19. Beat Jamestown - 7/10
OMG I'm so bad at shmups.
Dark Souls vanquished!
Just recently beat Forza Motorsport 6, excellent game. Looks gorgeous, has great gameplay, very good collection of cars, really good tracks, and solid online. It could perhaps use another track or two, is most noticeably missing a favourite of mine which is Maple Valley but other then that there really isn't much to criticize the game on. The current king of driving/racing games. 9.5/10
Finished Firewatch.
Really unique and awesome game with a great atmosphere....very relaxing to play. Just what I needed after Dark Souls. But the ending didn't make any sense to me....seemed to be some serious plot holes. Can anyone explain?
edgecrusher said:Finished Firewatch.
Really unique and awesome game with a great atmosphere....very relaxing to play. Just what I needed after Dark Souls. But the ending didn't make any sense to me....seemed to be some serious plot holes. Can anyone explain?
What specifically do you feel is a plot hole? The ending leaves me empty, and in theory that's the point, but I think it's still really shit.
Finished the 2nd play-thru of Senran Kagura Burst and got to see the story from the perspective of the 'evil' shinobi girls. I would say it was one of the best original games in quite a while, with well written dialogue, a fun battle system and such a quality of exuberance in every aspect of it's gameplay... but I know it would probably just be ignored and remembered as just another booby game. Anyone with an open-mind and a 3DS should really try it out, but I won't hold my breath.
I've already moved on to Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson and it steps up just about everything over the first one, plus... I'm actually shocked just how good the game is on the 3DS...
I'll reiterate one more time, the Senran Kagura games are incredibly original, great fun and they just don't make them like this anymore...
...not that they've ever made games quite like this before; this game just comes from a time when games were devoted to fun without a care of what group of people might be offended by it based on images alone.
phantom_leo said:I'm actually shocked just how good the game is on the 3DS...
Yes, but how good do the boobs look on the small 3D screen?
Gagan said:What specifically do you feel is a plot hole? The ending leaves me empty, and in theory that's the point, but I think it's still really shit.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone.....but.......that part when the chick is talking to someone else about you, it seems as if she knew more than she was letting on. Like she was in on the game. IDK.
edgecrusher said:Gagan said:What specifically do you feel is a plot hole? The ending leaves me empty, and in theory that's the point, but I think it's still really shit.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone.....but.......that part when the chick is talking to someone else about you, it seems as if she knew more than she was letting on. Like she was in on the game. IDK.
It's not really a hole, as much as a red herring. The larger point of it is
...fuck you guys don't have spoiler tags
SPOILERU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In general you are meant to feel a bit empty with no resoultion, because Delilah isn't supposed to be that fix. The problem with that is, they built up that hooky mystery thing, and it's lame ass payoff just makes the whole "no easy fix" nature of the other ending, well, bullshit.
20. Beat Resident Evil Remake - 9/10
On balance, I'll probably never think of one of these type of survival horror games as something better than what Silent Hill 2 is, but I have very high opinions of how good that game is. The difference I might actually enjoy the mechanical play of Remake a lot more, as the Spencer Mansion is one of the best settings in gaming. The sequels simply become too much of a string of level to level, or in the case of 3 and Code Veronica just more tedious and doubled down on more action choke points. Where Remake I spent a lot of time running away from things, and more or less trying to manage my inventory and manage different puzzle pieces across the Mansion.
Knowing that there are odd branches in Jill's playthrough, like the multiple times Barry can do, entire action sequences I can bypass, to how you might bypass saving Chris, to the individual bosses having a solid build up and being properly paced in the overall action. There are quality of life changes I might have liked (like maybe stop sending me to the main menu when I die, and just spawn me at the last typewriter I saved at), but the treks through this setting were an absolute delight. Because it would find ways to create tension by having you manage some busy hallways, to breaking one of the doors so you have to take one of the long ways around to a key save room, to the oh shit moments you have when you go "where the fuck is this other pie....OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it's on the other sid........fffffffffffffff"
Even the game's brand of camera by camera gameplay is so properly thought out, not saying there isn't a frame or 5 where you go "how the fuck was I supposed to avoid being hit there?", but all in all there is a meticulous nature to this game that is more or less the same brand of meticulous design that makes me go full hype when talking about Resident Evil 4.
It's disheartening to see both Mikami and Capcom not come close to this and Resident Evil 4, like at all, even remotely with their follow up games. And I like things like God Hand a lot, but there is a tightness to this package, and while the Tyrant fight is anticlimactic as fuck (mostly because I had saved my Magnum for it and a grenade launcher), I genuinely feel there is very little wasted moments/sequences in this game.
I get this type of game has its moments that will feel tedious because a lot of people don't like using so much progress, I get that the backtracking, the way the controls work, and the camera will turn people away, but I also think there is a lost art to how good this game, specifically is.
There is just a beautiful pace to it all, and the payoffs make for a game that is incredibly gratifying because you deal with enemies that are a genuine threat, death actually carries some stakes (where as plenty of modern games, I give zero fucks about my deaths), and the puzzles never quite reach Silent Hill level of bullshittery (listen I love me some Silent Hill, but some of the puzzles in that series are like, bitch are you serious?)
