressing through the main story.
Combat was always the most unique aspect of the Fatal Frame games, but it's never been particularly good in any of the games I've played. Wraiths like to teleport around, move through walls, and disappear at random. The camera has a lock-on feature for ghost faces that I don't remember being in the original version that is very helpful, but wraiths can easily break that lock-on. And fighting child wraiths is an exercise in frustration in every Fatal Frame game. New to this remake is that ghosts will frequently jump scare the player during combat to basically completely wipe out the willplayer gauge, which is annoying. But by far the most annoying new aspect to combat is that wraiths will often go into a rage state, where they regain their health; gain damage reduction; and often gain new attacks. You can only break this state by damaging a wraith past the stagger line on their health bar, which is aggravating when the wraith has a defense buff AND health regen during this state. Even a few of the bosses do this.
The game features a fairly decent collectible tracker, outside of nothing but a list of specters if you're hunting those. Those are those "blink and you'll miss them" ghost appearances. If you want to collect them all...good luck.
Fatal Frame 2 was an exceptionally easy game in its original incarnation, and the remake isn't that much harder...but it sure as **** is more tedious when you're just trying to explore for a side story; you keep getting jumped by the same annoying damage sponge wraiths; AND those wraiths will almost always go rage mode when you're halfway through defeating them. You CAN run from them to a point, but wraiths have pretty long aggro range and the environments are DESIGNED to snake the player around small environments.
On a weird note, the post-game has both chapter select and New Game +. However, if you use Chapter Select, the world you load into is the same map you originally cleared, including taking into account all items you already collected. That means if you want to go for the additional endings and side stories post-game, you're going to find yourself running out of good film really quickly. The optimal strategy is...bizarrely...to send your character into New Game+ to reset the item placements, save at the first lantern you can reach, and then send THAT save into Chapter Select so you can explore the end of the game immediately with all the items in the game uncollected. Just such a...weird design choice.
Overall, I'm disappointed with most of the new things Team Ninja added to the game, but at the end of the day it's still Fatal Frame 2. The atmosphere is as fantastic and the story as fucked up as ever. It's still easily the best game in the series. I just wish what was added was more thoughtful and more substantive.
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I’m hoping to complete a few games this month, so I’ll throw my hat in here.
While I’ve played the majority of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven as a Nintendo Switch 2 edition, I am going to try to make my Switch 2 release of the month Pragmata. I’m assuming that it will be more of a replayable, arcade-ish experience based on the demo’s time-trial nature, but we’ll see if it clocks in over 15 hours.
My Switch game for the month (yes, I am going to be semantic about it) is Haste, which I’ve already put some time into since its release on Thursday. It’s a roguelite parkour game from the folks that made Crumble, featuring an inscrutable plot and very nice character art. There’s some things I love about it and some things that irk me a bit, the former being the adrenaline rush of weaving through obstacles at high speeds and getting some silly combinations of items to extend the longevity of your run, the latter being the inscrutable ranking system and very obvious “run killer” terrain, which you need to have enough speed/energy/momentum to just glide past rather than attempting to land.
I am going to try to boot up the old 3DS and sink some time into a smaller game like Drancia Saga or Olli Olli, though I do have a few 3DS games on the backlog worth looking into, such as Ever Oasis or Kirby: Planet Robobot. I’ve already put some time in the latter so maybe that doesn’t count, and the former is a full-length JRPG…
As for my Analogue Pocket, I am going to try out some new games! Specifically, I am excited to give the recently released Dragonyhm a try- I know, a Game Boy Color release in 2025? This one has a nice, nostalgic art style that I think is really the main appeal for me, but who knows.
And finally, if some of you folks can’t get behind the Switch 2/Switch split, I will be trying to beat Black Hole Havoc on the Playdate. It’s a simple breakout-like about matching the size of your “ball” to the “block” you’re trying to clear. The art style is delightfully absurd.
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I don't think I'm going to be able to fulfill the requirements of the scenario, but what the hell. Let's talk about the latest Fatal Frame 2 remake.
Playing this on PS5?
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My Switch game for the month (yes, I am going to be semantic about it)
I am going to try to boot up the old 3DS and sink some time into a smaller game
That is how you do 4 on 4! I am working on a Switch 2 follow up to my switch game. Also working on a 3DS game.
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I completed Gunfright via Rare Replay on Xbox One. How many more of these ZX Spectrum games are there? Looks like just two more. This was the last one chronologically and is different enough from the others. This has the usual 5 stamps and 5 snapshots like the others and is easily wrapped up in a few hours if you are using save states, rewind, or infinite lives. Not using any of those would be quite frustrating as the shoot out part of this is really tough.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/Gunfright_1.gif)
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I don't think I'm going to be able to fulfill the requirements of the scenario, but what the hell. Let's talk about the latest Fatal Frame 2 remake.
Playing this on PS5?
Yes.
As an aside, there are a few games I have my eye on that I started playing a few days ago just for a break from Fatal Frame (Nightmare difficulty lives up to its name):
Switch
- Astral Chain (on Chapter 9. Been playing it off and on for months)
- Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (about 3/4 of the way through. Beat the PS4 version ages ago, but the Switch version's been my lunch game when time permits.
