as someone who a20'd the game after 500 hours i can firmly say it's the latter
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I will say on higher ascensions, every battle becomes so brutal that the turn-by-turn management of health and damage becomes far more engaging than in earlier ascensions--you'll start to seriously scrutinize card draw possibilities, learn to memorize enemy patterns and pools far in advance when picking cards, and generally it makes the game much more fun beyond the rote turn-by-turn play you pointed out. When the first enemy in act 1 can end your run if not played optimally, things tend to get a lot more interesting!
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Portal & 2 - Like with Shadow of the Colossus, it might be a waste of time to review a game this well known, but I said I'd review every game I played so god damn it I'm doing it. Honestly it feels silly even starting this review with a synopsis, but in case you've been living under a rock for the past thirteen years, Portal & 2 are first person puzzle platformers where you reach the goal by shooting the eponymous portal gun to link two surfaces with a magical gateway. All the while, your evil AI controller (you are a "test subject" in a "science experiment") cracks jokes at your expense.
The puzzles are... decent. It's probably tough to balance puzzles, especially in a setup like Portal which doesn't have optional levels. If you get stuck on any puzzle, your options are Google the answer (which I did have to do a few times in the sequel) or never finish the game. So while I might say that the games were generally too easy, it's better than them being too hard. I once read that the goal of a puzzle game is often not to make the player smarter, but to make them feel smart, and Portal's puzzles are often good at this. They invite you into an obvious (wrong) solution, and once you've tried it, the actual correct solution becomes just as obvious. I blitzed through Portal in 2 hours, though Portal 2 took me much longer.
Sometimes it doesn't even feel like there is a puzzle at all, which is rarely a good thing. The "outside" sequences of both Portal 1 and 2 are often a protracted exercise in finding the one portal-able surface in the haystack and shooting it. The best puzzles are found in the test chambers, though there are tedious exceptions--the turret chamber in Portal 1 is probably the most obvious example, but I could name half a dozen more if you cared. And after you've found the correct solution, it's occasionally frustrating to implement. Some solutions take too long to execute, and they often test your "skill" (ability to shoot a portal accurately while traveling at high speed, usually) and if you fail the skill test you are dead and have to restart. So it's not a pure puzzle game in the end; there's a bit of FPS involved, which some people might find welcome but bothered me. Especially since Portal 2 ran at like 10fps on my high end brand new gaming PC for some reason.
The writing is of course what actually made Portal so incredibly popular. What can I say? It's deserved! The jokes come extremely frequently and most of them are funny; the plot is interesting; the serious bits in the sequel are... not exactly compelling, but don't feel out of place in an overt comedy which is good enough. Despite my very lukewarm feelings on the actual gameplay, if you care about video games as a storytelling medium, Portal is a game you have to pick up. If you were going to play it on mute, just play something else instead.
The puzzles are... decent. It's probably tough to balance puzzles, especially in a setup like Portal which doesn't have optional levels. If you get stuck on any puzzle, your options are Google the answer (which I did have to do a few times in the sequel) or never finish the game. So while I might say that the games were generally too easy, it's better than them being too hard. I once read that the goal of a puzzle game is often not to make the player smarter, but to make them feel smart, and Portal's puzzles are often good at this. They invite you into an obvious (wrong) solution, and once you've tried it, the actual correct solution becomes just as obvious. I blitzed through Portal in 2 hours, though Portal 2 took me much longer.
Sometimes it doesn't even feel like there is a puzzle at all, which is rarely a good thing. The "outside" sequences of both Portal 1 and 2 are often a protracted exercise in finding the one portal-able surface in the haystack and shooting it. The best puzzles are found in the test chambers, though there are tedious exceptions--the turret chamber in Portal 1 is probably the most obvious example, but I could name half a dozen more if you cared. And after you've found the correct solution, it's occasionally frustrating to implement. Some solutions take too long to execute, and they often test your "skill" (ability to shoot a portal accurately while traveling at high speed, usually) and if you fail the skill test you are dead and have to restart. So it's not a pure puzzle game in the end; there's a bit of FPS involved, which some people might find welcome but bothered me. Especially since Portal 2 ran at like 10fps on my high end brand new gaming PC for some reason.
The writing is of course what actually made Portal so incredibly popular. What can I say? It's deserved! The jokes come extremely frequently and most of them are funny; the plot is interesting; the serious bits in the sequel are... not exactly compelling, but don't feel out of place in an overt comedy which is good enough. Despite my very lukewarm feelings on the actual gameplay, if you care about video games as a storytelling medium, Portal is a game you have to pick up. If you were going to play it on mute, just play something else instead.
Baba is You - This is the puzzle game you should play if you were going to play Portal on mute. Maybe. And you might actually want to play this one on mute, because a lot of the sounds kind of bug me lol. That's not to say it's generally unpolished: the pixel art is cute, it doesn't have any noticeable bugs, and the soundtrack is competent (basically just lofi hip hop beats to relax/study to), I just personally don't dig it.
Here is your standard block pushing puzzle game where the funny little sheep thing, Baba, is you, and the tile with the Flag is goal. Except it's not that simple because these rules are written in words on the game board and you can push the words around to make new rules immediately take effect. I pushed the word BABA out of BABA IS YOU; now nothing is me and I'm soft locked and have to restart. I pushed the words IS GOAL under BABA, now BABA is both YOU and GOAL and I've won instantly. This is obviously the simplest of cliffs notes, but the game has something like 250 of these puzzles and no two test the same principle. More and more concepts get layered on until there's something like 30 reserved words to play around with. It's an ingenious idea for a puzzle game and it really gets explored as far as I could possibly want it to here.
I think my personal favorite levels in Baba is You are the 'bonus' levels numbered with pips (instead of arabic numerals like the normal ones). Sometimes when you beat a level and you think you've squeezed the juice out of every available resource, a bonus level will open that is just the exact same thing with one piece missing (or one hazard added). There's no way this could be possible, you think, I just beat this level and I needed that missing piece. Somehow the bonus level is possible though and usually it's with a completely different method than you used the first time. Sometimes it gets even more psycho and after you beat the bonus level, this happens again.
If puzzle games are supposed to make you feel smart, Baba is You didn't get the memo because this game makes me feel like a dumbass sometimes. It's hard. But it might actually make me smarter; I'm using real problem solving strategies, busting out the fucking paper and pencil, drawing schematics and nailing them to a bulletin board with thumbtacks and tying the relevant ones together with red string, you know the works. Of course, all of this frustration means that when I solve a puzzle that has stumped me, I actually do get to feel genuinely smart. I've only finished a little over half the levels in this game; on a handful I got frustrated enough to look up the solutions on YouTube. Every time, I felt like I cheated myself. Not because I'm sure I ever would have solved these puzzles on my own, but because I'm convinced that used correctly, this is a genuine brain training device.
I won't say all of the solutions I had to Google seemed fair to me at the time. Many were because I misunderstood the interaction of two mechanics and under my wrong assumption the level was truly impossible. The game could be taught to you better than it is; the developer really leaned hard into that organic tutorial half life stuff but half life still had tutorials, they were just conducted by NPCs in the game world. This game doesn't teach you shit and you only learn by smacking two rocks together and seeing what happens. One that sticks out to me is that if a wall becomes impassable while you are inside, you can still leave as long as you are walking into a passable tile. Maybe obvious in hindsight, but poorly tutorialized. Learning the systems and experimenting could be argued to be part of the puzzle but I still think it could do with some optional text boxes.
Another complaint: counting large numbers of tiles is often required in finding solutions. Like, KEKE IS MOVE currently and I need to push this block exactly 21 tiles; I need to know what square he should be on when I start moving so that I can perfectly intercept him. This sort of thing happens a lot, and can make implementing the solutions take a damn long time. The controls do come with a nice mitigation I've never seen in one of these style games, which is a button that allows you to step back your actions one by one and resume from any point in the chain. This is a great answer to the tile counting problem (and misclicks) as some solutions to puzzles can have a whole fucking lot of steps and be easy to softlock with a single missed input.
While writing this review I've realized I have been too harsh on Portal. There's some reasoning behind making an easy puzzle game. I'm generally a completionist. I've 100%ed so many difficult platformers by just bashing my head against the wall over and over until the wall breaks, but no matter how much I like Baba is You, without Google I am not sure that 100% is ever going to be possible for me--it's not just a matter of practice. Maybe Portal made me happier than this did, because it made me feel smart. Then again puzzle games are not generally my forte, so if they are yours, you might just kick my ass and destroy this game no problem.
Regardless you really ought to buy this shit. It's totally unique, the puzzles are generally well designed and quite hard. If you're good at puzzles, not a completionist, or not ashamed to Google, this is an obvious pickup, and even if you check none of those three boxes (like myself) it is still an obvious pickup IMO, it's one of the most interesting games of 2019.
Here is your standard block pushing puzzle game where the funny little sheep thing, Baba, is you, and the tile with the Flag is goal. Except it's not that simple because these rules are written in words on the game board and you can push the words around to make new rules immediately take effect. I pushed the word BABA out of BABA IS YOU; now nothing is me and I'm soft locked and have to restart. I pushed the words IS GOAL under BABA, now BABA is both YOU and GOAL and I've won instantly. This is obviously the simplest of cliffs notes, but the game has something like 250 of these puzzles and no two test the same principle. More and more concepts get layered on until there's something like 30 reserved words to play around with. It's an ingenious idea for a puzzle game and it really gets explored as far as I could possibly want it to here.
I think my personal favorite levels in Baba is You are the 'bonus' levels numbered with pips (instead of arabic numerals like the normal ones). Sometimes when you beat a level and you think you've squeezed the juice out of every available resource, a bonus level will open that is just the exact same thing with one piece missing (or one hazard added). There's no way this could be possible, you think, I just beat this level and I needed that missing piece. Somehow the bonus level is possible though and usually it's with a completely different method than you used the first time. Sometimes it gets even more psycho and after you beat the bonus level, this happens again.
If puzzle games are supposed to make you feel smart, Baba is You didn't get the memo because this game makes me feel like a dumbass sometimes. It's hard. But it might actually make me smarter; I'm using real problem solving strategies, busting out the fucking paper and pencil, drawing schematics and nailing them to a bulletin board with thumbtacks and tying the relevant ones together with red string, you know the works. Of course, all of this frustration means that when I solve a puzzle that has stumped me, I actually do get to feel genuinely smart. I've only finished a little over half the levels in this game; on a handful I got frustrated enough to look up the solutions on YouTube. Every time, I felt like I cheated myself. Not because I'm sure I ever would have solved these puzzles on my own, but because I'm convinced that used correctly, this is a genuine brain training device.
I won't say all of the solutions I had to Google seemed fair to me at the time. Many were because I misunderstood the interaction of two mechanics and under my wrong assumption the level was truly impossible. The game could be taught to you better than it is; the developer really leaned hard into that organic tutorial half life stuff but half life still had tutorials, they were just conducted by NPCs in the game world. This game doesn't teach you shit and you only learn by smacking two rocks together and seeing what happens. One that sticks out to me is that if a wall becomes impassable while you are inside, you can still leave as long as you are walking into a passable tile. Maybe obvious in hindsight, but poorly tutorialized. Learning the systems and experimenting could be argued to be part of the puzzle but I still think it could do with some optional text boxes.
Another complaint: counting large numbers of tiles is often required in finding solutions. Like, KEKE IS MOVE currently and I need to push this block exactly 21 tiles; I need to know what square he should be on when I start moving so that I can perfectly intercept him. This sort of thing happens a lot, and can make implementing the solutions take a damn long time. The controls do come with a nice mitigation I've never seen in one of these style games, which is a button that allows you to step back your actions one by one and resume from any point in the chain. This is a great answer to the tile counting problem (and misclicks) as some solutions to puzzles can have a whole fucking lot of steps and be easy to softlock with a single missed input.
While writing this review I've realized I have been too harsh on Portal. There's some reasoning behind making an easy puzzle game. I'm generally a completionist. I've 100%ed so many difficult platformers by just bashing my head against the wall over and over until the wall breaks, but no matter how much I like Baba is You, without Google I am not sure that 100% is ever going to be possible for me--it's not just a matter of practice. Maybe Portal made me happier than this did, because it made me feel smart. Then again puzzle games are not generally my forte, so if they are yours, you might just kick my ass and destroy this game no problem.
