Today, I finished Rune Factory 3--well, the story at least. Whereas RF2 felt more like an expansion pack to the first game than a sequel, RF3 made some significant advancements, and I can see why that made it the best mainline game on its release. Hell, some still say they prefer it to RF4. But one thing that bothers me, besides a few technical and gameplay issues, is that many of the bachelorettes' personalities seem to be over-the-top. They're memorable, and they do change a bit as you interact with them, but I actually prefer the toned-down characters of the previous games. However, because RF3 has more dynamism to its cast, it's still better.
A small warning: If you ever decide to play this (or the games that preceded it), make sure to get an undubbed copy. You do not want to experience a hag voicing the fang-loli or anybody else. Jesus Christ, when will they learn?

>>13913
I played both of them last month, I liked VC1 more.
Personally the main characters of the first title are way more likeable than those of 4. I was especially annoyed of Raz, besides this the writing is not to my taste. Way too much swearing and the sexual themes sometimes are uncalled for. 1 is more serious and mature what makes me like it more. Furthermore I really dislike the class mortars. Anyway did you play 2 and 3 too?

>>13923
You've put it more aptly than I could and I couldn't agree more. Glad that there's someone else who feels the same way. Funny how VC4 was supposedly created to be more realistic with characters that feels more "real". I didn't like any of the main characters but I probably dislike Claude even more so than Raz. VC1 also has a lot of focus on the romance between the MCs but I think the focus on romance between the many characters here are obnoxious. The writing is also poor as you've mentioned. The swearing and sexual themes also feels contrived as well as the dramas/tragedies that crop up. I tried VC2 years ago but didn't like it, VC3's synopsis looks interesting but I have yet to try it.

>>13924
Well all characters certainly do have a litte bit more to them since everyone receives a mission where you learn a thing or two about them. I guess the main characters are also more realistic since Claude actually hesistates to do some though decissions. Furthermore "Kai" is conflicted about what she does, in addition Railey and Minerva are quite fucked up because what happpens/happened to them. Still I do dislike all of them, Minervas und Raieys issues are not explained and those two characters are very similar, so one of them should have a completly different personality IMHO. "Kai" interacts almost never with Claude which is kinda strange and does destroy the dynamic of that group. Claude has no spine and licks the boots of everyone while Raz is simply an idiot and annoying. The interactions between the main characters is just shitty, as you said truly obnoxious. A pity that you receive additonal turn when you deploy them, if not for that then I would use none of them.
VC2 has a different setting, therefore a lot of people dislike it. On the other hand some people call VC3 the best VC but I disagree because I did not like the main characters yet again. The story was good though.
Anyway I am glad too to meet someone who agrees with me on something regarding gaming, this is rare.

>>13926
Some of the side characters such as Vancey are certainly interesting but that only makes it more of a waste. There are certainly some elements that are more realistic but the relationship between the characters are too amicable and lacks conflict which makes it unrealistic, Raz did so many stupid things but nobody ever really calls him out on it, similarly Claude is too flawless. Many of the character feels more like caricatures of "real" people, this is especially obvious with the antagonists. It feels like they are trying to write a grand narrative but the poor writing ended up making everything fall flat. Exactly, I almost never used the main characters until the last half of the game. Yeah VC2 feels a little too shonen-y(?). I see, that's unfortunate I don't really enjoy emulating handhelds as well so I guess I might put off playing VC3 for a little longer.

Incidentally, what other games do you enjoy?

Post edited on 25th Sep 2020, 7:10am

I have begun to play Rune Factory 4, and I decided to try the "Special" edition. I'm not sure whether that's the correct choice, however. Bugs were fixed; Japanese audio was added; and the character portraits are significantly clearer thanks to the Switch's resolution. In addition, there's a mode that allows you to enjoy an additional hour or so with your chosen spouse, and there's in-game manga to read. However, they blurred a lot of stuff so as to fit everything to HD resolutions. The backgrounds look like shit, as if this were a high-quality flash game. I'm debating whether to just enjoy the undubbed 3DS version, or bite the bullet with the Switch version. Has anybody played both of them, and if so, do you have any suggestions on this debacle?

>>13927
It indeed says a lot when some side characters are more interesting and believable than the main characters. Best girl for you btw? Mabel for me, even though Nico is hella cute.
Couldn't agree more on that, wish Raz would have done some big fuck up at one point that runined something important and he would be neck deep in shit for it. Same for Claude, I am so tired of perfect, flawless overpowered characters. Just not convincing and boring too.
VC2 has also a very shitty MC, worst of the whole series IMHO.
Well I mostly play RPGs, occasionlly I read a VN, now and then I try out something that just looks interesting, then I don't care what genre it is. Most of the time my trying out ends bad though because I honestly dislike most genres and I am generally a picky cunt.
How about you? What do you enjoy?

>>13932
The characters I use most are probably Vancey, Neige, Nico and Ferrier (in order). I ended up using Ferrier and Nico less towards the later part of the game to make way for the shitty MCs but in general all my active squads are females, I think the only decent male characters are the two old guys and maybe Curtis. Mabel is a good character too and I used her quite a bit as well but ultimately had to choose between her and Kai (for the extra turn), she also joined a little later than the others. I'm also biased towards Vancey and Ferrier because I think they have great (japanese) VAs. Speaking of which, I really enjoyed the extra stories chapter where you have to fight against the MCs although unfortunately you don't get to choose your squad. I agree with you about Raz, I despised what happened to him as it turned him into a "hero" instead. With regards to Claude, I'd also add that he isn't actually even that flawless as a character, it's just that all the characters in the game seems to put him on a pedestal and never fault him.

I grew up with the PS1 so JRPGs are my thing as well although I haven't been playing much of the newer ones. I haven't played VNs in a long time, my first VNs are from the pc-98 and I feel like the direction of the story and characters now are a little too different for my tastes. Other than that I suppose I also do enjoy some simulation games.

And here I felt like the only person on earth who played Valkyria Chronicles 2 & 3

>>13913
I didn't like it either, I could not even finish it. I was not fond of the Valkyria revolution either. The writing just is not good and nothing new has been added gameplay wise. The characters were not great and the subtitles were far too westernised as well, actually even the natural Japanese was a bit.

>>13933
I actually have the habit of only using female characters if possible. Excpetions if there are no playable female characters or in case I dislike them. Anyway I dislike most of the male characters too, those you mentioned are fine with me too though.
Snipers are not in high demand too, I also struggeled to deploy her, sometimes even giving away the additional turn from Kai. Engenieers and Grenadiers are also not really that much needed too. The bulk of the squad are troopers and scouts. A pity IMHO.
I thought I did all the extra stories but I do not remember one where you fight the MCs, so please help my memory and tell me about it.
Absolutely, I dispse if the MC is up on a pedestal, only Minerva went against him but later backed down too.
>>13934
Your thoughts an those two?

