Updated with Wild Hunt!!

edgecrusher said:

...

Anyway, I'm glad I got around to it. Its hilarious to play because its like a relic from the past...it plays like those old school shooters of the late 90's. Actually pretty fun because we don't get games like this today. ...

yes we do. Wolfenstein , Samurai Warrior, Hard Reset Serious Sam 3. They are there man...

15 years after I first picked up the game (and got so frustrated with it that I put it down and never returned), I have finally finished Earthbound Beginnings/Earthbound Zero/Mother. Fun experience, but honestly not a fun game. Still, I'm glad I played it. Plus there's always a special feeling of accomplishment when it takes you over a decade to complete a game.

Finished MGS2oL.

I can't help feeling that this is a shitty game posturing as a truly great one.  And no, the problem is not Raiden at all.  I actually thought he was a great character and protagonist.  Unlike the first Metal Gear Solid, the environments are not varied at all.  The entire game is in this tanker type facility.  There aren't really enough boss fights.  Why couldn't they at least have you fight General Gurlugovic, Ocelot, Fortune etc ... they were in the game, may as well have you fight them.  What few boss fights there were felt kind of simplistic or similar to ones from the first game.  With the exception of the Metal Gear Rays battle.  It pissed me off at the time but in hindsight it was pretty cool.  The final boss fight is gimmicky rubbish.  I hadn't even realised that it was the final boss fight until I'd finished it.  The amount of cut-scenes is just obscene.  Seriously, it's not funny.  The plot is ridiculous and not in a good way and having spoon fed to you by endless cut-scenes upon endless cut-scenes is not fun.  After a certain point I just switched off.

I'm trying to think of things I actually liked about the game.  There must have been something if I played through the whole thing.  I guess it's fun enough to play (in the few intervals between cut-scenes when you do actually get to play) but I still don't understand why this is supposed to be such a highly revered franchise.

Hmmm I kind of want to start Snake Eater now but I may try something different before I do that.

Finished The Witcher 3, and, God help me, it's made me want to actually play 1 and 2 some day... If only the ending had been bad, then I could have hated it!

bugsonglass said:

Finished MGS2oL.

I can't help feeling that this is a shitty game posturing as a truly great one.  And no, the problem is not Raiden at all.  I actually thought he was a great character and protagonist.  Unlike the first Metal Gear Solid, the environments are not varied at all.  The entire game is in this tanker type facility.  There aren't really enough boss fights.  Why couldn't they at least have you fight General Gurlugovic, Ocelot, Fortune etc ... they were in the game, may as well have you fight them.  What few boss fights there were felt kind of simplistic or similar to ones from the first game.  With the exception of the Metal Gear Rays battle.  It pissed me off at the time but in hindsight it was pretty cool.  The final boss fight is gimmicky rubbish.  I hadn't even realised that it was the final boss fight until I'd finished it.  The amount of cut-scenes is just obscene.  Seriously, it's not funny.  The plot is ridiculous and not in a good way and having spoon fed to you by endless cut-scenes upon endless cut-scenes is not fun.  After a certain point I just switched off.

I'm trying to think of things I actually liked about the game.  There must have been something if I played through the whole thing.  I guess it's fun enough to play (in the few intervals between cut-scenes when you do actually get to play) but I still don't understand why this is supposed to be such a highly revered franchise.

Hmmm I kind of want to start Snake Eater now but I may try something different before I do that.

What is this insanity? Man.....Sons of Liberty was a 9.6 game for me. The only thing to not like about it was the bat shit nutty story at the end.

Dvader said:

Agreed. The gameplay is phenomenal. But level design and bosses are the worst in the series.

bugsonglass said:

I started it.  It's so difficult.  I beat the first two games pretty much by looking at the radar the whole time, now I don't have it.  Wow I may have to take the time to learn this properly.

bugsonglass said:

I'm playing the one that's on the HD Collection.  I think I've been told that it's the "subsistence" version which is meant to be the one with the better camera.  It's the reason I bought the collection (and also because I didn't want to have to hood up my PS2 again).

Oh ok that's the one.

Yeah the original version kind of sucked. They did the semi-overhead camera like the first two games but the level design in Snake Eater just doesn't work with that overhead camera at all. You literally can't see shit.

12. Batman: Arkham City - 8/10

SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HASNT PLAYED THIS GAME SINCE 2011...gosh

Okey dokey this time I did more of the side shit, only thing left over was the Riddler stuff (because way too many of them shits so now it's one giant fetch session), the Szazz mission (because going from telephone to telephone is boring, and I gotta wait on him to actually call), and the saving random dude from one thug, because those missions are all the same and gliding around Arkham City to just do that is boring.