Regardless you really ought to buy this shit. It's totally unique, the puzzles are generally well designed and quite hard. If you're good at puzzles, not a completionist, or not ashamed to Google, this is an obvious pickup, and even if you check none of those three boxes (like myself) it is still an obvious pickup IMO, it's one of the most interesting games of 2019.
The last of us 2. Probably the best storyline in a game, it’s perfect in sync. No repetitive bs and the story is great, really recommend playing it if you haven’t already. I always thought The Mafia series (1/2/3) had the best story but this one actually makes me reconsider that statement.
I'm still playing the last of us 2 (I got to Seattle Day 2), but man my brother has gone from "This is my game of the year" to "biggest disapointment of the year" to "fuck off naughty dog" within the span of a few days. Can't wait to see why he got there rofl.
Only thing I know of that he spoiled me on is
At the very least though, the gameplay is pretty good!
Otherwise I've just been playing fucktons of Mario Maker 2 and Pokemon Sword lately lol
Only thing I know of that he spoiled me on is
Apparently the game treats a transgender character like its a fucking 1950s movie. As in, he gets deadnamed, and the source of ALL his problems is because he is transgender, among other things. Did not sound like a well thought depiction.
At the very least though, the gameplay is pretty good!
Otherwise I've just been playing fucktons of Mario Maker 2 and Pokemon Sword lately lol
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fucking lol at the guy saying tlou2 is good getting only haha and love reacts. that really do be the state of things in june 2020 huh
Invisible, Inc - finally, a game I can unreservedly gush about. This game is a mashup of the grid-based tactics and stealth genres, which I have actually never seen before, and after playing I am shocked I have never seen it before because they blend so perfectly. I bought Invisible Inc only last weekend and have put maybe a dozen hours into it. I am also a huge fan of the tactics genre. And I've never really played a true stealth game before, so all this shit is new and sparkly to me. So keep all of this in mind, but these disclaimers all being said, I am absolutely in love with it. I guess it's technically also a roguelike, because there is permadeath and procedural generation, but the 4-6 hour campaign length makes it feel more like an Ironman XCOM playthrough. You get a level of investment and tension that you don't really get to a single roguelike run--which is what the permadeath exists to serve.
The setup: you are one of those "good guy terrorist" organizations in the stock cyberpunk future using covert ops to eke out a living. But then your base of operations is invaded and shot up by the Corporations! You manage to escape, but your superintelligent AI (Incognita) that forms the backbone of your operation only has 72 hours of backup power before it will shut down and be unrecoverable. You have three days to recover your lost resources and manpower before your final infiltration of the most heavily defended supercomputer in the world, which runs on the only power source big enough to save Incognita. The plot may be a bit heavy on cyberpunk cliche, but it's competently executed and doesn't develop in a completely paint-by-numbers fashion. In fact, after I first beat the game, my biggest complaint was that it was all proc gen. I would have absolutely loved a fully scripted campaign so that the writing here could really shine.
These missions take the form of grid-based tactics gameplay a la XCOM, Advance Wars etc, with the obvious twist that it is a stealth game and your goal is expressly not to kill anybody. You progress through procedurally generated levels looting safes, pickpocketing guards, and hacking into nanofabricators to increase your net worth, all while trying not to get caught and, once it gets too hot, booking it for the exit. And as proc gen goes, these levels are a real triumph. There is the occasional hiccup in progression or weirdly easy section but honestly if you told me that the levels from my first two playthroughs were hand crafted, I would believe you. I wonder how many playthroughs it would take to really pull back that curtain... Part of the success here is that your characters' scaling is relatively constant, because most of what matters is just stockpiling a generic currency; the proc gen is used to create the challenge, but has a more muted hand in the reward. In this way it pulls much more from the Into the Breach school of roguelike philosophy (well it came first but I played ITB first) than FTL / StS, which is much more my speed.
The tension is complemented by one of the best turn count systems I've seen in a tactics game. Veteran tactics players will generally agree that these games are the most fun when you are playing fast and moving your maximum tiles per turn. To encourage this other games have done things like ranking your turncount at the end (advance wars) or hard mission failure if you exceed a turncount (xcom 2). Invisible Inc uses an "Alarm level" system which increments every turn--and when you make other mistakes, like being sighted by a guard or camera--and every benchmark, it releases another guard into the level. You have absolutely no chance of surviving indefinitely on these maps, so you're encouraged to play fast, but in a much more flexible way than xcom 2 while being more powerful than advance wars'.
The stealth kit has all of the tools it needs to be engaging: noisemakers, cameras, stun guns, actual guns. I haven't played any Metal Gear games but I hear that the noisemakers in that series are overpowered. With Invisible Inc, you need to make appropriate use of all of your tools, as each has their strengths and drawbacks. Noisemakers (in the form of the Sprint command) are free, but risk raising the alarm level, and you can't turn them off when you want. Cameras are free but only give information and don't actually manipulate guards. Stun guns are free, but have a long recharge time. The guard will wake up in a few turns and be alerted, and hiding their unconscious body from other patrolling guards wastes valuable time. Actual guns sidestep the waking up issue but the ammo is expensive (and doesn't auto refill between missions), and they make noise. As I said, you will not survive indefinitely on these maps, because every tool to remove some immediate danger increases your long term danger. The typical tactics game experience is often one of continually expanding your safe zone, and while sometimes I am able to write off a room or two in Invisible Inc as fully explored and safe, it often more feels like my safe zone is contracting as enemies I've previously passed press in from behind, and the alarm level keeps hiking.
The stealth gameplay also has many levels of failure. The lowest punishment is the alarm level going up, and a guard being sent to investigate a disturbance. If the guard directly spots an agent, they are pinned and must be rescued (or rescue themselves, which is possible in certain circumstances). If they aren't rescued, you can choose to either let them get shot--they will die unless you have a revival item--or captured--they can be rescued later. Only by losing all of your agents or failing the final mission is it game over. I have heard players of other stealth games like Hitman complain that it feels like once you have made a single misstep, things cascade into a complete unrecoverable disaster. That is definitely not how I feel playing Invisible Inc. I have accidentally raised the alarm level dozens of times; I have been unintentionally pinned by a guard probably a dozen times, but never have I been screwed to the point of considering the mission a failure. There is usually a way back from the brink. (The game also gives a limited use rewind option for when you've truly fucked yourself).
As I wring out my cum soaked trousers, I really only have one major complaint and that is that the performance on the Switch version is damn near unplayable. The game will freeze for 1-15 seconds at a time a couple times per turn. Fortunately this is a thinking man's game so it's not the end of the world to have a little extra time to ponder your move (or catch up on discord) like it would be in an action game, but it's still very frustrating. I have no idea if the PC version has this issue but you should probably get it on that platform for the time being. That being said the Switch version did come out *checks calendar* last Monday so I'm hopeful for improvements in this area.
So yeah. I love this shit. That's about the summary here. But buy it on PC.
Invisible, Inc - finally, a game I can unreservedly gush about. This game is a mashup of the grid-based tactics and stealth genres, which I have actually never seen before, and after playing I am shocked I have never seen it before because they blend so perfectly. I bought Invisible Inc only last weekend and have put maybe a dozen hours into it. I am also a huge fan of the tactics genre. And I've never really played a true stealth game before, so all this shit is new and sparkly to me. So keep all of this in mind, but these disclaimers all being said, I am absolutely in love with it. I guess it's technically also a roguelike, because there is permadeath and procedural generation, but the 4-6 hour campaign length makes it feel more like an Ironman XCOM playthrough. You get a level of investment and tension that you don't really get to a single roguelike run--which is what the permadeath exists to serve.
The setup: you are one of those "good guy terrorist" organizations in the stock cyberpunk future using covert ops to eke out a living. But then your base of operations is invaded and shot up by the Corporations! You manage to escape, but your superintelligent AI (Incognita) that forms the backbone of your operation only has 72 hours of backup power before it will shut down and be unrecoverable. You have three days to recover your lost resources and manpower before your final infiltration of the most heavily defended supercomputer in the world, which runs on the only power source big enough to save Incognita. The plot may be a bit heavy on cyberpunk cliche, but it's competently executed and doesn't develop in a completely paint-by-numbers fashion. In fact, after I first beat the game, my biggest complaint was that it was all proc gen. I would have absolutely loved a fully scripted campaign so that the writing here could really shine.
These missions take the form of grid-based tactics gameplay a la XCOM, Advance Wars etc, with the obvious twist that it is a stealth game and your goal is expressly not to kill anybody. You progress through procedurally generated levels looting safes, pickpocketing guards, and hacking into nanofabricators to increase your net worth, all while trying not to get caught and, once it gets too hot, booking it for the exit. And as proc gen goes, these levels are a real triumph. There is the occasional hiccup in progression or weirdly easy section but honestly if you told me that the levels from my first two playthroughs were hand crafted, I would believe you. I wonder how many playthroughs it would take to really pull back that curtain... Part of the success here is that your characters' scaling is relatively constant, because most of what matters is just stockpiling a generic currency; the proc gen is used to create the challenge, but has a more muted hand in the reward. In this way it pulls much more from the Into the Breach school of roguelike philosophy (well it came first but I played ITB first) than FTL / StS, which is much more my speed.
The tension is complemented by one of the best turn count systems I've seen in a tactics game. Veteran tactics players will generally agree that these games are the most fun when you are playing fast and moving your maximum tiles per turn. To encourage this other games have done things like ranking your turncount at the end (advance wars) or hard mission failure if you exceed a turncount (xcom 2). Invisible Inc uses an "Alarm level" system which increments every turn--and when you make other mistakes, like being sighted by a guard or camera--and every benchmark, it releases another guard into the level. You have absolutely no chance of surviving indefinitely on these maps, so you're encouraged to play fast, but in a much more flexible way than xcom 2 while being more powerful than advance wars'.
The stealth kit has all of the tools it needs to be engaging: noisemakers, cameras, stun guns, actual guns. I haven't played any Metal Gear games but I hear that the noisemakers in that series are overpowered. With Invisible Inc, you need to make appropriate use of all of your tools, as each has their strengths and drawbacks. Noisemakers (in the form of the Sprint command) are free, but risk raising the alarm level, and you can't turn them off when you want. Cameras are free but only give information and don't actually manipulate guards. Stun guns are free, but have a long recharge time. The guard will wake up in a few turns and be alerted, and hiding their unconscious body from other patrolling guards wastes valuable time. Actual guns sidestep the waking up issue but the ammo is expensive (and doesn't auto refill between missions), and they make noise. As I said, you will not survive indefinitely on these maps, because every tool to remove some immediate danger increases your long term danger. The typical tactics game experience is often one of continually expanding your safe zone, and while sometimes I am able to write off a room or two in Invisible Inc as fully explored and safe, it often more feels like my safe zone is contracting as enemies I've previously passed press in from behind, and the alarm level keeps hiking.
The stealth gameplay also has many levels of failure. The lowest punishment is the alarm level going up, and a guard being sent to investigate a disturbance. If the guard directly spots an agent, they are pinned and must be rescued (or rescue themselves, which is possible in certain circumstances). If they aren't rescued, you can choose to either let them get shot--they will die unless you have a revival item--or captured--they can be rescued later. Only by losing all of your agents or failing the final mission is it game over. I have heard players of other stealth games like Hitman complain that it feels like once you have made a single misstep, things cascade into a complete unrecoverable disaster. That is definitely not how I feel playing Invisible Inc. I have accidentally raised the alarm level dozens of times; I have been unintentionally pinned by a guard probably a dozen times, but never have I been screwed to the point of considering the mission a failure. There is usually a way back from the brink. (The game also gives a limited use rewind option for when you've truly fucked yourself).
As I wring out my cum soaked trousers, I really only have one major complaint and that is that the performance on the Switch version is damn near unplayable. The game will freeze for 1-15 seconds at a time a couple times per turn. Fortunately this is a thinking man's game so it's not the end of the world to have a little extra time to ponder your move (or catch up on discord) like it would be in an action game, but it's still very frustrating. I have no idea if the PC version has this issue but you should probably get it on that platform for the time being. That being said the Switch version did come out *checks calendar* last Monday so I'm hopeful for improvements in this area.
So yeah. I love this shit. That's about the summary here. But buy it on PC.