>>13936
Yeah everything boils down to the scouts and shocktroopers, I didn't use the lancers too often either, the Hafen did most of the job. I can't remember if VC1 was as unbalanced but I remember using the lancers more often then. I started using the engineers more often towards the later part of the game as at times they felt like a slightly better version of the scouts, being able to heal both troops and tanks for a lot of health. The mission was a DLC (I think) where Rags ran away from the ship and the squad without the MCs have to look for him, it's the third and final part of that sub-story. Yeah, they tried to make him morally incorruptible whereas the others around him are prone to breaking down (often for no discernible reason) such as the scene with Minerva but then she backs down just as quickly. That part felt really weird to me.

By the way how old are you and what kind of video game/manga/anime did you grow up with? Sometimes I feel like with regards to male MCs, I think there is a divide between people who grew up with either showa/heisei era medias. This is probably most obvious between tokusatsu otaku as there is a clear distinction between the showa and heisei. Technically I should belong to the heisei era but I consumed a lot of hand-me-downs from older relatives so I grew up with more showa materials. I find that people who enjoys media without male characters tend to be older and possibly around my age group (30s+/maybe late 20s). I also like silent protags but I think that not too many people enjoy those anymore nowadays.

>>13937
I actually forgot about the lancers, damn. This surely tells you how much use they had in my playthrough.
VC1 was pretty balanced IMHO, only Alicia was over the top because she had so many great abilities. Engenieers have way less defense though, respect for using them over scouts, I only used one engenieer to stay behind the Hafen. Ah, yes, that one. Thank you for the reminder of it. I pushed that one out of my memory because I had a really hard time against Crymaria in that extra story. Exactly and this made me dislike him so much. I like it if the MC makes some character development or at least acts human, struggles a litte, makes mistakes and so on.

This may come as a surprise but I am only 23, turning 24 in the coming December.
Anyway I grew up with a GBC and a shitty PC, later got a NDS, a Wii and a slighly better PC.
After some time I got the first usable PC and a decent internet provider, this is were I started diving into anime and emulating a lot of older games for various consoles. Before that I only watched some stuff that aired on TV, nothing noteworthy. So my childhood and teens were mostly full of media from the heisei media.
Silent protagonists are okay with me, what I care about is the atmosphere and story, else I don't really care. This can lead me to enjoy some things that are rather low quality but can also make me dislike stuff for very silly reasons. Unfortunately a lot of stuff produced today is unenjoyable for me. I also can't remember a recent game with a silent protagonist too.

>>13938
That Crymaria mission was certainly a pain to get through with.

Ah I see, I was thinking perhaps my dislike for modern MCs was because I grew up with a different kind and am no longer able to relate. Atmosphere and story are certainly pivotal but the characters are also focal in carrying the plot and there are many instances where I dropped series simply because of the characters. I've seen opinions from people that dislike silent protags complaining that silent protags have no personality and boring but I find that characters with "personality" tend to be even more boring. I find that perhaps as I grew older my perspective and enjoyment of things have also narrowed.

>acts human, struggles a litte, makes mistakes and so on.
Yeah, this is definitely true although interpretation of it can be very subjective. Speaking of the heisei/showa divide, I think series like FF7/8 and Evangelion contributed largely to the development of modern MCs. Perhaps people like characters like Cloud and Shinji that have flaws in them because they can relate better to them compared to showa heroes that are supposed to be paragons of virtue(although this is not always true, for example the MCs of Getter Robo). This may also have to do with people self-inserting into characters which is something rather alien to me.

>>13935
Exactly the writing felt like they were trying too hard to write a script for a hollywood film from a Japanese perspective.

Post edited on 28th Sep 2020, 5:32am

>>13938
>>13937
I for one used lancers a lot. seemed like the most logical way to take down tanks. Maybe I'm weird but I'd have lancers walk right up to and around tanks, shoot them in the ass, and repeat. It made things go a lot easier when I realized you can have units walk to and around enemy tanks easily by pulling up the action menu just before their gun points at you, closing it, taking a few more steps, and repeating until you're out of movement.

I decided to just play Rune Factory 4's Switch version as the CGs' clarity is greatly appreciated. Sadly, however, having a permanent map on the 3DS' bottom screen is very handy. Regardless, this is a pretty good game: Nice QoL improvements, more dialogue, slightly better combat, additional interactions, familiar visuals (Something about the look of RF's world is very comforting), and more!
With that said, the MC's house being a palace is not ideal. Yes, one starts out in a medium-sized room that may be expanded and upgraded; however, I believe that building up from a more modest dwelling is far more rewarding and interesting. Plus, manually placing down furniture and workstations is annoying and limited. Why bother?
The selection of bachelorettes is also wanting both in designs and personalities. Rune Factory 2, too, had this problem. The bachelors are also rather lame, and the prince (the real one) seems to bat for a different team, always flirting with the male MC. But still, RF4 ostensibly provides more depth to the romance mechanics, so I hope these candidates became more appealing.
I keep meaning to post screenshots, but I often forget to do so.

Spent the last couple days playing "This War Of Mine" off and on. This after playing the similar styled "deadlight" game, which was a short shovel wear tire 2.5d zombie game where you play as a old man doing a solid snake voice with parkour skills to rival mirrors edge across a zombie filled city (that looks weirdly war torn and crumbling) as he tries to find his missing wife and daughter, who turn out to already be dead because he repressed the memory.
In "This war of Mine", you struggle to survive in a 2.5d war torn city. I guess it didn't originally have a story mode but one was added in with three separate stories, the first of which has you playing as an old man who's daughter gets kidnaped, and you search the war torn city trying to find her, only to learn she's already dead because he repressed his memories. hmm... Second was about a radio operator trying to keep the people informed, but my game bugged out and I couldn't continue that so I went onto the third, which was of a girl helping a museum protect their heritage. It was the better of the three by far.

War of mine Seemed well made at first but sure got annoying by the end. I hate it when common materials that are clearly all around you are made rare and hard to get. Like wood or scrap wood for fires, in a half demolished house full of broken furniture with plenty of trees outside. Or water, when it's raining every other day. Even when you build a water collector you can't make water until you build a one time use filter. Then you need something like 20 wood and 15 scrap materials to make a basic knife. you'll have no weapons for a while because of this, but even then the game seems to really discourage combat anyway.
The point is to illustrate how hard it is to survive and gather basic materials in times of war for an average civilian, but it just makes me feel like these people are helpless idiots and makes gameplay frustrating. It often felt like an eternity watching characters drag their feet from point A to B because they're tired or sad or something. In a weird way, it was like playing a really edgy very of the sims. It was a decent enough game for the most part but I was glad to see the credits roll so I could uninstall and move on.

Finished Super Mario galaxy after more than a month of chipping away at it here and there. Never really got that much into the wii, pretty much only got one when it was a current gen system to play No More Heros then resold it. After that a few more games popped up on my radar but I never got around to playing them, even after buying another wii. But when I went back to being a NEET a couple months back I started to really dive into wii games thanks to the Dolphin emulator. It ran surprisingly well on my laptop. I guess you could say Mario Galaxy was one of the stars of the system and it had interesting looking gameplay, and sure enough it's pretty fun and creative. Some of the levels were rather impressive too with some nice overall presentation. Seems like it really pushed the wii to it's limits. There's not much context/story behind the game, but I guess that's how the Mario series has always been. Not sure why they bothered to give the game a dub when there's something like less than ten spoken words in the whole game. back when it came out I didn't really get what the big deal was with spherical worlds, but I really see what people meant now. Being able to quickly run around a tiny world, leap to another, and play around with gravity made for some really unique gameplay. It also controlled a lot better than I expected considering how the game operated, I did fight the controls a little on occasion, but it was rare. Sasuga Nintendo.

