The Clayton Awards 2023

Game of the Year 2023 – Starfield

I can understand why others may not enjoy Starfield as much as I did, why they may think it dated, but for all its flaws, I still think Starfield is a pretty remarkable game and experience. It’s the kind of game that reminds me why I still love and enjoy playing video games. It’s a one of a kind experience. The kind of game that doesn’t come along very often. A game I’ve already lost myself in for 200 hours and yet, I still want to keep going. There’s a lot more space out there for me to explore. (Full Review)

Most Disappointing Game of 2023 – Sons of the Forest

What I will say in its favour is that the potential is there. It can surpass the original with the right focus and updates. But, right now, I honestly can’t recommend it in its current state. I’d say it’s best to wait for those updates. I wasn’t sure if I should score Sons, given it’s in Early Access. But if they’re selling it, I’d say it’s fair game. I will, however, update this score over time if the game does improve. Let’s hope so, because I really would like to play this again when it’s more complete. (Full Review)

Gallery: Starfield (Part 1)

Now Playing: Scorn

Scorn is a (sort of) horror, (sort of) puzzle and (sort of) action game that I picked up on sale recently. I say it’s ‘sort of’ those things because it’s a little bit of everything but it doesn’t really excel at anything. The reason why I was interested in Scorn and, frankly, why anyone probably will be, is the visuals. Clearly inspired by the art of H. R. Giger, the visuals are the only real standout feature of Scorn, although they’re also not without issue.

I like how the main menu opens immediately into the game. There’s no exposition in Scorn. No cutscenes. The ‘story’ such as it is, is told entirely through the environment and your actions. It’s a story that does leave various aspects to your own interpretation but it provides enough information for you to come away feeling satisfied by the narrative. Well, I did. Others may find it frustratingly obscure.

As you traverse the impressive looking environments you’ll come across various puzzles to solve in order to progress. These are all fine. There’s nothing particularly challenging, but there’s nothing that’s too easy, either. Some require a little trial and error to figure out, but nothing that should annoy.

You’ll also have to fight a few enemies on your way. You can avoid a lot of these, and I’d recommend you do so where you can because the most common enemy you’ll face is of the irritating ‘spit goo at you’ variety which is never fun. There’s a couple more, but nothing very interesting. I do like the weapon / tool design though and how it integrates into the experience.

Your path through the game is entirely linear which does feel like a missed opportunity. The first puzzle, for example, has a couple of different solutions. I thought all the puzzles might offer a couple of different choices on how to proceed but unfortunately not. It’s a shame because doing so might have then resulted in a different outcome or ending based on the choices you made.

But no. After the first puzzle, everything is a linear progression and there’s no alternative ending. Not that I thought the ending was bad, just that an alternative path through the game might have encouraged another play.

Because Scorn, for me, is very much a ‘one and done’ kind of game. It’s short – about 4 hours max – and it has zero replay value. The visuals are great, but the style can grow repetitive in some areas and can result in some confusion when trying to navigate identical winding paths. There’s a strong atmosphere to the world but I never really found it as imposing or intimidating as I think was intended. The puzzles are fine – what few there are – as is the combat – what little there is.

Overall, I’d have to say I did enjoy the experience and I’m glad I played it, but I’m also glad I picked it up on sale. So I would recommend checking out Scorn, but only if you can get it on the cheap. It’s a decent experience which I felt was worth my (4 hours) time.

6/10

The Clayton Awards 2023: GOTY Nominees

It’s that time of the year when everyone gets very excited about Game of the Year awards. And by everyone I mean publishers who want to slap ‘Game X won 200 GOTY awards!’ on the cover of their GOTY editions. Because there’s so damn many GOTY awards these days and all of them are as meaningless as all the rest.

For some reason people think ‘The Game Awards’ is the ‘real’ one because it calls itself ‘The Game Awards’ but the last time I watched it most of the awards were handed out off-screen whilst ads were playing or corporate mascots were dancing in the aisles.

But we all know the truth – the only GOTY award that matters is right here – The Clayton Awards – and this is the 12^th Annual Clayton Awards for the Game of the Year 2023 & The Most Disappointing Game of 2023. No other categories, because I like to keep things simple.

