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Media Videogame thread
- Thread starter Bummer
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mfw 
https://gematsu.com/2019/01/the-leg...el-i-and-ii-localization-staff-working-on-iii
some major members of the localization staff that worked on 1-2 are working on 3 as well so it's very unlikely to be the debacle that Ys 8 was, at least
Honestly I'm feeling kinda iffy on 3-4 in general after hearing that they have the same problem that 1-2 had of roughly a single game's plot (and not a particularly good one) stretched and padded out over the length of two long games but maybe it'll be better. The other thing I was kind of hoping for was a Switch port, super long JRPGs are better when you can play them on the go. Maybe I'm worrying too much though idk.
I finished playing CrossCode today and it's a good game and everyone should play it
I don't remember the last time I clocked 70 hours into a game
I don't remember the last time I clocked 70 hours into a game
Yeah I listened to some of the soundtrack recently, it seemed fucking baller. Probably gonna pick it up when it comes out on the Switch.
Anyways, here's my video game agenda for the month beyond "play lots of Pokemon and Mario (in particular Mario Maker cuz of Super Mario Maker 2 hype)"
Gears of War series: I decided its about time I catch up with Gears of War, since I only played the first one, and want to get Gears 5 later this year. Currently replaying Gears of War via the Xbone Ultimate edition, cuz I haven't played the original in over a decade. Still about as kick ass as I remember though!
Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn: Another remake play, just got it today actually! Devilish Mode is better than I expected, so this seems like a welcome improvement over the easy, but heart-meltingly cute original game!
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: After playing Bloodborne a few years back, I'm now pretty exicted to see what From unleashes next. Since Activision are being douchebags and not giving out review copies, I might not get this quite at launch, since I'm not sure what platform I'm gonna get it on (save me Digital Foundry). But I doubt From will fuck this up either, so I'm pretty sure this will be mine somehow!
Wario Land Shake It!: Good lord a forgotten Mario sin: I somehow never finished this game! Been playing it every day except today, and been enjoying my time with it. Might be the worst Wario Land game (or around VB Wario Land level), but its not really the game's fault, its more due to the Wario Land series just being full of bangers in general lol. Graphically, its very pretty despite being a Wii game due to the gorgerous hand drawn animation.
Yoshi's Crafted World: Wow I'm on a bit of a Good Feel marathon this month aren't I? These dudes not only made an awesome Wario and Kirby game, but made the first Yoshi game that didnt have serious problems since... Yoshi's Island! I finished Yoshi's Woolly World last month, and was pretty impressed with it, so I trust these guys to hit it out of the park with Crafted World again, especially since that demo showed a promise of some very creative level design!
Horizon: Zero Dawn: I missed out on this game 2 years ago because it launched way too close to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I picked this up for 20 bucks, and am pretty pleased with it thus far. Not too mind blowing, but I like the combat and the protagonist so far. The creature design is pretty fantastic too, so I'm curious to see how this game unfolds.
Touhou Luna Nights: I got this RIGHT before it left early access last month, so I got it pretty cheap. I normally avoid Touhou spinoffs and stick to the main shootem ups, but a Touhou Metroidvania seemed like an interesting idea to me, and the mechanics around using Sakuya's time bending powers sounds like a cool concept. People seem to like this game quite a bit, so I'm probably gonna start my playthrough soon!
Alien Vs Predator: My brother got a bunch of Atari Jaguar games a few months back, so I decided to dust the fucker off, and I've been hungering for some old school shooters lately. Normally I'd just go back to the reliable classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, but this time, I want to try something I've never played before. A lot of people consider this to be the Atari Jaguar's best original game, and hey, outside of Alien Isolation (which I really need to get to later), what other good Alien games are there?
I actually finished CrossCode a couple weeks ago and have pretty mixed feelings on it. It does a lot of things right; it looks good, the combat is simple but fast-paced and fun, the story is solid even if it doesn't start moving until you're 2/3 of the way done with the game, but the characters and writing are generally enough to keep things interesting before that point. It also has a good chunk of content for an indie game, I did a fair amount of optional quests/exploration and had 31 hours on my file when I finished.
The dungeons and puzzles nearly killed the game for me though. It always introduces new puzzle mechanics without really giving an explanation and I found myself getting stuck a couple of times in each dungeon and having to search for solutions, and when I found said solution it was usually because there was some additional mechanic to the way the puzzles worked that the game didn't bother telling you about (admittedly some were just me being dumb, but once your confidence that the puzzles are fair is lost, it's hard to give them a chance).
There are some other not insignificant issues, I think partly caused by the fact that it's probably a small indie team building a relatively large game, but ultimately I'm glad I stuck with it, the flaws do thankfully get a little better as the game goes on.
So Ive barely beaten any of the games in my monthly to do list (only finished Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn and Touhou Luna Nights), mostly cuz of Pokemon among other things lol.
On the bright side, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is FANTASTIC! It's hard as fuck, and not really like Dark Souls or Bloodborne outside of the difficulty, but man the combat is so damn satisfying, especially when you beat a really hard boss!
Also, to chill out inbetween intense Sekiro and Pokemon laddering sessions, I've started to play a cool game my brother got for the N64: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (he also got the 2D platformer sequel, Goemon's Great Adventure).
Funnily enough, like Sekrio, it's about a ninja like figure, but for any of you who know this series, you know that its a light hearted romp through "feudal" Japan with crazy shit like a giant fighting robot that's also an American actor, a farting Ninja named Ebisumaru, who claims James Dean is his ancestor, and other weird, zany shit. I've always wanted to import the Super Famicom games, but this is a nice introduction!
The first N64 game is a strange mix between Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. It's quasi-open world like the N64 Zeldas, but instead of a focus on puzzles, the dungeons focus on platforming. The big issue with the game is that there is ZERO camera control. Thankfully, the game isn't very tough and is rarely frusterating, but it's still annoying. The townsfolk also say a lot of weird shit, here's some examples:
I still got a ways to go in the game (I'm 5 hours in and have a lot of items to get still), but as long as you can deal with the camera and its... N64 gameplay (hey its from 1998!), this has been a great way to decompress. This is such a chill, wacky game to play!