>>13970
Dolphin is an amazing project, and probably one of the finest examples of community open-source development. Look at their monthly blog-posts: one of the most memorable ones was when they essentially re-implemented the Wii's rendering pipeline using shaders so they could run it on the gpu directly.
>Seems like it really pushed the wii to it's limits
No, that honor belongs to the little-known title Zenkoku Dekotora Matsuri [1, 2]. It doesn't look like much, but it's overlaying the reflections dynamically (rather than using a pre-baked reflection map as most titles would; although of course with modern gpus you could just raytrace it).


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr1Q6P_-28s
[2] https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/08/04/dolphin-progress-report-june-and-july-2019/#dev-diary-fixing-the-most-curious-wii-game

At the recommendation of a friend who hated it, I played Helltaker. It took a little convincing and I really only played it because I assumed it was just that bad like he said. He probably thought we would complain about it together. As for it's actual quality, it's okay, I think. It's an alright puzzle game, I felt, if simple. Maybe there are too few mechanics overall since the regular levels stop introducing new mechanics once they bring in spikes that switch on and off with each step you take.
The story is near non-existent, it's just about some guy who really fucking loves demon girls setting out to get a demon girl harem because he had a dream about it.
The dialogue for the characters comes from the cutscenes, if you can call them that, and the hints they give you for each puzzle. The characters themselves lack depth, likely to be expected for such a short game. Judgement is probably the deepest character out of the group.
I don't really feel inclined to talk about graphics considering the game is illustrated but it has a very appealing art style with great character designs which I'll touch on later. I would say it's art is very focused relying on colors that you could expect from a demonic setting but with white to contrast certain features and make them stick out more.
The soundtrack has very few tracks to it and a single song plays for most of the game until you get to the final boss. It's a very catchy soundtrack but I don't feel like the song you hear most often is very fitting for a puzzle game. It's catchy, at least, so I don't mind it too much.
It's idea of humor is very simple, often relying on things that you wouldn't expect to work actually working.
I won't comment on the difficulty of the puzzles much since they would probably have varying difficulties for people and there would probably be someone bragging about speedrunning this game on the first try anyway but I enjoyed them. I only really had to look up a walkthrough for the last one from a lack of paying attention and a careless mistake I made. While I'm on the topic of it, the gameplay involves you getting to the goal for the level you're in within a certain number of moves. If you run out of turns you die. There are things that can make you take more turns like pushing a block, attacking a skeleton in your way, or getting hit by spikes, all which will take an extra turn from you either through damage or the act of pushing or attacking. But you can simply skip whatever puzzle you're on and simply talk to the girl you're supposed to get to except for the boss fight so it leaves me feeling like there isn't really a point to bothering with the game. While I haven't tried it, there was nothing that made it obvious I can't just use the chapter select to get to whatever puzzle I wanted to go to even on a new file so even talking about the gameplay feels a little useless. It makes me wonder why such a feature would be implemented considering the characters aren't particularly interesting.
I want to talk more about this game just so that I can make a more detailed and comprehensive "review" for anyone considering playing this game but even disregarding the need for that, as anybody here who might be convinced to play this game after reading a post probably already did, there really isn't much to talk about. There are only 10 levels and while it's certainly very stylish and appealing to the eyes and ears it's difficult to call it much more than a cool, cute, and funny puzzle game. But I can't help but wonder why this game got so popular for a time. It's really just a short and free puzzle game, why did it approach Undertale levels of popularity for a short time? While I could throw out any number of cynical and dismissive ideas, and I do want to, I think it might be everything besides the gameplay. It boasts catchy music, cute, cool, or hot character designs, and a general very attractive art style, not to mention it might be very appealing to anybody who likes demon girls or monster girls. Or rather, the normalfags who like them and find their low standards easily met. With such style it's possible that not only do people enjoy posting about such characters that are inclined to goof off and be demons like demons should, but it's also possibly very fun to draw. While I don't like any of the character's personalities, I can't help but like Justice's design a lot. She looks like some kind of action movie character and I thought about how fun it would be to put her in cool and ridiculous situations while constantly showing off or looking cool as she bests every challenge thrown at her. It hit me then that it could be something fun for artists, to just draw a well-designed character who is simple, without much nuance, and can be put in whatever general situation they think would be fitting without any kind of catch a deeper character would have, realizing that this or that couldn't happen because this or that trait wouldn't allow it for this or that character. And a good art style gets the attention of artists. Good fan art gets the attention of potential players. Happy players come away from it ready to post anything they please about it or share fan art they like, which catches the eyes of more potential players and so the cycle continues. I don't know how accurate that may be but it's an idea I had.
I can't say it's popularity didn't set any expectations. Honestly, I didn't expect it to be good at all and I assumed it was a hentai game or something. I'm happy neither of my assumptions were true but I went into the game knowing so little about it that I'm not really sure how I feel. I'm not disappointed because I know better than to expect popular things to be good but I'm not particularly glad I played it nor do I regret it. It was fun but that was it so I'm not sure what to list for my personal feelings on the game itself other than confusion. All the gameplay made me feel at the end was wondering why it was so popular until I answered my own question but with the ability to skip puzzles considered and an uninteresting story I'm left wondering what the point was for this. I almost wonder if whoever made this just wanted to make a VN but couldn't think of enough material or they just happen to really like puzzles. It's free so I can't complain too much but still, it leaves me wondering what the point was. But to conclude this, play it if you want. Play it if you like demon girls, if you like puzzle games, or if you're just bored.
I'll probably have to post these other two cute Justice pictures I have saved somewhere later just in case somebody wants to see them, it would be a shame to delete them even if I don't like the character that much.

Post edited on 21st Oct 2020, 12:39am

>>14027
>I assumed it was a hentai game or something
That would have been better.

Finished Nanashi no Game Me. This is a sequel and pretty much the first game all over again, which is not a bad thing, really. I remember having a great time playing the first Nanashi no Game. The horror mood is there, the story is decent enough and we have a sense of progression. The environment is fun to explore and it manages to give a feeling of isolation and dread. The fact you're playing this on a somewhat small DSi screen and you have to hold it vertically somehow enhances the whole experience.

The story is about a cursed game that kills people that play it in seven days. This is the exact same plot as the first NnG title, but this time we go a little deeper than that, exploring more of the curse itself and the entity behind it. It's nothing you haven't read or seen before elsewhere if you're a horror fan, still, I find it to be a very enjoyable experience and it's told in a nice way.

The game is divided in 3 parts more or less. Exploration, exposition and "skill" challenges. I put skill in quotes because they're quite easy. In exploration you walk around empty hotels, hospitals, schools, trying to find clues to advance the plot. Then, once an area is finished, you get exposition dialogue. Every so often you go to a 2D mode where you have to go through some platforming levels in order to continue the exploration part. None of it is difficult and you can finish the game in about 4 hours if you playing it slowly like I did.

