Robio, I’m out of town, but will gladly play with you this weekend.
I wanted to play the online, but whenever I tried I failed to find anyone playing it at all.
Damn, Travo beat me to it....
And I'll try to finish it this week. I said to myself I was going to put it on hold until Valkyria Chronicles 4 was finished, but this game is dragging in a major way and now I'm just trying to force myself to finish it. Disappointing to say the least. It started out so good too.
#6. Persona 3 and 4
All right, if you want to go ahead and call me a bitch for not being able to pick just one and or placing them in two different spots, go ahead. I don't feel bad about it. I was late to the party, but when I finally got around to playing these games, I was pretty well knocked out. They were amazing, and the series has stepped up to become one of my favorite franchises. They are jRPGs in a modern day highschool setting, but what makes them cool is the juggling act you have to do in order to level up several different sets of skills. You have to work on personal traits, social links (inter-personal connections), and good old fashioned combat level ups in order keep progressing with the story. And there are time constrictions so you have to really think about how you'll spend your limited time each day. It's a rare idea in any genre, let along jRPGs and I'll be damned if I can't decide which is better. Persona 3 was the originator of the formula, but Persona 4 definitely refined it. P3 has a better story, but P4 has the better characters. The soundtracks are both a kind of weird mix of J-Pop and more traditional music, and they have beautiful and usually twisted artwork of Shigenori Soejima, master of the penis and vagina monsters. So fuck it, I say they're equally good.
When it comes to RPGs, I typically lose interest after the 40 hour mark, but with the Persona games I actually enjoy for being long. Years ago while doing a podcast with Yoda I mentioned I was playing Persona 4 and asked him if he remembered the in-game end date, as I felt the story was starting to wrap up, but it seemed a little too early. Persona 3 ended in the early Spring, and I was anticipating something similar, but the final day of the game was actually Christmas. Anyway I was disappointed. I had only played it for about 65 hours and I just felt like there should have been more. Lord knows Atlus addressed that complaint with the near 100 hours Persona 5 so I don't hold too much of grudge.
#5. Resident Evil 4
How god damn good is Resident Evil 4, even 10 years after it was originally released? It's mechanics are a bit on the slow side and the graphics are a touch dated, but everything else is still better anything other horror/action/survival game puts out. I won't go into all the details of it since everyone here is pretty damn familiar with RE4, and we pretty much have one of the world's leading authorities on it, so I'll just say it's excellent. I will still happily play this anytime its put in front of me.
The funny thing about it is how close I came to never playing it. When it came out at the start of 2005, I looked at it but put it down since I wasn't a fan of the earlier RE games. I ended up buying a copy of the flash game turned into a console game, Alien Hominid. Ugghhhhhh....About a month later I traded it in at Gamestop, and they had a kiosk set up with RE4, so I gave it a shot. I killed a crow and thought that was kind of cool. Then I kept playing and got to that first rush of villagers and was amazed. That sold me, and I bought the game right there, to which the Gamestop employee/asshole said, "wow...how do you not have this yet???" Sure fuckhead.... remind me again that I bought Alien Hominid.
Yes yes! Alien hominid?! Lol.
My entire list is going to be filled with spots with multiple games so I dont think you are a bitch.
Alien Hominid is cool by the way, don't be a hater.
Resident Evil 4, such an amazing game. It was the whole reason I got the GameCube when I did. I just HAD to play that game as soon as it came out.
robio said:No Alien Hominid was a good solid run and gun. I'm just not sure why it was ever a full prices game (and why I paid $50 for it).
If it wasn't, you wouldn't have got this RE4 anecdote out of it!
#4. The World Ends With You
Aside from being an incredibly fun game, there are two things amaze me about The World Ends With You. First, the game is insanely original concept. There was nothing like it before it (and really nothing since then), and yet it felt like a completely polished experience. This touch screen controlled action RPG was just about perfect right from the get-go. The story was complex, but not mind boggling (like a certain Disney-Square collaboration), the art style was wild but not off-putting, and the soundtrack... well let's just say I don't think any handheld game ever had a soundtrack that was this good. And the controls, while they took a little time to get used to, were actually very smooth once you learned what you were doing. It all made for what was maybe the most creative game Square-Enix has ever put out. And when Solo Remix, the single-screen mobile version was announced, I was as disappointed as anyone. Sequel dammit!! Just give us a fucking sequel!!! But that's where the second amazing thing happened.... they made it better. The single screen made it easier to control your partner, and suddenly combos were a bigger part of the game than ever. Remixed versions of amazing songs were somehow better than before. And finally, you could play the game on a larger screen (assuming you were using a tablet) and could really appreciate the art style that much more.
I can't honestly say I immediately was hooked on the game. In fact, I almost gave up on it during the second week, as I found the game very difficult and Joshua an unpleasant partner. Fortunately I stuck with it and everything clicked and after that it's been a favorite of mine, and my opinion of it only gets better each time I play it. Funny story though, I almost had the game taken away from me after it taught my son his first "curse word" or phrase at any rate. He used to like to play the game more for the music and colorful graphics and so on long car rides I'd let him play the game a little bit. Unfortunately the main character Neku has a bit of a mouth on him, particularly in the early part of the game and that came back to bite me in the ass when the 4 year old kid would go around shouting, "LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!!!!" for virtually no reason at all...yeah mom didn't dig that.
I never played any of The Last of Us single player but I did play some of the multiplayer on my friend’s PS4 and it was pretty enjoyable.