N64 (via PS5 remaster)
- Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (cleared the first level a few days ago)
GameCube (via Switch Online)
- Wario World (like Turok, cleared the first stage a few days ago)
GBC (via PS5 remaster)
- Shantae (haven't started this one yet, but I've been collecting the Shantae games and have played maybe 2 of them)
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Got the final ending in Fatal Frame 2 remake and bought/fully upgraded all the charms. For the most part, this ending is identical to the last ending I saw, aside from an epilogue that's rather hopeful in tone. So much, in fact, that the title screen becomes permanently updated to be more pleasant as a result.
So, I have gripes about the unlocks in this game. When you obtain the final ending, you earn the right to buy the last 2 charms in the game, and they are powerful: the charm that gives you unlimited ammo, and the charm that makes every photo you take a Fatal Frame. This basically lets you run through the game stunlocking ghosts to death, and it's very satisfying. However, each charm is 500,000 points. Now, Nightmare gives you a ton of points for combat, not to mention bonus points for each key item you grab again that you already have. I had 2 Million points by the end of my Nightmare run, so I was fine to buy those and to buy all the remaining charms in their Level 1 form.
It cost the better part of another million points to fully upgrade those. The point economy in this game is just fucked, most epitomized in the unlockable costumes. You don't just "get" those. You have to buy them once you've met certain ending conditions.
This is a game firmly based around replay, as fully upgrading the camera takes an absolutely absurd number of prayer beads and transcendence beads. The former spawn on every difficulty, though mostly on story and up to 80 at most. They barely spawn at all on Nightmare, though 13 transcendence beads become available.
You need 420 prayer beads and 50 transcendence beads to fully upgrade the camera. Well, if you have to replay the game that much to fully upgrade the camera, at least you can do it with those unlockable costumes for variety, right?
...right?
3 Million points.
That's not for all of them. That's for one of them, and Mio and Mayu each have 3 costumes, plus a number of headgear pieces.
I remind you, my point total from my Nightmare run was 2 million points, and I needed to spend that on my "reward" for finishing the mode.
Why do the costumes cost such an absurd amount? NO player will EVER buy them. Why would they when you could buy prayer beads, transcendence beads, or charms to make your camera stronger?
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Between grinding runs of Fatal Frame 2 Remake, I've been dabbling with a few other games:
Graveyard Keeper - I'm labeling this one a PC game, as despite me playing the PS4 version I only know this game exists because my best friend got sucked into it a few years ago. The game's sequel just got announced, so in honor of that the developer made the original free on all platforms for the next few days.
I put a few hours into it and...yeah, I dunno about this one. At first glance, this looks like your standard Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley knockoff. Your character's a graveyard keeper, so you spend your time keeping the graveyard...in theory. You cut down trees, break rocks, grab materials, build infrastructure, etc. for the task of fixing the yard and disposing of bodies.
Here's the problem, though: this genre thrives upon having a gameplay loop, a set of routines you follow every day towards getting various tasks done. Graveyard Keeper has no loop. There are no crops you're tending, and the dead aren't going anywhere. You never need to sleep unless you want to recover stamina. They don't even get delivered every day like you'd expect. And there's so much **** unlocked within menus and menus WITHIN menus that it's very easy to think you made a mistake somewhere and got permanently stuck because you need a resource you have no means of making. In fact, I started the game over after a few hours for exactly that reason, only to find out later that the character progression menu you open has multiple tabs of additional unlocks you can invest into.
See why I'm calling this a PC game? Needless bullshit is exactly what I associate with PC gaming.
Even when you aren't running into problems with the interface, early on there's just nothing to DO. I would spend most of every day running around the environment just looking for SOMETHING I could interact with in order to get the process moving. This isn't like your typical farming sim where you spend those early days clearing your land so you can start planting your crops. You START with a fully-functional graveyard. You just have to FIX the broken graves IN it, which requires crafted materials.
Oh, and each main NPC is only available on certain days of the week in certain locations. It looks like the main goal of the game is to advance their respective quest chains, but to advance them you need...of course...crafted materials you have no idea how to make or what you can use to make them.
Just such a bizarre farming game. It even has farming IN it, but bizarrely it doesn't look like you ever need to water your crops?
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Finally, I did start up the Shantae GBC game, and I played through to Water Town. So far, I think this game absolutely sucks. Yes, it looks great for a GBC game, but so far this is a more punishing game than I expected. The game has no in-game map, areas are huge, enemy hit detection is somewhat suspect, enemies are pretty numerous, health drops are fairly rare, and items are expensive.
So I don't know where I'm going, the areas between towns never seem to end, and the entire process is going to be a battle of attrition. Great. -_-
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The deed is done. Fatal Frame 2 Remake 100% completed.
The first and probably last time I will ever do that with a game in this series.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFvq4iVa8AA9kXq?format=jpg&name=small)
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Why do the costumes cost such an absurd amount? NO player will EVER buy them. Why would they when you could buy prayer beads, transcendence beads, or charms to make your camera stronger?
That always drops my rating of a game. In general, I think you should be able to buy everything in the game on a single 100% run.