The music and graphics are pretty good and the only problem I have with it is how awkward you have to hold your DSi to play this game. Several areas you'll be switching between holding it horizontally and vertically. The DSi screen is not really made to be seen on vertical, so you have to find the right angle to have a good visibility. Other than that I have no complaints. I would play a NnG3 for sure, if it ever came out.

I have some nostalgia for the first title. I remember playing it on lazy afternoons when the sun was almost down, close to a window and a light breeze coming through. I played the sequel close to the same window. These games hold nice, pleasant memories for me and I'll remember them fondly.

>>14029
>I would play a NnG3 for sure, if it ever came out.
Isn't Nanashi no Appli essentially NnG3?

>>14030
Yeah I read on the wiki there are some sequels for mobile but I don't own one. They could release a brand new one for the 3DS or something.

Finished playing the original Red Dead Revolver via pcsx2
Apparently some people feel it's garbage, and compared to the sequels sure I can see that. But for the time it was released I think it's "okay". The game is a very simple, with very simplistic combat but works fine for what it is. It's more linear than I expected but I don't really mind that, sometimes it's a nice change of pace from open sandbox games. Most of the time they just drop you off in an arena like map and tell you to kill everyone in it. Sometimes you have to go down a bit of a path maybe your way to the boss arena. As simple as it is however it's bizarrely difficult at times. There was one point at the end where you had to protect not one but two npc for three minutes, while being rushed by infinite mini-bosses who spawned faster than you can kill them (I had 4 on the map at the same time at one point.), This while being rushed by endless normal enemies too, and as if that's not enough only the mini-bosses would drop heal items.
After 30+ tries of this I had to rest my hand and eyes because they were killing me, then said fuck it and put the game at 20% speed with cheat engine and played it at what felt like 2fps. Even then combined with the use of save states it took me half a dozen more tries. It was like you needed the reflexes of some korean kid while nailing headshots one after another and timing your reloads perfectly. I really had no problem with the game up till this point, in fact the stage before it which I thought was the end of the game that has you assaulting an armored train fortress was laughably easy.
That said, Head shots would randomly do one hit kills, or sometimes just make the enemy dance around saying "ouch" as you shoot them in the face over and over. It didn't help that the targeting system was really floaty, the cross hairs could easily zip right past your target. If was tempting to try and configure the game to work with a mouse rather than a pad but I didn't want to spend hours configuring the thing and risk messing up the config I already managed to get working. The game also has this quick draw minigame that comes up randomly, in it you have to have perfect timing and precision or you'll be instantly killed and have to start over, sometimes those come at the end of stages, and the last boss does one with no warning or intro as all the others have, which I was expecting to happen sooner or latter but still seemed like a bitch move all the same.

Another thing that really stuck out to me was how the game felt lacking in content. It didn't just feel short, it felt like it was meant to have more to it but got trimmed down due to budget & time issues. There's a hub down which feels pretty useless. The bank only seemed to be there to introduce a side character and let you buy the saloon, which turned out to be pointless. Likewise there's three stores in the town that all sell the same photos of random objects, which only unlock multiplayer content and character bios. You can buy a couple of guns near the start of the game but they're kinda junk, and the game gives you much better ones as you progress for free. The town has a tailor and barber shop that make me wonder if they didn't plan on having character customization, when you try to go into the barber shop it just says they're "closed due to a death in the family". A lot of the game in general felt kind of rushed. All the side characters just had a short intro followed by a single level where you play as them, then they would disappear till they reunited at the very end. There were also parts that left me feeling like I was missing something, like when you're first switched to the British character who sneaks into a town center to save a tied up girl and gets attacked by someone who seems to know him, our character shoots at without a second thought, leading into a boss battle.
Speaking of being rushed, There's one point where red gets captured, and they introduce a native American character who's apparently you cousin?? You play as him for one level in which you free Red, then the character dies in the intro for the next level.

The plot is pretty simple. You play as a Red, a bounty hunter who's parents were killed in a raid. You latter learn your father's business partner sold him out to save his own life when captured by the Spanish military so he could split his newly found gold mine with that armies' general. So of course you go and kill these mofos. It's a bit funny though how after killing the general and the game seems over, they start this whole quick draw competition like something from The Quick And The Dead. Two of the side characters join, which means one or two of them would end up being killed at some point right? Well when you start your match with the running champion, the mayor has the sheriff hauled away and beaten up so he can come out and say you and the champion are obviously the best, so the other two contestants have been disqualified, making whoever wins your match the new champion. After you win, by you know gunning down the other guy, the mayor orders his men to kill you, including the guy you just shot (it's revealed at this point he was your dad's business partner.) so starts a gameplay segment where you have to kill the champ again but in normal combat, this while he's shooting at you without a car in the world for how many civilians he kills in the process. It was an admittedly funny scene watching these people run around like chickens with their heads cut off right into the middle of a gun fight and randomly being blasted by this guy who couldn't care less.

Anyways, now I've gotta get around to playing the third game. (Forth if you count that zombie expansion thing.)


>>13971
That's pretty neat. It was during this gen when I was really starting to pay attention to improvements in graphics, and was having my mind blown by what systems at the time could do. I thought GTAIV in particular was amazing visually because among other things, I think it was the first time I saw real reflections on cars. But even on a game like that the rear view mirrors had animated gif rather than real reflections. I feel like this Zenkoku Dekotora Matsuri could have used some work with filters and shading, but even so it's got some pretty impressive elements to it.

>>14035
I have a really fond memory of that game, I played it even before the first Redemption was announced, so long time ago. It was a really good third person shooter with a cover system before the mechanic became popular and an standard for the genre.
Also it had an amazing same-screen multiplayer with lots of options, you could unblock all characters to use, I find weird you found the game lacking in options or uncomplete because what I recall is quite the contrary, but I played it more than a decade ago so I can't say for sure.
And finally, the soundtrack was a compilation of songs of lesser known spaguetti westerns, quite obscure but still amazing tracks, Luis Bacalov and even some Morriconne;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUEflrmy60A
Redemptions lost most of the spaguetti touch and I don't think there's other game that have tried to capture the same vibe. It's also curious how one of the best selling franchises ever started as an arcade leftover from Capcom that looked silly as fuck;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4MDed5u4MI
(The song from the trailer is the main theme of Compañeros by Sergio Corbucci, composed by Morricone, that really says it all about the spaguetti influence)

>>14036
It certainly did get the feel right and the music did have a charming fit to it. I was pretty impressed with the intro segment of the game. It felt like something Tarantino would have gone for. I never really touch on multiplayer stuff but I can see the appeal of being able to unlock every story character in the game.
I'm no stranger to short games, and I know a lot of older ones can easily be knocked out in a few hours. Maybe I missed some stuff in the game but something about RDR just gave off that vibe like they meant to have more. Aside from what I mentioned before, another example is the horse ridding which is only used for the train attack level. You'd think if they went through the trouble of making a ridable horse in the game that they would have used it more than once. The trailer you linked certainly made it look like they originally had more use for it. It's also very curious to see they wanted to have a flying character considering how small the maps are.

