BTScorpion

This is my first JRPG. It will probably be my last going on my experience with this game. There are some serious failings, mainly with game design. I cannot remember, in 30+ years of playing computer games, not finishing a game due to boredom. It truely is that bad. I found myself reading my phone during the combats! So just for clarification I played for probably 10+ hours. I was at levels 14. I only had 3 companions and was looking to get the 4th in the next part - I believe. Good points. it looks great. The scenery is great. The monsters definately are cute and names are quite funny. The style takes a bit of getting used to - every character is cross-eyed? The companions are ok. Interesting enough I guess. Voice acting comes across great. An interesting crafting mini-game let down by a tiresome collection system. Okay thats what gets it to a 6 in my rating. Not the bad news. Interface design is appalling. Now I know inventory management can be difficult on console but effort has to be made. Perhaps it is easier with a keyboard and mouse but I'm not going to try this game again on any other platform. Its just terrible. The amount of clicks to get anything done. Some many better ways that could have been done. Also, I wonder if anyone from the design team has ever played this game on the console. The button set up is just awful. Perhaps there is a way to customise controls but again I'm not playing it again. Its not worth it. Who puts auto-run on the options button! Jump stops pretty much any forward momentum and you jump up, possible a step forward, even when dashing. Combat, now I am new to this "each side has a go in turn" type combat. it seems interesting at first with various options and looked like it was going somewhere but once you set it to fight for itself you realise its all fairly pointless as the tactics are so irrelevant. The reason why is you can flee almost any point, you can avoid most monsters so can return to a save point to rest and recuperate. Monsters spawn back in almost instantly. several times I fought and defeated some critters, turned around, looked at the map, turned back and there they were again. Pointless. purely for grinding **** good game design. why bother with a lovely map if you could literally just be in a square box, fighting again and again and again. Mapping, is terrible. The mini-map is virtually worthless. You can see a fraction more than you can actually see but possible the worst part is the lack of any markers for ANYTHING on the **** have to then delve into the map proper for see collectables that you then have to scroll though. Sheesh. It was just so cumbersome. If you leave and area and come back all the resources are reset. Ok this makes it 'easy' to collect things but really it just makes it grindy again. Quest management, now I only did a few quests so perhaps they got better but they were just collect/make/come back stuff. Just for the sake of collect/make/come back. Zero reasons behind the quests. Silent protagonist. now I've played the old GTA 3. I did the whole game not speaking but the character did not speak! In this game every one speaks, the kids in the street, the cats, even the cows gave a weather report. Why does not the 'hero' talk. The interactions say he is saying stuff. Say stuff. This was just frustrating. Unskippable cut-scenes. Long ones. ones where for a good few seconds you think the game may have actually frozen because nothing is happening. Oh dear. Okay I am going to stop there as I feel like I am trashiing this a lot and its really not THAT bad. It didn't crash, the graphics were ok, if a little dated. Load times were well hidden but it has an awful lot of downsides that just reaked of lazy development. Considering this is version 11, this should be as smooth as ice. I really do not understand how there are so many 10/10s for this game. I can only assume that other, earlier JRPGs must be truly bad and buggy. I really wanted to like this game buts its design frustrations and gameplay was just boring. Sorry JRPG fans - I know now I am not one.

This Lego expansion is a fine addition to the world of Forza. It fits in surprisingly well. there is a wonderful lego landscape that fits into the 'real world' landscape really easily. The sound is perfect when you crunch into the lego pieces, of which there are many. Graphics are up to par with all the lego pieces being identifiable. The Lego cars are great. Could have used more. In fact my only dissapointment with it was how quick it seemed to be over. Within a few days play, say 8 hours or so, I had done all the challenges, discovered all the discoverables, done all the races. Blizzard Mountain, Hot Wheels and Fortune Island took far longer to fully complete. Its got plenty of tracks, however, for my family and me we were drawn to the speedway circuit. We found ourselves racing each other, on that one, a lot. There is the everything is awesome radio **** song on repeat - perhaps skill song to that one? The ability to create your own tracks and routes is probably the best evolution from Forza Horizon 3 to 4. There are plenty of challenges but they seem almost too easy, perhaps the target was a younger driver. There does not seemt be much thought in the weekly challenges here either. I would assume they cannot put too much exclusive stuff here so as not to disctract from the main game. Still it would be nice to have one car a week to try and get. I'm sure there are plenty of lego cars that could be made, Ecto-1, Batman vehicles, Lego Movie vehicles...basically any of the vehicles they've made in the actual lego games. If you like Forza this is an expansion you should get. Everything is Awesome.