The deed is done. Fatal Frame 2 Remake 100% completed.
The first and probably last time I will ever do that with a game in this series.
So did you buy all those costumes?
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Why do the costumes cost such an absurd amount? NO player will EVER buy them. Why would they when you could buy prayer beads, transcendence beads, or charms to make your camera stronger?
That always drops my rating of a game. In general, I think you should be able to buy everything in the game on a single 100% run.
The deed is done. Fatal Frame 2 Remake 100% completed.
The first and probably last time I will ever do that with a game in this series.
So did you buy all those costumes?
That's a joke, right? ;)
Like I said, no player will ever do that. Even after fulfilling the Platinum requirements by buying the remaining Prayer Beads I needed, I only had just under 2 million points again. Like hell I was going to grind out another 16 million points just to purchase costumes I'll probably never use while constantly being assaulted by ghosts.
This is what the encounter rate looks like on Nightmare. And, mind you, I have unlimited high power ammo in this clip. I had to do all this crap on my original Nightmare run without that.
https://x.com/i/status/2043483751980601600 (https://x.com/i/status/2043483751980601600)
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Over the weekend I played Alien Crush on the TurboGrafx-16 Mini. A well known PC Engine exclusive, the game applies a sci-fi theme to pinball gameplay. Controls here are quite simple with the d-pad and face buttons used as to control the flippers. The game has two speeds but I found the default fast setting to be manageable. As with real pinball machines, the level is too tall to fit on the screen so only half is shown at a time, but when the ball moves between halves the change in the screen is a little jarring. Otherwise the sound and graphics are a positive. I think I saw all of the bonus rooms and my high score was 4,749,000. Apparently there is an end screen when you hit 999,999,900 points which takes about 20-40 hours. If you have the mini console this is worth playing for a bit.
(https://assets.nintendo.eu/video/private/w_900/ilvhp6lhio6h32w213dx.jpg)
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Well, it's time now for one of the games I had always planned on playing this month, because I've been putting a fair amount of time into the Rogue Prince of Persia (PS5) now that it's out on physical media.
This game is made by the Dead Cells team, the same team making the upcoming Castlevania: Belmont's Revenge, and it is excellent. Dead Cells is one of the few Roguelikes I've ever enjoyed, as character movement is extremely snappy and progression just has a sublime flow to it. I'm happy to say that Prince of Persia made the transition over to the Dead Cells format excellently, with an added emphasis on wall running and wall climbing that wasn't really a thing in Dead Cells. People praised that Lost Crown Metroid PoP game a few years ago (and if the game hadn't bugged out on me I'd agree with the praise), but THIS just nails the speed and ease of the Prince of Persia traversal flow in a way that game just didn't.
If there's a wall in front of you or a wall in your immediate background, you can climb it for a few seconds with the press of a shoulder button, just like the Sands of Time trilogy.
In terms of design, you can tell the devs learned a lot from Hades, as there's a fair amount of story in here and it's broken up in an interesting way. While you can try to soldier through an arcade ladder-esque string of biomes to face the final boss, if you take the time to explore you'll find NPCs and little clues scattered around that point you to quests spanning the various locations, as well as clues alerting you to the existence of new locations (which adds them to future runs). Across your runs, if you string these investigations correctly, you'll unlock a major NPC and story content back in your home base. It's an interesting idea, and does some serious heavy lifting keeping new runs feeling fresh by giving the player something to work towards besides a successful run.
I don't love the combat, which basically is just Dead Cells with a fancier dodge. In a strange way, though, that feels kind of...fitting...for a Prince of Persia game. I can probably name only 1-2 games in the entire franchise where the combat was particularly amazing.
Overall, so far I'm quite enjoying this, despite not being particularly good at it. I still haven't managed to survive more than about halfway through a run.
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Man, I wanted to like Haste. The numerous crashes in the latter half of the game have been really killing my vibe, though. Mind you, I was able to stomach the massive framerate dips, which occur even on Switch 2, if only because I thought the core gameplay concept was nice enough. I am regrettably adding this one to my spreadsheet as a DNF, though it starting losing steam before the bugs popped up. There’s just not enough variety in world design or the roguelike item pool to feel that runs are varied or fairly balanced. You either get items that might be helpful if you can survive, or you get health items that vastly increase your survival and can be further exploited via all those other highly circumstantial items way more useful. It’s synergy-based, but anything outside of gaining health is also incredibly risky because they mostly increase your running speed, which means you can run into (and lose health from) obstacles even faster. It doesn’t help that the games narrative is trickled out through dialogue sequences at campfire/healing zones that are long, plodding, and nauseatingly whimsical. I had higher hopes for this game, especially because of the developer’s pedigree.
Onto greener pastures. I know this goes against the 4 on 4 code, but I decided to go back to Oceanhorn 2 while I wait for Pragmata to drop. Of all the 3D Zelda-a-likes that have ever 3D Zelda-a-liked, this one is definitely the most.
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Onto greener pastures. I know this goes against the 4 on 4 code, but I decided to go back to Oceanhorn 2 while I wait for Pragmata to drop. Of all the 3D Zelda-a-likes that have ever 3D Zelda-a-liked, this one is definitely the most.