Horizon zero dawn somehow managed to recently get a PC port in spite of previously being a big budget PlayStation exclusive, seemed like that'd be the version to play but when I heard they screwed up the port two ways from sunday I decided to dust off the copy I had for ps4 and just play that instead. I guess they wanted to take a dip into the pc market to promote the upcoming sequel and ps5. It was a game included with half a dozen others I got in a cheap batch but never got around to playing till now.

In the game you play as a orphan outcast who's been shunned by her tribe to be raised by a guy who's also been an outcast. If nothing else this frame work helps to justify why the protagonist is such a loner who often talks to themselves throughout the game. This takes place in a post apocalyptic world full of barbaric tribes and wild machine animals roaming the land. This of course raises a lot of questions, and the game is actually pretty good at explaining 'most' of it all in a fairly satisfying way. Although more than a few holes do start to pop up in the plot by the end. It's nice though how the game starts by just focusing on the main character trying to accepted by the tribe who shunned her, learn about her parents ect, then the story very naturally expands as the game world does too.

It's always funny seeing scifi media where in people treat technology like magic, and this is no exception. Not just in universe where they think machines were sent by the devil, but also from the creators who somehow don't seem to understand how electronics work. Your character learns a fair bit as they progress so it's understandable by the end that she would be better able to work with the things around her, but even so from the start you hack complex electronics and bend them to you will by jamming a mcguffin up it's ass that you tied to a stick. There's a point where normal people can see data streams with their naked eye. In general people do a lot of complex things that should be pretty hard for people who don't even use electricity (as anything other than ammo type). But to be fair, our main character essentially grew up with a smart phone to spend her life tinkering with and figure out, and the only other character who really has a true grasp on technology has a pretty decent in universe explanation for why.

There's no doubt it's a nice looking game. Apparently the pc port needs a hypothetical super computer to run it properly due to bad codding. With the attention to detail given to the landscapes I can certainly believe it. It takes place in what's left of utah so most of the map is natural landscapes with just a few ruins of old cities scattered around. Unironically the city ruins look like garbage. Those areas look like they're from a last gen game at best. There's not really much of anything to explore in them anyway, and if anything they can be a bit annoying to traverse.
Speaking of traversing the map, it has this climbing system that reminds me a lot of Uncharted or Asscreed, but done far far worse. You're only able to climb things that are yellow or have hard to notice bird poop on them. Far too often I'd be jumping up and down tryng to get on top of something, only to latter realize if there isn't a yellow/poop path lied out for you, they didn't mean for you to go there and as such there's nothing to see there anyway. The character would also glue herself to these yellow/poop objects like glue and not let go sometimes. I found myself smashing all the buttons on my pad at times just trying to get her to let go.

Unlike the nice looking landscapes however, the character models have this sort of uncanny valley thing going on. During the Mass Effect style conversation segments, characters act like robots wearing human skin. This isn't helped by how oddly perfect some of them look. By perfect I mean with flawless skin that looks almost like rubber. I swear I couldn't help but laugh at some of the characters, they're supposed to be savage tribal men who grew up hunting in the wilds, but they look like Ken dolls in bad cosplay. On top of that a number of characters are very flamboyant. I don't think they're meant to be gay but they sure act like it. The conversation segments seem to have an oddly limited range of animations, some of which are used very inappropriately for what characters are saying or doing. There's one point for example when you approach a character sitting next to some water. She gets up and you both take your talking stances across from each other. You talk to her a bit, As the character continues to talk to you and looks you right in the eyes: "oh, is that my sister in the water?" "oh wait no, I'm just looking at my own reflection. God I miss her..."
I thought stuff like this might have been because I was playing an unpatched version of the game. I tried downloading a 1gb update but all that seemed to do was preinstall a paywalled dlc expansion.

All in all I thought the combat was well executed. I liked the fact that the leveling system in the game was only there to unlock new abilities and didn't effect your personal much. Even buying better weapons didn't seem to change how much damage you'd do. You could raise it with weapon mods but even then it mostly comes down to the type of ammo you use and skill/know how. It all made you feel OP without really being OP. Even late game enemies from the start could fug your shat up if you're an idiot. If anything I think being able to carry less ammo and heal items early on is probably the main contributor to what made things easier as it went on. By the end you're a walking armory and ammo factory. That said the ultimate big baddy enemies called "Death Bringers" were a tad underwhelming. They're very slow and most of their weapons can be knocked off fairly easily. The "thunder jaws" which are pretty much mechanical dinosaurs, were a lot more challenging. If you knock their weapons off they'll just run over and stomp on you.


The plot really bugged me by the end because it left a lot of things unresolved and sort of just 'ended', felt a bit like sequel bait. For anyone who's curious about the story A corporation in the future decided for some genius reason that they should make and sell fully automated war machines that could consume local mater (inorganic and organic) to fuel themselves and replicate more of themselves, and of course they were built with no backdoors or fail safes I guess. so of course they go Skynet on all life and turn the earth into a barren inhospitable wasteland crawling with killer robot spider tanks.

So how are there plants, animals, human tribes, and machine animals running around? and who's the MC's parents? That's where things get a bit more interesting.

The militaries of old tried and failed to fight off the machine swarms. They'd replicate faster than humans could kill them. Apparently the governments of the old world seeing the looming threat and knowing full well they couldn't stop it, pressured the head of the corporation responsible for unleashing the hoard to fund a massive project they called "Zero Dawn". Apparently they tried building a ship and sending people into orbit but that didn't pan out and they didn't have time to try again leaving the fate of humanity to rely on Zero Dawn alone. It's a bit weird to explain what zero dawn is exactly, but I guess it's a combination of a complex AI and vault system housing dna and knowledge of all life. At it's core was an ai designed to spend the next hundred years cracking the codes to shut down the machine swarms, while also terraforming the planet to make it hospitable for life again, then using breeding chambers and automated classrooms ect to bring humans back once it's safe. Part of this meant creating machines to roam the land, harvesting materials and fixing the planet. Unfortunately the system screwed up. A subroutine designed to destroy everything and start again became infected with a virus that spread to the other systems and sabotaged the whole operation. On top of this the guy at the head of the corporation decided to say fuck human culture and deleted all the archives containing all human knowledge. To give future generations a clean slate I guess. The core AI in charge of everything tried to solve the virus problem at least, by creating a clone of the head of the program and then nuking itself to take out the problem with it. The MC being that clone, who was created to be able to access any and all systems in Zero Dawn. Also to eliminate that virus ridden subroutine which some humans had dug up, reactivated, and began to worship as the "metal devil", who trying to build an army of salvaged war machines, cult followers, and corrupted machine animals to attack a broadcast tower, to send out a signal to reactivate the swarm and erase life on earth again. So you along with all the people you help out during the course of the game make a stand and fight off the metal devil and his army.

What bothers me about the end is that after defeating the metal devil, the mc just sort of walks away. There was lots of talk about rebooting the AI, fixing it's systems, regaining lost knowledge of humanity past, but at that moment I guess the mc just lost all interest in that. She left her hacking tool behind and decided to go exploring to find her clone mother's final resting place. After the credits we see the Metal Devil leave it's core and fly away, into a device in the hands of a character who helped excavate it in the first place while implying he'd give it a new body in exchange for more info about the old civilizations.
I was hoping to see what would happen to the humans after that, or at least get some clue but I suppose that's for the sequel.