Aight so time to talk about a hella underrated(?) game I'm doing a silly challenge run of rn
I feel like this game (and to a slightly lesser extent its Wii U sequel 3D World) has been cast aside by the broader vidya community because it's not a genre-defining award-winning hyper ambitious console beast along the lines of Galaxy 1 and 2 and Odyssey. Well as someone who has played all 3 of those examples I can safely say 3D Land still reigns supreme as my favorite mainline Mario game.
The plot's pretty unremarkable (although even then the postcards you get at the start of each world showing what Peach is up to and Mario's reactions to them are pretty charming) so I'll go right to gameplay. Now in comparison to the typical big 3D Marios like the examples I mentioned earlier 3D Land stands apart by essentially being among the the first true recreation of the 2D formula in a three-dimensional space: Instead of several big sprawling areas with a hub or menu to go through them you got 8 classic-style worlds which feature about 6 levels each including a castle or airship to cap things off. Now when you think of recent examples of the classic Mario formula your mind may default to the New Super Mario Bros series, which in turn will conjure images of incredibly samey levels within any given world adhering to a strict theme minus an additional gimmick here and there. Crush this notion now, for comparing this game's level variety to the NSMB series is an insult. In fact, I dare say it's right up there with the likes of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze in terms of how they keep things constantly fresh with different level themes and artstyles. It's not quite at that game's level due to the much lesser variety of music (although there are some bangers like the desert level, beach level and airship themes) but in terms of level design and aesthetics they really change things up while keeping to the similar themes. Like in 1-2 it's a pretty typical closed-in underground segment, then in 2-2 it has a darker color scheme with those green assembling path things and vats of poison, then 7-2 which is made of jet black dricks and has you dodge spike cylinders on chains and on platforms you gotta balance. Once again, art direction is key in making these distinctions more pronounced, especially in regards to different color schemes and setpieces. Don't forget the total oddballs like 3-5 which has you jumping across floating sweets and crackers! A key example of how this game can throw you for a loop is 7-4. Ok, so you're at World 7 out of 8, you've surely seen all the themes possible at this point, no? WRONG!!! In you go into a clock tower stage where you traverse across gears and through glass pipes with this absolutely outstanding rustic remix of the main theme. The finale of this game is also very underrated: It's not quite the space opera-esque epicness you'll find in the Galaxy games but it's nonetheless extremely cool to enter the final stage and get greeted by the opening maws of a big Bowser head as you enter slowly via a bone coaster. I'd say it's at least on par with 64's final stage; nah scratch that, it's way beyond that. Odyssey-level, there I said it.
But it doesn't end there! So, what usually happens when you beat a Mario game? An extra level or 2? Maybe an entire world if you collect enough trinkets? Try 8 entire extra worlds. That's what 3D Land has in store when you beat everything! Ok, ok, I'll admit that's overhyping it. A lot of these stages (and I mean a LOT, like the vast majority) are just the original main game stages but with additional challenges, like a stricter time limit or having Cosmic Mario from Galaxy chasing you around. Don't worry, there are original stages, at least 1 per world, coming out to 8 which puts it on par with stuff like NSMB Wii World 9. In conjunction with the the aforementioned "challenge mode" stages I think it justifies itself well enough, especially with some other new things you can discover in the Special Worlds, mainly the stone leaf which lets you get the Tanuki Statue ability from Mario 3 as well as playable Luigi.
Finally, I am essentially indebted to this game for what it did for the 3DS. Along with Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land was the game that saved this console, my favorite ever, from the death spiral it was in after the atrocious launch characterized by terrible game selection and being overpriced. Without 3D Land this console very likely may have not survived to give us handheld classics like Bravely Default, Animal Crossing New Leaf, Kid Icarus Uprising, Kirby Triple Deluxe, Metroid Samus Returns, Mario and Luigi Dream Team, Tomodachi Life, Pokemon ORAS/SM and so much more.
So basically, if you're a 3DS/handheld fan or wanna try something a lil different from the big 3D Mario games, show ya gramps some respect and give Super Mario 3D Land a shot.
I feel like this game (and to a slightly lesser extent its Wii U sequel 3D World) has been cast aside by the broader vidya community because it's not a genre-defining award-winning hyper ambitious console beast along the lines of Galaxy 1 and 2 and Odyssey. Well as someone who has played all 3 of those examples I can safely say 3D Land still reigns supreme as my favorite mainline Mario game.
The plot's pretty unremarkable (although even then the postcards you get at the start of each world showing what Peach is up to and Mario's reactions to them are pretty charming) so I'll go right to gameplay. Now in comparison to the typical big 3D Marios like the examples I mentioned earlier 3D Land stands apart by essentially being among the the first true recreation of the 2D formula in a three-dimensional space: Instead of several big sprawling areas with a hub or menu to go through them you got 8 classic-style worlds which feature about 6 levels each including a castle or airship to cap things off. Now when you think of recent examples of the classic Mario formula your mind may default to the New Super Mario Bros series, which in turn will conjure images of incredibly samey levels within any given world adhering to a strict theme minus an additional gimmick here and there. Crush this notion now, for comparing this game's level variety to the NSMB series is an insult. In fact, I dare say it's right up there with the likes of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze in terms of how they keep things constantly fresh with different level themes and artstyles. It's not quite at that game's level due to the much lesser variety of music (although there are some bangers like the desert level, beach level and airship themes) but in terms of level design and aesthetics they really change things up while keeping to the similar themes. Like in 1-2 it's a pretty typical closed-in underground segment, then in 2-2 it has a darker color scheme with those green assembling path things and vats of poison, then 7-2 which is made of jet black dricks and has you dodge spike cylinders on chains and on platforms you gotta balance. Once again, art direction is key in making these distinctions more pronounced, especially in regards to different color schemes and setpieces. Don't forget the total oddballs like 3-5 which has you jumping across floating sweets and crackers! A key example of how this game can throw you for a loop is 7-4. Ok, so you're at World 7 out of 8, you've surely seen all the themes possible at this point, no? WRONG!!! In you go into a clock tower stage where you traverse across gears and through glass pipes with this absolutely outstanding rustic remix of the main theme. The finale of this game is also very underrated: It's not quite the space opera-esque epicness you'll find in the Galaxy games but it's nonetheless extremely cool to enter the final stage and get greeted by the opening maws of a big Bowser head as you enter slowly via a bone coaster. I'd say it's at least on par with 64's final stage; nah scratch that, it's way beyond that. Odyssey-level, there I said it.
But it doesn't end there! So, what usually happens when you beat a Mario game? An extra level or 2? Maybe an entire world if you collect enough trinkets? Try 8 entire extra worlds. That's what 3D Land has in store when you beat everything! Ok, ok, I'll admit that's overhyping it. A lot of these stages (and I mean a LOT, like the vast majority) are just the original main game stages but with additional challenges, like a stricter time limit or having Cosmic Mario from Galaxy chasing you around. Don't worry, there are original stages, at least 1 per world, coming out to 8 which puts it on par with stuff like NSMB Wii World 9. In conjunction with the the aforementioned "challenge mode" stages I think it justifies itself well enough, especially with some other new things you can discover in the Special Worlds, mainly the stone leaf which lets you get the Tanuki Statue ability from Mario 3 as well as playable Luigi.
Finally, I am essentially indebted to this game for what it did for the 3DS. Along with Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land was the game that saved this console, my favorite ever, from the death spiral it was in after the atrocious launch characterized by terrible game selection and being overpriced. Without 3D Land this console very likely may have not survived to give us handheld classics like Bravely Default, Animal Crossing New Leaf, Kid Icarus Uprising, Kirby Triple Deluxe, Metroid Samus Returns, Mario and Luigi Dream Team, Tomodachi Life, Pokemon ORAS/SM and so much more.
So basically, if you're a 3DS/handheld fan or wanna try something a lil different from the big 3D Mario games, show ya gramps some respect and give Super Mario 3D Land a shot.
I’m gonna be honest, I really thoroughly disliked Super Mario 3D Land. I never liked the whole “2D Mario in 3D space” gimmick—it just feels like a horrible mish-mash of ideas that doesn’t work very well in practice—and while most Mario games make me feel challenged at sone point in the play through+fulfilled when I beat it, this one just doesn’t. Keep in mind that it has been a very long time since I played it and as such may not remember the game itself 100% as I experienced it at the time, but IIRC these were loosely my thoughts when I played it.
To put into perspective just how pathetically easy this game is, I got through the entire main game+postgame on my first playthrough without dying once, collecting every single Star Coin on the first run of each level. And keep in mind that I’m a) not particularly good at Mario games and b) played it near to launch (and as such was worse at Mario games than I am now). I kept expecting the game to ramp up in difficulty, and while there was a gentle upward curve, the last world’s difficulty was only really that of world 3 or 4 in a regular Mario game.
3D Land feels like I’m just playing NSMB but in 3D this time—except that the game’s mechanics and physics mean you can’t do any of the sick platforming that makes NSMB games fun. Movement feels awkward, the level design feels generic and a little too generous, and the lack of challenge felt less deliberate and more like they were scared of not being accessible enough for little kiddies. They were too focused on the depth perception part (and tbf the 3D slider and Mario platforming really do go hand in hand) and forgot about the fun part.
As for the postgame, it was the same contrived bullshit as having to go through every galaxy again to collect green stars in Galaxy 2. There is such thing as “too much to do” in a video game, especially when hardly any of it explores new ideas or provides an otherwise distinct experience from what preceded it. I’d have much preferred to just be given a world 9 instead of having to slog through 8 more worlds that mostly consist of stuff I’ve already played—at least then it has one coherent definition without making you feel overwhelmed by the amount you have to do.
Compared to 3D World, the level design is just far less interesting. That game is also by-and-large pretty easy, but it makes up for it with vibrant worlds and interesting platforming concepts. This alongside multiplayer co-op (or versus, depending on how dickish your mates are) make 3D World a blast even if the movement is still broadly pretty awkward. The cat suit still kinda turns the game to baby mode, but stuff like the duplication cherry, character selection, and wider variety of level types just mean it doesn't get stale quickly like Land did.
It’s clear to me that Nintendo had found their feet with the gimmick by the time 3D World rolled around, as the improvement over Land is just so big it’s kinda insane to think that they’re in the same sub-series of Mario games. That said, I hope they leave the 2D-in-3D gimmick where it is instead of releasing another game with it, as I can’t see any way to really explore or improve further with it—it’s really not a very good formula, and I can only imagine it working alongside level design that is as top-notch as 3D World’s is.
To put into perspective just how pathetically easy this game is, I got through the entire main game+postgame on my first playthrough without dying once, collecting every single Star Coin on the first run of each level. And keep in mind that I’m a) not particularly good at Mario games and b) played it near to launch (and as such was worse at Mario games than I am now). I kept expecting the game to ramp up in difficulty, and while there was a gentle upward curve, the last world’s difficulty was only really that of world 3 or 4 in a regular Mario game.
3D Land feels like I’m just playing NSMB but in 3D this time—except that the game’s mechanics and physics mean you can’t do any of the sick platforming that makes NSMB games fun. Movement feels awkward, the level design feels generic and a little too generous, and the lack of challenge felt less deliberate and more like they were scared of not being accessible enough for little kiddies. They were too focused on the depth perception part (and tbf the 3D slider and Mario platforming really do go hand in hand) and forgot about the fun part.
As for the postgame, it was the same contrived bullshit as having to go through every galaxy again to collect green stars in Galaxy 2. There is such thing as “too much to do” in a video game, especially when hardly any of it explores new ideas or provides an otherwise distinct experience from what preceded it. I’d have much preferred to just be given a world 9 instead of having to slog through 8 more worlds that mostly consist of stuff I’ve already played—at least then it has one coherent definition without making you feel overwhelmed by the amount you have to do.
Compared to 3D World, the level design is just far less interesting. That game is also by-and-large pretty easy, but it makes up for it with vibrant worlds and interesting platforming concepts. This alongside multiplayer co-op (or versus, depending on how dickish your mates are) make 3D World a blast even if the movement is still broadly pretty awkward. The cat suit still kinda turns the game to baby mode, but stuff like the duplication cherry, character selection, and wider variety of level types just mean it doesn't get stale quickly like Land did.