I am also awaiting Pragmata, as well as Saros to close out the month.
Thankfully, new releases get way less interesting after April.
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OK, finally had my 1st 2 successful runs through the Rogue Prince of Persia, as well as moved the story forward by rescuing my next family member.
Wow, that final boss was surprisingly easy, even as a 2-phase fight.
You unlock permanent items that make the game harder if you wish to use them (with the trade-off being that you acquire more upgrade currency), but I don't think I'll ever use them. I never see the point in these masochist challenge Debuffs in Roguelikes. TMNT: Splintered Fate has these, too, and they only made the game way less enjoyable.
Gonna stick with this game through at least the end of the story, which requires at least 1 more story quest completed first.
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Completed my time with the Switch version of Yooka-Laylee & the Impossible Lair, getting all the Coins, Tonics, and Bees you can get without clearing the lair hit-less.
Still quite like that game, though I feel like it starts running out of ideas for areas about 3/4 of the way through. I definitely enjoyed the earlier levels more. And the lair itself is as miserable as I remembered.
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Completed my time with the Switch version of Yooka-Laylee & the Impossible Lair, getting all the Coins, Tonics, and Bees you can get without clearing the lair hit-less.
That sounds like the level of completion I had. What do you get for clearing the impossible lair without getting hit?
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Completed my time with the Switch version of Yooka-Laylee & the Impossible Lair, getting all the Coins, Tonics, and Bees you can get without clearing the lair hit-less.
That sounds like the level of completion I had. What do you get for clearing the impossible lair without getting hit?
The game's final tonic, which makes the duo Gold.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4BkNVWVXp9M/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLC9IjJVxWdF9bsa5o08zVh2x5Xzww)
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I hit an end to my time with Chicken Wiggle on 3DS. I was playing this via the atooi collection from Limited Run. As is well documented online, there is a game breaking bug on the second to last level (8-5). It prevents players from accessing the last two levels. I did 100% complete all levels before this. With no official patch and not wanting to mod my 3DS I am going to consider this completed.
(https://i.imgur.com/qYlYFDY.jpeg)
I really enjoyed my time with this game (~5.5 hours). The controls are tight, the game looks great (especially the 3D 8)), and the level design was strong. I sharing features are no longer available and I did not try using the level creation tool. It was nice to get back into using my 3DS. I had not played it since I wrapped up Etrian Odyssey last year. I am not a little more motivated to tackle that part of my backlog.
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I have rolled credits on the Rogue Prince of Persia after lucking into a damn good run, where I got situationally the best weapon in the game early, plus the medallions needed to make it always Crit.
I proceeded to absolutely annihilate all 4 of the run's bosses, including netting me 3 most of the no-hit boss trophies I was missing (I already had the no-hit from the 4th boss). I'm not just missing 1 of those. I also got the trophy for no-hitting one of the trap-ladden levels.
Didn't think I was going to go for the Platinum on this one, but the game's a lot of fun and the Platinum's surprisingly do-able for a rogue-like.
As for the story, it's pretty standard issue Prince of Persia, right down to the ending being kind of lame, really.
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Well, the plan was to play Pragmata (great game, btw) until Saros came out, but it appears we have a New Challenger for the rest of the month:
Oh how I have been waiting for this one. This one's been vexing me for 20 years, it and the game that came after it. Both PS2 games. Completely incompatible with the PS3 backwards compatibility. XSEED told everyone to forget those games ever getting re-released again. Vengeance shall be mine. ;)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HGcPsT7XkAAw3LM?format=jpg&name=small)
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Pragmata is the game I forgot that I needed. While I’ve been out of the Resident Evil loop for quite some time and would be curious if more recent games reflect this mentality, Pragmata very much reminds me of Resident Evil Revelations, a game that I got partially because I wanted a graphical powerhouse for my Nintendo 3DS and ended up adoring because of its pacing, variety, and absurdity. In a similar way, I needed something that felt a bit more premium on my Nintendo Switch 2, and Pragmata’s demo did a great job of selling its potential. Like a good demo, it also doesn’t give away too much of its narrative and gameplay conceits, so starting and playing a hefty chunk of Pragmata over the weekend was a surprise and delight.
While enemy variety isn’t incredibly varied, it’s the thoughtful combination of environmental design and the number of enemies that keeps Pragmata feeling consistently fresh, though the slow trickle of new weapons also helps things also. The great thing about a science fiction game is that the weapons get increasingly cool: you start with a pea shooter, then a shotgun, then a grenade launcher… and you eventually get your railgun, decoy spawner, concussive shield, mini rockets, and autonomous drones. The one thing that feels only a bit underbaked is Diana’s hacking system, which has sorts of strange modal variations and a chip system that is much more random than the loadout prep system would lead you to believe. In my opinion, the game could have leveraged less health packs (especially with the evasive movement Hugh possesses) and more chip slots, though I understand dispersing them throughout the hacking planes might have been too extreme a task.