Anyways, I thought it was pretty good, even with a number of issues.

>>14038
I loved it, for a typical AAA it had a lot of good things, great artistic design, competent writing and a really satisfying combat with enough options and different ways to play.
It also had most of your typical generic sandbox shit like boring collectibles, some fetch quests and the annoying timed ones, also a big but too empty map, but overall it was a great experience. I liked doing captures because the game looked georgeous almost all the time. Also I really like games were you can explore ruins and abandoned technology.

>>14040
I couldn't help but do a bunch of screencaps too, but because it was on a ps4 I can't easily share them.
I was disappointed by those collectibles. I had hoped they'd lead to something more interesting, or at the very least unlock you something decent. Once I finished my first set of metal flowers and turned it in I felt like a kid that spent all day and $20 collecting tickets at an arcade just to learn all he could afford was a stick of gum and a rubber band. Needless to say I stopped collecting anything after that. At least the armor you got for collecting all the power cores was pretty neat, even if it didn't allow mods. Wasn't till I got it that I realized this was the first modern game I played in a while that didn't have automatic regenerating HP. It was also funny how her armor reset to the default for some of the cutscenes at the end. It was weirder yet how mohawk bro did a quick-change too for whatever reason back to his original outfit, dunno what was up with that.
Speaking of the metal flowers, I had hopped there would be some, any, explanation for them and the flower patterns around them. Even looking it up online and checking the wiki didn't really seem to explain anything. Almost feels like they were an after thought, there to make the world feel a little less empty. It didn't really feel that empty to me though. Every step of the way there were materials to collect, animals to hunt, and enemies to take on. Not that I wasn't glad to eventually unlock unlimited fast travel and use the hell out of it. Unlike say, Genshin Impact which has a nice looking world, but it felt empty and lifeless with not much to do between objectives.
Another thing in retrospect, it seems a bit silly to even use robots to kill humans. With their technology they could have just had drones do strikes on any and all targets. I mean if you have a roach infestation in your house, you don't send in small robots to kill them all right? If you wanted to eliminate all life on earth, it would make a lot more sense to just gas or radiate the planet. Also, who the hell in their right mind puts the fate of humanity in the hands of someone who makes "bad ass" mobile apps?

Not ripping on the game because I disliked it mind you, I thought it was really good. Just random thoughts.

I played the pikmin games not too long ago. First about two months ago and second a week ago. Took me a good while to track down a copy of the wii version for pikmin 2. I feel like the the wiimote was a good fit for the games and it's weird to picture playing it on the gamecube. Unfortunately it didn't run too well on my laptop, ikmin 2 ran like garbage, I had to keep it on the lowest settings to make it playable, but even then it would turn into a slide show during cinematic. Still, I managed to reach the end on both all the same. The first game seemed appealing back when it came out, but someone I knew insisted I shouldn't play it, warning that it's a game with a constantly ticking clock which you can reach the end of and still fail. I think the only other game I've ever played like that was one called Big Mother Truckers, and that was a pretty horrible game which left me feeling like it was a big waste of time when I got to that non-end. Anywho, Pikmin is a game in which you play as a tiny alien who crash lands on what I think is earth. There you meet little native plant like creatures called pikmin, and by building an army of them you traverse the world looking for the scattered parts of your ship in the first game, and random junk in the second game to take back and sell as treasures on your home planet. I'm not entirely sure if it's earth because while the environment and items you collect resemble things from earth (pikmin 2 had tons of various product placement), almost all the enemies and the pikmin themselves look like nothing found on this planet.
I think the light rts concept is pretty neat. If you know what you're doing there are various points where you can split up your teams and have them carry out different tasks, but that's usually just limited to having pikmin carry things back to base while you continue to explore with your main force. spiting them up to have some take down obstacles wouldn't usually be worth it as it takes forever with a small amount, but can be done fairly quickly when forced on. More so they want you to switch between pikmin types, sending one type to do X, then switching to another type to do Y. The second game seemed to suggest they might want you to micromanage more by giving you two commander type characters you can switch between and control independently, but this was very rarely useful. There was only one boss battle that I encountered in the second game that required using one character to distract the boss then switching to the other to hit it from behind. Most of the time that ability was just a time saver at best as I'd keep one near the base to save me a trip if I need more pikem or some of another type. I think my play style wasn't what was intended because I was overly cautious about loosing pikmin and would often load a save if I lost too many. By the end of each game I had an abundance of pikmin, but I think what they want players to do is to have them die, run away, and learn from your mistake as you farm for more. The problem with that is farming for pikmin can be very time consuming, but you can't really waste time with a ticking clock like in the first game. The second game doesn't really have a time limit for the game itself, but they still have a day and night cycle where in you need to return all active pikmin to the base before dark or they'll die. It's not generally a hard game as long as you keep up a good stock pile of pikmin. Most enimies can be beaten by just spamming pikmin at them with good timing. Your aim when tossing them matters a lot as they can stick to enemy heads, backs, ect. if/when they get thrown off where they land matters too since an enemy can easily eat any that are in front of it, or use some other attack. In general it helps to remember how enemies behave. I heard there's a third game coming out which is pretty neat since I didn't get the impression the first two were all that popular. They're pretty decent games that I think are a bit under rated.

Looks like someone had to learn from CAPCOM that a crap game like MvC:Infinte with a big franchise tie-in is still a crap game.
https://avengers.square-enix-games.com

>>2003
>>13865
How ASSASSIN'S CREED has fallen... from being a hidden blade killer with morals to a Valhalla Viking raiding sim with barely any connections to the previous games.

The fact that you can make it through the game without stealth assassinating someone rubs me the wrong way..

It’s very much a Ubisoft game — good concept, decent to middling execution.

Here's an exercise~ rank all the AC games. All 18 of them.

My fave is the original AC & Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China.
https://youtu.be/hWs6pIOT1o8

A few weeks ago I played Assassins Creed Odyssey, it's nothing like the old Assassins Creed at all, they may as well have just made it a new title. It was a mediocre experience.

The new combat system is like a cheap imitation of a standard action RPG but lacking the refinement they do so coming off as tedious, this becomes far worse as they also have a level system now, fights can take a VERY long time and be VERY tedious, Assassinations are based on level as well so often you can't even do that.

The story is bland, the setting had potential but I really don't like what they have done to the world, AC 1, 2 and the Expansions were set in cities, this meant that you could have a large world and feel like it was actually a real city, Odyssey has a large map but it's the whole of Greece so cities are very small and the world comes off as actually being comically tiny, it's something like 12 or 13 KM from Laconia to Macedonia, it's really hard to be immersed in that. Historically it has issues as well, it feels like it was written by memers that don't actually know Greece beyond those memes, there is a lot of sexual content and you have the option of have s*x with many characters yet s*x out of wedlock was actually highly frowned on in Greece, it was punishable by loss of Citizenship for a woman in Athens and that was Athens. It's highly pro-Spartan, to the point where it portrays Athens as evil and mentions there slavery while giving a VERY brief and VERY sugar-coated mention of the Heliots , it basically says they are treated fine and don't revolt because they feel safe and you actually get a mission from the Spartan king who asks you to stop certain malicious Spartans from a certain Special group from harming them as if they are a minority and that it was not an accepted practice when historically this group in question(I forget the name) Actually routinely did this, it was part of there training to kill and steal from Heliots and morover every year the Spartasn declared symbolic war on the Heliots giving all Spartans the right to kill a Heliot which they would do to kill of any Heliot that was charismatic, good looking or stood out in any other way that might cause them to be a potential rebel or rebel leader, they were treated Horribly in what was a Race based state that people like Hitler glorified yet Ubisoft the people that say 'this game was made by a diverse group from different faiths, ethnicities and gender indemnities' or whatever, glorifies them.