It’s clear to me that Nintendo had found their feet with the gimmick by the time 3D World rolled around, as the improvement over Land is just so big it’s kinda insane to think that they’re in the same sub-series of Mario games. That said, I hope they leave the 2D-in-3D gimmick where it is instead of releasing another game with it, as I can’t see any way to really explore or improve further with it—it’s really not a very good formula, and I can only imagine it working alongside level design that is as top-notch as 3D World’s is.
Hmm you got good points I reckon. Still though, as I said, comparing 3D Land to NSMB in terms of level variety is total heresy in my eyes, none of the latter series aside from maybe the original even come close
That said, man I hope we get a Switch port of 3D World. Seeing as I already love Land I'd probably like that even more and it's one of the handful of big Wii U titles that has yet to be ported to that console.
That said, man I hope we get a Switch port of 3D World. Seeing as I already love Land I'd probably like that even more and it's one of the handful of big Wii U titles that has yet to be ported to that console.
Furi - Furi follows a prisoner breaking out of a very secure jail--one built to contain only himself. It takes the form of a linear series of boss fights interrupted by subdued, nonthreatening strolls through exotic scenery. After each fight, a guide who clearly knows more than he lets on tells you a little bit about the upcoming boss and that you must kill him very dead and you slowly begin to wonder if you might in fact be the bad guy here. A quick Google while writing this review tells me that I'm not the first person to think of Shadow of the Colossus; I love Shadow of the Colossus, so you would think that Furi reminding me of it would be a good thing. You'd be right.
Though it certainly wouldn't be fair at all to say that the game is a rip off of Shadow of the Colossus. Unlike the gullible Wander, the manipulative Dormin, and the innocent Colossi, every character in Furi has a pretty good idea of the larger goings on, which might just make it all the more tragic when they decide to walk the same course anyway. It ends up being a unique take on a similar idea and I couldn't tell you which concept I preferred more. Though rather than citing SotC, the writer actually cites his main inspiration as Greek myth which I think is very cool and (said with some self awareness) more unique and original than a lot of video game influences.
The boss fights here are elaborate multi-stage affairs which alternate between bullet hell and--honestly I'm not even sure if there's a genre for the CQC phases, but they almost play like fighting game PvE? You are just given basic arena combat tools: a gun controlled with right circle pad, a dodge roll, and a melee parry and attack. As with most bullet hell games, the gameplay isn't really about what you are doing to the enemy; for the most part the idea is just focusing on surviving their attacks and dying second. The combat focuses heavily on pattern memorization and reaction time. You will learn through failure. The bosses' patterns are, for the most part, well designed. Each phase feels distinct, but with a unifying theme. If you showed me a boss's attack sequence but with de-identified stick figures on a white background, I could tell you which boss it was, which is cool! I really love the bullet hell sections.
While the fights are definitely quite hard, the design is perfectly complemented by an HP system that strikes the right balance between demanding perfection and being forgiving. You have 3 HP bars and the bosses have 4-7, each corresponding to a phase with unique attack patterns. Whenever a boss depletes your HP bar, his current one fills back up and the phase resets. But when you deplete a boss's bar, you also get a full refill--plus recovering one entire E tank. So while each phase of the boss demands something kind of close to perfection, as you must beat the phase without losing a single HP bar to progress, you can actually make a whole lot of mistakes over the course of the long fight. This also means you don't have to lose to a boss before you can win, if you're quick enough on your feet, since you have a buffer for learning their attack patterns without screwing yourself over in the long run. Can't stress enough how clever this is.
Unfortunately while I would love to say I love Furi, there are just a bunch of little frustrations that really add up, and in the end I must admit that I only like it. The biggest: one of the major mechanics is parrying melee attacks, and the game is quite bad at telegraphing them. You need to know when the combo will end so you can take advantage of the short counterattack window. I remember googling one later boss because I couldn't figure out the difference between her 1, 2, and 4-hit combos. The answer? They actually have the same exact startup and the only way to know which one you're getting is that she cycles through them in order. Ridiculous. Not all melee combos have this problem but a frustratingly large number of them do, which often makes me dread the CQC phases. This could be so easily fixed with some audio or visual cue (such as the boss flashing red) when they are ending their combo and most frustratingly, a later boss actually did have such an audio cue, so I'm not sure why it was so inconsistent.
The other big: so many unskippable mid-boss cutscenes. For a game that is explicitly about high difficulty and learning through failure, you would think the last thing they would have is unskippable cutscenes you have to hear every time you die! But every boss has an unskippable cutscene every time you, or they, lose an HP bar. I can still quote some of them by heart I had to listen to them so fucking much. I finished this game about a month ago and I'm about to type this from memory: "Excellence is not an art, it's a habit. We are what we repeatedly do." Google that and check me on it. Come on this game came out in fucking 2016 don't tell me you don't know better.
The so-small-I-wouldn't-mention,-but-it-comes-with-a-tip-I-think-you-should-know: the between boss walking simulator sequences have frequent and disorienting camera changes, often for no reason. I got lost more than once just trying to follow a straight line from point A to B. It turns out the game does have an auto-walk functionality, which is never taught and I only learned about at the very end. I can see why they hid it, I guess, because they don't want you to just auto walk and read Discord until the next fight. I can agree with that motivation, you'd be missing a lot if you did, but you should still know that it's X on Switch / triangle on PS. Oh, and while I'm giving tips, make sure you stay past the (long) credits and walk to the big obvious building in the distance so that you can actually finish the story and the game. That was kind of dumb lol.
I will reiterate that despite these paragraphs of venting, I do like Furi. I rarely finish games I don't like, and I blitzed through this one. Mastery-focused gameplay is really my cup of tea; if it's yours as well, this game is worth checking out. Or if you just really liked Shadow of the Colossus's story and are just curious to see a different take on it--there is an easy mode for storygamers. The environments and writing are nice.
Though it certainly wouldn't be fair at all to say that the game is a rip off of Shadow of the Colossus. Unlike the gullible Wander, the manipulative Dormin, and the innocent Colossi, every character in Furi has a pretty good idea of the larger goings on, which might just make it all the more tragic when they decide to walk the same course anyway. It ends up being a unique take on a similar idea and I couldn't tell you which concept I preferred more. Though rather than citing SotC, the writer actually cites his main inspiration as Greek myth which I think is very cool and (said with some self awareness) more unique and original than a lot of video game influences.
The boss fights here are elaborate multi-stage affairs which alternate between bullet hell and--honestly I'm not even sure if there's a genre for the CQC phases, but they almost play like fighting game PvE? You are just given basic arena combat tools: a gun controlled with right circle pad, a dodge roll, and a melee parry and attack. As with most bullet hell games, the gameplay isn't really about what you are doing to the enemy; for the most part the idea is just focusing on surviving their attacks and dying second. The combat focuses heavily on pattern memorization and reaction time. You will learn through failure. The bosses' patterns are, for the most part, well designed. Each phase feels distinct, but with a unifying theme. If you showed me a boss's attack sequence but with de-identified stick figures on a white background, I could tell you which boss it was, which is cool! I really love the bullet hell sections.
While the fights are definitely quite hard, the design is perfectly complemented by an HP system that strikes the right balance between demanding perfection and being forgiving. You have 3 HP bars and the bosses have 4-7, each corresponding to a phase with unique attack patterns. Whenever a boss depletes your HP bar, his current one fills back up and the phase resets. But when you deplete a boss's bar, you also get a full refill--plus recovering one entire E tank. So while each phase of the boss demands something kind of close to perfection, as you must beat the phase without losing a single HP bar to progress, you can actually make a whole lot of mistakes over the course of the long fight. This also means you don't have to lose to a boss before you can win, if you're quick enough on your feet, since you have a buffer for learning their attack patterns without screwing yourself over in the long run. Can't stress enough how clever this is.
Unfortunately while I would love to say I love Furi, there are just a bunch of little frustrations that really add up, and in the end I must admit that I only like it. The biggest: one of the major mechanics is parrying melee attacks, and the game is quite bad at telegraphing them. You need to know when the combo will end so you can take advantage of the short counterattack window. I remember googling one later boss because I couldn't figure out the difference between her 1, 2, and 4-hit combos. The answer? They actually have the same exact startup and the only way to know which one you're getting is that she cycles through them in order. Ridiculous. Not all melee combos have this problem but a frustratingly large number of them do, which often makes me dread the CQC phases. This could be so easily fixed with some audio or visual cue (such as the boss flashing red) when they are ending their combo and most frustratingly, a later boss actually did have such an audio cue, so I'm not sure why it was so inconsistent.
The other big: so many unskippable mid-boss cutscenes. For a game that is explicitly about high difficulty and learning through failure, you would think the last thing they would have is unskippable cutscenes you have to hear every time you die! But every boss has an unskippable cutscene every time you, or they, lose an HP bar. I can still quote some of them by heart I had to listen to them so fucking much. I finished this game about a month ago and I'm about to type this from memory: "Excellence is not an art, it's a habit. We are what we repeatedly do." Google that and check me on it. Come on this game came out in fucking 2016 don't tell me you don't know better.
The so-small-I-wouldn't-mention,-but-it-comes-with-a-tip-I-think-you-should-know: the between boss walking simulator sequences have frequent and disorienting camera changes, often for no reason. I got lost more than once just trying to follow a straight line from point A to B. It turns out the game does have an auto-walk functionality, which is never taught and I only learned about at the very end. I can see why they hid it, I guess, because they don't want you to just auto walk and read Discord until the next fight. I can agree with that motivation, you'd be missing a lot if you did, but you should still know that it's X on Switch / triangle on PS. Oh, and while I'm giving tips, make sure you stay past the (long) credits and walk to the big obvious building in the distance so that you can actually finish the story and the game. That was kind of dumb lol.
I will reiterate that despite these paragraphs of venting, I do like Furi. I rarely finish games I don't like, and I blitzed through this one. Mastery-focused gameplay is really my cup of tea; if it's yours as well, this game is worth checking out. Or if you just really liked Shadow of the Colossus's story and are just curious to see a different take on it--there is an easy mode for storygamers. The environments and writing are nice.
oh and re: super mario 3d land. If you think that game is good (it's uh... ookayyy, way too easy like Martin said, and I think the environments suck and are boring) you will love 3d world which is much prettier, better level design, actually becomes kinda hard sometimes in the bonus worlds
Man I hate to admit it, but the more I played the
More turned off I get. I was so hyped cause I liked the first game and thought they couldn’t fuck it all up right. Well Sadly I was wrong, sounds like your brother and I have similar taste lol. Like you said the gameplay is cool though, I have played games with far worse gameplay. I’m just taking a break from it now, don’t even know if I am gonna finish. Glad I did not bought it myself though. Lately a lot of games get me hyped but in the end they disappoint me. Was the same with RDR2 when it came out, I pre ordered that shit and in the end it was not really what was expected of it. I think I’m gonna try some games mentioned here, some seem like fun
Hotline Miami 2 - Haven't had a ton of free time lately, so have what is (hopefully) gonna be a shorter review, since I already reviewed Hotline Miami here. Rechecking that review has reminded me that I should really post about K0 sometime but I have so many games to catch up on before I even get to plugging older favorites.
HM2 clearly runs on the same engine as the original, so the basics still apply here. Same extremely fun primary gameplay about quick weapon swapping and thinking on your feet. They've added some new flavors to the gameplay. We get two new enemy types, the bullet-immune brawlers, and the duckers that need to be baited out of cover and counterattacked. Your character always survives the first bullet he takes during a level (I think?), which is a welcome balancing change: you deal with gun enemies the same way as HM1, but the RNG in how bullets fly no longer screws over solid plans on occasion.
HM2 follows an ensemble cast with different skills and drawbacks. You have the fat reporter who's afraid of violence and can only use melee weapons; the honest soldier who won't steal his enemy's weapons and thus has limited ammo; the mafia boss who starts with a giant fucking sword with a huge hitbox; and more. While this is ostensibly similar to the mask system in the original, I found that the characters in this one felt far more distinct than the different masks for Jacket did. This game is also comparatively huge with 24 levels, most of which are also bigger than HM1 levels.