Loved it. Certified classic. Back when Capcom wasn't a joke : (
I found REmake too unsettling to play. I didn't have problems with other games like RE4 or Eternal Darkness etc but RE on gamecube had me so shit scared right from the get go with those rabid dogs that I wasn't able to get far with it. In RE4 by comparison with the over the shoulder camera view I felt like a boss almost all the time.
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Gagan said:I get this type of game has its moments that will feel tedious because a lot of people don't like using so much progress, I get that the backtracking, the way the controls work, and the camera will turn people away, but I also think there is a lost art to how good this game, specifically is.
Its like I used to say to people all the time back when RE4 came out and suddenly people were claiming "see this is why RE had to change, the old style is dated and stale"....not true. The only reason the old style seemed stale is because they weren't making the games as good as RE1 and RE2 were. If RE Zero was as awesome as RE2, nobody would have been saying its old and dated.
edgecrusher said:Gagan said:I get this type of game has its moments that will feel tedious because a lot of people don't like using so much progress, I get that the backtracking, the way the controls work, and the camera will turn people away, but I also think there is a lost art to how good this game, specifically is.
Its like I used to say to people all the time back when RE4 came out and suddenly people were claiming "see this is why RE had to change, the old style is dated and stale"....not true. The only reason the old style seemed stale is because they weren't making the games as good as RE1 and RE2 were. If RE Zero was as awesome as RE2, nobody would have been saying its old and dated.
Yes and no.
A: The quality did dip
B: But they also ran that formula into the fucking ground
The irony is that what happened to the old RE formula happened to the new one. Resident Evil 4 is divine. 5? Mediocre. 6? piece of shit. Revelations? Those aren't even video games.
21. Beat Vanquish - 7/10
Now I remember why I don't think more highly of Vanquish. All in all it's still a pretty good and outright badass game when the game is hitting on ally cylinders. The first 2 acts are almost all killer, no filler territory, sans the first person walking segments. But after that the pacing of the game straight up drops, it does a solid job mixing up the scenarios, as I guess monotone (which was one of my big complaints when i played it back in 2010) isn't really the issue with the gameplay, as much as the narrative just lacks any punch (as I skipped cutscenes while I played, and watch the story after).
So I'll start there for a second, I like good gameplay more than anything, and in theory I do not play Bayonetta for the plot. BUT!, but, I do really like the character a lot. She's sassy, charismatic, eloquent, she's just all around a lot of fun, and her dialogue exchanges with Rodin are usually worth a solid listen. It's the few stretches where the Bayonetta plot is about her amnesia or being taken seriously that is lame as fuck. I love me some cheesy Dante in Devil May Cry, he's plenty fucking endearing and makes the 2nd half of DMC4 tolerable.
Sam Gideon is neither of those things, he just doesn't get enough time to marinate or make enough cheesy one liners. And to say "hur dur story in tps", or a Japanese one at that, um Binary Domain is a thing. And fucking Dan and Big Bo are awesome, Cain the french robot is chill, I liked Faye, the story ends up being pretty cool by the end. Even Resident Evil 4, all the Leon S. Kennedy one liners are fucking amazing
Ashley: No Way! Leon
Leon: WAY!!!!!
Gets me every time.
So that aspect I think is the monotone stuff. Now to the things that really fucking bug me
-Fucking cinematic walking in first person. WHY IS THIS A FUCKING THING (its obviously a loading mechanism), omg this whole time I thought Platinum Games learned this from other douchy devs, they learned it from Shinji fucking Mikami. It's not as bad in the first 2 acts, but late in the game when it's exposition time? Fuck everything. Do you know what it is like to skip cutscenes, boost down a hallway, half way down the hallway sam just stops to first person walk? Fucking stupid.
-The upgrade system is lousy. Who in the fuck thought it was a cool idea that every time you die, your weapons will downgrade? Why the fuck is that a thing. None of Platinum's other games do that. Resident Evil 4 doesn't do that. God Hand doesn't do that. The Evil Within doesn't do that. Shadows of the Damned doesn't do that. Why do I bring up those 4 games, Mikami, what was supposed to be the point of this system. It can't be a shmup thing.
-No New game Plus, in a Platinum Game? Are you fucking serious? It's the only Platinum Game without one.
-Some of the controls and movement could use work. First of all boosting around while slow mo, or in forced slow mo (because you got hit) and Gideon just moving into walls and stuff can be hard to gauge because of that blue effect when boosting and slowing down time. Also because of the way the game has a lot of chest-high walls, it might have been smarter to actually give Gideon some parkour additions, because a lot of arenas can restrict basic flow. It's why Bobert's line of "glorified sprint mechanic" isn't necessarily absurd.
-I wanted more significant upgrades to this suit. I should have been able to extend that bar, maybe beef up my health bar, something.
-The Unknowns one hit kill move, fuck that shit.
More divisive on
-When you get hit, you get forced into automatic slow mo, and given how little health you have beforehand, this can happen a lot, and that breaks flow of the game pretty often.