The quests themselves are bland as well it's all, go here kill that gather this, it comes across as a free to play MMO, in fact in many ways it comes across as that, from the levelling system, the combat, the loot, the map, the 'time savers' they offer that you can buy, the weapons you can buy, the types of quest they have, the add-ons, I would not be surprised if the next AC has a Gacha system(or I guess it's Loot box in the west).

It feels nothing Like AC 1 or 2.

>>14077

>(I forget the name)

Crypteia. Though with the years I have read different theories and definitions, from a particularly defined group or "secret police" to just some part of the spartan education program, but it included the killing of helots as some sort of training, and like you said, even a "declaration of war" to them, once a year. By all means it was institutionalized, part of the spartan state. And while there was some reformist spartan kings that could have different ideas about it, I think none of them lived in times of the Peloponnesian war or short after.
I think it was supposed to work as some sort of demographic control and exercise of terror since spartan were few against so many of the subjugated.
I have Odissey and haven't played it, bought it because the setting, but reading your post doesn't give me the slightest motivation to touch it. I find atrocious how they can fake history like that, it's the most lowest form of manipulation and propaganda. And I'm saying it as a pro-spartan myself. I really hate this times we are living in sometimes.
Also it's such a shame we can't have good historical games, it could be a great learning tool, but it seems we are too idiotized for that, we need to project the present to absolutely everything or we don't understand a thing. Only grand strategy games seem to work for me since you can learn lots of geography and focused details from them.

Post edited on 14th Nov 2020, 12:39am

Anyone else playing Sakuna?

>>14082
Tell me about it.

>>14082
No, but i'm looking foward to seeing much more of that character design.

>>14083
It's an action side-scrolling platformer with a relatively detailed rice farming simulation aspect. You play as the titular goddess of harvest/rice and war. It was developed by a doujin circle that had been active in comiket over the years, Edelweiss. Their past titles include Freesia and Astebreed. I find it fun thus far although some people might find the farming aspect a little tedious and repetitive.

>>14077
Sounds pretty shitty. Weird because I heard lots of good things about it elsewhere. It's a shame to hear they butchered the map like that, the attention to detail in the environments was one of the best things about the old asscreed games.

I finished playing No More Heros 2 today. It made me regret selling my wii back in the day before it came out, but after finally getting around to it, it feels disappointingly short. I clocked in at 8 hours when I finished it, and I think I left it running at times too while afk. It certainly has a lot of great moments to it and some neat boss/assassin battles, but the game feels lacking. Ironic as a character at one point comments on how the game is packed full of enough content as it is, after you learn he completed 3 stages for you and rubs it in a bit how you can never play those now. (the game has a bit of 4th wall breaking early on) They start the game off by saying you'll be fighting 50 assassins (bosses and their stages), but one of the first few fights knock the number in half, then again a bit latter on, and many of them don't even have stages. The story is a very paper thin and rushed revenge story with a bit of romance sprinkled in.

It's weird how the game has a number of mechanics that they only seem to use once, like when you have a mecha fight early on, or this really long driving segment where nothing happens as you drive to the boss fight.
There's two playable side characters who almost seem pointless. There's three stages between the two of them, and once done one character who seems really important just disappears from the game for good, the other only shows up again at the end to help on the final battle. Wouldn't have guessed that a magical school swimsuit wearing loli elf in a partial mecha suit would be one of the hardest enemies in the game. Took me a lot more tries than any other, and it doesn't help that it's with one of the playable side characters.

The combat mechanics are nice, but did get a little repetitive at times in combination with some of the stages which felt really long and dragged out. Luckily, there's a power up system you can activate to really kick some ass, and there's also this random chance after every enemy you kill to get an ability that can let you shoot fire balls or turn into a tiger and one hit kill enemies. The side jobs that play like old 8bit games are pretty neat and creative.

Overall I think it was a decent game, it's got a lot of fun things going for it on multiple levels, but it also felt very half baked, almost like the game is an expansion of the first rather than a stand alone. Still, there's nothing wrong with short games that are very direct and to the point while being enjoyable, which I think is what they were sort of going for with this. Not sure if it works too well though. You've got lots of neat moments and set pieces, not much context to back them up. Which is a shame because some of the bosses seem pretty neat and interesting.


Also, I felt this was a really nice touch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ51oME5LZI
The accompanying mini game was also pretty neat too, and it was charming how they used volcaloid for the game bgm. It's no big deal now but when No More Heros came out, being an ironic weeb still hadn't hit the mainstream just yet, so it was kind of fascinating playing a game like this with a moe loving lead character. Whelp, here's looking forward to the third game coming out.

Help. Ikemen is seducing my uncle.

I had a decent amount of fun playing Celeste. When I got to the original version of Celeste accessible in the hotel, I played through it in one go. That way, it foreshadowed getting the double jump upgrade, which was nice. I'm nowhere near close to finishing the game 100%, but I'll return to it someday.

It's been so long since I've felt so sad about completing a game. I do hope there will be a sequel in the future. The game is by no means perfect but it's oddly satisfying.

Recently played the god of war soft reboot, or as some might know it, the "BOY!" game. For those who don't know since I figure people here tend to stick with pc, you play as a character named Kratos who just before being killed in battle makes a deal with ares the god of war to give him a power up in exchange for his soul. Ares then makes Kratos into his whipping boy minion, and sends Kratos on missions to kill so and so, raid villages ect. I guess after doing it so many times Kratos didn't notice when he got sent to attack his home village and killed his own wife and kid in the process. To add insult to injury, Ares permanently attaches the ashes of the wife and child to Kratos's skin, which is why he's so pale white. Needless to say he weren't too pleased with this and with the help of another god goes on he war path to take down ares.
which he does, then takes his place as the god of war. Then in the sequel we learn Kratos has been starting too many wars and needs to chillaxe, so the other gods kick him out of the god club, so he kills a god or two, makes a deal with some titans, and marches with them back up to Olympias to kick some god ass. 3 mostly has you fighting your way across Sparta and over the bodies of gods to reach Zuse who turns out to be Kratos's father, go figure.
The games had a very simple but effective fast passed combat system, they were completely linear, and by the third game had gotten extremely violet and graphic. I think it's also worth pointing out the main character is a pretty nasty peace of work. He has a largely one track mind, focused on revenge and killing pretty much everyone/everything he meets, this includes innocent people.