Jeez, I’m not doing a great job of explaining the hacking. I will say that the targeting system is elegant and allows for much more freedom of action than I initially thought. I was a bit worried that breaking eye contact would reset a hacking plane, but your progress on multiple enemies is saved if you should have to break line of sight due to evasive measures. It’s a bit unfortunate that the D-Pad and the weapon wheel are on the same side of the controller, as switching guns mid-hack can be a bit cumbersome, but I also think the appeal of Pragmata is its clunkiness. Even if you are supposed to be controlling two characters simultaneously, their controller real estate makes them feel like a single unit, and it’s satisfying to get more proficient with their particular quirks. There are a couple of things you can do to make the game feel a bit less flow-chart-y: it can sometimes feel like the gameplay is always “Execute your Diana actions first, then deal damage with Hugh,” but some of the modal modifications you can make to Diana’s side of things can make dealing damage during a hack more rewarding. There’s also some weapons that Hugh possesses that work well as pre-Diana actions, such as dropping decoys, knocking enemies off their feet, and some neater, weird mid- to endgame options. I do think the Right Bumper is unfortunately underutilized in gameplay, which is weird since the Left Bumper is used consistently throughout the game, becoming a full-on contextual attack in the final act. Said contextual attack is also far from a permanent solution, with Hugh having to do some fast shooting in order to properly capitalize on exposed enemies.
While the data logs in the game are pretty light fare and inconsequential overall, the narrative is well-paced, to the point where I am reminded that games don’t have to be these protracted, grind-heavy experiences in order to justify their price. Rather, a game can present a nice, ten to twelve hour narrative and enough novel scenarios to still feel premium. The story is twisty enough to satisfy some, but I found it a bit predictable in its main hooks, with a third act introduction of some context that is hinted at environmentally, but still feels like a late trickle. The nature of the environments you visit never really feel justified, save for the lunum mines that are impressive from a scale and gameplay expansion standpoint. Still, the lack of environmental context is excused by the fun inherent in the scenarios: why do we have a wonky, 3D-printed version of a city being stalked by giant toddler robots? Why am I exploring varied biosphere simulations? Because it’s fun.
There’s a couple of ways that Pragmata pads its playtime and limited environmental space: its chock-full of collectables tucked in every corner, an extensive and sometimes unreasonable set of training missions, and a few progression gates- both literal and metaphorical- that you’ll have to double-back on in order to unlock. But all of these things are easy to access, with a pretty generous scan feature that shows your direct proximal relationship to items in the environments. The map could be a little less obscure, but every location is linear and telegraphed enough that it’s never too tedious to get where you’re going. I do wish you could fast travel between emergency exits a bit more immediately instead of having to return to the Shelter in order to pop up somewhere else in the same environment. The game leans heavily on making sure your initial loadout can get you where you need to go, so it’s somewhat excusable, but its also pretty generous about giving you weapons before and even during enemy encounters. This loadout feature is a core part of the game’s challenge: for half of the campaign (and even after that point, though slightly lessened) you will have to complete a sequence of encounters with a limited set of tools, and whatever scattered extras the game is willing to offer you in a certain arena. The fast travel system works for the forward momentum of the campaign, less so in doubling back.
In some ways, Pragmata is a movement shooter, if only because Hugh’s thruster dodge makes him a lot more slippery than one might expect upon first impression. With the amount of evasive opportunities you are given and how range focused the encounters are, you’ll be zipping around arenas and avoiding enemy attacks on the regular. One of the game’s most intense boss fights pits you against a highly mobile enemy with a number of area-filling attacks, but it all feels as if its in good fun. Verticality is not Pragmata’s strong suit, however, and the few areas that do possess levels often prove a bit more cumbersome than one might hope. You can avoid a larger enemy early on in the campaign simply by climbing up on a ledge that it could very easily surmount, itself.
…I should have just put this in reader reviews.
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I've enjoyed my time with Pragmata so far, but if I don't get Astral Chain done now I'm never going to. That game is such a goddamn slog. Finally on the last chapter, btw. Never underestimate Platinum's ability to repaint the same monster designs and give them new names with slightly different stats.
Wild Arms 4 also takes priority because that game's been one of my gaming white whales since back on the PS3, where I owned the PS2 copies of both it and Wild Arms 5, and both of them were one of the few games to not work on any PS3 after the original model. You spun up either of them, and you were rolling the dice every 30 seconds. The game would hard crash your console at any time, which was especially frustrating since I was really enjoying what I was able to play of those 2 games. But it's pretty much impossible to make any progress in a turn-based JRPG reliant on save points that can crash at any time.
The PS4/5 port of Wild Arms 4 looks quite lovely...so long as it's not in a cutscene. The in-game models are very crisp and look great, but the cutscenes all appear to have been recorded videos using the in-game assets, and they just look terrible. No helping that, I'm afraid. Still, SOMEONE at Sony had to care about this game to jump through all the legal hoops with XSEED to get it up on PSN after they basically said "no" years ago. Hopefully, that same person is also getting Wild Arms 5 in there.
The world needs the return of the Black Fenrir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsNdqOpVo-M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsNdqOpVo-M)) and the Genocide Circus (https://youtu.be/zxql5apis3Y?t=194 (https://youtu.be/zxql5apis3Y?t=194)).
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I've rolled credits on Astral Chain.
That final boss is fucking awful.