I also need to play more of the 2D platforming sequel later. From what I've heard, it's not only conisdered one of the best Goemon games, but also the best N64 2D platformer, and even among the best 2D platformers of its generation! I'm gonna get to it AFTER this game though, because as excited by it as I am, 2D platformers are more my style, and I'll forget to finish this relaxing 3D romp if I skip ahead!
On the bright side, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is FANTASTIC! It's hard as fuck, and not really like Dark Souls or Bloodborne outside of the difficulty, but man the combat is so damn satisfying, especially when you beat a really hard boss!
Also, to chill out inbetween intense Sekiro and Pokemon laddering sessions, I've started to play a cool game my brother got for the N64: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (he also got the 2D platformer sequel, Goemon's Great Adventure).
Funnily enough, like Sekrio, it's about a ninja like figure, but for any of you who know this series, you know that its a light hearted romp through "feudal" Japan with crazy shit like a giant fighting robot that's also an American actor, a farting Ninja named Ebisumaru, who claims James Dean is his ancestor, and other weird, zany shit. I've always wanted to import the Super Famicom games, but this is a nice introduction!
The first N64 game is a strange mix between Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. It's quasi-open world like the N64 Zeldas, but instead of a focus on puzzles, the dungeons focus on platforming. The big issue with the game is that there is ZERO camera control. Thankfully, the game isn't very tough and is rarely frusterating, but it's still annoying. The townsfolk also say a lot of weird shit, here's some examples:
I still got a ways to go in the game (I'm 5 hours in and have a lot of items to get still), but as long as you can deal with the camera and its... N64 gameplay (hey its from 1998!), this has been a great way to decompress. This is such a chill, wacky game to play!
I also need to play more of the 2D platforming sequel later. From what I've heard, it's not only conisdered one of the best Goemon games, but also the best N64 2D platformer, and even among the best 2D platformers of its generation! I'm gonna get to it AFTER this game though, because as excited by it as I am, 2D platformers are more my style, and I'll forget to finish this relaxing 3D romp if I skip ahead!
Stratos
Banned deucer.
I need to rave about my 3 favorite games of 2018. These games are all amazing. None of this is probably news to Epic Gamers but I don't care.
3. Return of the Obra Dinn
The entire internet has been sucking Lucas Pope's dick over this game and I'm eager to hop right in line. The narrative is excellent and the detective gameplay is very good. The game has an incredible density of information, but the journal was organized so well that I never needed to break out pen and paper. The organization of everything is truly its crowning achievement—other adventure games present problems one at a time; Obra Dinn asks you 180 questions at once, yet it never feels overwhelming. The prime frustration of adventure games is knowing the answer and feeling clever, then not being allowed to present the answer until the game beats you over the head with more clues, dashing that feeling. See Ace Attorney 1 for examples. Obra Dinn never does this. In that respect, I love it.
The mark of a perfect adventure game is captivating me to the point that I refuse to use a guide. In that respect, Obra Dinn failed, which is why it's only #3 on my list. I used a guide for the last seven fates. It has two flaws which keep it from being perfect. First, the graphics are bad, which I normally don't care about, but when they're so bad they get in the way of gameplay it becomes a problem. There was one bloke who I thought was shoved overboard and drowned, but after I looked up his fate in a guide, it turned out he had been stabbed. You could not even see the knife in his attacker's hand. Second, revisiting memories you've already seen is a pain in the ass. You have to walk around the ship to the right corpse every time. While there is a map showing where on the ship you can find the corpse, this makes it really hard to find some of the identities that want you to string together clues across multiple memories. As an example, the Bosun is very easy to identify, and you're expected to peg the Bosun's mate as the guy who's next to the Bosun in a lot of his scenes. The Bosun has like 14 scenes, and the mate isn't in all of them. I would prefer to be able to revisit a memory just by pressing a button on the appropriate journal entry. Don't let the fact that my negative paragraph is longer dissuade you though, this is probably the closest to flawless an adventure game has ever come.
2. Celeste
It's rare for a game to feel so fair, yet kick your ass so mercilessly. This is Celeste, probably the best platformer I have ever played. I died 1500 times on one level (Summit B), and when I finished it, I was disappointed. Only 1500? Kill me at least 3000 times!
I love platformers, but I normally hate losing in them. I yell all sorts of mean things at the character, the developers, and myself; I pound the couch; I scream at the ceiling. Celeste made me enjoy losing. It does this by borrowing from lessons of the precision platformers that came before. Most levels fit on a single screen width, so you know exactly what you need to do to make the next checkpoint before you even start. Dying is like a three second time loss and it doesn't shame you with a stupid lives system. It does all in its power to make losing feel like the step before winning, instead of like a failure, which is something that a lot of mainstream platformer developers still haven't internalized (fucking 2D Mario with its black screen showing your lives ticking down).
The gameplay is so incredibly good. Unbelievably good. You only have three buttons—jump, air-dash, wall-cling—but these combine with the 1-3 unique gimmicks of the area for endless possibilities such that of the 400+ levels in the game, no two feel the same. The movement is free and, dare I use this word, expressive. There's a clear "beginner's path" on most levels, but there's almost always at least 5 other ways to get to the end. The developers thought a lot about timing their cycles properly, and it shows. There is almost no waiting in the game. There's a room in Shovel Knight which I like to pick on. Right after a checkpoint, there is lava dripping from the ceiling. If you die and respawn, and hold right from the checkpoint after you respawn, you will get hit by the lava cycle. This never happens in Celeste.
And throughout all of this excellent gameplay is a pretty solid story. It's very tumblr, but in a good way. Excellent art and music, too. None of this is critical to making a good platformer but it's sure nice to have. Celeste would probably be my GOTY in most years, but it came out the same year as...