I followed along with the series and it's spin offs from the first installment up till god of war 3, but I passed on ascension because by that point I was starting to get kind of tired of them, and with the way 3 ended I wasn't sure if I'd want to play another one any time soon, if it was even possible to make one after that. The main character Kratos, kills off all the greek gods, releasing a different plague with each one he kills, and by the end basically destroys the planet. The main character was also starting to get a bit too unlikable for me, so I passed on the prequel game that came out after 3. I kept hearing nothing but praise about the latest one so I figured I'd give it a shot. After destroying the greek world Kratos decides to settle down and start a new family in the Norse realm. seemed like it must have been going well up till his wife passed away, which is where the game starts and one of the local gods decide to pay Kratos a visit.
I think the story was really well presented in this game, maybe a little too well in fact. A problem this game has is it feels like it's a set up for things to come. The objective of the game is simply to take the wife's ashes to the tallest point in all the lands. You get side tracked a lot on the way there, and along the way tons of exposition and lore gets dumped on you that in the end doesn't really play into the game events at all. Characters will go on and on and on about Thor and Oden, but they never at any point show up in the game. They go on about how blood thirsty insane and vengeful thor is, but even even after killing Thor's kids half way into the game, Thor waits 3 years before making an off camera cameo appearance in a post credit bonus scene to drop in on Kratos and not say anything. .
Far as gameplay goes, Kratos felt really sluggish and heavy in this game. It didn't have the devil may cry style fast paced combat all the others had, instead it was more modern and grounded. Somehow everything felt slow, but I did eventually get used to it. Still felt weird by the end how he couldn't hop over boxes or small gaps, unless it's an approved direction, then you can leap a hundred meters without issue.
I was also happy to see they didn't do the modern gaming trope of turning everything now into a sandbox, up until I got to the sandbox hub area. It wasn't 'that' bad, but it still felt weird for a game series that's always been linear. So now they got you rowing around in a huge lake collecting random crap and knocking out a handful of side missions. Speaking of weird, they really cut down on the violence this time around. The game felt rather PG aside from some swearing. The main character throughout the game tries to do this father of the year thing while trying to be a better person I guess, maybe a good role model too I'm not sure, but it's bizarre coming from a blood thirsty psychopathy who once tore a guy's head off to use it as a flashlight. Maybe the idea is having that son changed him for the better? What wasn't changed for the better is this horrible armor/perk/ whatever system in which you have to hunt and grind and kill this or that for random item drops to craft and upgrade slightly better armor than what you had before. That's one of the things I felt should have stayed with MMOs. Before every weapon, skill, and piece of armor you got was via story progression. Seems like just another lazy way of padding out run times. It also ran oddly bad at times. You wouldn't expect a console game, let alone a first party big budget game to have FPS issues, but sure enough...
The way they avoided having any loading screens was pretty neat, although there's a shortcut quick travel room you enter which became pretty apparent was just a place to keep you while the game loads the area you're quick traveling to. It's a bit surprising they decided to get rid of quick time events when I think this was 'the' quick time event game, but all in all I'm not sure if those are really a great idea at this point. A real pleasant surprise indeed was realizing part way into the game that the VA for Kratos this time around was a main character in one of my favorite tv shows, Stargate.
The ending felt pretty disappointing. Sure you did what you set out to do from the start, but by then so many other things get established and built up, you expect something more to come of it all. A number of side stories have no real resolution for that mater, you basically just go home. So in the end it just feels like the foundation for a sequel. It was certainly a pretty decent game in spite of it all, I can understand why it was so popular, but it just felt like such a huge cock tease. Not that I don't think the game can be enjoyed on it's own, I'd certainly recommend it, but I'd think most people would have a "that's it?" view by the end. The squeal should certainly be interesting if nothing else.

>>14119
After that I played Infamous second son. Definitely something I wouldn't have bothered with if the game wasn't included with others I bought. I played the first two but it's been so long I can't remember much of anything about them aside from the fact you play as a dude with super powers freeing a city, and there's a big focus on morality. It also had a pretty decent ending that made me think they really shouldn't make another game in the series. Which of course they did anyway. Second son has it's own story, characters, setting ect. The main character instantly comes across as the studio trying too hard to appeal to younger demographics, it almost felt pathetic. It played decently enough, but it's very short, the map feels tiny, and while somewhat original the super powers you get make little sense. You can use smoke, neon, and video (then cement after beating the game)powers, which all play similar but have minor differences. For whatever reason you can't switch between them easily and need to drain a fuel source to switch powers. Smoke was common place with video being really hard to find. In the story a militarized police like force tasked with hunting down super powered people, is tracking down a few who escape in a Indian reservation(?), the leader of the group tortures and mutilates the locals while trying to get info on the escaped prisoners, and leaves them suffering from something only she can reverse. Your character accidentally receives powers from one of the escaped prisoners, and so you head to seattle washington, where this group set up base and occupied the town, so you can confront the leader and make her fix the people back home.
It wasn't a terrible game but it's also not something I'd recommend. The original two were much better, and there's not really much about it that stands out as being unique or interesting. It was almost tempting to play it again to see what the other morality line might be like, but couldn't say I cared enough to bother.


After that I played Uncharted 4.5. A spin off of the uncharted series focused around some side characters from Uncharted 2 and 4.
The game seemed like it was largely reusing resources from 4 while trying to squeeze some extra use out of the engine from the game. This too was a pretty short game and only needed one sitting to finish it. It had a nice intro but quickly drops you on a tiny open world map while making it seem like that's pretty much the whole game, luckily getting past that it turned out to just be 2/3 of the game, The uncharted games are supposed to be rather linear after all so it'd be weird to day the least if the whole thing took place in a sandbox. The plot isn't anywhere near as interesting as that of the previous games and the adventure doesn't feel nearly as earned. There's very little built up or investigation leading up to where the treasure is located. In the other games half the time was spent just trying to figure out where to go. Everything else plays pretty much like Uncharted 4 since it seems to use the same engine and reused a number of the same mechanics. If nothing else I'd say I liked it more than the PS vita uncharted game which itself wasn't even that bad.

>>13743
>>13841
I just finished this game as well. I thought the gameplay was actually difficult on my first playthrough (so before the first ending) because of the camera/lock-on mechanics, which felt a bit uncomfortable. I hated the game on the first play-through but I was quite impressed by the cinematic start of the third story-route. But then, I was also quite overwhelmed by the various endings.
As for Emil, I found his little side-story to be more interesting than the main plot of the game and I think it would have been interesting if they had expanded on that.

>>14135
For more on Emil I'd say just play the previous game.

>>14135
>>14136
The Nier Replicant remake is releasing soon so you might want to look into that.

>>14135
Actually, I forgot to mention one major flaw in the game: you cannot open the items menu when your character is performing any sort of action, which could be jumping or staggering after being attacked (the staggering is also annoying, as it happens after every attack from an enemy). There were lots of moments where the game set me up against waves of enemies and I was tapping the esc button every few seconds while stuck in a cycle of dodging and staggering, in the hopes of finally being allowed to use a healing item, only for it to just pause the game again. Accessing the menu was the only way to use these healing items by the way. Even Dark Souls allows you to use healing potions in the middle of a boss fight.
>>14137
Yes, I will.