llsorts 1 – Oh boy, this is a long list. For some reason I decided to start clearing out my “free” PS plus games. So here we go…
Hunter’s Arena
Put this one in the graveyard dedicate to competitive multiplayer games
with an interesting idea that die at debut or an inevitable slow death.
Loadout, Dirty Bomb, LawBreakers, etc.
The game had a really cool concept with a martial artist MOBA meets Battle-Royal. You start the game by diving off a tower into an arena that is essentially a MOBA jungle, with pools of creep. Fight them, level up, attain loot and gear, then move to avoid the fog inevitably ending in a intimate climax with what land is left. The heroes are awesome, with some really cool skillsets that feels like a mix between a fighting game and MOBA champions.
Some personal favourites being Geonhong with his drunken kickboxing style (which will always be a favourite ever since Rock Lee used it) thrown in with some fire breathing of course. Mumyung, with his loki style daggers, clones and trickery. Dara and Ara deserve a shotout for there elegant long range blade weapons (think circle blades from Kingdoms of Amalur) and Wukong for obvious reasons. However, Yoongeon is by far my favourite. He has the most difficult skillset and would have likely been my main benchmark character. A dual sword wielding ronin looking fellow, he can switch to a spectral mode that hangs over his body kinda like a Stand from JoJo; this allows him to fight at range. All in all !@#$in badass.
So what killed it? Well the PvE just isn’t fun. Creeps make up the bulk of the fighting, with players often avoiding others to level up for a final fight; you don’t have the constant threat of PvP and ganking like other MOBAs. Unless not in the short time I played it. Not sure the West was the best market to start as the only sever is NA which is dead and laggy to the point of unplayability. I never made it to the end; but watching it the meta of jungle PvE then hide in a corner and let others eliminate each other is boring AF.
Knockout City
Played this one for a good chunk of time and it had a cool idea but the formula just got boring after a while. For starters you spend way too long with bots at the start before it lets you verse humans (I’m surprised I even stuck it out it got that boring). Humans are far better as you’d expect, but idk, it just feels like its missing something. It’s clear they’re going for that fortnite and Rocket League audience; but while Fortnite had the build mechanic and Rocket League had the trick shots; Knockout city lacks the depth that these games have and keep people coming back for hundreds of hours. It was fun with a lot of potential, just missing that secret ingredient to make it stand tall above the rest.
Street Fighter 5
It’s just bad. It spits in the face of this giant
franchise. 3D just never feels right, even as good as 4 was I didn’t like it
nearly as much. I just don’t feel that same level of precision and technical
fighting with the characters. I wish they would go back to 3D; do a classic
remake and revamp the movesets and rosters. The initial launch lacking content
killed this game at launch but even with it, the core fighting doesn’t feel
satisfying and lacking the dragon’s punch it use to have.
Virtua Fighter 5
I never got into this series, always preferring Tekken for a 3D fighter
and Street Fighter for 2D. But it was good for a laugh with some friends for an
hour. We tried most the characters like Ryu Akira Yuki and Ken
Jack Bryant and most feel like bland rip offs. It wasn’t until a mate
chose E. Honda Taka-Arashi and spammed his sumo kick reminiscent of E.
Honda's palm flurry that we had a good run with this all but forgotten fighter.
Fall Guys
This game is a blast; what can I say. Good fun obstacle course with rounds of elimination. You only need to look at one screenshot to know exactly what the game is about. I think that’s what has carried this game for so long giving it a wider audience and long-term success. My one gripe is that there’s no local co-op. If I was eight I’d have a blast with this game online but as it is; it doesn’t appeal to me enough to keep me coming back and play this with strangers. I understand that the game is built for 60 or so players. But it’s a party game, so why not release a mode that lets you have four, eight, sixteen people on the same screen. Hell give us the option to player with 2-4 players online as a group (split-screen). If it had that I’d still be playing it now.
Predator Hunting Grounds
I love asymmetrical games and after Dead by Daylight I would have expected this to be a slam dunk. The themes, art, predator, characters and abilities all hit the nail on the head. The predator feels as it should - tough and stealthy jumping from tree to tree and blasting soldiers apart with shoulder mounted plasma cannons. The problem is a simple one to explain, but understandably difficult to implement on a budget. The shooting mechanics suck. This is a common problem in these games for the marines and I remember AvP got around it with the M56 smart gun. I mean sure it was fun, but that presented its own problems with a lack of variety and turtling marines. Give us more options, stims, adrenaline, shields, traps, etc. But most of all give us the ability to aim smoothly especially when the Predator moves so fast AND has ridiculous health. How can the humans win when they can’t aim and the Predator can be in your face in a single moment. Not to mention the NPCs guerrilla enemies are boring to kill. If this game had Tarkov level AI and shooting, it would still be getting played today; but as it stands its understandably dying.
Friday the 13th: The Game
Not much to say here. Forgettable. Dead by Daylight but worse. Made by the same developer as Predator Hunting Grounds (IllFonic) so that explains a lot. A friend told me Behaviour Interactive pitched a Friday the 13th game, was denied and decided to make their own game which would be Dead by Daylight. Well, evidently they backed the wrong horse.
Onrush
I loved MotorStorm back in the day and this one hit hard where the MotorStorm shaped hole is in my heart. It’s tight, smooth and fun. Pick anything from bikes, ATV, muscle cars and trucks to dodge and wipe other vehicles off the road. The main noticeable difference here are the different modes and the team racing. Having two teams adds an awesome dynamic where you can get certain perks to buff your teammates, adding an element of class synergy to cars. This opens the door to a plethora of different modes such as capture the point where your team must maintain control of a moving domination zone. It’s just a lot of fun and one I’ll be keeping installed for when I want to scratch that racing itch.
Battlefield V
The 90s and 00s were marked by WW2 shooters. Call of Duty, Medal of
Honour, Wolfenstein and many clones. It was so flooded to the point that WW2
fatigue persists to this day (at least for me). That doesn’t mean that an
exceptional game wouldn’t break me out of that spell, but CoD: WW2 failed, and
Battlefield V certainly didn’t succeed in its place. The game gave me BF1943 vibes in Europe. But it didn’t add anything new. Compare that to BF1 (still a dumb name) which
added a fresh new setting that introduced a plethora of new changes such as
mounted combat, train combat, bayonet charges and a surprisingly refreshing
lack of automatic weapons. BFV on the other hands feels like a step backwards,
re-treading old grounds.
WWE 2k Battlegrounds
I was never into wrestling growing up. I always thought it was lame and corny even at an age where that was acceptable to think was cool. But I did love the old games like smackdown raw. Pile driving my mates and picking up chairs to make them sit the F down gave me hours of entertainment. So I saw promise in this one especially because it wasn’t taking itself seriously. Instead it had a corny, cartoony bobble head theme that appeared at home given the costumes and characters of WWE. But just no, the game feels so clunky and budget to the point that even basic menu transitions require a lot of willpower to navigate. How a game feels so much more difficult to control then its PS2 contemporaries will always confound me. It was good for 30 minutes of fun and that’s about it.
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