1. Into the Breach
The magnificent bastards behind FTL have completely outdone themselves this time. FTL was very good, but I'd hesitate to call it great. On the other hand, Into the Breach is my favorite game of 2018. It may be my favorite game of my fucking life.
I'm a tactics fan and a roguelike fan, so this game has a bit of an unfair advantage with me, but it still crushed all of my expectations. Both of these genres tend to rely on information hiding to provide a challenge. Tactics games often don't tell you how many enemies there are or how they will attack. Roguelikes don't tell you what the next encounter will be or what your mission rewards will be. Into the Breach tells you all of these things, and it still kicks your ass (on Hard... Normal is pretty easy). But despite the game repeatedly turning my face into a mop, I never felt the usual roguelike frustration of "I made all the right moves and got fucked by the RNG." RNG is of course one of the tactics to keeping roguelikes fresh, but unlike all the other roguelikes, the difference in outcomes between "perfect RNG" and "worst RNG possible" in Into the Breach is pretty small. My losses are all because I misplayed, and my wins are all because I'm a fucking god.
The lifeblood of Roguelikes is replayability, and Into the Breach has this in spades. The game comes with 24 mechs arranged in 8 preset squads of 3, each of which has three unique achievements and three types of victory. All eight squads play very differently, and it takes me upwards of 10 hours to get all six of these medals for one preset squad. Add 25 more non-squad-based achievements and you're looking at a lot of replayability. But then add the option for a random squad and a custom squad and you have infinite possibilities (though most of them are, admittedly, shit.) After getting all 55 achievements you even unlock another three mechs. And that's just the starting loadouts. You can change your squad along the way too! But even when sticking to just one mech squad I have yet to get bored of the game because the core gameplay is so fun and so difficult to master that I just love the feeling of slowly getting better at it.
Now if you loved the variety of FTL, I am afraid that Into the Breach scaled back on that aspect. The flavor text and soundtrack in the game are excellent, but in pursuit of more balanced gameplay, the beats are more similar run-to-run. You'll probably have seen all the text in the game by the ten hour mark. But if you love masterful moment-to-moment strategic gameplay, this is the best tactics game you'll ever play.
3. Return of the Obra Dinn
The entire internet has been sucking Lucas Pope's dick over this game and I'm eager to hop right in line. The narrative is excellent and the detective gameplay is very good. The game has an incredible density of information, but the journal was organized so well that I never needed to break out pen and paper. The organization of everything is truly its crowning achievement—other adventure games present problems one at a time; Obra Dinn asks you 180 questions at once, yet it never feels overwhelming. The prime frustration of adventure games is knowing the answer and feeling clever, then not being allowed to present the answer until the game beats you over the head with more clues, dashing that feeling. See Ace Attorney 1 for examples. Obra Dinn never does this. In that respect, I love it.
The mark of a perfect adventure game is captivating me to the point that I refuse to use a guide. In that respect, Obra Dinn failed, which is why it's only #3 on my list. I used a guide for the last seven fates. It has two flaws which keep it from being perfect. First, the graphics are bad, which I normally don't care about, but when they're so bad they get in the way of gameplay it becomes a problem. There was one bloke who I thought was shoved overboard and drowned, but after I looked up his fate in a guide, it turned out he had been stabbed. You could not even see the knife in his attacker's hand. Second, revisiting memories you've already seen is a pain in the ass. You have to walk around the ship to the right corpse every time. While there is a map showing where on the ship you can find the corpse, this makes it really hard to find some of the identities that want you to string together clues across multiple memories. As an example, the Bosun is very easy to identify, and you're expected to peg the Bosun's mate as the guy who's next to the Bosun in a lot of his scenes. The Bosun has like 14 scenes, and the mate isn't in all of them. I would prefer to be able to revisit a memory just by pressing a button on the appropriate journal entry. Don't let the fact that my negative paragraph is longer dissuade you though, this is probably the closest to flawless an adventure game has ever come.
2. Celeste
It's rare for a game to feel so fair, yet kick your ass so mercilessly. This is Celeste, probably the best platformer I have ever played. I died 1500 times on one level (Summit B), and when I finished it, I was disappointed. Only 1500? Kill me at least 3000 times!
I love platformers, but I normally hate losing in them. I yell all sorts of mean things at the character, the developers, and myself; I pound the couch; I scream at the ceiling. Celeste made me enjoy losing. It does this by borrowing from lessons of the precision platformers that came before. Most levels fit on a single screen width, so you know exactly what you need to do to make the next checkpoint before you even start. Dying is like a three second time loss and it doesn't shame you with a stupid lives system. It does all in its power to make losing feel like the step before winning, instead of like a failure, which is something that a lot of mainstream platformer developers still haven't internalized (fucking 2D Mario with its black screen showing your lives ticking down).
The gameplay is so incredibly good. Unbelievably good. You only have three buttons—jump, air-dash, wall-cling—but these combine with the 1-3 unique gimmicks of the area for endless possibilities such that of the 400+ levels in the game, no two feel the same. The movement is free and, dare I use this word, expressive. There's a clear "beginner's path" on most levels, but there's almost always at least 5 other ways to get to the end. The developers thought a lot about timing their cycles properly, and it shows. There is almost no waiting in the game. There's a room in Shovel Knight which I like to pick on. Right after a checkpoint, there is lava dripping from the ceiling. If you die and respawn, and hold right from the checkpoint after you respawn, you will get hit by the lava cycle. This never happens in Celeste.
And throughout all of this excellent gameplay is a pretty solid story. It's very tumblr, but in a good way. Excellent art and music, too. None of this is critical to making a good platformer but it's sure nice to have. Celeste would probably be my GOTY in most years, but it came out the same year as...
1. Into the Breach
The magnificent bastards behind FTL have completely outdone themselves this time. FTL was very good, but I'd hesitate to call it great. On the other hand, Into the Breach is my favorite game of 2018. It may be my favorite game of my fucking life.