I mean...really? It has high health, high damage, high combo ability, the ability to teleport at will, and the ability to split into multiple copies & attack you from behind WHILE teleporting? Like the entire 2nd half of the game, it's just not fun to play.
Oh, and you have a heavy dose of the game's awful platforming before you even fight it.
It doesn't even look cool to fight, as it just looks like every other copied & pasted humanoid chimera in the game.
Good riddance to this game. Yes, I know there's a bunch of sidequests you can do in the epilogue post-game chapter. I don't care.
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I've rolled credits on Astral Chain.
That final boss is fucking awful.
I mean...really? It has high health, high damage, high combo ability, the ability to teleport at will, and the ability to split into multiple copies & attack you from behind WHILE teleporting? Like the entire 2nd half of the game, it's just not fun to play.
Oh, and you have a heavy dose of the game's awful platforming before you even fight it.
It doesn't even look cool to fight, as it just looks like every other copied & pasted humanoid chimera in the game.
Good riddance to this game. Yes, I know there's a bunch of sidequests you can do in the epilogue post-game chapter. I don't care.
I was really hoping you were going to like Astral Chain. I don't remember the final boss being such a pain. I still have some of those epilogue quests to take care of.
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This week I beat Tron: Evolution on PlayStation 3. This was my first PS3 game making use of the Move controllers. While I have those from PSVR I did need to pick up a PlayStation Eye camera to make them compatible. These are pretty cheap online, even brand new. The game also includes stereoscopic 3D support which is decent for games from that platform. Not knowing much about the game, I was expecting to be throwing discs with my move controllers, but the motion controls are only for steering the light cycle (same as the Wii version). The game is mostly a beat 'em up with some 3D platforming connecting the battles. The story was decent and serves as a prequel to the second film. I was surprised to see Bruce Boxleitner and Olivia Wilde reprising their roles in the voice acting. The game only takes about 5-10 hours to beat, though without the online trophies the Platinum is no longer available.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cf/Tron_Evolution.jpg/250px-Tron_Evolution.jpg)
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I've rolled credits on Astral Chain.
That final boss is fucking awful.
I mean...really? It has high health, high damage, high combo ability, the ability to teleport at will, and the ability to split into multiple copies & attack you from behind WHILE teleporting? Like the entire 2nd half of the game, it's just not fun to play.
Oh, and you have a heavy dose of the game's awful platforming before you even fight it.
It doesn't even look cool to fight, as it just looks like every other copied & pasted humanoid chimera in the game.
Good riddance to this game. Yes, I know there's a bunch of sidequests you can do in the epilogue post-game chapter. I don't care.
I was really hoping you were going to like Astral Chain. I don't remember the final boss being such a pain. I still have some of those epilogue quests to take care of.
I don't...dislike...Astral Chain. I'm mostly fed up with how bored I was playing it by the end. My issue with it is that it's a 30 hour game with enough ideas for a solid 8-10 hour game. The 1st half has pretty good pacing to it, but the 2nd half is just a bloated, awful mess. Just endless recycling of the same environments & the same enemies with new names. It's still probably my favorite Platinum Games product, but I don't like that studio's output in general. IMO, Platinum is a 1 trick Pony, and by Bayonetta 2 every other company making action games was doing that trick as well as improving on the rest of the experience. Platinum never grew as a developer. Even their "best" game, Nier Automata, mostly benefitted from only people like me ever playing the original Nier, or they'd have realized how little new Automata did.
Tried playing Fire Emblem Engage on my Switch 2 over lunch. That game runs pretty badly in handheld mode, with sound constantly dropping and desyncing.
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This week I beat Tron: Evolution on PlayStation 3. This was my first PS3 game making use of the Move controllers. While I have those from PSVR I did need to pick up a PlayStation Eye camera to make them compatible. These are pretty cheap online, even brand new. The game also includes stereoscopic 3D support which is decent for games from that platform. Not knowing much about the game, I was expecting to be throwing discs with my move controllers, but the motion controls are only for steering the light cycle (same as the Wii version). The game is mostly a beat 'em up with some 3D platforming connecting the battles. The story was decent and serves as a prequel to the second film. I was surprised to see Bruce Boxleitner and Olivia Wilde reprising their roles in the voice acting. The game only takes about 5-10 hours to beat, though without the online trophies the Platinum is no longer available.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cf/Tron_Evolution.jpg/250px-Tron_Evolution.jpg)
Weird. I owned this game back in the day. A co-worker gave it to me after he got tired of it, much like his copy of that Terminator game from around that time that was a 3 hour Platinum. I don't remember it being a Move game (and I do have a Move & Camera), but I do remember it being a surprisingly decent game based on an underrated movie.
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Well, might as well talk about Wild ARMS 4 now that I'm pretty far in, past the part where I originally had to stop playing this PS2 game on the PS3 due to all the crashes.
The Wild ARMS games are a series of Western (as in "Old West") RPGs, but Wild ARMS 4 is an odd one that tried to shake up the formula by being post-apocalyptic, taking place 10 years after a global war that ravaged the planet. You play as Jude, a kid who's world is literally shattered when an army smashes through the invisible dome protecting his village in search of an ancient weapon: the ARM (a laser gun), which it turns out he's compatible with. Fleeing the destruction of his village with a rescued girl, he teams up with a pair of mercenaries to try to find out why this military splinter group is trying to revive the war and stop it.