While it sounds like the gameplay would be a straight improvement, it's not that simple. I don't remember the original Hotline Miami being such a buggy mess? Open doorways always eat my attacks (both melee and ranged) in HM2, so I can't fight near doorways or snipe through doors anymore. I clipped out of bounds and had to reset on multiple occasions; once as I was walking back to my fucking car at the end of the level.... Also, bigger levels is a blessing (more content!) but it's also a curse. There are a lot more times in this game where I'm peeking through doors and baiting enemies in single or small groups. There are definitely also times where I'm bursting from room to room and racking up a 15 kill combo and that's when the game fucking shines, I just feel like one, everything is more spread out in this game, and two, by the end of a long room I end up playing cautiously so as to not die.
The story here is also way better, which is basically to say, there is one. It's pretty engaging in parts, even. I find it hard to recommend because the end is covered in a big plop of edgy nihilism which is not a philosophy I am a fan of, but maybe I'm not deep enough and it's actually a rejection of edgy nihilism (I don't think so, but I could see the argument?)
It's frustrating since this game really is an improvement in so many areas, but I have to say: if you're only going to play one Hotline Miami, play the original, it has better level design. If you are hungry for more, you will probably like the sequel.
HM2 clearly runs on the same engine as the original, so the basics still apply here. Same extremely fun primary gameplay about quick weapon swapping and thinking on your feet. They've added some new flavors to the gameplay. We get two new enemy types, the bullet-immune brawlers, and the duckers that need to be baited out of cover and counterattacked. Your character always survives the first bullet he takes during a level (I think?), which is a welcome balancing change: you deal with gun enemies the same way as HM1, but the RNG in how bullets fly no longer screws over solid plans on occasion.
HM2 follows an ensemble cast with different skills and drawbacks. You have the fat reporter who's afraid of violence and can only use melee weapons; the honest soldier who won't steal his enemy's weapons and thus has limited ammo; the mafia boss who starts with a giant fucking sword with a huge hitbox; and more. While this is ostensibly similar to the mask system in the original, I found that the characters in this one felt far more distinct than the different masks for Jacket did. This game is also comparatively huge with 24 levels, most of which are also bigger than HM1 levels.
While it sounds like the gameplay would be a straight improvement, it's not that simple. I don't remember the original Hotline Miami being such a buggy mess? Open doorways always eat my attacks (both melee and ranged) in HM2, so I can't fight near doorways or snipe through doors anymore. I clipped out of bounds and had to reset on multiple occasions; once as I was walking back to my fucking car at the end of the level.... Also, bigger levels is a blessing (more content!) but it's also a curse. There are a lot more times in this game where I'm peeking through doors and baiting enemies in single or small groups. There are definitely also times where I'm bursting from room to room and racking up a 15 kill combo and that's when the game fucking shines, I just feel like one, everything is more spread out in this game, and two, by the end of a long room I end up playing cautiously so as to not die.
The story here is also way better, which is basically to say, there is one. It's pretty engaging in parts, even. I find it hard to recommend because the end is covered in a big plop of edgy nihilism which is not a philosophy I am a fan of, but maybe I'm not deep enough and it's actually a rejection of edgy nihilism (I don't think so, but I could see the argument?)
It's frustrating since this game really is an improvement in so many areas, but I have to say: if you're only going to play one Hotline Miami, play the original, it has better level design. If you are hungry for more, you will probably like the sequel.
You can survive any "weak" bullet (pistols and smg) once.
doors in hotline miami have always been more like "guidelines" of where to clip rather than fixed rules
I definitely prefer hm2 far more over hm1. The journalist and the soldier's level design becomes so rewarding, and it offers much better replayability where hm1 was just spam fast move mask. The soundtrack is also twice as good.
Papers, Please - Time to review this landmark title in pretentious indie gaming. In Papers Please, you are a border checkpoint agent in the fake cold war nation of Astrotzka. For twelve hours a day (six minutes real time) you review entrants' documents and either approve or reject them for entry based on whether their documents are valid. Each entrant processed earns you five dollars, but if you process an entrant incorrectly, you are penalized: the first two mistakes are free, then five, ten, twenty dollars and so on.
The document rules start out simple--allow valid passports--but get more complicated as time goes on: foreigners must have a valid entry visa; then if they're entering for work they need a work pass in addition to their entry visa; then to prevent forgeries, you need to check that these documents have a valid seal; and so on. If you enjoyed "spot the six differences" panels in the Sunday newspaper, this is basically the ultimate gamification of that concept. I found it gratifying to develop a system of maximum efficiency, and I found myself holding my breath until I was sure that I wasn't going to get dinged for getting it wrong. (There's a three or four second delay between rendering your verdict and getting confirmation that it was correct, which by the way--genius. the game is full of little polishing touches like this.) For such a simple game, it's hard to talk too much about the simple gameplay, but it's fun!
Apart from the difficulty curve, the main incentive that the game gives to keep coming back is these little "What would you do?" moral vignettes. You see, the money you collect isn't some arbitrary reward; you take it home each night to feed your family and pay rent. Once or twice per 'day' the game will present you with a conflict between an altruistic and a selfish action. A man is immigrating into the country for life and mentions that his wife is in line right behind him; his papers are good, but then you discover that his wife's are bad. Your employer informs you that all residents of the Altan district should have their passports seized for inspection, but someone from there says they are leaving again on Monday for a business trip. A friend offers to forge you fake Obristani passports to get out of this hell hole, but you'll need to illegally seize real Obristani passports from innocent travelers to serve as a base.
To be honest, most of these "dilemmas" felt like very wasted potential to me for two reasons. First, the stakes are super low; on the one hand you have this pixel art guy you met six seconds ago who talks with the Charlie Brown teacher sound effect, and on the other hand you have the word "Daughter" on a status screen in white text, who you never meet. Second, most of these ethical dilemmas can be completely sidestepped by being pretty good at the game. Not perfect, just pretty good; if you're averaging 13 entrants and one mistake per day, you can afford to take the morally good option every time without hurting your family at all. I also save scummed to achievement hunt on my very first playthrough, which completely removed the stakes and I would definitely recommend nobody do that. So while most of the plot just rolled right off me, let me give one example which didn't:
You are given the option of detaining or rejecting entrants with falsified paperwork. At first you just reject them all, because it's faster, so you can get more money. But after a while the border guard in charge of detaining offers you a little kickback for each detainee. A lot of these people are probably innocent victims of a bureaucratic fuck-up--we all know how common that is. How do you sift between the criminals and forgers, versus the honest people? (Do the forgers even deserve to be punished? Are they just trying their best in a hard situation?) In the end I struck the balance of letting people go if they seemed confused when questioned on their papers, and detaining them if they were rude to me. And I didn't even realize until writing this review how fucked up that is!
One of my friends once derided the thesis of this game as "Stalinism is bad--no shit," but I don't think that's true. I think the point is to show how easy it is for regular citizens who don't even like Stalin to act selfishly or even tyrannically when he gives them perverse incentives. Do I think this is a ludonarrative masterpiece? No, but it's interesting enough. Though here I go writing more about the story than the gameplay for a game I like primarily because it's a cute little observation timewaster.
The document rules start out simple--allow valid passports--but get more complicated as time goes on: foreigners must have a valid entry visa; then if they're entering for work they need a work pass in addition to their entry visa; then to prevent forgeries, you need to check that these documents have a valid seal; and so on. If you enjoyed "spot the six differences" panels in the Sunday newspaper, this is basically the ultimate gamification of that concept. I found it gratifying to develop a system of maximum efficiency, and I found myself holding my breath until I was sure that I wasn't going to get dinged for getting it wrong. (There's a three or four second delay between rendering your verdict and getting confirmation that it was correct, which by the way--genius. the game is full of little polishing touches like this.) For such a simple game, it's hard to talk too much about the simple gameplay, but it's fun!
Apart from the difficulty curve, the main incentive that the game gives to keep coming back is these little "What would you do?" moral vignettes. You see, the money you collect isn't some arbitrary reward; you take it home each night to feed your family and pay rent. Once or twice per 'day' the game will present you with a conflict between an altruistic and a selfish action. A man is immigrating into the country for life and mentions that his wife is in line right behind him; his papers are good, but then you discover that his wife's are bad. Your employer informs you that all residents of the Altan district should have their passports seized for inspection, but someone from there says they are leaving again on Monday for a business trip. A friend offers to forge you fake Obristani passports to get out of this hell hole, but you'll need to illegally seize real Obristani passports from innocent travelers to serve as a base.
To be honest, most of these "dilemmas" felt like very wasted potential to me for two reasons. First, the stakes are super low; on the one hand you have this pixel art guy you met six seconds ago who talks with the Charlie Brown teacher sound effect, and on the other hand you have the word "Daughter" on a status screen in white text, who you never meet. Second, most of these ethical dilemmas can be completely sidestepped by being pretty good at the game. Not perfect, just pretty good; if you're averaging 13 entrants and one mistake per day, you can afford to take the morally good option every time without hurting your family at all. I also save scummed to achievement hunt on my very first playthrough, which completely removed the stakes and I would definitely recommend nobody do that. So while most of the plot just rolled right off me, let me give one example which didn't:
You are given the option of detaining or rejecting entrants with falsified paperwork. At first you just reject them all, because it's faster, so you can get more money. But after a while the border guard in charge of detaining offers you a little kickback for each detainee. A lot of these people are probably innocent victims of a bureaucratic fuck-up--we all know how common that is. How do you sift between the criminals and forgers, versus the honest people? (Do the forgers even deserve to be punished? Are they just trying their best in a hard situation?) In the end I struck the balance of letting people go if they seemed confused when questioned on their papers, and detaining them if they were rude to me. And I didn't even realize until writing this review how fucked up that is!
One of my friends once derided the thesis of this game as "Stalinism is bad--no shit," but I don't think that's true. I think the point is to show how easy it is for regular citizens who don't even like Stalin to act selfishly or even tyrannically when he gives them perverse incentives. Do I think this is a ludonarrative masterpiece? No, but it's interesting enough. Though here I go writing more about the story than the gameplay for a game I like primarily because it's a cute little observation timewaster.
Good and comprehensive comparison of TLOU 1 / 2, that sums up a lot of my skepticism regarding TLOU 2 gamer rage. Definitely a lengthy watch but I recommend checking it out!
e: a good way to sum this up: TLOU 1 is worth watching, TLOU 2 seems worth playing
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The funny swearing man on youtube (zero punctuation) has said that tlou2 is shit, but the other funny swearing man (videogamedunkey) has said it was good. Imma need a 12 hour tim rogers video to break this tie, please.
Cave Story+ - One of the classic "indie" games (past the era where nobody was established and indie was the default, apparently i.e. 2004), Cave Story is a classic run-and-gun reminiscent of SNES games like Super Metroid. Two main gameplay differences set this one apart. First, weapon upgrades in this game are temporary: collected by gathering Dorito tokens dropped by dead enemies, but lost proportional to HP whenever you take a hit. Second, rather than controlling the ponderous Samus Aran or Megaman in honorable combat against a few enemies at a time, you are zipping in between 20 or 30 of the little fuckers at once with Quote.
First things first I have to say this game just oozes charm. Everything here is huggable. The NPCs are adorable, the enemies are adorable, the villains are adorable. The environments are adorable, the chiptunes are adorable, the scene where one of your friends fucking dies? Sad but also, maybe, a little bit adorable? This game has the aesthetic of laying under a warm blanket in a spotless house with no overdue bills. It's just pure comfort and bliss, which is good, because actually playing the thing is a bit of a pain in the ass.
This was a single man passion project in a time before good gamedev tools existed and it shows, because it is one of the most padded games I have ever played. A lot of playtime is spent interacting with every NPC to find the next step on the poorly labeled critical path. Though even if you know where to go, you will have to run errands back and forth across the same bit of the Bushlands like seven times. And forget about keeping your weapon levels topped off if you don't want to waste insane amounts of time. You are basically never in danger of dying (except at boss fights or in the final zone), so my advice if you get bored of slowly mowing your way through huge crowds of enemies: just pick your least favorite weapon (I recommend Fireball or Bubbler) and damage boost. It's not worth it.
Tedium notwithstanding, is the game's core unique mechanic--the weapon levels--exciting? I was interested when I first learned about it, but after playing through I think I come down on the side of not liking it. One of its main outcomes is turning the challenges into real sink or swim affairs; you either do big damage early, or may as well kill yourself and start over. Arguably this could enhance the feeling of scraping out a boss fight as you chip their last few HP off with your unupgraded pea shooter, but that wasn't really the experience I had. You can farm the best-designed bosses for Doritos mid-fight but there are unfortunately many for whom this isn't true.