-The controls, for the most part they are pretty tight, but I'd like to switch the square button to melee, and make cover circle or X. Just because even with me only using cover about 7% of the time according to the scoreboard by the end of the game, I'd still like a button like O. Going to square always felt odd to me.
-The scoring system seems to only really reward you for speed and headshots, nothing else really from how I read it. Kind of hampers my experimentation.
-The way he fucking throws grenades, but I get that there is a reason for that
I complain Shake, because I love, and Vanquish is so easy to love when it gets going. A lot of fun scenarios, I think I used the emp grenades a lot more this time around, especially on bosses, and getting those clean hits on their weak spot was always clutch. I made shooting grenades out of the air with slow-mo a go to habit, and OMG! was it satisfying every fucking time. The shooting mechanics are so fast and snappy, gun feel is on point, the robots do a great job selling hits, and the weak spot nature of a lot of the enemies adds to the experience as well. Didn't know how different it was to beat an Argus Core fight as you try to go limb by limb, as opposed to setting up that one QTE.
Boosting/dodging around the field, boosting into a wall to drop kick it so you are launched in the air, and shooting off the faces of 3 mooks before you even hit the ground is GLORIOUS!! The God Hand combo. And, like I said there is a reasonable amount of shake up for the first 2 acts, while the 2nd half gets bogged on recycling a bit too much. Another rail sequence, another chain gun sequence, mostly the same enemies, those weird ninja flying bots seem to really be used sparingly, and all that jazz I still had a lot of fun shooting things in this game. Fighting the Unknown can be dope, ditto that scorpion thing, and that banshee/ghost/zombie thing. The final boss was mostly hype when they gave me my new boost.
All in all I had a lot of fun, but it doesn't quite stack up favorably to my time with other Platinum Games (Both Bayonetta Games, Wonderful 101, and Revengeance, hell I might humor the idea I like the more recent Transformers game more tha nit). That said I dig it a lot more than I do most of the third person shooters from last gen: Tomb Raider games, 2 of the 3 uncharted, all 3 gears of war games, Max Payne 3, and even Binary Domain, and I love Binary domain.
It's a class below Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us, not necessarily mechanically (good god, no), but it just lacks the pacing and some of the extra stuff that makes those games more cohesive and compelling in their composition.
You're definitely turning into a story-loving softyin your old age, Gagan...I just hope it's not dementia. 
22. Beat Star Fox Zero - 3/10
Even without any controller issues, this game in terms of what is actually there is basically an average to below average game. I'm not one of those people that goes "was Starfox 64 ever that good?", because I think those cats take it a bit too far acting like the game was average, it was a good game, it just wasn't some all time great one (certainly not a platform that had Mario 64, Paper Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, etc).
But this is just fucking lame most of the way through. Why...why is an N64 doing so much more than this game? Why does Starfox 64 have more bosses, to the point where it feels like there is a boss every level (I feel like there was, I might be wrong), why is the branching path stuff restricted to a bunch of them requiring me to beat the level vanilla, and then needing to come back to it when it has a portal on it. Why? in front flipping fuck did someone think that in a franchise where no one liked the Zelda off shoot (I kind of did, I thought that game was fun), no one liked the on foot shit in assault, no one really cared for the ghetto strategy game in the DS version (though it sounds kinda neat, I actually want to try it), did you think anyone wanted to play with
A: a vehicle that has some awkward ass controls like the gyrochopper
B: you decide to make it this stealth mission where I'm dodging lights, and dropping off this little robot to touch panels in a fairly straight forward level.
In a series where all any of us have ever wanted was Starfox 64, but improved. This is Starfox 64 done worse. The "remake/reboot" excuse wouldn't even fly, why are you doing less than the original? (certainly didn't help that I played Remake recently, and that game is superb) The original game isn't exactly one I'd argue has filler, outside of a sector/planet or two just not being all that good (plus you can avoid them). This in contrast feels like it has moments of just straight up filler.
And that's without getting into how much the controls fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I get that people like the gyro controls for Splatoon (gross, personally play that game with the sticks), but Splatoon is just gyro controls. You're still effectively looking at the tv, making this a game where I'm going to be bouncing off looking at the tv and then looking at the pad at times just feels completely unnecessary. Nothing about it makes me think "yep, I would rather play it this way instead of a gamepad". Shit if they really wanted to do motion contorls, this is game that would have worked fine with a wiimote. A pointer is naturally better for rail shooting than gyro shit.
Why is a gyro gamepad even a fucking thing? The only people who liked Six-Axis were assholes. What did they spend all that time, money, effort, and talent (A Platinum made rail shooter should be a fucking no brainer) on just making the controls work and to have it run 60 faps on both the pad n tv? Because that's a fucking waste. Fuck you Miyamoto. Fuck motion controls. So shit.
Played through Timesplitters 2 on the Xbox. Didn't mean to, but couldn't stop playing. They don't make FPS like this anymore. Even though it doesn't have as good of a single player as Perfect Dark, the whole package together is tough to beat.
I want to play Enslaved soon. Many people seem to like it.