Interesting, was hearing a lot of good things about Yakuza series (even from some people I'd consider on the "woke" side) and do plan on trying one. Loved Sleeping Dogs.

Well mine certainly seems to be a minority opinion, so don’t take my word for it. There is more to to the game as well. Kiryu gets to manage a real estate portfolio, Majima manages cabaret clubs. The problem is that you can only do those things when controlling those characters, but the game forces you to switch protagonists every two chapters. I think at some point you can switch freely, but that hadn’t happened by chapter 8.

That’s a general point about Yakuza’s approach that I don’t understand. It’s restrictively linear for such a long time. It’s not a bad idea for open world games to be linear for a while until the player understands how the game works, and then open up. But there’s no need to be so linear for so long.

I'm not writing a whole review, but I decided to replay Bioshock because a) I was looking for a change of pace, and b) I didn't remember finishing it.

It still holds up. What a fantastic game. GOAT setting and ambience. I can't wait to finish so I can move on to Bioshock 2 and Infinite, which I have but never played.


EDIT: The game has implanted the earworm, "Je-sus loves me yes I know..."

A MAN CHOOSES A SLAVE OBEYS

Man, 3.5 years since this thread has a post? It should be resurrected, it's a good idea for a thread. I'll give a short one:

Curse of the Dead Gods
7.5/10

Curse of the Dead Gods is a rogue-like isometric action game, where you play an explorer delving into one of three temples. As you play you fight an array of monsters, collecting gold and trinkets for run-specific health and damage upgrades, and 3 types of permanent currency to permanently upgrade your character/your future runs. As you go further and further into runs you build up a Corruption meter (through entering new rooms, getting hit with some attacks, and in exchange for upgrades if you choose), which periodically afflicts you with a curse of some nature that make your run harder (although in some cases, if managed correctly can actually turn out net-beneficial). You can get 4 relatively bearable curses, but if supposedly the 5th curses are very bad (I never made it long enough to get a 5th). When you die you start at the beginning, spend your permanent currency to upgrade, and start again.

I picked up the game hoping for something similar to Hades, which I finished earlier this year and was maybe my favorite game of all time, absolutely a top-10. However, while the art/drawing style and isometric perspective were similar to Hades, the combat reminded more more of Dead Cells due to having a primary and secondary weapon that is somewhat random at the start of the run, then you can both change and upgrade weapons throughout the runs. The combat is much slower than either game - at least it needs to be; if you dash in sword swinging hoping to stun enemies before they hit you, you'll soon find yourself with mouthful of broken teeth. This game is more about learning enemy attacks, timing deflections/parries (which weaken enemies if done correctly), and attacking efficiently to manage stamina than the offense-forward gameplay of Hades, and to a lesser extent Dead Cells.

Overall I found this a good game, but not good enough to keep me hooked (I have a 30+ game backlog and only play 4-6 hours a week usually, unless I really get sucked into something). There are a variety of weapons to unlock and explore, and nothing felt either particularly over- or under-powered in my 10-15 runs. Enemy design is well done, and traps were clever and while they often hit me, I never felt them unfair.

One big detraction for me is a complete lack of story - there's good art but literally nothing describing your motivation, where the monsters come from, etc. Coming from Hades this is (obviously if you've played it) a huge distinction, as Hades has one of the very best stories and sets of dialog ever. Even Dead Cells, while it doesn't have nearly as clear a story, has some NPCs and backstory of the island to piece together as you play. Dead Gods has literally nothing in this regard: start a run, try to kill enemies, eventually die, start next run. No talking, no text.

More than that though, I just felt like if I wanted to focus on this type of random-weapon runs, I enjoyed Dead Cells more than COTDG. The combat felt a smidge tighter, and I appreciated the option of having a faster, more direct combat choice present in Dead Cells. I only ever beat 1 boss cell in DC and probably didn't unlock more than half the weapons, if I'm going to invest time, I'd do it over there rather than here. But, if you're looking for something to play and like the genre, the game goes on sale sometimes for under $10, you can do a lot worse.