Disappointed was how I felt when I played it.

Foolz said:

Disappointed was how I felt when I played it.

#5. The Binding of Isaac

There are few games with a premise that's as twisted and fucked up as The Binding of Isaac. The story starts out dark enough with a little boy escaping from his overly religious mother who believes god wants her to kill her son. Things only go downhill from there as Isaac battles spiders, mutated fetuses, piles of shit and more through their basement, the sewers, her womb, and eventually the afterlife.  Oh and spoiler alert, the might very well end with young Isaac committing suicide. It's too god damned weird for words at times, but the simplistic and kind of cute art style helps take the edge off and almost makes it acceptible conversation at dinner parties.

So yes it is all quite gloomy and depressing, but it's insanely difficult to put down as the  gameplay is absolutely god tier. It uses that classic SMASH TV system of using one controller to move the character and the other controller to aim and shoot (or buttons if you prefer). You'll find power-ups in treasure chests and occasionally shops, and they usually make you stronger, but it's not uncommon for them to make you weaker, making things that much harder. And since there's roughly a million different power-ups with virutally clear explaination of what they do until you pick them up you'll find yourself making things difficult for yourselves often. Add to that randomly generated dungeons and a variety of mini-bosses that rotate around, it's virtually impossible to have the same experience twice. Hell, it's pretty damn hard to even have a similar experience each time you play.

What's almost as much fun as the game is other people's reactions to it. My son would leave the room when I played it. My wife will keep asking me what the fuck is wrong with me when I play it. When the game came out for the Wii U a couple years ago, I actually would record myself playing it on Periscope (a real-time video based social media app that never quite took off), and random strangers would be appauled but unable to look away when I played it. The Binding of Isaac has made for some very interesting conversations and that's something not many other games can say.

Such a bizarre game indeed. Never played it though, perhaps one day.

Foolz said:

Great game. I'm not sure the narrative really worked all that well in and of itself, but as an excuse for a gross aesthetic it was great.

#4. Dragon Quest 11

9 years. That's how long it was between the release of Dragon Quest 9 for the DS and Dragon Quest 11. Of course, that's fairly stand for western fans of this damned series. That however is a rant for another time, and ultimately it doesn't really matter as the wait was very much worth it. Dragon Quest 11 is an absolute delightful love letter to the roots of the series (Dragon Quest 3 in particular), but it's also very much a tribute to 16-bit jRPGs in general. It's impossible to play this game without making some comparisons to Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. And let's face it, if you're going to borrow from any other jRPGs, it doesn't get better than those two games.

Dragon Quest 11 also takes some strides in the QoL department (particularly in the definitive Switch version). And while the story probably still doesn't quite top DQ5 as my favorite, this is overall the best cast of characters to grace series in one game. The story is still pretty amazing though. It twists and turns in ways that you just wouldn't expect from the DQ series prior to this.

While it is absolutely everything you'd love in a Dragon Quest game there is a valid criticism about the length and repetitive feeling of the game. I wrapped up Dragon Quest 11 after 90 something hours of gameplay. It's a lot, and towards the end it drags because you spend a lot of time revisiting familiar locations, people and sidequests in an attempt to give them happier resolutions. However, it's completely worth playing because once you finish it you are given what I believe is the best and most satisfying ending I've ever come across in a video game. As a long time Dragon Quest fan, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the final pay-off. It was almost like getting endings for two different games, plus a prelude to an older game. It's like the best present you could get, plus amazing wrapping paper, and a picture of the last great present you received.

Foolz said:

One of these days I need to give a Dragon Quest a go.

robio said:

And that of course brings us to DQ11 which is without question the most accessible in the series. It's still veers to the old school side of came in, but as I said in the review it's pretty well modernized.

Cool!

robio said:

I wrapped up Dragon Quest 11 after 90 something hours of gameplay.

Oof!

#3. L.A. Noire

Make no mistake about it, L.A. Noire is flawed as hell. The interogations and questioning become counter-intutive if the player puts the pieces together and figures out where things are headed before the main character Cole does. The city itself, while appearing detailed is actually quite hollow. The final homicide case/scavenger is ridiculously frustrating. And the game's story nearly collapses on itself at the end because they just couldn't quite weave it in throughout the game. About 75% of the story is spelled out in the last 10% of the game, and ends up weighing it down. But I will take these flaws all day long, because the things the game does right make it nothing less than a masterpiece.

The characters are a who's who of noir archetypes. A very flawed hero, a drug addicted distressed damsel, bad cops, worse cops, and villains who aren't always that bad. Outside of a handful (I'm looking at your corrupt Irish police chief), there really aren't too many stereotypes and even the ones that tread on that tend to only hang around briefly. And they're all set against a backdrop of post-war LA. A city seemingly full of prosperity, but is full of plenty of problems if you look just past the surface.

While the characters and setting are great, the cases and investigations are where the game really shines. When they're good, and most of them genuinally are, they're amazing experiences. They feel like classic detective movies and tv shows from the 50's and 60's (hell they even borrow their names in some instances), but with a little more seediness added to them for modern audiences. The flaws do get noticeable in the most complex situations, but most of the time it's extremely smooth, and nothing you can't overlook. And despite the flaws they're still remarkably detailed. Even if you find the bad guy there still might be one or two dangling questions if you didn't look behind every door or ask every question just right. Most adventure games (which this is pretty much based on) tend to be games you can play one time and that's its. LA Noire has so much packed into its stories that I've still managed to find new things everytime I've played.

The most disappointing aspect of the game though is probably the developers management group at Team Bondi. Apparently these guys were such nightmares that they had to be shut down once the game had wrapped up. Though in time, it doesn't seem to be too far out of line of what other Rockstar developers go through, so maybe the problem was higher up? At any rate because of it, we'll never get to see what lessons were learned in their follow-up title, Whore of the Orient. It's a real shame because this model really feels like it has no shortage of life to it, provided the stories are good. Maybe one day Rockstar dusts off the series and tries again. Time will tell.