So, all in all, pretty standard issue JRPG so far.
Where Wild ARMS 4 really shook things up for the series was in the battle system, throwing out the then-typical 3 person Dragon Quest-style combat and replacing it with a grid of 7 Hex-shaped positions on a circular board. When the battle starts, your 4 person party and the enemy are semi-randomly placed across the board. 3 of those Hex-spaces have elemental affinity, which affects the spells available to your casters and the damage received from elemental attacks. Player characters and enemies cannot enter each other's hexes, but multiple player characters and multiple enemies can occupy the same hex.
There is exactly 1 reason to ever have characters in the same hex, and that's that any item used on that hex affects everyone, like healing berries. But in general, you should avoid this at all costs, and the game WILL try to bait you at times into forgetting to spread your forces out by starting boss fights with everyone in the same hex. Attacking a hex attacks EVERYONE in the hex, so it's real easy way to get party wiped.
The difficulty balancing of this game is...erratic. Characters don't gain XP at the same rate. Once battle starts, every character starts with an XP multiplier of 1.0, with bonuses that kick in depending on actions during battle. Dodge an attack? +.1 to the XP multiplier of that specific character. Kill an enemy? +.2 or .7 depending on how many enemies. This severely disadvantages Yulie, who will never get XP bonuses of any kind since she's a primarily a healer and there's no bonus for healing. This severely advantages Racquel, a character who's just completely broken since she can move AND attack very hard in the same turn very early in the game. It's also easy for Arnaud or Jude to rack up multiple kills since they have ranged attacks that can hit multiple enemies and multiple hexes at once. You have to work to level up Yulie, and considering she's the healer you know she also has absolutely no HP once enemies start going after her.
And bosses will absolutely kick your teeth in if you don't make the right moves very early on in the fight.
On the flipside, battles go by pretty quickly, and you fully regain health for all party members after every battle. You don't regain MP, so segments of the game meant to be battles of attrition can get very hairy, but for the most part things are pretty breezy. While the game has random encounters, you can usually fulfill certain conditions to turn off them at nearby save points if you really want to. I don't recommend it since you need the XP, but hey...you CAN do it. And while death can come easily and swiftly, you also always have a quick retry option. These features were not common at all back at the time this game came out.
On a strange note, the game has a large emphasis on time-based 2D platforming to break up the RPG combat, and it's not very good in general. Jumping into or towards the screen feels very awkward, and there's a certain slippery nature to movement and jumping that can send you to the nearest bottomless pit extremely easily, requiring you to restart the section. And you are meant to play these sections somewhat recklessly, as there is a slow motion mechanic you can trigger that also makes invisible currency pickups appear in the air you can combo together. It's an interesting experiment, but I'm glad they ditched it for Wild Arms 5.
Equally strange is the game's character growth system. Like most RPGs, you unlock skills for each character as they level-up, but where Wild Arms 4 differs is that it also awards a set of re-usable skill points to each character at the player's discretion. All skills will eventually unlock on their own as you level, but you can use these bonus points to unlock later skills earlier without any hard commitments since you can reallocate the bonus points at any time and you get them back when the skill unlocks at its intended time. I get the impression this system is more important in the late game than the early to mid game, as you get more bonus points as you level and skills start to spread further apart.
So far, Wild ARMS 4 is a good RPG with a decent setup and a creative combat system with some surprisingly forward-thinking quality of life features, but generally poor production values (the insides of houses strictly speaking don't exist, as trying to enter one will just bring up a static NPC conversation image). I'm interested in seeing where the game goes now that I can finally play it properly, but the game I'm really hoping to see soon is Wild ARMS 5.
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Happy birthday, broodwars! It’s been fun following your April odyssey, and not just because we’re two of the handful of people who still post here.
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Happy birthday, broodwars! It’s been fun following your April odyssey, and not just because we’re two of the handful of people who still post here.
Thanks. I try to participate in these things when I can, though I thought we'd see a few more of the regulars this month.
Gonna play Saros when it arrives in a few days, but I did manage to clear the first 3 main areas of Pragmata. Quite an enjoyable game that's doing a good job of keeping combat interesting by continually introducing combat scenarios; new enemies; new weapons; and new mods, which is always a challenge with shooters. RE Requiem certainly failed that challenge with its spectacularly boring 2nd half. That said, even by the end of the 3rd area the game's already starting to re-use a few early game enemies with a bit more armor/power and a new name. Can't say I love that, but it hasn't gotten egregious yet. So far, it's the best game that truly came out this year that I've played (a stipulation I have to make since Rogue Prince of Persia technically came out last year, despite getting a physical release this year).
Been running into intermittent technical issues with the game on PS5, from Diana's hair sometimes rendering in a substantially more "fake"-looking way (where it looks kinda gray; sparse; and shimmery) in the shelter to sometimes sound effects getting muted altogether until I close the game and reload it.