I'm a tactics fan and a roguelike fan, so this game has a bit of an unfair advantage with me, but it still crushed all of my expectations. Both of these genres tend to rely on information hiding to provide a challenge. Tactics games often don't tell you how many enemies there are or how they will attack. Roguelikes don't tell you what the next encounter will be or what your mission rewards will be. Into the Breach tells you all of these things, and it still kicks your ass (on Hard... Normal is pretty easy). But despite the game repeatedly turning my face into a mop, I never felt the usual roguelike frustration of "I made all the right moves and got fucked by the RNG." RNG is of course one of the tactics to keeping roguelikes fresh, but unlike all the other roguelikes, the difference in outcomes between "perfect RNG" and "worst RNG possible" in Into the Breach is pretty small. My losses are all because I misplayed, and my wins are all because I'm a fucking god.
The lifeblood of Roguelikes is replayability, and Into the Breach has this in spades. The game comes with 24 mechs arranged in 8 preset squads of 3, each of which has three unique achievements and three types of victory. All eight squads play very differently, and it takes me upwards of 10 hours to get all six of these medals for one preset squad. Add 25 more non-squad-based achievements and you're looking at a lot of replayability. But then add the option for a random squad and a custom squad and you have infinite possibilities (though most of them are, admittedly, shit.) After getting all 55 achievements you even unlock another three mechs. And that's just the starting loadouts. You can change your squad along the way too! But even when sticking to just one mech squad I have yet to get bored of the game because the core gameplay is so fun and so difficult to master that I just love the feeling of slowly getting better at it.
Now if you loved the variety of FTL, I am afraid that Into the Breach scaled back on that aspect. The flavor text and soundtrack in the game are excellent, but in pursuit of more balanced gameplay, the beats are more similar run-to-run. You'll probably have seen all the text in the game by the ten hour mark. But if you love masterful moment-to-moment strategic gameplay, this is the best tactics game you'll ever play.
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Assassin's Creed Odyssey - PS4
I picked up this game about a week ago because it was on sale for 19.99 (retail 59.99). I think it was a good purchase and I've gotten some hours out of it so far and am still playing it and it seems to hold my interest a little bit. That said it is certainly not an amazing game and I would not buy it at its full price at all.
I'm about 13-14 hours in right now, so the story has started ramping up, I'm like level 15 or so, and have explored a lot of different areas. The game just feels, empty and repetitious. The game wants to be the Witcher sooooo bad, with mechanics like being able to call your horse from anywhere, the free roam endless wooded repetitious landscape, npcs that don't talk to you at all, honestly kinda bad combat, but without any of the good parts of the witcher like the cool quests and narrative. It also really wants to be an Assassins Creed game (spoiler) but fails to achieve that particularly well either. Now, my last Assassins Creed games that I played were back when Black Flag came out, and I had played all the ones previous to that. The story in AC Odyssey is basically nonexistent, and Ubisoft seems to have taken a liking to the aspects of Black Flag; abandoning the Assassin timeline in favor of a more historical free roaming sandbox game. This would be awesome and all, if the world was at all interesting. ACII had the entirety of Italy to explore, with noted historical achievements like Notre Dame, the city of Rome, Venice to explore. AC1 had breathtaking architecture for its time, and AC4 had the awesome pirate / Caribbean aesthetic that made up for its lack of structures. This to me, exemplifies what makes the AC games AC; an emphasis on historical combat, an alternative timeline (with secret societies) and an amazing free roaming parkour environment. Odyssey does almost none of this. Of the 13 hours or so I've played so far the only singular time I've ever thought, "wow this is really cool actually" was the very first synchronization on the Statue of Zeus. That was really cool because you got to see the whole island you were on from the top of the mountain, and in that moment it felt like the world was limitless. In successive synchros, not so much. You climb up a cliff so you can jump on a branch and boom synchronization. You get to the top of a house that is barely a story, sometimes two, and boom synchro. It's the same problem that to me, AC3 had, an uninteresting climbing environment. The world feels overwhelmingly repetitive; get a mission, travel 300 meters to the next marker, you kill guards / clear a fortress, travel another 200 meters to complete the quest. The most interesting quests I've received have been the city state takeover missions. In these what you are supposed to do is travel the land and clear different forts that are erected around the area you're attempting to clear. Once the area is weakened enough you are able to travel to wherever the head leader of the area (usually I guess a senator? prominent politician?) is and kill him, as the nation is weakened so he has to disperse his defenses. Or, you could ignore all that and attempt to fight him full powered, where he will usually be levels up and have bodyguards all surrounding him. This leads to a somewhat cool interaction betweent eh land and the political state at the time, as you are then able to do a conquest battle, where you fight in a big ass war / conflict and just go ham with the combat. This would be such an interesting and cool idea but unfortunately is executed like garbage. None of the battles / political sphere matter one bit. No matter which side (Athens or Sparta) you pick, none of the sides will ever be friendly toward you. Almost every single area in the game is just hostile, so there's no sense of like, the Civil War in Skyrim where you are shaping the landscape (even though that in itself was handled poorly). The whole point of doing these battles is to get better and better gear, but the game already hands you an extraordinary amount of high level gear, making the whole process superfluous. It's strictly designed to appeal to completionist natures of gamers, but even then its a frustrating sort of completionist. I'll compare my previous trophy hunting in Hollow Knight to this. In Hollow Knight, the last few trophies I had to get were the Pantheon trophies, in which I fight the bossrushes. This was a cool and fulfilling completionist activity, as I got better and better at the combat, I could test out my kinks and work out the battles, while still being challenging. Odyssey seemed in contrast, to learn nothing from its previous games at all. Go here, collect this Ancient Tablet, loot these chests, kill these cultists. Boom, area done. The repetitive nature of these tasks the game asks you to complete is overwhelming at first, and really leads me to question why the fuck I'm still playing this game 13 hours in, because it doesn't seem different and I'm sure as hell not leveling myself to the 60s so I can do all these cultist quests it wants me to complete.