The secret True Ending final level (the Bloodstained Sanctuary) at least shows what this mechanic could have been. Weapon levels are reset upon entry and enemies are permanently finite (well, for the most part), so gathering Doritos actually adds a level of skill to the game. You have ranged weapons, but basically need to be able to safely melee enemies for the sake of weapon points, and trying to loot their corpses without getting hit is a significant portion of the challenge here. I'm not kidding when I say this is 100 times harder than the rest of the game though. The rest of the game is easy but I have never beaten the Bloodstained Sanctuary, which is why I put off reviewing this game, but I've made it to the final boss a couple times so fuck it. Speaking of padding though, good luck getting the True Ending without looking it up. I won't say it's impossible, so if you want to prove me wrong, feel free to try... but good luck.
Putting aside the weapon levels gimmick, how are the fundamentals? Some good, some bad. Enemy patterns are distinct, designs are recognizable, and attacks are well telegraphed. On the other hand, Quote's airspeed is incredibly floaty, to the point that even very simple tasks like "land on this block" are easy to fuck up into a spiked pit and die instantly. The arsenal really isn't notably distinct, mostly just giving you several ways of hitting things for similar amounts of damage in the orthogonal directions. Fireball and Bubbler are a little better about this but in the only level challenging enough to want a distinct arsenal, you don't get enough Doritos to upgrade them to usefulness.
So yeah, that's about my final verdict. Original characters and story are good. Gameplay is worse than just about any other notable title in the genre, but easy enough to generally be inoffensive. Play it if you care about that stuff or its "cultural influence."
Thanks for bearing with me as I spammed the thread, folks. I won't have time to Game for a few weeks probably so this is the last you'll hear of me until I finish Doom Eternal.
Cave Story+ - One of the classic "indie" games (past the era where nobody was established and indie was the default, apparently i.e. 2004), Cave Story is a classic run-and-gun reminiscent of SNES games like Super Metroid. Two main gameplay differences set this one apart. First, weapon upgrades in this game are temporary: collected by gathering Dorito tokens dropped by dead enemies, but lost proportional to HP whenever you take a hit. Second, rather than controlling the ponderous Samus Aran or Megaman in honorable combat against a few enemies at a time, you are zipping in between 20 or 30 of the little fuckers at once with Quote.
First things first I have to say this game just oozes charm. Everything here is huggable. The NPCs are adorable, the enemies are adorable, the villains are adorable. The environments are adorable, the chiptunes are adorable, the scene where one of your friends fucking dies? Sad but also, maybe, a little bit adorable? This game has the aesthetic of laying under a warm blanket in a spotless house with no overdue bills. It's just pure comfort and bliss, which is good, because actually playing the thing is a bit of a pain in the ass.
This was a single man passion project in a time before good gamedev tools existed and it shows, because it is one of the most padded games I have ever played. A lot of playtime is spent interacting with every NPC to find the next step on the poorly labeled critical path. Though even if you know where to go, you will have to run errands back and forth across the same bit of the Bushlands like seven times. And forget about keeping your weapon levels topped off if you don't want to waste insane amounts of time. You are basically never in danger of dying (except at boss fights or in the final zone), so my advice if you get bored of slowly mowing your way through huge crowds of enemies: just pick your least favorite weapon (I recommend Fireball or Bubbler) and damage boost. It's not worth it.
Tedium notwithstanding, is the game's core unique mechanic--the weapon levels--exciting? I was interested when I first learned about it, but after playing through I think I come down on the side of not liking it. One of its main outcomes is turning the challenges into real sink or swim affairs; you either do big damage early, or may as well kill yourself and start over. Arguably this could enhance the feeling of scraping out a boss fight as you chip their last few HP off with your unupgraded pea shooter, but that wasn't really the experience I had. You can farm the best-designed bosses for Doritos mid-fight but there are unfortunately many for whom this isn't true.
The secret True Ending final level (the Bloodstained Sanctuary) at least shows what this mechanic could have been. Weapon levels are reset upon entry and enemies are permanently finite (well, for the most part), so gathering Doritos actually adds a level of skill to the game. You have ranged weapons, but basically need to be able to safely melee enemies for the sake of weapon points, and trying to loot their corpses without getting hit is a significant portion of the challenge here. I'm not kidding when I say this is 100 times harder than the rest of the game though. The rest of the game is easy but I have never beaten the Bloodstained Sanctuary, which is why I put off reviewing this game, but I've made it to the final boss a couple times so fuck it. Speaking of padding though, good luck getting the True Ending without looking it up. I won't say it's impossible, so if you want to prove me wrong, feel free to try... but good luck.
Putting aside the weapon levels gimmick, how are the fundamentals? Some good, some bad. Enemy patterns are distinct, designs are recognizable, and attacks are well telegraphed. On the other hand, Quote's airspeed is incredibly floaty, to the point that even very simple tasks like "land on this block" are easy to fuck up into a spiked pit and die instantly. The arsenal really isn't notably distinct, mostly just giving you several ways of hitting things for similar amounts of damage in the orthogonal directions. Fireball and Bubbler are a little better about this but in the only level challenging enough to want a distinct arsenal, you don't get enough Doritos to upgrade them to usefulness.
So yeah, that's about my final verdict. Original characters and story are good. Gameplay is worse than just about any other notable title in the genre, but easy enough to generally be inoffensive. Play it if you care about that stuff or its "cultural influence."
Thanks for bearing with me as I spammed the thread, folks. I won't have time to Game for a few weeks probably so this is the last you'll hear of me until I finish Doom Eternal.
My favorite part of TLOU2 was trying to figure out exactly why people were shitting on it while I was playing it.
well time to find a new game to play. is persona 5 on sale yet?
in the end, it was not the transgender teenager but the women who murdered everyone's favorite character and who happened to be muscular xd. guess i should've predicted how rabid fanbases can be. still, really don't understand why people feel the need to be psychotic when they don't like a game, isn't it enough to just leave it at "i don't like the game"?
I totally get why people are unhappy with the game and I think it's a testament to how good the first game was. I'm pretty open minded when it comes to games going different directions in sequels so I'm more inclined to be accepting of big changes but even this game, I don't know, it just feels so unfulfilling having reached the end. I think that's probably the point but it meant that having finished the game it just feels so extremely empty and hopeless and shitty. This was true for the first game too but it was a lot easier to overlook because it wasn't like everyone you came across died. It wasn't all just meaningless death. In this game it feels almost everyone you learn about that's not just a "bad guy" dies and that's it. It isn't fulfilling in any way at all. Nobody changes for the better or their life improves with the exception of abby (possibly?) and the game isn't truly about her (even if it tries to be). It's sad and I feel kind of removes the ambiguity of the first game's ending which at least left the possibility open.
I thought the game did a good job of developing the new characters. I get why people don't like abby and I felt the same way at first but I did grow to have empathy for her and her friends. Maybe I'm just overly sympathetic but it really did get to the point where I disliked ellie more than abby (which is hopefully the point?). I appreciated that most all the people in the game were pretty nuanced. I don't really think most of the criticism I've seen is that valid. The game doesn't shove SJW-bait or whatever down your throat lol. Idk maybe the sexual aspects were a little over the top but not really a dealbreaker. There's nothing wrong with abby being muscular lmao dunno why peple are being weirdos about that. I thought joel dying makes sense for the narrative. I don't really see a game without that happening honestly.
Man I hope this isn't how the series ends. I would've been totally happy if they left the first game as is but now I feel like they have to go back.
I thought the game did a good job of developing the new characters. I get why people don't like abby and I felt the same way at first but I did grow to have empathy for her and her friends. Maybe I'm just overly sympathetic but it really did get to the point where I disliked ellie more than abby (which is hopefully the point?). I appreciated that most all the people in the game were pretty nuanced. I don't really think most of the criticism I've seen is that valid. The game doesn't shove SJW-bait or whatever down your throat lol. Idk maybe the sexual aspects were a little over the top but not really a dealbreaker. There's nothing wrong with abby being muscular lmao dunno why peple are being weirdos about that. I thought joel dying makes sense for the narrative. I don't really see a game without that happening honestly.
Man I hope this isn't how the series ends. I would've been totally happy if they left the first game as is but now I feel like they have to go back.
well time to find a new game to play. is persona 5 on sale yet?
I don't actually know if anyone is interested, but i'd like to share my thoughts about TLOU2 after the end of my second playthrough.
Overall, i think it is a bad game, expecially if you compare that to the first chapter (which happens to be one of my favs).
Positive aspects: Graphics and gameplay
About the graphics: You can't deny they're pretty good, but just consider two things:
1) The first game graphics are just as good and impressive, considering they were made in 2013 for ps3. Maybe you could argue they're even proportionally better considering the timelapse and the resources (ps3), but let's just stop.
2) Graphics are not really important in a game, not even close to gameplay and the plot.
About the gameplay: prolly the best thing in the game, ND was able to propose a gameplay that looks fresh and new, while still sticking to the OG game.
Negative aspects: Bad writing (Plot, Narrative choices, and characters psychology)
Gonna put some major spoilers here.
TL'DR': It is a narrative disaster, and plot matters to me way more than graphics and gameplay. That's way it's a bad game to me
Overall, i think it is a bad game, expecially if you compare that to the first chapter (which happens to be one of my favs).
Positive aspects: Graphics and gameplay
About the graphics: You can't deny they're pretty good, but just consider two things:
1) The first game graphics are just as good and impressive, considering they were made in 2013 for ps3. Maybe you could argue they're even proportionally better considering the timelapse and the resources (ps3), but let's just stop.
2) Graphics are not really important in a game, not even close to gameplay and the plot.
About the gameplay: prolly the best thing in the game, ND was able to propose a gameplay that looks fresh and new, while still sticking to the OG game.
Negative aspects: Bad writing (Plot, Narrative choices, and characters psychology)
Gonna put some major spoilers here.
First of all: the way joel dies
You wanted Joel to die? Okay, but not in that way.
In the first game joel is described as someone who was able to survive because he never trusted anyone (except people like Ellie,Tommy,and Tess), as any human (infected or not) will most likely try to kill you. You also have to consider that joel has been the bad guy of the situation many times in his past (They give hints about this many times, in pittsburgh for example), so he pretty much knew a lot of tricks that his enemies could use against him.
It is UNCONCEIVABLE that he would trust a group of strangers like that.
Secondly: Abby
This character is so bad-written, anything she does doesn't make any sense.
So, what ND wants you to understand is that there are not good or bad people in a world like that, but honestly the way the try to teach us this lesson is PATHETIC. In the first part of game they depict abby as the most evil character you could ever encouter, not only for her actions, but also for her masculine appearance and the shape of her face (that's no coincidence).
While on the second part, they try to make the player emphatise with her, showing her past and her will to help Lev and Yara. This method doesn't work, as the player has a way stronger bond towards ellie and joel, and also because it is bad executed.
So, her father is honestly pathetic, expecially when they help the zebra they wanna make you think "Oh joel what u have done OMG ur the bad guy". Honestly, a doctor who operates for willingly killing his patient instead of helping him is a joke to me lmao.
Let's cut with the past and let's talk a bit about Lev and Yara, which i liked way more, as they're coherent with themselves. So to show that Abby is not a massive biatch, after killing the man who saved her life, they make her emphatize with them because they saved her life (LMAO). So she turns her back to WLF, in which she still has many friends she's been knowing since years (not only the ones Ellie & friend killed) to help people he just acquainted with. Everything about this characters is bad and doesn't make sense.
Lastly: The finale
Yeah, so Ellie just kills abby's friends like nora, who didn't harm joel at all, but she lets the girl who tortured and killed him be free. So I've read some posts about ellie breaking the cycle of revenge and not give to strangers any reason to go hunt herself or the people she loves (like dina and JJ) which are total bs. If Ellie killed Abby and Lev, no one would have ever known anything about that. By letting her live, what's gonna happen is the exact opposite thing: Abby has a reason to hunt her Ellie, because she joined the fireflies again.
You wanted Joel to die? Okay, but not in that way.
In the first game joel is described as someone who was able to survive because he never trusted anyone (except people like Ellie,Tommy,and Tess), as any human (infected or not) will most likely try to kill you. You also have to consider that joel has been the bad guy of the situation many times in his past (They give hints about this many times, in pittsburgh for example), so he pretty much knew a lot of tricks that his enemies could use against him.