The combat improvements over Asylum were pretty obvious from the get go. Beyond just like the added gadgets he's a bit more fluid in City as well, like the whiffs are still there, but they aren't as frequent as some of the random whiffs you'll get in Asylum (which drives me insane during the challenges). All the upgrades I got were pretty legit, it's made doing challenge rooms way more interesting than doing them in Asylum. City tends to reward keeping the flow going and mixing it up, Asylum was keep the flow going but make sure you get ground pounds in.

Predator challenges are still a highlight and in my opinion still the best gameplay sequences of these games, because picking apart the thugs one by one and watching them all get terrified is badass. That room with the two snipers was giving me a bit of trouble on hard, but then I remembered I could just disable their snipers. Good times were had, for Batman. At it's core it is a better playing game than Asylum and some of the side stuff was legit fantastic like the Madhatter.

However, I stand by the notion that Asylum is a tighter, better paced (by design), and more clear experience. Not that it didn't have its moments of filler, but City wastes your time with so much nonsense at times. Between the go take out jammers to back into the museum, the robot scanning, the helicopter scanning, the back tracking the sewer segment being tedious as all hell, to returning to the Steel mill in this really dull ice block pulling shit.

The other side stuff were interesting contextually, but the payoffs were kind of weak at times. Azreal is "We're going to make a sequel" and you need Chris OCD to even notice him at times, otherwise a lot of times I found him way off the beaten path of where I was going. The Hush storyline is a fucking tease where Batman goes "meh, I'll take care of him in the sequel"

Riddler's hostage stuff is great and while there is way too many riddles/puzzles that are straight lol territory, there are some genuinely clever uses of batman's gadgets for puzzles. For instance there was this one part where I had to dive bomb onto a pressure plate and use the shock wave (which I didn't unlock until after the game was over) which made me go, oh that's neato. The puzzles were a great compliment to the riddles, I'll leave the game installed to keep doing those and the challenges maybe.

Speaking of which I like that Riddler's shit has hostages you have to save, the 2nd hostage I assumed was a follow the cup type sequence, but apparently riddler is a lying sack of shit. So what you do is detective vision, which reminds me of that thing ...I want to say in Ocarina? that minigame where you just cheat it by using that one thing. Philipe will remember. My only gripe is that it tells you right after you failed (I wasn't banking on Riddler cheating) that Riddler is cheating and to use detective vision, which kind of ruins it a little bit. Still a cool use of it.

Plot wise Asylum is better even if the ending was silly, City's plot I feel just jumps around What's going on in the city, get a cure, Ra's, get your cure, now you gotta find out Hugo's plans, Hugo was working with Ra's, and then get your cure/save Talia. Asylum seemed thematically consistent even with the role player villains in trying to get across Bats is as crazy as the villains, City was trying to convey what? He's an asshole? He liked The Joker more than Talia? Like what's up?

Also the clayface ending still comes off silly to me, but whatever. Speaking of which Mr. Freeze is every bit as legit as he's touted to be even on a replay. Because the idea of the boss is fantastic, even though he's super easy when you know what to do. And while the boss fights aren't "good" necessarily, they aren't out right bad like they were in Asylum. I thought Ra's for instance was kind of fun, and them actually letting you fight joker+thugs is what Asylum should have had, and even Solomon Grundy, while not good, was still more interesting than dodge out of way, he hits wall, you beat up brute.

The gadget oriented nature made those fights work. And while throwing battarangs at ivy is a lame fight, throwing icebombs at Clayface...is still pretty lame, but at least contextually it makes sense. Because Clayface.

Catwoman should not be mandatory. She is completely unnecessary and all her stuff is straight up filler (though I do like the fake ending for her) to the point she's basically Rachel in Ninja Gaiden sigma. I should have the option to play City without her. I sort of made that two-face part harder on myself by never upgrading her, because why the fuck would I?

Oh and I punched a shark in the face.

All in a really good game, just like Asylum. If I had to pick between the two, yeah I'd say City, but I still like Asylum structurally. But I genuinely prefer Metroid or more singular environments to big open world games. That said City's way of doing open world is my type of open world game. Since it's more like Zelda, the city is an overworld, the Museum, GCPD, and Steel Mill work as dungeons. That and at least some effort was put into the side stuff in this game vs other open world games. For instance I love Saints Row, but I don't like doing the side stuff usually.