The combat in the game is one you would expect to be refreshing. It's an Assassin's Creed game after all, the coolest parts of the games are figuring out how to stealth kill every single dude, how to not get caught so you can successfully complete the area, slaughtering people with your pistols and your pirate sword and weaving in an dout of combat. Odyssey does none of this. The RPG nature of Odyssey leads to a Dark Souls esque combat that just isn't satisfying enough. You get indicators when the opponent is about to attack and you have two choices, parry or dodge, both of which if done correctly reward you with a slow mo cam that allows you to get hits in on the enemy. This at first glance would seem to be a cool mechanic, and it is, however the problems stem from there being a leveling and gear system to begin with. The leveling is pointless except as a gatekeeper, because the enemies level with you. The only difference is, some quests you are required to be a certain level to complete and you can't complete them unless you're that level. The leveling and health system means that often times you can't even really stealth complete areas. I remember unlocking the bow in the game, and I was so hyped. I fucking love archery in games, when I play Skyrim I almost always go bow and attempt to snipe everyone, when I play Dishonored I always try to crossbow bolt everyone out the game, when I play any shooter really I always try for the sniper character (Zer0 from borderlands, Triple Take in Apex Legends, Hanzo from Overwatch). Theres just something satisfying about being able to snipe a character down. Can't do that in Odyssey though, your arrows deal maybe 1/20th of the health bar if youre lucky, and maybe upwards of 1/7th if you get a headshot. Being able to oneshot people requires a special skill that consumes Adrenaline (a finite system that replenishes through battling and engaging enemies, defeating the point of sniping) and getting a headshot with it, while theyre underleveled. OK fine, at least you can have good satisfying combat with the slow mo system right? Sure, but one of the first leveled abilities you can get is the Spartan Kick (lol). Additionally there is fall damage. Put two and two together and you can basically cheese any fight by luring them to a cliff and just spartan kicking them until theyre dead. There was one fight that I was having particular trouble with as I killed some dudes and went up high to kill the Polemarch and was surrounded by like 6 different guys (when one guy sees you they all spot you for the most part). I just kept dodging and spartan kicking, abusing the I frames to deal with the captains as I kicked them off a cliff for minimal effort. It's just so frustrating, the blows lack any depth as it just feels like you're playing Runescape and watching them trade blows in an archaic form of combat, until you get to the end of the duel and you perform one of three different finishing moves on them.
These are my thoughts without including the microtransaction pushed approach to the game and the glitches and bugs of the game (which I assume are exacerbated on PC). Overall the game seems very middling. There are cool concepts included here and a story that is somewhat interesting at times, but the gameplay is just super unengaging. Go here, kill this dude, clear this fort, do this conquest battle, loot. The areas are not really fun to look at, certainly beautiful but not engaging at all, there are no alternatives to assassinate people other than hiding in a bush really, the cities are widespread and most of the game just feels like empty space. IT feels like someone blew up a "no correlation" stats 101 picture and said "OK all these dots are going to be cities and areas." The combat overall feels cheesy dull and repetitive. The coolest parts are being able to sneak around and assassinate people, but you can't even do that correctly because a lot of enemies are just overleveled and you can't oneshot any captains or significant characters. I can only hope that the story is more redeemable, as an interesting character named Demios just got introduced that I look forward to playing against, but even then the missions assigned to that segment of the game are just more mindless repetition. Kill this cult leader in this area, find clues for the next cult leader, kill him. Overall I'd give the game a 5.5/10. It's certainly beautiful at times, worth the 20$ I spent on it as I'll probably still play it in the next coming months, but definitely not worth the 60$+. This feels like a slow burn type of game that you would play in the middle of other games, certainly an improvement on previous AC games but it jsut tries too hard to be a somewhat middling Western RPG rather than sticking to the things that make Assassins Creed an intriguing franchise.
I picked up this game about a week ago because it was on sale for 19.99 (retail 59.99). I think it was a good purchase and I've gotten some hours out of it so far and am still playing it and it seems to hold my interest a little bit. That said it is certainly not an amazing game and I would not buy it at its full price at all.
I'm about 13-14 hours in right now, so the story has started ramping up, I'm like level 15 or so, and have explored a lot of different areas. The game just feels, empty and repetitious. The game wants to be the Witcher sooooo bad, with mechanics like being able to call your horse from anywhere, the free roam endless wooded repetitious landscape, npcs that don't talk to you at all, honestly kinda bad combat, but without any of the good parts of the witcher like the cool quests and narrative. It also really wants to be an Assassins Creed game (spoiler) but fails to achieve that particularly well either. Now, my last Assassins Creed games that I played were back when Black Flag came out, and I had played all the ones previous to that. The story in AC Odyssey is basically nonexistent, and Ubisoft seems to have taken a liking to the aspects of Black Flag; abandoning the Assassin timeline in favor of a more historical free roaming sandbox game. This would be awesome and all, if the world was at all interesting. ACII had the entirety of Italy to explore, with noted historical achievements like Notre Dame, the city of Rome, Venice to explore. AC1 had breathtaking architecture for its time, and AC4 had the awesome pirate / Caribbean aesthetic that made up for its lack of structures. This to me, exemplifies what makes the AC games AC; an emphasis on historical combat, an alternative timeline (with secret societies) and an amazing free roaming parkour environment. Odyssey does almost none of this. Of the 13 hours or so I've played so far the only singular time I've ever thought, "wow this is really cool actually" was the very first synchronization on the Statue of Zeus. That was really cool because you got to see the whole island you were on from the top of the mountain, and in that moment it felt like the world was limitless. In successive synchros, not so much. You climb up a cliff so you can jump on a branch and boom synchronization. You get to the top of a house that is barely a story, sometimes two, and boom synchro. It's the same problem that to me, AC3 had, an uninteresting climbing environment. The world feels overwhelmingly repetitive; get a mission, travel 300 meters to the next marker, you kill guards / clear a fortress, travel another 200 meters to complete the quest. The most interesting quests I've received have been the city state takeover missions. In these what you are supposed to do is travel the land and clear different forts that are erected around the area you're attempting to clear. Once the area is weakened enough you are able to travel to wherever the head leader of the area (usually I guess a senator? prominent politician?) is and kill him, as the nation is weakened so he has to disperse his defenses. Or, you could ignore all that and attempt to fight him full powered, where he will usually be levels up and have bodyguards all surrounding him. This leads to a somewhat cool interaction betweent eh land and the political state at the time, as you are then able to do a conquest battle, where you fight in a big ass war / conflict and just go ham with the combat. This would be such an interesting and cool idea but unfortunately is executed like garbage. None of the battles / political sphere matter one bit. No matter which side (Athens or Sparta) you pick, none of the sides will ever be friendly toward you. Almost every single area in the game is just hostile, so there's no sense of like, the Civil War in Skyrim where you are shaping the landscape (even though that in itself was handled poorly). The whole point of doing these battles is to get better and better gear, but the game already hands you an extraordinary amount of high level gear, making the whole process superfluous. It's strictly designed to appeal to completionist natures of gamers, but even then its a frustrating sort of completionist. I'll compare my previous trophy hunting in Hollow Knight to this. In Hollow Knight, the last few trophies I had to get were the Pantheon trophies, in which I fight the bossrushes. This was a cool and fulfilling completionist activity, as I got better and better at the combat, I could test out my kinks and work out the battles, while still being challenging. Odyssey seemed in contrast, to learn nothing from its previous games at all. Go here, collect this Ancient Tablet, loot these chests, kill these cultists. Boom, area done. The repetitive nature of these tasks the game asks you to complete is overwhelming at first, and really leads me to question why the fuck I'm still playing this game 13 hours in, because it doesn't seem different and I'm sure as hell not leveling myself to the 60s so I can do all these cultist quests it wants me to complete.