It is UNCONCEIVABLE that he would trust a group of strangers like that.
Secondly: Abby
This character is so bad-written, anything she does doesn't make any sense.
So, what ND wants you to understand is that there are not good or bad people in a world like that, but honestly the way the try to teach us this lesson is PATHETIC. In the first part of game they depict abby as the most evil character you could ever encouter, not only for her actions, but also for her masculine appearance and the shape of her face (that's no coincidence).
While on the second part, they try to make the player emphatise with her, showing her past and her will to help Lev and Yara. This method doesn't work, as the player has a way stronger bond towards ellie and joel, and also because it is bad executed.
So, her father is honestly pathetic, expecially when they help the zebra they wanna make you think "Oh joel what u have done OMG ur the bad guy". Honestly, a doctor who operates for willingly killing his patient instead of helping him is a joke to me lmao.
Let's cut with the past and let's talk a bit about Lev and Yara, which i liked way more, as they're coherent with themselves. So to show that Abby is not a massive biatch, after killing the man who saved her life, they make her emphatize with them because they saved her life (LMAO). So she turns her back to WLF, in which she still has many friends she's been knowing since years (not only the ones Ellie & friend killed) to help people he just acquainted with. Everything about this characters is bad and doesn't make sense.
Lastly: The finale
Yeah, so Ellie just kills abby's friends like nora, who didn't harm joel at all, but she lets the girl who tortured and killed him be free. So I've read some posts about ellie breaking the cycle of revenge and not give to strangers any reason to go hunt herself or the people she loves (like dina and JJ) which are total bs. If Ellie killed Abby and Lev, no one would have ever known anything about that. By letting her live, what's gonna happen is the exact opposite thing: Abby has a reason to hunt her Ellie, because she joined the fireflies again.
FF7R is exactly the kind of game that gets a three hour thinkpiece months later telling us exactly how shit the game is because people are too waifu-struck right now to see it somehow.
After decades of asking for a remake, we instead get an Evangelion style reimagining that has "remake" in its title. We've seen Activision make two PS1 remake collections now, Crash and Spyro. Those were each three remade games, and instead we got 1/10 of one (and yes, I'm asking for the same level of quality as those remakes, which are just HD reskins. An HD reskin and retranslation would have produced a far superior product to what we got). Square is making Activision look good by comparison.
Even though expectations had to be tempered because it's a cash-grab made out of 10% of the original game, it might have been okay if it had managed to be a combination of good aesthetics with either good gameplay or good story. And I feel sad because 1/2 out of 3 is bad.
Aesthetically is where the game does its best. Returning characters and enemies look great. The music is fantastically made. Some environments look quite good. But there's also tons of blurry textures and Sonic 06' looking NPCs. Music is used poorly a lot, with action music blarring on loop over exposition scenes, motifs used to death (we didn't need 20 versions of Aerith's theme for every time she's on screen), and Midgar just feels bafflingly poorly realized. Midgar is supposed to be cramped and dark. That's why Tifa is confused that Cloud has a flower, because only Aerith can grow them. But there's so much light and space that I don't understand why Sector 7 can't grow plants. Sector 7 just looks like Fallout with more dirt and less radiation. It feels more like a gun-toting libertarian paradise instead of a slum, not helped by its music being an uplifting version of the main theme instead of Underneath the Rotting Pizza. FF7R never remotely sells Midgar as a concept to me in spite of anti-capitalism being only more topical and also it's the whole game. Just seems like it would have been impossible to fuck this up and yet.
The Story is equal parts nonsense to new players and maddening to old ones. Now, probably the only reason people are giving this game a pass is because it gets the characters of Cloud and Aerith right, which after 20 years of flanderization I had absolutely no faith in. But when you take something that works perfectly well in 6 hours and stretch it to 40, there are going to be problems in almost every scene. Absolutely nobody likes the sidequests, but I haven't seen anyone complain about the nearly 4 hours of reused areas in between the fall of the sector 7 pillar and arriving at Shinra HQ. Instead of flowing smoothly into the climax, our heroes ask Aerith's mom if it's okay to rescue her and that takes a whole day? WTF? Stupidity abounds like framing Avalanche as non-terrorists, comically overboard villains, Sephiroth showing up all over the place, and the frickin-heck spoiler police spirits that are actually the whole plot now.
The Gameplay is surprisingly not a brainless button-masher the way Square games have been going, and I have to say that about 2/3 of the way into the game it actually develops into something that can be fun (and the sheer variety of enemies is great). But it sure is going to suck getting metroided at the beginning of the next game if the devs don't learn from the indefensible errors with this game's system. It's the only game I know where not only are party members useless, they actually feel like a detriment when I examine the worst boss fights. Because your party doesn't gain ATB quickly, doesn't gain limit quickly, doesn't use their special attacks, and doesn't avoid taking AOE damage. If you want a character to do anything you need to take them out and use them, but the character you are playing as immediately draws aggro (I've literally switched back and forth between characters and seen enemies switch their attention back and forth completely in sync) which means staggers (losing your action, ATB, and mana) and stuns. All these things combined make it really arduous to recover from a bad state (which you can't always avoid getting into when your NPC team gets themselves killed so easily) until you get far enough in the game to have lots of options at your disposal and with that came a marked turn in my frustration level. To be clear, I only got a game over once, so I'm not talking about difficulty. I'm talking about sometimes 20 minute fights against some of the rudest bosses I've ever seen in gaming. Who made these boss fights, the people who made Deus Ex; Human Revolution's? They're shit. Shiiiiiiit.
Anyway I made this post because I realized it would be funny to do a top 10 worst boss fights list in a game that has about 20 of them.
10. Sephiroth
This actually is not a frustrating boss fight. In fact, it's possibly the easiest and most vanilla boss fight in the whole game. Sephiroth attacks pretty fast and has some melee attacks that Cloud can't block (a common problem that is never telegraphed), but you're never unable to attack him and he's in a pressured state almost all the time. It's just comical that of all the boss fights that isn't bullshit, it's Sephiroth who has been built up so much by the KH games and is also the final boss here. Honestly could have been more unfair.
9. Queen Grashtrike
May have been a glitch but when I got this mini-boss down to 0 hp, she put the
sign over her hp bar and then just wouldn't die for about two minutes. Still including it because the game pulls the shit midfight all the time and it's super annoying,
8. Swordipede
This is the only game over I got. It's main gimmick is that first Cloud and Barret fight it, then Aerith and Tifa. The issue is in the second phase the arena is a tight circle and the Swordipede just circles around it doing AOE shit wrecking your idiot NPC. Completely unable to recover from a death here. Low on the list because it's easy to burst down at this late stage of the game.
7. The Valkyrie
Another easy boss. In the second half of the fight, it has a giant sky laser attack that it can hurt itself with, instantly staggering it. It would be staggered, start the laser just before stagger ends, hit itself again, and it chained this pattern it died. Great design.
6. Scorpion Sentinel
Wow, Scorpion Sentinel, really? From the demo? It wasn't that bad was it? No, but it's such a harbinger of bosses to come. 10 minute fight, near invulnerable phases, and a boss that would just skip its stagger phase every time it triggers. Bosses in FF7R really don't like being staggered. Some will stop allowing you to do it after phase 1, and many just never allow it at all. Pressure and stagger is the core gameplay loop of FF7R, so the boss fights refusal to play by its own rules just really stings.
5. Rufus & Darkstar
Okay now we're getting into the territory of real egregious shit. This fight is fairly annoying in its first two stages as Cloud gets ruthlessly dicked down in a 2 on 1 fight. But it wouldn't make the list if not for stage 3, a fight where Cloud (who is melee and counters melee enemies) is pitted against Rufus (who is ranged, counters all melee attacks, and resists magic). You have about half a second when he reloads to attack him, but he loves being halfway across the arena and most of his attacks inflict knockback even through guard. The only saving grace to this fight is that I took the last 70% of his HP away with one limit break, but it's still entirely uninteractive.
4. Reno & Rude
2 on 1 is harsh but manageable. In this game, 2 on 3 is a nightmare. There are more friends going down and lost action in this fight than at a cockblocker's convention. This is compounded by the fact that story and gameplaywise, the pillar is just the worst fucking part of the game. After spending hours evacuating literally everyone from Sector 7, climbing the tall pillar and dealing with annoying helicoptor soldiers, and watching long cutscenes where characters dramatically die of being dirty, this fight was the capstone that had me stop playing for a good week.
3. Abzu (First Fight)
Real simple. Just shows off what little you can do when a boss throws board-wide AOEs around with two dumb NPC allies.
2. Air Buster
Spends 90% of phase 2 flying so that only Barrett can attack, but stuns the character you are playing as every 5 seconds. Wow, that's pretty cancerous, but it's not the injury that puts Air Buster this high, it's the insult. In the lead-up to Air Buster, you spend an hour crawling around a Shinra lab removing parts from Air Buster to make the fight easier. In the choice between removing big bomber or stuns, I chose stuns 4/4 times. So what the fuck is this fight like if I hadn't allegedly reduced it's amount of stuns?
1. Hell House
Simply one of if not the worst boss fights I have ever played in my life. Puts a real fucking fork in replaying FF7R or doing hard mode. For starters it does the "swapping elemental weakness" mechanic that has never been fun in any good FF game. Then when it decides to get serious, it becomes invulnerable for 99% of the fight. It has a tiny window of opportunity to attack it, but only after a basically unavoidable AOE attack. You can attack its hands, but its hard to target anything in this game (especially a problem for ranged characters) and Cloud's sword will clank off the shield most of the time anyway. That's why this fight takes 20-30 minutes, and I'd have broken my disc in half if I died here. Absolutely atrocious.
I didn't even mention the 100% unavoidable "cinematic" attacks bosses use. Some action game.
After decades of asking for a remake, we instead get an Evangelion style reimagining that has "remake" in its title. We've seen Activision make two PS1 remake collections now, Crash and Spyro. Those were each three remade games, and instead we got 1/10 of one (and yes, I'm asking for the same level of quality as those remakes, which are just HD reskins. An HD reskin and retranslation would have produced a far superior product to what we got). Square is making Activision look good by comparison.
Even though expectations had to be tempered because it's a cash-grab made out of 10% of the original game, it might have been okay if it had managed to be a combination of good aesthetics with either good gameplay or good story. And I feel sad because 1/2 out of 3 is bad.
Aesthetically is where the game does its best. Returning characters and enemies look great. The music is fantastically made. Some environments look quite good. But there's also tons of blurry textures and Sonic 06' looking NPCs. Music is used poorly a lot, with action music blarring on loop over exposition scenes, motifs used to death (we didn't need 20 versions of Aerith's theme for every time she's on screen), and Midgar just feels bafflingly poorly realized. Midgar is supposed to be cramped and dark. That's why Tifa is confused that Cloud has a flower, because only Aerith can grow them. But there's so much light and space that I don't understand why Sector 7 can't grow plants. Sector 7 just looks like Fallout with more dirt and less radiation. It feels more like a gun-toting libertarian paradise instead of a slum, not helped by its music being an uplifting version of the main theme instead of Underneath the Rotting Pizza. FF7R never remotely sells Midgar as a concept to me in spite of anti-capitalism being only more topical and also it's the whole game. Just seems like it would have been impossible to fuck this up and yet.
The Story is equal parts nonsense to new players and maddening to old ones. Now, probably the only reason people are giving this game a pass is because it gets the characters of Cloud and Aerith right, which after 20 years of flanderization I had absolutely no faith in. But when you take something that works perfectly well in 6 hours and stretch it to 40, there are going to be problems in almost every scene. Absolutely nobody likes the sidequests, but I haven't seen anyone complain about the nearly 4 hours of reused areas in between the fall of the sector 7 pillar and arriving at Shinra HQ. Instead of flowing smoothly into the climax, our heroes ask Aerith's mom if it's okay to rescue her and that takes a whole day? WTF? Stupidity abounds like framing Avalanche as non-terrorists, comically overboard villains, Sephiroth showing up all over the place, and the frickin-heck spoiler police spirits that are actually the whole plot now.