A great addition to the LEGO games series. Based of the two Avengers films with a main hub location of Manhattan plus some other key areas from the two films - Barton's Farm, SHIELD base, Asgard etc. Plenty to do. Plenty to collect. All the characters. Possibly the best thing is the combo features where one power will boost onto another. Great stuff. Made even the simple fights seem like scenes from the movies. Great level design. Greatly improved flying controls. In fact the flying was so much improved I barely used any vehicles. Even for the races it was easier to use a flier than a land based. It does have its issues. My main problem with the game was the Hub/Fast Travel or rather lack of fast travel. Anytime you finish a level you - when not in story mode - you are plonked back in Manhattan. You can then go to space. Easy enough but the customised parts and red bricks were all in the Helicarrier flying above which meant either finding a vehicle chooser (where there was an up to carrier launcher) or fly up. Either was a bit of a drag when it felt like this should have been its own location really. I had no problems with glitching or crashes. There were a couple of times I got the character trapped in flames or force field that caused a respawn/dead loop but just swapped to other character and it sorted itself out. Possibly the only odd game-play decision is the scanning 'puzzle' that black widow/tony stark/ultron have as a side power. This seemed somewhat pointless. It is a sort of memory game but gives you so much help/hints that it did not seem to be anything apart from a delay technique, possibly to give BW something to have as her 'thing'? None of the mini games/access puzzles were particularly challenging but this is a lego game so not to be expected. Red Bricks are only available to find on free play and via the collector. These challenges again are simply find object things. Certainly easier than some of the red brick finds in the past. It made a nice MCU way of doing it. Loved how the Collector bows. Mini-figure character animation is top notch. The Lego version film clips are great. They use clips from the movies for the characters which does sometimes cause the sounds to vary in quality quite a bit. It would have been nice to have had them either extracted from the films as their own channel - sure this could have been done - or had the actors record the words again, pretty sure Stan Lee did - although this probably would have added too much to the budget. In Conclusion, its a great addition to the lego franchise. Yes - I did 100% it. No - I have not played the DLCs - of which there are 6 currently.

As a background I played this on PC back when it came out. Then again in the early 2000's when I got a reasonable PC to play it on. Now I have just finished it again on my PS4. It has aged surprisingly well. Graphics: These have been updated to take account of developments and are good. It has a definite retro feel to the maps with the 'squared' landscapes but I love minecraft so found this quaint. Soundtrack and effects: The soundtrack has been updated and is great as it always was. Great sounding effects. Walking around the various towns and villages you get great snippets of the Aldepha lives. The weapon noises are all great and Sci Fi sounding where they should be. Plot: Still holds up even after 18+ years. The sub-missions are surprisingly very good. They still are original and interesting and are based of the inhabitants and their local issues. Only a couple of them get a bit tiresome as they are go talk to this person and then hop across lands to talk to other person. Most of them are still great. Controls: Here is where the weakness lies. It certainly does harken back to olden times in its use of inventory and weapon selection. Taking you out of the game - but not pausing it - to choose things. I also found that the game wasn't paused if I went out of the game. It could really use some form of weapon wheel and/or quick item selection. Weapon aiming on the PS4 has a helpful lock on ability to cope for not having a mouse. This was definitely handy as the combat was not very smooth without it. Conclusion: I finished the game within a could of days with a 98%/96% finish score. I would recommend anyone who has played this in the past and enjoyed it to try it again. If you've never tried it just remember its a 1999 game with a 2017 skin. Strongly recommend.