The combat in the game is one you would expect to be refreshing. It's an Assassin's Creed game after all, the coolest parts of the games are figuring out how to stealth kill every single dude, how to not get caught so you can successfully complete the area, slaughtering people with your pistols and your pirate sword and weaving in an dout of combat. Odyssey does none of this. The RPG nature of Odyssey leads to a Dark Souls esque combat that just isn't satisfying enough. You get indicators when the opponent is about to attack and you have two choices, parry or dodge, both of which if done correctly reward you with a slow mo cam that allows you to get hits in on the enemy. This at first glance would seem to be a cool mechanic, and it is, however the problems stem from there being a leveling and gear system to begin with. The leveling is pointless except as a gatekeeper, because the enemies level with you. The only difference is, some quests you are required to be a certain level to complete and you can't complete them unless you're that level. The leveling and health system means that often times you can't even really stealth complete areas. I remember unlocking the bow in the game, and I was so hyped. I fucking love archery in games, when I play Skyrim I almost always go bow and attempt to snipe everyone, when I play Dishonored I always try to crossbow bolt everyone out the game, when I play any shooter really I always try for the sniper character (Zer0 from borderlands, Triple Take in Apex Legends, Hanzo from Overwatch). Theres just something satisfying about being able to snipe a character down. Can't do that in Odyssey though, your arrows deal maybe 1/20th of the health bar if youre lucky, and maybe upwards of 1/7th if you get a headshot. Being able to oneshot people requires a special skill that consumes Adrenaline (a finite system that replenishes through battling and engaging enemies, defeating the point of sniping) and getting a headshot with it, while theyre underleveled. OK fine, at least you can have good satisfying combat with the slow mo system right? Sure, but one of the first leveled abilities you can get is the Spartan Kick (lol). Additionally there is fall damage. Put two and two together and you can basically cheese any fight by luring them to a cliff and just spartan kicking them until theyre dead. There was one fight that I was having particular trouble with as I killed some dudes and went up high to kill the Polemarch and was surrounded by like 6 different guys (when one guy sees you they all spot you for the most part). I just kept dodging and spartan kicking, abusing the I frames to deal with the captains as I kicked them off a cliff for minimal effort. It's just so frustrating, the blows lack any depth as it just feels like you're playing Runescape and watching them trade blows in an archaic form of combat, until you get to the end of the duel and you perform one of three different finishing moves on them.
These are my thoughts without including the microtransaction pushed approach to the game and the glitches and bugs of the game (which I assume are exacerbated on PC). Overall the game seems very middling. There are cool concepts included here and a story that is somewhat interesting at times, but the gameplay is just super unengaging. Go here, kill this dude, clear this fort, do this conquest battle, loot. The areas are not really fun to look at, certainly beautiful but not engaging at all, there are no alternatives to assassinate people other than hiding in a bush really, the cities are widespread and most of the game just feels like empty space. IT feels like someone blew up a "no correlation" stats 101 picture and said "OK all these dots are going to be cities and areas." The combat overall feels cheesy dull and repetitive. The coolest parts are being able to sneak around and assassinate people, but you can't even do that correctly because a lot of enemies are just overleveled and you can't oneshot any captains or significant characters. I can only hope that the story is more redeemable, as an interesting character named Demios just got introduced that I look forward to playing against, but even then the missions assigned to that segment of the game are just more mindless repetition. Kill this cult leader in this area, find clues for the next cult leader, kill him. Overall I'd give the game a 5.5/10. It's certainly beautiful at times, worth the 20$ I spent on it as I'll probably still play it in the next coming months, but definitely not worth the 60$+. This feels like a slow burn type of game that you would play in the middle of other games, certainly an improvement on previous AC games but it jsut tries too hard to be a somewhat middling Western RPG rather than sticking to the things that make Assassins Creed an intriguing franchise.
What I've seen of ITB it seems much more repetitive to me than FTL. The boards are so small it feels more of a puzzle game than a strategy game, but it's not very compelling in that manner.
So I was gifted me a copy of Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure and I started playing that recently. It's been on my Steam wishlist for a long time but was never a high priority, nonetheless I'm obligated to play it immediately so my gifting buddy has someone to talk about the game with. For a game that's native to PC, the controls are pretty clunky and customization is annoyingly limited: You can only choose keybinds from a preset list of keys, not assign them as you please, and the only volume control is for music so I gotta open up the volume mixer and just turn the whole game down through Windows settings. For some reason, the game also won't launch at specifically 4x antialiasing.