The Gameplay is surprisingly not a brainless button-masher the way Square games have been going, and I have to say that about 2/3 of the way into the game it actually develops into something that can be fun (and the sheer variety of enemies is great). But it sure is going to suck getting metroided at the beginning of the next game if the devs don't learn from the indefensible errors with this game's system. It's the only game I know where not only are party members useless, they actually feel like a detriment when I examine the worst boss fights. Because your party doesn't gain ATB quickly, doesn't gain limit quickly, doesn't use their special attacks, and doesn't avoid taking AOE damage. If you want a character to do anything you need to take them out and use them, but the character you are playing as immediately draws aggro (I've literally switched back and forth between characters and seen enemies switch their attention back and forth completely in sync) which means staggers (losing your action, ATB, and mana) and stuns. All these things combined make it really arduous to recover from a bad state (which you can't always avoid getting into when your NPC team gets themselves killed so easily) until you get far enough in the game to have lots of options at your disposal and with that came a marked turn in my frustration level. To be clear, I only got a game over once, so I'm not talking about difficulty. I'm talking about sometimes 20 minute fights against some of the rudest bosses I've ever seen in gaming. Who made these boss fights, the people who made Deus Ex; Human Revolution's? They're shit. Shiiiiiiit.
Anyway I made this post because I realized it would be funny to do a top 10 worst boss fights list in a game that has about 20 of them.
10. Sephiroth
This actually is not a frustrating boss fight. In fact, it's possibly the easiest and most vanilla boss fight in the whole game. Sephiroth attacks pretty fast and has some melee attacks that Cloud can't block (a common problem that is never telegraphed), but you're never unable to attack him and he's in a pressured state almost all the time. It's just comical that of all the boss fights that isn't bullshit, it's Sephiroth who has been built up so much by the KH games and is also the final boss here. Honestly could have been more unfair.
9. Queen Grashtrike
May have been a glitch but when I got this mini-boss down to 0 hp, she put the
sign over her hp bar and then just wouldn't die for about two minutes. Still including it because the game pulls the shit midfight all the time and it's super annoying,8. Swordipede
This is the only game over I got. It's main gimmick is that first Cloud and Barret fight it, then Aerith and Tifa. The issue is in the second phase the arena is a tight circle and the Swordipede just circles around it doing AOE shit wrecking your idiot NPC. Completely unable to recover from a death here. Low on the list because it's easy to burst down at this late stage of the game.
7. The Valkyrie
Another easy boss. In the second half of the fight, it has a giant sky laser attack that it can hurt itself with, instantly staggering it. It would be staggered, start the laser just before stagger ends, hit itself again, and it chained this pattern it died. Great design.
6. Scorpion Sentinel
Wow, Scorpion Sentinel, really? From the demo? It wasn't that bad was it? No, but it's such a harbinger of bosses to come. 10 minute fight, near invulnerable phases, and a boss that would just skip its stagger phase every time it triggers. Bosses in FF7R really don't like being staggered. Some will stop allowing you to do it after phase 1, and many just never allow it at all. Pressure and stagger is the core gameplay loop of FF7R, so the boss fights refusal to play by its own rules just really stings.
5. Rufus & Darkstar
Okay now we're getting into the territory of real egregious shit. This fight is fairly annoying in its first two stages as Cloud gets ruthlessly dicked down in a 2 on 1 fight. But it wouldn't make the list if not for stage 3, a fight where Cloud (who is melee and counters melee enemies) is pitted against Rufus (who is ranged, counters all melee attacks, and resists magic). You have about half a second when he reloads to attack him, but he loves being halfway across the arena and most of his attacks inflict knockback even through guard. The only saving grace to this fight is that I took the last 70% of his HP away with one limit break, but it's still entirely uninteractive.
4. Reno & Rude
2 on 1 is harsh but manageable. In this game, 2 on 3 is a nightmare. There are more friends going down and lost action in this fight than at a cockblocker's convention. This is compounded by the fact that story and gameplaywise, the pillar is just the worst fucking part of the game. After spending hours evacuating literally everyone from Sector 7, climbing the tall pillar and dealing with annoying helicoptor soldiers, and watching long cutscenes where characters dramatically die of being dirty, this fight was the capstone that had me stop playing for a good week.
3. Abzu (First Fight)
Real simple. Just shows off what little you can do when a boss throws board-wide AOEs around with two dumb NPC allies.
2. Air Buster
Spends 90% of phase 2 flying so that only Barrett can attack, but stuns the character you are playing as every 5 seconds. Wow, that's pretty cancerous, but it's not the injury that puts Air Buster this high, it's the insult. In the lead-up to Air Buster, you spend an hour crawling around a Shinra lab removing parts from Air Buster to make the fight easier. In the choice between removing big bomber or stuns, I chose stuns 4/4 times. So what the fuck is this fight like if I hadn't allegedly reduced it's amount of stuns?
1. Hell House
Simply one of if not the worst boss fights I have ever played in my life. Puts a real fucking fork in replaying FF7R or doing hard mode. For starters it does the "swapping elemental weakness" mechanic that has never been fun in any good FF game. Then when it decides to get serious, it becomes invulnerable for 99% of the fight. It has a tiny window of opportunity to attack it, but only after a basically unavoidable AOE attack. You can attack its hands, but its hard to target anything in this game (especially a problem for ranged characters) and Cloud's sword will clank off the shield most of the time anyway. That's why this fight takes 20-30 minutes, and I'd have broken my disc in half if I died here. Absolutely atrocious.
I didn't even mention the 100% unavoidable "cinematic" attacks bosses use. Some action game.
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Wow I just found this thread and I saw all of these quick reviews from Stratos and I basically already do what he does but I don't have a platform to share it on. I guess I'll start sharing here whenever I have these sorts of thoughts, and I'll start from one I completed recently
I played Death and Taxes. It's very clearly inspired by Papers Please but instead of gatekeeping a country you're picking who gets to live and who gets to die. Every day you're given a few profiles of a few people, some clearly evil, some clearly great, most of them inbetween, and you're tasked to do your job as a grim reaper - though you don't actually get to kill anyone directly, you just sign the paperwork for their death and the universe takes care of the rest.
The idea that makes Death and Taxes signficantly different from Papers Please is one that Stratos actually touched on in his review some posts ago - in Papers Please, the characters you're meant to be caring about are essentially just a few lines of text, which makes it difficult to get really engaged in things. This still mostly holds true in Death and Taxes, but the game introduces one grand exception: your superior, some dude in a suit called Fate. You, as Fate's employee, get a check up with him at the end of each and every single day. Fate will praise you if you follow his requests, and he will be disappointed and/or detract your pay if you don't. There is actual character development and actually interesting conversations to be had by taking your time with Fate, something that was pretty difficult to find in Papers Please.
The idea for the character Fate is the one that makes this game worth playing, really. He's pretty fascinating - certainly more fascinating than the randos whose lives you judge, and more fascinating than most of the other innovations this game tries to present. Instead of spending your pay on food and other necessary commodities, the only use for your pay is buying accessories that contribute slightly to the experience and help keeping the paperwork from getting too boring, but overall aren't really anything substantial. The punishment for not following the directives isn't so much dictated by gameplay elements, given that not being paid for any individual day really isn't too impactful, but rather by Fate getting upset at you, which I think is a nicer system than what Papers Please imagined, because I really couldn't care less in Papers Please if my family had to go without heating for a few days, but in Death and Taxes the consequences of your actions are represented by someone with a much more active presence.
Ultimately you're trying to balance making Fate happy and not sending the world to hell in your decisions, which I think is a slightly more interesting dynamic than the one Papers Please presented, though by no means a revolutionary one. If you like answering these sorts of moral questions, and you liked Papers Please, then this game is probably good for you. If you didn't love Papers Please then I can't imagine you will love Death and Taxes too much, but at the very least Fate managed to make the game more interesting for me than Papers Please was.
I played Death and Taxes. It's very clearly inspired by Papers Please but instead of gatekeeping a country you're picking who gets to live and who gets to die. Every day you're given a few profiles of a few people, some clearly evil, some clearly great, most of them inbetween, and you're tasked to do your job as a grim reaper - though you don't actually get to kill anyone directly, you just sign the paperwork for their death and the universe takes care of the rest.
The idea that makes Death and Taxes signficantly different from Papers Please is one that Stratos actually touched on in his review some posts ago - in Papers Please, the characters you're meant to be caring about are essentially just a few lines of text, which makes it difficult to get really engaged in things. This still mostly holds true in Death and Taxes, but the game introduces one grand exception: your superior, some dude in a suit called Fate. You, as Fate's employee, get a check up with him at the end of each and every single day. Fate will praise you if you follow his requests, and he will be disappointed and/or detract your pay if you don't. There is actual character development and actually interesting conversations to be had by taking your time with Fate, something that was pretty difficult to find in Papers Please.
The idea for the character Fate is the one that makes this game worth playing, really. He's pretty fascinating - certainly more fascinating than the randos whose lives you judge, and more fascinating than most of the other innovations this game tries to present. Instead of spending your pay on food and other necessary commodities, the only use for your pay is buying accessories that contribute slightly to the experience and help keeping the paperwork from getting too boring, but overall aren't really anything substantial. The punishment for not following the directives isn't so much dictated by gameplay elements, given that not being paid for any individual day really isn't too impactful, but rather by Fate getting upset at you, which I think is a nicer system than what Papers Please imagined, because I really couldn't care less in Papers Please if my family had to go without heating for a few days, but in Death and Taxes the consequences of your actions are represented by someone with a much more active presence.
Ultimately you're trying to balance making Fate happy and not sending the world to hell in your decisions, which I think is a slightly more interesting dynamic than the one Papers Please presented, though by no means a revolutionary one. If you like answering these sorts of moral questions, and you liked Papers Please, then this game is probably good for you. If you didn't love Papers Please then I can't imagine you will love Death and Taxes too much, but at the very least Fate managed to make the game more interesting for me than Papers Please was.
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Now let's talk about one of my absolute favorite games, Gorogoa. Comfortably one of the most unique games I've ever played, it's the single best piece of evidence I have for videogames being art.
The game is quite short - I cleared it in 90 minutes and I hear most people take somewhere between 75 mins and 2 hours, depending on how quick you are with the puzzles - but you spend every second of it looking at incredibly beautiful and evocative imagery. The scenes are vivid but not so much that they become aggressive on the eye, and the way they combine together to create very innovative puzzles is just brilliant. This is a game you clear in one short sitting, and combined with the price tag perhaps this will turn people off, but what a fucking sitting it was for me. The way this game combines artistic elements and gameplay elements to tell a story is just incredible - the story itself isn't all so deep, but it's enough to keep you jumping from puzzle to puzzle, from art piece to art piece. The puzzles aren't overly complex which means getting stuck is unlikely, but even when you do have to take a minute to look at things a bit more it's a brilliant excuse to sit back and examine the finer details of the drawings, which eases all potential frustrations.
The game is an incessant stream of eye candy intertwined with an incessant stream of brain candy, but it makes sure neither is too overwhelming at any point, keeping the experience relaxed and very pleasant all the way. It perfectly executes a concept I've not seen any other game attempt before or since. I loved it to shreds, it's an easy recommendation to anyone who loves videogames and can afford the pricetag.
The game is quite short - I cleared it in 90 minutes and I hear most people take somewhere between 75 mins and 2 hours, depending on how quick you are with the puzzles - but you spend every second of it looking at incredibly beautiful and evocative imagery. The scenes are vivid but not so much that they become aggressive on the eye, and the way they combine together to create very innovative puzzles is just brilliant. This is a game you clear in one short sitting, and combined with the price tag perhaps this will turn people off, but what a fucking sitting it was for me. The way this game combines artistic elements and gameplay elements to tell a story is just incredible - the story itself isn't all so deep, but it's enough to keep you jumping from puzzle to puzzle, from art piece to art piece. The puzzles aren't overly complex which means getting stuck is unlikely, but even when you do have to take a minute to look at things a bit more it's a brilliant excuse to sit back and examine the finer details of the drawings, which eases all potential frustrations.
The game is an incessant stream of eye candy intertwined with an incessant stream of brain candy, but it makes sure neither is too overwhelming at any point, keeping the experience relaxed and very pleasant all the way. It perfectly executes a concept I've not seen any other game attempt before or since. I loved it to shreds, it's an easy recommendation to anyone who loves videogames and can afford the pricetag.