But given how prestigious and sought after the Clayton GOTY Award has become, it seems wrong not to generate hype and anticipation by announcing the nominees in advance. I thought about doing a public poll of which 10% of the vote would count towards the winner but that would be a lie and total nonsense so I won’t. So here they are – the Nominees for the Clayton GOTY Award 2023 -

Now Playing: No More Heroes 2

I played No More Heroes 1 & 2 when they originally released on the Wii in 2008 and 2010. I played NMH 1 multiple times, so when I replayed the game for review on this blog in 2017, I remembered the game quite well. I said – ‘It misses as much as it hits with its content, but when it hits it really knocks it out of the park. It’s enjoyable, irritating, bizarre and most importantly –fun. I can’t wait to play the sequel.’

I guess I got a little side tracked, because it’s taken me six years to finally sit down and play No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle again, but this time I’m not playing my Wii copy but the Switch version which, as far as I can tell, has the best available versions of NMH 1 & 2. All I could recall of NMH 2 from when I played it on release was that I didn’t think it was as good as the original – hence why I never replayed it until now.

I was curious to see how I felt about it today, to see if I still didn’t think it was as good or if, as I’ve seen so many say down the years – is actually better. But now, having finished it again I have to say – I kind of hate it.

For me, NMH 2 isn’t a very good sequel and not a particularly good game. Despite all my issues with NMH 1 I said in my review – ‘I love its style, its music, its completely bonkers world, characters and plot. And the core gameplay and missions are a lot of fun. But in many ways, the game feels unfinished. Even some of the main missions feel hastily cobbled together. It’s like they just tossed a bunch of wacky, half-baked ideas together to see what would stick.’

And I feel exactly the same about NMH 2, but whereas the high points of NMH 1 were enough to elevate the game beyond its low points, the lows of NMH 2 are much lower and the highs are few, fleeting and far between. And frankly, the novelty of the first game has somewhat worn off.

NMH 2 desperately struggles (yes, I did that) to recapture the manic energy of 1, but it’s trying way too hard. The weirdness is just weird for the sake of being weird. The sexualisation is dialled to eleven and is, honestly, just embarrassing. The humour misses way more than it lands. The story is bonkers, but it’s trying too hard to be bonkers and ends up feeling obvious and trite. There was a certain magic to NMH 1 where all of this crazy shit just came together in a way that worked – but sadly, NMH 2 can’t replicate that magic here.

NMH 2 strips the open world aspect from 1 but it doesn’t replace it with anything better – now you just teleport to your chosen map location. The side jobs you can do to earn money are now all retro style mini-games (aside from one, for some bizarre reason) and none of them are very good. They’re not terrible, but once you’ve played them once to see what they are, you probably won’t bother again. You can still buy some cosmetic items for Travis which is nice, I guess, but kind of pointless. You can also, like in NMH 1, purchase training to improve your health and attack but this is now another dull retro mini-game so I didn’t really bother with it.

Naomi is back to purchase new beam katanas from but she’s also been given massive tits because . . . because tits, I guess? She was a cool character in 1, so why not at least give her an expanded role here? All they did was give her massive, bouncing tits. Like I said – embarrassing. That doesn’t annoy me as much as what they did with Shinobu who only makes a brief appearance here. She’s playable in two of what are some of the better levels in the game, but then immediately f**ks off never to be seen again.

The combat works more or less the same as NMH 1 which is kind of disappointing as they had an opportunity to really mix things up, especially with the wrestling moves. I do like the new beam katanas though, especially the dual wield. But there’s so few levels where you really get to cut loose and just enjoy the action. There’s some really pointless little sections where you might be riding your bike or walking along a road but nothing actually happens and the game is really just padding out its already meagre content.

I finished NMH 2 in about 6 hours but I’d guess about 40 minutes of that was watching those dumb ‘intermission’ cut-scenes where the camera constantly zooms in on the narrator’s tits and ass. The side content is rather lacklustre, and the main content feels stripped back compared to NMH 1. Most of the ranking fights forget any kind of build up action and just throw you straight into the boss fight.