Game itself is fun so far but I'm not very far yet. Little girl's parents go off an adventure, you (her) go to live with grandpa in some old mining town, and you meet little monsters who are invisible to adults and live in a parallel world accessible through a hole in some wall in the middle of town. Other monsters who are more evil take over the fictional monster land and I guess it's your task to save it! Lots of irreverent humor, a creepy old man hitting on you and some asshole dancing Wobbuffet, fun action RPG gameplay in the vein of Diablo or modern Ys.
So I was gifted me a copy of Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure and I started playing that recently. It's been on my Steam wishlist for a long time but was never a high priority, nonetheless I'm obligated to play it immediately so my gifting buddy has someone to talk about the game with. For a game that's native to PC, the controls are pretty clunky and customization is annoyingly limited: You can only choose keybinds from a preset list of keys, not assign them as you please, and the only volume control is for music so I gotta open up the volume mixer and just turn the whole game down through Windows settings. For some reason, the game also won't launch at specifically 4x antialiasing.
Game itself is fun so far but I'm not very far yet. Little girl's parents go off an adventure, you (her) go to live with grandpa in some old mining town, and you meet little monsters who are invisible to adults and live in a parallel world accessible through a hole in some wall in the middle of town. Other monsters who are more evil take over the fictional monster land and I guess it's your task to save it! Lots of irreverent humor, a creepy old man hitting on you and some asshole dancing Wobbuffet, fun action RPG gameplay in the vein of Diablo or modern Ys.
It's bad enough to be worth mentioning but not enough to seriously detract from the experience. Mario 64 has a clunky camera, it's still an all-time great game. Gurumin has a Diablo-esque control scheme with a mouse cursor, you click to move and shit, except unlike Diablo you do more clicking/mashing to attack and you have to do mouse gestures to perform special attacks. (I only have one so far but it requires a 360-degree spin of the cursor.) You can use full keyboard instead of KB/M combo, but then you lose analog movement and the mouse wheel is the most convenient way to control the camera direction. The game actually seems better suited for a controller -- odd for a native PC game, but the game plays much like modern Ys or 3D Zelda this way -- but I don't know how you perform the special moves with one (ingame tutorials always refer to default KB controls) and my friend says there are portions of the game later on where you have to type shit into prompts, so you still have to use a keyboard for that anyway.
Also, it has a music bar at the top and your attacks crit when you attack in time with the beat. One of the finer details of that little nugget is that your weapon skill levels up as you perform more critical hits... including breakable objects and destructible terrain, so it's optimal to break shit in time to the beat even when you're out of combat. TRIGGERED. At least if you crit your opening swing, your attack speed perfectly matches the beat so you usually crit every swing. At least it did in the first dungeon, dunno if later stages have different beat timings.
Also, it has a music bar at the top and your attacks crit when you attack in time with the beat. One of the finer details of that little nugget is that your weapon skill levels up as you perform more critical hits... including breakable objects and destructible terrain, so it's optimal to break shit in time to the beat even when you're out of combat. TRIGGERED. At least if you crit your opening swing, your attack speed perfectly matches the beat so you usually crit every swing. At least it did in the first dungeon, dunno if later stages have different beat timings.
I really want to love Mortal Kombat 11, because it's fucking gorgeous and the mechanics seem great. But man there's some stuff that's wrong.
The grind is just stupid. Which is nothing that Cheat Engine won't be able to fix in a couple weeks. But for some reason they put the single-player stuff server-side to make that less viable? It's not going to work anyway but even if it did...like, why? That's almost as dumb as that Sekiro "you cheated yourself" meme.
The PC and Switch versions are balance patches behind, which is quite frankly unacceptable.
The grind is just stupid. Which is nothing that Cheat Engine won't be able to fix in a couple weeks. But for some reason they put the single-player stuff server-side to make that less viable? It's not going to work anyway but even if it did...like, why? That's almost as dumb as that Sekiro "you cheated yourself" meme.
The PC and Switch versions are balance patches behind, which is quite frankly unacceptable.
Finished Subnautica recently. I liked it overall, it has a lot of rough spots but it gets that open world/survival/crafting/exploration/etc mix done effectively and the deep (alien) sea is a good setting with lots of cool sub biomes to explore. I do like that it actually has a story going on as well, it's in the background for most of the game but it offers a bit more reason to explore than "because you can". The upgrades and things you craft also tend to change the way you play rather than being a numerical increase of something you already have. The three different vehicles you build, for example, are all vastly different but I liked the first one best and continued to use it where I could.
The fact that it doesn't have a map is something I have mixed feelings on. Considering most of the game takes place underwater where it's difficult to see long distances, and the only real tools you get are a compass and eventually placeable beacons that use up valuable copper. There's some fun to navigating with the limited abilities and easily visible landmarks you're given though, and the map thankfully isn't randomly generated so you can look up where something is if you need to get somewhere specific.
As for the negatives, it does the absolute bare minimum with inventory management (so you end up with an endlessly-expanding array of storage containers in your base and have to rearrange them regularly), it has some bugs and performance issues which are bad enough to actively interfere with gameplay, a couple of times the pop-in made me think that something looked like something else, and the endgame doesn't really come together as well as it could've. The open-ended design leads to a lot of "you got X! But you can't use X until you get Y" and it's also the type of game where you end up having to look things up on the wiki/google constantly but that may just be something that comes with the territory.
Ultimately it's flawed but a game I had a lot of fun with, hoping the sequel/spinoff Below Zero improves on it when that's finished.
The fact that it doesn't have a map is something I have mixed feelings on. Considering most of the game takes place underwater where it's difficult to see long distances, and the only real tools you get are a compass and eventually placeable beacons that use up valuable copper. There's some fun to navigating with the limited abilities and easily visible landmarks you're given though, and the map thankfully isn't randomly generated so you can look up where something is if you need to get somewhere specific.