Oh yeah, and I'm up to Chapter 5 in Fire Emblem: Engage. Yep, I can definitely see where people are coming from when they say that the hero worship of the main character is extremely obnoxious.
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Over the weekend I was able to beat all 99 levels of Mario Clash which I was playing on Switch 2 as part of the Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics app. First off, a hot take, the Virtual Boy is not really virtual reality, it's just 3D. You can't change your perspective or interact with objects the way you can in VR. As for the game, it is a nice 3D version of Mario Bros. (the not super one), which is a game I really like. When playing this I wondered why I never tried to get to the end in the Arcade Archives version of Mario Bros ???. Anyway, I heard there were only 99 levels so I aimed to see them all. Most are really quick but a few of them took quit a while and I don't think I would be able to beat this without save states. I did only use save states between levels and I did not use rewind. When the score hits a milestone you get cool little graphic like the one shown below. The Princess/Fantastic one is the highest I got as my final score was 640,950. Turns out if you get to 1,000,000 you get a message indicated you have beat the game. If I ever replay this I will chase that score, but marking the game as beat for now.
(https://i.imgur.com/yqSX79j.jpeg)
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It looks like the Four on Four has officially come to an end, but feel free to continue posting about games played in April. I was able to play six games across six different devices:
- Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche - Switch
- Gunright - ZX Spectrum/Xbox One
- Alien Crush - TurboGrafx 16
- Chicken Wiggle - 3DS
- Tron: Evolution - PlayStation 3
- Mario Clash - Virtual Boy/Switch 2
Maybe I can get 7 on 7 next year 8)
I want to thank broodwars and Evan_B for joining the fun!
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I'll admit. My gaming has definitely dropped off again in the past couple years. I just seem to spend my time on a handful of games here and there. Playing them to completion and then dropping out of gaming again for a couple months before getting to another.
But this year, I feel I've been getting into a bigger gaming spree so far. For one thing, I went on a bit of a shopping spree and picked up a whole whack of games that I've wanted to add to my collection but had dragged my feet on. In the past six months, I've really encumbered myself with stuff to play. I've also found myself a bit less enthused with movies as I'm starting to feel I've really seen a lot of the major stuff I've always wanted to get around to seeing. Of course, even there, my mood can suddenly change. This month on TCM, they're airing a large portion of Yasujiro Ozu's filmography. Up to this point, I'd only seen about 4 of his films so now my DVR is filling up with a bunch of movies as I realized its not always so easy to see some of these films as there are a bunch of them TCM has never aired before and who knows when they might air them again. As well, the library doesn't always have complete collections of foreign filmmakers nor do streaming services air much of the older classics let alone older foreign films. Not only this but just tonight they aired Ed Wood which I've yet to see so that's now on the DVR and there's a bunch of other films that interest me on this months schedule after a few months of low interest. Likewise, TV can be up and done with when new seasons of a show is happening and when its on break but before this recent outbreak of a lot of content I want to get around to watching, it had been gaming I'd been going back to and spending more of my evenings and weekends on.
As such, I actually meant to post a bit with this 4 on 4 thread as halfway in the month, it seemed like something I could have done which hasn't been the case for most of the time this event has happened. At first, I was playing a bit of Metroid Fusion as the Nintendo App had some platinum coin missions and avatars for playing a couple Metroid games. I then switched back to Crash Bandicoot 1 from the N. Sane trilogy. I had started it back in January and then left it but knowing I was about halfway through it, I had wanted to complete it. I got that done and since I don't own a Playstation, I could only do it on Switch even though I would count that as a PS1 game. I then ended up playing Metroid Prime: Remastered and beat that on both Normal and Hard and unlocked all the extras there. That took about a week and was about halfway in April. Knowing about this event, it suddenly seemed kind of doable for once.
I thought about other systems and games I wanted to play on them but I continued on this Metroid kick and decided to finish what I had started with Metroid Fusion on the Switch GBA app. I beat that to completion which I'd put in the GBA category. As for a fourth game, I realized I'd probably just go with Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket which I started playing around Dec. 20, 2024 and I'm still checking in and playing to this day. It's the most I've ever engaged with the Pokemon franchise. I was so close to finally completing all the diamond and one star cards for all packs released which was a bit hard for one pack they only had limited availability on. Just as they released the latest packs around something like Apr. 26 was the same day I finally got the last diamond card I needed to complete the Deluxe Ex set. At this point, I just need 15 more diamond cards and about 9 one star art cards for this latest pack that's been released and I'll have achieved that continued perfection up to this point. Was also blown away to end up getting both immersive cards for this latest set in back-to-back days. The first one I got by doing a 10-pack pull and then the next day I was just opening up a single daily pack and got the other immersive in this set. Normally, I've only gotten immersive cards when the set has been small like 69-72 diamond set instead of these 155 or more diamond sets. Thanks to one immersive card, I was later able to unlock the special mission for the hidden Sobble badge. I haven't been able to get a hidden icon like that for a long time.
Anyways, that's a little recap of my four on four. Technically three of the four were on the same game system but they were different era games and originally for different systems.
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Thanks for reporting back Khushrenada. I saw some of your activity on Backloggery and was hoping you would share. What did you think of Ed Wood?