You might get a couple of small sections of goons to slay – all of which only seem to have two lines of dialogue they repeat ad nauseam. Enemy goon variety as you progress is also practically non-existent. Killing waves of goons in NMH 2 is still pretty fun, but there’s just not much of it because so many ranking fights just throw you straight up against the boss – and a lot of these boss fights are f**king awful.

Honestly, I must have scrubbed some of these fights from my memory because they’re absolutely terrible. They’re not fun. They’re not challenging. They’re not clever. There’s a lot of cheap nonsense to artificially inflate the difficulty – teleporting enemies, insta-kill attacks, perfect dodges – and there’s a lot of really irritating stuff too.

Like bosses that continually dart (or teleport) away from one side of the map to the other forcing you to constantly be chasing after them, to attacks that instantly drain your battery, or attacks that knock you down and then instantly knock you down again when you try to get back up. Or unnecessary scenery items that block your view or cause you to miss an attack. They are, on the whole, far more frustrating than fun.

Like I said, none of them are very difficult. They’re either so easy and fast that you wonder what the point was, or they’re frustratingly slow as you have to chip away at them every chance you get because they’re constantly dodging or teleporting away. I think, maybe, there were only 2-3 bosses I actually thought were well designed.

There’s one point when you think you’re going to play as Henry and fight a few bosses as him, kind of like you did as Shinobu, but instead the game makes a joke about how ‘there’s too much content in the game as it is’ (there’s not) and you just skip over them. Oh.

It’s honestly kind of hard to think of many parts of NMH 2 I actually liked, but there are fleeting moments when the game does come close to those highs of the original (transforming into a tiger never gets old). Moments when the craziness doesn’t feel totally forced like they’re desperately (and unnecessarily) trying to top the first game.

But it’s just not enough. And now I see why I never replayed NMH 2. Because even back then I could see that it wasn’t very good. It’s a short, disappointing sequel that simply can’t recapture the magic of NMH 1. It tries so hard, but it fails. It doesn’t improve or evolve any aspect of the first game. There are a few moments of fun, but they can’t save it. It’s weird seeing all those great scores it got at release. Are they mad? Or am I?

5/10

Half-life 2: Episodes 1 & 2 VR (Mod)

One of the best VR experiences you can have is the VR mod for Half-Life 2 which I wrote a post about last year. The way the VR functionality was incorporated into the game was impressive, but what was even more impressive was how a game from 2004 translated so perfectly into VR. And now, following the Half-Life 2 release, we now have full VR mods of the two Episodes.

I always felt Episode 1 was the weaker of the two, at least in terms of content, and I still feel that way now after playing them both again in VR. I do think I enjoyed Episode 1 more in VR though. The fight through the old hospital was always the highlight in Episode 1 and it’s even better in VR.

Episode 2, whilst superior in terms of content, is a more mixed experience in VR, mostly because a large part of the content is spent in a vehicle. There are several additional comfort options for how you want to play the vehicle section, but like the vehicle stuff in Half-Life 2, this is the one aspect of the game that doesn’t translate quite as well to VR.

It’s a shame, because up to that point Episode 2 is a real blast in VR. All the stuff in the mines, fighting antlion hordes and venturing into a nest is great. There’s one fantastic moment when you’re climbing a ladder and you look up to see a Vortigaunt peering down at you and it works so well in VR you really start to feel like you’re playing a game designed for VR – not just a mod.

But then you hit that vehicle section and things can feel a little awkward and annoying. It’s not so bad once you get used to it and, like I said, there is an impressive range of choices with regards to how you play it, but none of it is really ideal for VR. It’s the one aspect of these games that just doesn’t quite work.

Overall, like Half-Life 2 VR before it, these Episodes are a must play if you own a VR platform. Vehicle stuff aside, they translate brilliantly into VR, even to the point that you might forget they’re nearly 20 years old and never designed for it.

That’s a testament not only to the fantastic job the modders have done putting together these VR versions, but also to just how well designed these games were at release and how well they hold up today in terms of visuals, animations, combat, pacing and level design. If you’ve got a VR set, be sure to give them a spin, I guarantee they’ll offer you a better VR experience than a lot of actual VR releases.