As for the negatives, it does the absolute bare minimum with inventory management (so you end up with an endlessly-expanding array of storage containers in your base and have to rearrange them regularly), it has some bugs and performance issues which are bad enough to actively interfere with gameplay, a couple of times the pop-in made me think that something looked like something else, and the endgame doesn't really come together as well as it could've. The open-ended design leads to a lot of "you got X! But you can't use X until you get Y" and it's also the type of game where you end up having to look things up on the wiki/google constantly but that may just be something that comes with the territory.
Ultimately it's flawed but a game I had a lot of fun with, hoping the sequel/spinoff Below Zero improves on it when that's finished.
The first two hours of Okami are definitely the slowest and worst part of the game, once you get past that it becomes incredibly better. I guess kind of like most RPGs like zelda and pokemon
this post made me start okami hd and let me say issun fucking ruins this game
e: saying this as someone close to 100% ing the game (already collected all 99 prayer beads)
Been playing a lot of Dead Cells recently (just got Boss Cell #2) on my Switch. It's odd, because the game initially gave me a really weak impression- On my 3rd or so run, I had already reached the last stage of the game and had quickly figured out that camping with turrets was an overwhelmingly powerful option. I stopped playing after that point because I didn't really feel engaged, but I came back recently and got my first boss cell (beating the last boss). This allowed me to access the higher difficulty (level 1 of 5) level and the game massively improved from there. Enemies dealt enough damage to dismantle most turrets and such, forcing me to actually engage. And when I have to engage, the game is massively better. I don't think I've ever played a game that so consistently "flows" like Dead Cells does- When there's a mechanic in place that boosts your movement speed after melee multikills, you already have me entertained. But as far as 2D combat goes I'd argue Dead Cells is borderline perfect in that regard. Rolling feels perfect, enemies only hurt you on attack animations that are clearly choreographed, and the difficulty is insane but fair (at difficulty "hard". No idea what the 4 fucking difficulties above that are like). Main complaint is that the general plot is pretty generic "indie game going for a dark souls feel" and laughably edgy at times, but the plot barely matters so whatever. The boss battles do suck in my opinion though- Most bosses have a damage aura that appears a few seconds after you get in melee range, and just artificially lengthes the battles and makes the flawless rewards stupidly hard to get. Most of the time the boss battles are just me winning the battle of attrition.
Also the game uses Donkey Kong Country Models-Into-Sprites and it's a very uncanny look. Super unique though and fits the tone of the game so I'm a fan of it.
Also the game uses Donkey Kong Country Models-Into-Sprites and it's a very uncanny look. Super unique though and fits the tone of the game so I'm a fan of it.
Ya if you hated Navi I could see you hating Issun. I didn't mind either one but that's definitely a fair assessment
I was fine with Navi, Issun is an arrogant lech (not to mention a plagiarist) and has like 0 redeeming qualities. Issun is also waaay more intrusive and controlling than Navi, roadblocking tons of shit, especially during the second and third arcs, which completely cripples exploration and you often notice new things as you backtrack through each area on your way to your next urgent mission. In addition, the puzzles in Okami aren't anywhere near as difficult as OoT so Issun straight up solving half of them for you is even more frustrating.
^ I don't think most of these flaws become apparent until after Orochi though, since you'd expect the game to let up a bit on the hand-holding. But it really never does, and Issun is its main tool for this. Would have really helped if he was actually a cool dude who also maybe did more to advance the plot (aside from Thief's Glove and the Spirit Gate I don't really recall him doing much plotwise. Obviously he's your mouthpiece but let's be real he says little to nothing of value over the course of the game besides lewd remarks and general assholery + if anything the endgame, with its long stretches of pure exploration or backtracking, are way more enjoyable because you DON'T have to listen to Issun's bullshit.
But yeah overall the game blows me away on all aesthetic fronts, and the love behind this game is insanely apparent. Definitely not the modern masterpiece I've seen it getting hyped up to be though...maybe flawed classic is the right term.
Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
So E3 basically has begun and loads of titles, both good and bad have been announced for Xbox and Playstation consoles. Until we know more about the Nintendo stuff, what are peoples' thoughts on the new stuff?
Personally I found Bethesda's presentation rather lackluster aside from the Ghostwire Tokyo (the lady that came on stage was adorable) and Deathloop reveals.
Halo and Cyberpunk were definitely hype trailers - Keanu Reeves totally took me by surprise and you could feel the excitement emanating from both Reeves onstage as well as the fans in the auditorium.
Elden Ring looks like a standard Norse-esque From Software medieval game.
Unrelated to E3 but we got a date for FF7 Remake (March 3 next year).
Finally Devolver Digital's Conference was batshit insane and I loved it.
Personally I found Bethesda's presentation rather lackluster aside from the Ghostwire Tokyo (the lady that came on stage was adorable) and Deathloop reveals.
Halo and Cyberpunk were definitely hype trailers - Keanu Reeves totally took me by surprise and you could feel the excitement emanating from both Reeves onstage as well as the fans in the auditorium.
Elden Ring looks like a standard Norse-esque From Software medieval game.
Unrelated to E3 but we got a date for FF7 Remake (March 3 next year).
Finally Devolver Digital's Conference was batshit insane and I loved it.
is that this girl, I was busy agonizing over my team failing at wcop to pay attention to E3
My Kiseki strap collection continues to grow. Recently opened the Alisa and Tio pixelated straps (16 total in the recent set, random, bought 5 packs) which I am very happy about since I got my favorites! Other 3 were Emma, Jusis (traded for Kevin), and Elliot.
Debating if I want to play Cold Steel 3 in English since I already played through Cold Steel 4 in Japanese. Maybe I will rant a bit on CS3/4 once people at least finish CS 3 lol. Ys 9 coming out in September as well will compete for time. Ys 9 looks like something I will play even though I never really considered the older Ys games.
Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Yup! Also Nintendo E3 was hype.